I thought I was dreaming. And it was a pleasant dream. Lord knows I haven't had many of THOSE lately, since Amy passed away. But as I slowly shook off the sleep, I realized that it wasn't a dream at all; Shelly was standing at my bedroom door.
"Mike," she whispered hoarsely, "Are you awake?" she said as I lifted my head off the pillow.
Michelle, or Shelly as I have called her for the last 14 years, was my stepdaughter. Her mom and I met when she was 5, got married when she was 8, and I have been her dad ever since. It's only been the last 2 or 3 years she has been calling me Mike, instead of Dad.
Shelly is a knock-out. I know I am probably biased, but she is a very beautiful girl. She had been a runner-up in several state-level pageants. With long slender legs, a slim waist, a flat tummy, and firm, perky, 32D breasts, she was hard to take my eyes off most of the time. And at 5 foot 3 inches, she just barely came up to my nose.
She was standing at my bedroom door and the dim light from the hallway was behind her. She probably had no idea that in that position I could see right through her nightgown.
"What's wrong baby? Are you OK?" I asked as I sat up in bed.
She sighed and said, "I can't sleep. I probably shouldn't have had that cup of coffee earlier."
She turned and leaned her back against the door frame, making it so the light shone through her nightie and I could see the shape of her breast. I drew in a breath. Her beauty just never ceased to excite me. She walked into the dark room and sat on the bed.
"I feel like talking," she said. "Do you have to work tomorrow?"
"No sweetheart I don't," I said, "I'm off all week. It's pretty warm in here though. Let's go out on the deck, OK? Just let me get my robe on."
She smiled and said "Mike it's too hot for that robe and I have seen you in your boxers before for heaven's sake. And it's 2 AM so nobody else is going to see you, even if anybody COULD see our deck. I have to potty so I'll meet you out there". With that, she walked into the master bathroom and closed the door.
Well, she had no way of knowing that I didn't even have boxers on, so while she was in the bathroom, I got a pair from the drawer and slipped them on. I grabbed my cologne from the top of my dresser and gave myself a spritz just because. I was fumbling around trying to find my glasses and had just turned on the bedside light when she came out of the bathroom. She had a smile on her face that I hadn't seen in a while.
I had decided to take some vacation time to hang out with Shelly. Her mom had been dead for six weeks and she was still taking it pretty hard. She was missing most of the semester at college, but that was something that could be made up. I just hated seeing her this way. She cried a lot and I heard her calling to her mom in her sleep.
Amy had been in great shape. She worked out regularly and ate right, but she just naturally had a healthy body. It was easy to see where Shelly got her great looks and her gorgeous body. That's why it was such a surprise to everyone when Amy got sick so suddenly about three months ago. Within a few days, she got quickly worse until she lapsed into a coma. Several treatments the doctors tried just seemed to make things worse until within three weeks of her getting sick, a specialist pronounced that her brain was dead and there was nothing more they could do. It was like someone hit me with a brick; beyond my comprehension, this woman, who was everything in my world, 38 years old and extremely healthy, could die of an illness that no one had yet to pinpoint.
An autopsy showed an aneurysm had been caused by a toxin introduced probably by something that she had eaten, but because her system had processed everything she had eaten, there was no way to track it down.
A friend of mine is an MD but also a lawyer. He told me that that should have been diagnosed and was probably very treatable. So, I pressed and started asking questions, to the point where I was approached by the legal team of the huge medical center conglomerate where she died, and offered 7 figures to settle. Honestly, I was not REALLY considering suing, I just wanted to find out what happened, but I accepted anyway; I'm not STUPID after all.
So that brings us to where we are now: a 43-year-old widower and his 20-year-old stepdaughter, with no real financial worries anymore and not knowing what else to do but go back to school and work.
I walked down the hall behind her, unable to keep my eyes off her ass. At the end of the hall was a small table with a lamp and on the wall over the lamp was a photograph of the three of us when Shelly was about 8 or 9. She stopped to look at it and I stopped behind her, putting my hands on her waist. We stood looking at it for a few minutes. I could feel her start to sob and I moved my hands up to her upper arms and stroked her gently. She turned and threw her arms around my neck, buried her face against my chest, and cried. She felt so good to hold. I knew I was being crass but her tits felt so good pressed against me. I just wanted to carry her back to the bedroom and make love to her. Actually, it's even crasser than that; I wanted to lower her to the floor right there and fuck her brains out.
She lifted her head from my chest and looked up into my face. I don't know what came over me, but I leaned forward and I kissed her softly on her mouth. When I backed away, she looked genuinely surprised.
"Wow. That was unexpected," she said, with a little laugh.
I was a little embarrassed then. "Um, I'm sorry baby. Not sure where that came from. Please forgive me."
"No forgiveness is necessary," she said, matter-of-factly. "I enjoyed that as much as you did, and in fact, was hoping for it. But now my nose is running and my eyes are all wet, so you go pour us something cold and I'll be out in a minute." And with that she walked into the other bathroom to freshen up, closing the door behind her.
After stopping at the fridge to pour some punch for us, I carried them out to the deck and sat at the table. I sat on one of the swivel chairs and turned it so I could conceal my lap with the table because I had a bit of a hard-on.
Moments later she came through the door. She was smiling again and I loved seeing her smile.
