THE LAST TIME
I was filled with a confused mess of emotions as my stepdaughter sat on my lap, facing me. Painfully gorgeous in her smocked crop top and short wrap skirt, she had grown a lot since the first time I met her when she was just six years old. At that first meeting, and countless times since I became her mother, Tracie had sat on my lap, many of those times as a playful surprise, and it always made me laugh in delight.
But this time, things were different. She wasn't a little girl anymore, she was a beautiful - let's face it, sexy - young lady. And I wasn't laughing; in fact, her weight on my legs felt like a frightening trap. I tried to keep myself from crying as I looked at the brown shipping box she had put in my hands.
She said, "I think you're going to love it."
I looked at her skeptically, but she just smiled and said, "Come on, open it."
The packing tape was already cut open. I lifted the cardboard flaps to see what was inside. There was a colorful package with words I couldn't process - or didn't want to: something to do with horseback riding? Walking a dog?
Strap-On Harness Set.
Then I realized the picture on the package was no animal, but a thick, veiny dildo.
My eyes opened so wide they hurt. I looked up from the box to my daughter's face. I said, "Honey, no."
"Mom, yes." She opened the package and pulled out the toy phallus.
My head buzzed in shock. Part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but I was too stunned. "Tracie, what on Earth do you expect me to do with that?"
"What we both want, Mom."
My mouth went dry and I tried to swallow. I felt like I must be in a dream; this couldn't be real.
"Tracie, I don't even... Th- There's no way."
"Yes there is."
"No. Absolutely not. My god, honey, I have to draw a line."
"I'm sorry, Mom, but I'm not letting you do that. We need to do this. You need to do this."
Hot tingles spread over me. I rubbed my forehead. "So you're blackmailing me again?"
She said, "Mom, remember when you brought me to my first swimming lesson, and I was so terrified about getting in the water? And you knelt down to my height, and you took my hands and looked me in my eyes, and you told me I could do it?"
I did remember.
She went on, "No one else could have done that, but I trusted you. Something about you, Mom, something in your eyes, in your touch, made me feel that I
could
do it, even if I was really scared to. And so what happened?"
I mumbled, "We could hardly keep you out of that pool all summer."
"That's right, because once I got over my nerves - once you helped me get over them - I loved it so much, I never wanted to stop. So don't think about this as blackmail. Just think of it as I'm helping you get past your fear. Because I love you."
I looked at the sex toy in her hand, tilting between us. I grumbled, "This isn't how you love someone, Tracie."
"At least I'm willing to take a chance."
I heard the firmness in my stepdaughter's voice, but still searched her eyes for some hope of getting out of this. I said, "You've got to be kidding. I've never used one of those, Tracie."
"And you think I have?"
We both looked at the big silicone penis. She turned it slowly, showing the ridges and bumps molded into it.
She said, "Take it." She put the dildo in my hand.
"Tracie, my god. I-"
"That's enough, Mom." She got off my legs and said, "Go wash it off." That strong, bossy blackmail tone was back in her voice.
I stared at her in disbelief. As the seconds ticked past, I realized she was not joking and was not relenting. If anything, I thought I saw a twinkle of anticipation in her eye, like when she was a little girl watching me take fresh-baked cookies out of the oven.
My shoulders slumped. Of course, I had to do whatever she told me. I felt once again that weird consolation: I didn't have a choice.
The dildo was surprisingly heavy. I looked to her and risked one more protest, "Honey, are you-"
She groaned in annoyance and rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mom, I'm sure. Go. The directions say to use dish soap. And don't take too long."
I wanted to cry. But I just heaved a shaky sigh and clambered stupidly off Tracie's bed, a giant cock in my hand. Walking out of her bedroom, I glanced back at my teenage taskmaster. In a normal household, I would have been delighted to see her dressed up so cute in a room so tidy. But this wasn't a normal household.
I started toward the kitchen. Back on the hallway wall was the framed picture of Tracie and me. I had gotten the glass repaired, but it seemed our relationship was still fractured. I was still in my daughter's control.
At the kitchen sink, I started the water pouring and dribbled dish soap onto the dildo. I washed it, feeling like I was giving the dumb thing a hand-job.
Here I was, still in my clothes from the office, pumping my sudsy fist on the silicone dick. I thought about other moms in the neighborhood - Jenny, for instance, Emma's mother. They lived only a few minutes' walk away. Our girls had grown up together. Jenny and I had been mothers together.
Jenny was probably in her own kitchen at that same moment, making dinner for her family, waiting for her teenage daughter to come home from work at the grocery store. When Emma got there, they would probably talk about normal, decent things, like Emma's new job, or school, or the volleyball team.
I wasn't living in that world anymore - and hadn't been for a while.
Jenny and other moms I knew - the women of countless school events, kids' birthday parties, and neighborhood gossip sessions; women whom for years I had been comfortable as one of them - they would be washing dinner dishes this evening like sane people. But me, I was washing my stepdaughter's sex toy.
I rinsed the dildo and stuck it in the drying rack beside the sink, pointing up. It curved to one side under its own rubbery weight. I watched beads of water trickle down its thick, glossy shaft.
I couldn't believe what was happening. I didn't dare wonder how Tracie intended to use the massive thing.