Chapter 1: Yearning
He'd always known. When I was younger I thought I was being coy, but Jonathan saw right through me. I teased at first, but John isn't playful. He's the strong, silent type - heavy on the silence.
Of course that made me want him more. Other friends' fathers would tease us back, make corny jokes, or indulge our girly pursuits. John never did. He gave his daughter what he thought she needed, and reserved his speech for when it was absolutely necessary. He said so much in his glances, and the curl of his beautiful lips. His eyes were fierce, a shade of brown that recalled wet earth after a storm. His cologne was a piercing breath, a shock of cold shot through with something unmistakably male. And there was him, too, his natural male scent that emanated in waves when he returned from a run. I remember sitting in Kelly's kitchen one afternoon when his musk rolled over me. Instantly, I moistened. I squirmed. I fought the urge to follow him like a sniffing dog.
He just did that to me.
Kelly and I were best friends in high school, and so her house became my second home. Late nights, sleepovers, secrets shared over pizza. The four of us, with Jessica and Tammy, were inseparable in those years, but Kelly and I were like sisters. Maybe it was growing up without a mother that forced Kelly to be so strong, so spunky. She was funny, clever, everything I wanted to be. I loved her like a sister...but John was never my father.
My father is a lovely man. He sports a beer gut and a grin like a scruffy sea lion, he loves my mother and NASCAR - and he swears it is in that order. The best thing about my father is that he's real. Dirt under his nails, kind of a slob, but never any confusion about where he came from or what he wants.
Kelly's father was just the opposite. He didn't seem real at all. He wore impeccable suits, his nails were trimmed and smooth. He rarely had five words for me but I heard him speak a handful of separate languages on the phone. He'd retire to his office, phone in hand, and talk to clients in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Brussels and Mumbai. He was the international man of mystery next door.
I was infatuated with him. Sometimes I yearned for him so fiercely I was sure it was love, but over the years, as my desire went unconsummated, as I became more aware of men, I realized my passion had no basis in that gentle emotion. I didn't love him. I wanted him. I wanted to possess him; I wanted him to possess me.
As I grew into myself, dated, learned about my body's talents, I began to use my body more to communicate my attraction. Gentle teases became long, lingering looks. Looks to match his own silent glances.
We began to understand each other.
I couldn't act on my feelings in high school. The urges I felt for John weren't underage, but I certainly was, and John was no fool. It wasn't until Kelly and I were nineteen and in college that looks could graduate to anything more.
One afternoon, after he returned from a run, I willed myself not to look at him. But as he rounded the kitchen on his way to his room, I made sure to slide my hand up my skirt, all the way to my underwear. Kelly was in her room getting her computer, so I didn't have to play the gesture off. I didn't look at him, but he saw. He saw my body, my smooth legs and the sheer red panties I wore for him.
After Kelly returned I pretended to take a phone call from my mother. She waved me away and set to work while I wandered down the hall.
I wandered, echoing a conversation I'd had with my mother that morning, silent phone held to my ear. I opened John's bedroom door, heard the shower, and slowly crept into his bathroom.
He was standing there, wet and magnificent, the marble walls glowing in the bright afternoon sun. He was soaping his chest when he saw me, and...
...he didn't jump.
...he didn't yell.
He fixed those dark eyes on me, as if he'd been expecting me all this time. I didn't move, didn't speak. He knew what I'd come there to see.
He filled his palm with the blue body soap and wrapped his fingers around his thick, red cock. My breath caught in my throat as I watched the thing grow, and then rise. He masturbated at me, his daughter's best friend, through the glass.
His bicep flexed as he took his time putting on the show. The water streamed down the muscles in his neck, his meaty shoulder, joining streams and coursing over his wrist. The penis bulged in his grip, an alien limb both repulsive and tantalizing. What an odd, indelicate looking creature, I thought, and how I wanted to wrap my lips around it.
Had he done this before, stroked himself to the thought of my nubile body? Which of us had lusted after the other more? I could not count the times I'd lain awake and pictured him touching me, opening me, loving me.
"Sophie," he groaned. He splayed one palm on the glass, bent his knees, and rubbed harder. It was lewd. It was inappropriate. It was exactly what I wanted.
I was the voyeur. I watched, rapt, as John groaned, the suds gliding up his veined manhood. He didn't call me to join him. He knew better than that. Even if I wanted to - and he knew damn well I wanted to - how could I explain that to Kelly? No, my part was to watch him pleasure himself until his penis swelled and his milky cum splattered the glass.
I was impressed by the distance, and the volume. He rolled his wrist, sliding his fist down, all the way down, to his base. I watched his scrotum constrict and squeeze his jism up his urethra. A gob. Another thick gob. And his placid face was contorted in majestic agony.
It was a tribute, a vulgar appreciation of my lust.
As the cum slid down the glass, I hiked up my skirt. I pulled my panties down, gently stepped out of them, and then laid them atop his towel. They glistened with my approval.
My yearning for John entered a new phase that day. Other teases followed, between he and I. He, as always, remained mute when his hand would brush my hair or his body slid against me while I sat in the kitchen or on the couch. His face was a blank mask, but in his eyes, I understood. It was time. The game had gone on too long, and we needed release.
