Author's Note: As with this story's first part, there is a scene herein involving sex with a person unconscious due to stroke. There is prior consent for the act, but I will completely understand if readers decide to quit here and move on to another story.
*****
The morning after my nineteen-year-old daughter, Vicca, performed oral sex on me, my body felt wonderful. I rippled with newfound energy. I was like dark, moist earth in the springtime, ready to burst into life.
My mind, on the other hand, struggled something fierce. Two walls and twenty-five feet away from the bed where it happened, my wife of more than thirty years lay in a stroke-induced stupor. Guilt just tore at me.
I knew how to solve the strange conflict between my body and my mind—get to work.
It was just after five in the morning when I walked out to the barn. I fed our three horses and cleaned out the stalls. Then, I began loading the giant pile of fallen branches from the derecho into my truck, and I hauled them in about six trips to our old bonfire pit.
At seven o'clock, the hands showed up, and I put one of them to work scouring the area around the yard and in the barn for anything else to burn—leaves, twigs, rotten fence posts, anything at all. Another hand helped me load our movable cattle fencing into the truck. We set it up in a perimeter around the burn pit to protect the cattle.
When all was ready, I called in our burn plan to the county sheriff's, and me and the boys set the blaze. I sat on the tailgate of my truck; the boys sat on the tailgate of the other, and we watched it burn.
There's something about a big fire.
Vicca must have seen it. She rode up on her horse, tied her mare to the side mirror of my truck, and sat beside me.
I told the story about how me and my friends used to steal my mother-in-law's pies.
Denise's mother was named Victoria, just like my Vicca. She was a small woman with an enormous voice, and she loved to bake pies. Her husband planted a berry garden and a little grove of apple and pear trees just for her baking.
July was strawberry season, and damn if Mrs. Victoria's strawberry pie wasn't the best thing we'd ever tasted. Every day, she'd bake them and just like the old-timers, set them on a shady window sill where a breeze might cool it down.
I was thirteen when I decided I was gonna steal one. It had been easy. In and out, shifting the hot plate from hand to hand as I raced out of there, my friends laughing all the way.
Back at our farm, we dug in with our fingers, but my older brothers saw us. They beat our asses for stealing, and then they took the pie from us and ate the rest. As me and my friends lay in the dirt, angry and tearful, we heard them talk about taking one for themselves the next day.
I was hell-bent on revenge. The three of us divvied up the tasks. One of my friends was to get some strawberries. The other friend had to get his momma to bake a pie crust. My job was easier.
We made our own decoy pie. I knew precisely when Denise's mom set out hers. So we ran ours to Denise's house and replaced her momma's with our own.
And we got caught doing it.
Mrs. Victoria chewed us out until I explained what we were up to. Then, she laughed, but not two seconds passed before she chewed us out some more because she knew it was us who stole the first one.
Mrs. Victoria liked the plan, and she doctored up our fake one to make it look more realistic.
Then, my brothers came out and took the fake pie. My friends and I followed them as fast as we could, but my brothers were older and faster. They got away.
Still, we eventually caught up. They were in our backyard puking. My papa found them there, saw Victoria's pie plate, and while they were still throwing up, he made them eat the rest for stealing.
The filling was strawberries, of course, but laced with Hyde's Syrup of Ipecac—a vomit inducer.
After more puking, my brothers had to wash and run both the pie dishes that they stole back to Mrs. Victoria and apologize.
As for my friends and I, we had to promise Mrs. Victoria never to steal her pies again. Then, she gave us each a slice of the one she'd already baked that noon.
The hands laughed a bit a that one; Vicca, too.
But the real laughter came out when I told them the last bit.
Two minutes after we ripped through our slices and slapped each other's backs for getting revenge on my older brothers and getting away with stealing Mrs. Victoria's pies, we started kind of mumbling about not feeling good.
I saw Denise's momma watching us from her kitchen window, a satisfied look on her face. I was feeling real nauseous—sweating and such—and I knew what she'd done. I yelled to my pals, "Mrs. Victoria's got us! There was that Ipecac shit in them pieces we just ate!" And no kidding, Denise's momma raised a little plate, looking right at me through that window, and she shoveled a big bite of strawberry pie into her mouth.
Then, me and my friends started upchucking.
Mrs. Victoria never let nobody off the hook. You always paid the piper with that woman.
When I finished telling the tale, Vicca flopped back into the bed of the truck, holding her belly. Her eyes watered, and she kept saying how she was going to pee from laughter.
When things settled, I sent the boys on a few errands, and they drove off.
Vicca put her head on my shoulder, and she said, "Oh, Daddy, I know why momma loved you so much."
"Why's that?"
"You're so dang funny is why. And you're strong and handsome. You're kind and fair. You're just what a man ought to be, and I love you just like Momma."
"Thank you, Vicca. I love you, too."
We watched the fire slowly die out. Vicca leaned on my shoulder and hugged my arm. One of her hands slid down my bicep, over my forearm, and clasped my hand. Vicca began caressing every part of my hand except my thumb.
When she finished petting my hand, she took my thumb, pinching it between two fingers and her own thumb. Then, she began to stroke it softly. Up and down.
I watched her fingers go, and it looked like Vicca was jerking off a thumb-sized cock. Felt like it, too.
"Does that feel good, Daddy?" she asked.
"Yeah."
It did. I grew erect in my jeans.
She said, "I like making you feel good."
I didn't say anything to that.
"Can I give your thumb a little kiss?" she asked.
I turned to her. She smiled innocently at me. I said, "I suppose so, Vicca."
As my hand was on my lap, her head went down there, too, and I felt her lips on the tip of my thumb.
One kiss, a peck.
Two, a softer one.
Then, Vicca's lips wrapped around the top, and she began to kind of pleasure it with her mouth. I felt her soft lips glide. Her head rose and fell three times in my lap.
"Vicca..." I warned.
When she sat up, she said, "Sorry, Daddy, but you must have had some honey on your thumb, and I couldn't help with how good it tasted."
I shook my head, speechless.
"Say, Daddy," she began, "This morning I was checking my breasts like Momma taught me—for irregularities and such—and I thought I found something."
I blinked.
She finished, "I know you'll tell me it ain't appropriate, but I've got no one else, so you think maybe tonight you might have a quick look at them to see if I'm crazy?"
I swallowed.
Vicca quickly added, "I'll leave my bra on if you want me to."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe—maybe that'd be good."
Vicca sighed, saying, "Thanks, Daddy, but I best get on home to make lunch and check on Momma."
She kissed my cheek and left.
I kept thinking how unfair it was to be in such a situation where my head and my body were getting pulled in two opposite directions to the point of ripping apart.
***
Vicca was still in her blue jeans and boots when she took off her shirt in front of me that evening in her bedroom.
It was a low-cut bra, bright pink, and I couldn't understand how Vicca's nipples weren't exposed. There was just fields of flesh there above the top of the cups.
When I was a kid, we had a neighbor who grew sunflowers as a hobby and to make a little money on the side. His wife would harvest them, season them, and roast them in the shell. The family sold them every September, and my Papa always bought us a couple of two-pound sacks.
That's how big my daughter's breasts were—they were a couple of two-pound sacks of sunflower seeds. More than a handful, but not so big as to be ridiculous or embarrassing. Certainly, they were big enough to get boys talking and dreaming and jerking off.
Upon seeing them in her bra, my first thought was wondering why my daughter didn't have more boys after her. It didn't make any sense. If I were a young hand, I knew, I would be using everything lure in the tackle box to get that girl behind the barn and grab a feel of them tits.
Vicca said, "I hope I'm not embarrassing you, Daddy."
"I'm fine," I responded, prying my eyes from her chest.
She looked at her right breast, saying, "Well, on this side I felt something funny around here." She pointed to a place just above the cup of her bra and towards the outside of her breast. "You can start there," she said. Vicca stood very erect with her boots together, chest out proud, and hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes wandered toward the ceiling as she waited.
I stepped toward her and stopped. "What is it that—what am I supposed to be checking on here?"
"Anything that might feel different from the rest—a lump or something."
I stepped right in front of her. My left hand rose, and I wasn't sure I even decided to bring it up. Vicca's tits were a magnet for a fella's hands. I touched the warm skin with my index and middle fingers, and I made a soft circle around the area where she pointed.
I heard Vicca sigh like she'd just tasted something good, but didn't want too many folks knowing about it.
I did it again. I said, "I don't feel anything different."
"You got to press a bit harder, Daddy. Don't just feel the skin; feel what's under."
I slid my fingers over the top of her breast, and I pushed into the concerning area with my thumb. The feel of it was like stepping into a time machine. It could have been Denise's breast back before we were married when we stole feels off each other's bodies whenever no one was looking.
Vicca's skin was downy soft, but the flesh underneath had resistance—it wanted to push back. When I dragged my thumb deeper, a gap opened between her breast and the cup, and I could see where the color of her flesh changed. I could see where her areola began.
I dragged my thumb deeper, moving it in arcs and circles to get another look. Peeking again, I saw it was pale pink. Vicca's nipples were the same shade of pink that I'd seen in the clouds when a red sun sat on the horizon.
"I don't feel anything strange," I finally told her.
"Okay, good. I wasn't sure," she said. "So on the other one, it's kinda different, Daddy." She pointed to where her nipple likely sat, explaining, "I felt a little something behind and kind of under my nipple. I'll show you."
I glanced at her.
She said, "Not—not what you think. Just give me your hand."
I gave her my right hand, and she led it to her tit, guiding my fingers into her bra. She let me go.
I pressed into it and rubbed. After a few seconds, I said, "All I feel is your bra, Vicca."
"Then here, I don't mind," she responded.
Before I could open my mouth, her hands swept behind her back, the bra snapped free, and Vicca slid her arms through the shoulder hoops. I watched the bra fall to the floor.
