(Please note: I'm British and my stories are written in British English. I write whatever comes to me and in whatever way feels right to me. Some of my stories are down and dirty, some are slightly more restrained. They are all a part of my imagination and I don't censor my muse to fit any aesthetic. You might find that you like some and hate others. That's perfectly fine. I genuinely enjoy writing all of them and hope that each will find its intended audience.)
Richard White watched his twenty-one-year-old daughter Alice as she bent her head studiously over a large textbook and smiled wryly.
She'd just completed her final term of her Mathematics BSc at King's College London and had obtained a First.
It was the start of the summer break, but instead of painting the town red with friends, she was doing preparatory work for the Statistics Research MPhil/PhD she was due to start in September.
She was so beautiful it was hard to imagine that all she did was study.
She could have attended Oxford University as he had done, but she'd chosen to go to King's instead wanting to live at home with him and his wife, Helen.
To his wife's annoyance, Richard had moved the family from their sprawling six-bedroom house in Richmond to a two-and-a-half million pound, two-bedroom apartment on The Strand when Alice had started university just so that she didn't have to travel far.
He hadn't understood his artsy wife's objection. The new-build apartment had every mod con and she'd also benefitted from being close to both Somerset House and the National Portrait Gallery.
When he had bought the Richmond house years ago, he'd anticipated having at the very least, four children. Helen had declined to have any more after Alice, saying that she didn't want to ruin her body any further.
Though they'd entertained and often had company over, the four spare bedrooms had remained largely empty. Eventually, Helen had commandeered the smallest as additional storage when she'd filled the walk-in wardrobe in their master bedroom to capacity.
Since Alice was their only child, he'd thought that Helen would want to do everything in her power to give her an easy life, just as much as he did.
Instead Helen had accused him of caring more for their daughter than her—a frequent complaint but one that was totally unjustified. He'd given Helen everything she'd asked for from the moment he'd met her in a bar the night when he had been out with friends celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday. She had been one of the scantily-dressed waitresses and it seemed to him that she'd focussed her raptor attention on him the moment she'd heard his friends tease him about the five million pound trust fund he'd just inherited.
He and Helen had slept together that very night. He had been a lanky 6'5" Eton and Oxford educated Mathematics nerdy virgin. She had been a petite, shapely 5'2" tall, twenty-one-year-old nobody with ambitions to ensnare a wealthy husband.
She was three months pregnant when they'd married less than four months later. None of his relatives had attended the registry wedding nor have spoken to him since.
She had been adopted as a baby by an older couple who had died in a car accident when she was fourteen. She had then been placed in a series of foster homes where she'd suffered sexual abuse on three occasions, twice by the men of the house and once by a son of her foster parents who had only been a year older.
All Richard had ever done was protected her and given her everything she'd never had growing up, but the more he'd given her, the more she'd seemed to want.
She had resented everything he did for Alice, who in all fairness never demanded anything herself. She wasn't a typical girl, wearing designer clothing and needing expensive shoes and handbags. She lived in T-shirts and jeans, and always wore her hip-length, curly blonde hair plaited into a thick ponytail. Instead of a high-end cosmetic range, she still used the fragrance-free products her mother had used on her as a small girl when her delicate skin had reacted to anything perfumed.
The only time Richard had seen his daughter wear makeup was on her 21
st
birthday ten months ago. The three of them had gone to The Ritz for dinner to celebrate and Helen had insisted that Alice made an effort for once in her life.
Helen had applied both of their makeup and for the first time Alice had looked more her age than the sixteen years old she often got mistaken for.
Her mother had used her skill to shave years off her own looks and as a result, they had looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, but the strapless pink mini dress that Helen had chosen for Alice had been too revealing as far as Richard was concerned.
He had been so relieved when Alice promptly went back to her usual self the very next day.
He'd put that night and the strange feelings that had stirred in his belly at the back of his mind for ten months...then Helen had left him three months ago, telling him in a note that she'd gone to Maryland with her boss, Tony. She'd also admitted that they'd been having an affair for the last five years and she couldn't bear to be parted from him.
Strangely, Richard felt no jealousy of the man. It just annoyed him that he'd attended the man's leaving-do a few days before and had congratulated the man on his promotion and move to the company's headquarters. All the while the man must have been laughing at him, knowing that he'd already made secret plans with Helen.
His wife had left with her lover and hadn't made contact with either him or Alice since. Richard didn't believe she ever would again. Tony was ten years younger than her and had enough money to keep her in the style she'd become accustomed to. She also had enough sexual wiles to keep his cock from straying.
Richard on the other hand had never been good with women. He'd hung out with his wealthy male friends since he was a boy and then had been too occupied with getting his Bachelor's degree and then his PhD in Mathematics. He'd been relieved when he'd met Helen and things had fallen into place without him having to woo her.
It would be tough to find a replacement for her, but he had to and soon!
If he didn't, he would one day fall upon his innocent daughter like a ravenous beast.
"Alice, I need to talk to you," he said, deciding that today was the day to have a frank talk with her.
"What is it, Dad?" she asked, immediately closing the book and giving him her full attention.
"Now that your mother has left, I'm going to have to find someone else."
"Why?" she asked, her eyes instantly filling with unshed tears. "Why do you need another woman when you have me?"
He couldn't tell her the real reason.
He couldn't tell her that she looked too much like her mother when he had first met her.
He couldn't tell her that he'd been having the most terrible thoughts since the night of her twenty-first birthday and he'd seen more of her body than he'd seen since she'd matured from a girl to a woman.
It hadn't been a problem before.
He'd never thought of her as anything but his daughter, until her stupid mother had insisted on making her dress up to look like her twin.
Now, even when Alice was fully covered, all he could see was her smooth, bare shoulders, her young, firm breasts barely covered by the hot pink dress and her silky-looking, long legs.
If bloody Helen hadn't left, she would have taken care of his needs adequately.
He would have been able to control the urges that wracked his body day and night.
He might have even controlled them for the rest of his life, if her sudden departure hadn't left him in emotional turmoil.
The trouble is he didn't miss her as a wife; he only missed what they had done together in bed.
