My ex, Beth, used to joke that she was a golf widow in-training, and she was right—as much as a cliché as the lawyer-cum-golfer may be, I dearly loved to spend the day on the course. Today was no different: Warm, clear, basically the perfect spring day, and where better to pass the time than in the company of two old friends, trying to hit a tiny ball insanely long distances into a tiny hole? Sometimes I did have to laugh at the game, but mostly I just enjoyed the hell out of myself out there.
It had been a long week. Not only because the main case I was working on had taken a nasty turn and required late nights and early mornings. Also because of Lauren. All these years I'd been resenting her very presence in my life, thinking of her as an unfortunate side-effect of my marriage to Beth, and now...now she was quite literally all I could think of. I awoke to the image of Lauren climbing onto me and grinding herself on my cock. I fell asleep to the memory of her hot pink ass under my hand. And every moment in between? Well, it took a supreme effort to focus on anything other than the clear green of her eyes, or the velvety softness of her skin, the scent of her neck.
And of course, this week, of all weeks, she seemed to be around much more than usual. Most of the time I could count on her spending most of her time away from the house, but every time I was home, there she was. From the way she lingered in any room I was in, looking at me with this odd expression on her face, I got the feeling that she was waiting for something. I just didn't know what it was. I didn't know what I wanted to give her, either. I knew it certainly wasn't right to be fantasizing about my stepdaughter—though, honestly, how any man could avoid thinking lewd thoughts about as nubile a creature as Lauren, I can't imagine—but although I couldn't seem to stop myself, I didn't intend to take those fantasies any further. If necessary, I could spend every night for the rest of my life jerking off to the vision of her long slim legs wrapped around my waist, or her wet, full lips stretched around my cock, or her soft golden breasts filling my hands. I didn't have to take the relationship any farther than that, I decided; my thoughts, after all, were my own. On the other hand, I'd committed to allowing Lauren to live with me until she started college in the fall, and I was determined to maintain control in my own house. If she faltered, I'd decided, I would correct her, as firmly as necessary—and that would require a bit more interaction than the typical stepfather-stepdaughter bond.
Why, you might wonder, hadn't I insisted Lauren leave with her mother? I've wondered that myself, many times. And like most family situations, it's a complicated one. When Beth and I married, I'd adopted Lauren. At Beth's insistence, certainly—she wanted her daughter to have a 'real' father. Of course, I'd had sunny thoughts of the three of us bonding, living together as a real family, and I'd assumed Beth and I would have more children of our own, which would help us 'blend'. But none of those things happened. Beth put off starting a family so many times I eventually got the picture: She had no intention of ever getting pregnant again. And Lauren wasn't interested in bonding with her new daddy. As often as I tried, she pushed my attempts at fatherly love and guidance as far away as possible.
Beth and I got along well for the most part. For the first six years of our marriage I'd even say we were devoted to each other. Well, I was to her, at least. She was an older version of what Lauren looks like today—all golden skin and glinting green eyes—but where Lauren has rough edges and attitude, Beth was all womanly sweetness. I thought our sex life was perfect. Ladylike as Beth was most of the time, in bed she'd beg me to fuck her like a whore. The first time she looked over her shoulder at me and asked me to fuck her ass I nearly shot my creamy cum all over her back, before I even got it inside her. She was no slouch as a cocksucker either...she could do this thing with her tongue, right underneath the head of my dick....all I can say is: instant orgasm. And she was funny. I used to sit in the kitchen and listen to her stories about her day while she finished up dinner each night, and I'd almost always end up in stitches over her gossipy tales of her girlfriends, or her exploits at work. She was an accountant, a pretty successful one, and I always wondered how her clients could focus on their balance sheets with such an overblown rose across the desk from them. But Beth was nothing if not professional about work and money, and I respected her for that, too.
Something changed about two years ago. It was subtle at first; in fact, I didn't even notice it. Only after she left did I trace the reverse trajectory of our break-up, and I could see that it started two summers ago, when I moved to a new firm, and Lauren turned 17. In Beth's defense, I'll admit that I was working all the time. I wanted to make a good impression in my new job, of course, because this one was the big time. Assuming all went well and I made partner on schedule, we'd be set for life. So I wasn't around much. And Lauren was particularly difficult that summer. Out all the time, coming home drunk. She was in the back of the car one night when her friend got pulled over for DUI. Beth had her hands full, and I was no help. But after the summer when work settled into a more manageable routine and school started up again, we didn't go back to our old patterns. Now Beth was the one who had to "work" late all the time. And she was never around. Well, maybe she was around, but she wasn't really there, if you understand what I mean. We started fighting all the time, a lot of it about Lauren. But I think that was just the easiest thing to latch onto as an obvious problem. The truth of the matter was that Beth had found someone else. She was finished with me; I just didn't know it yet.
Of course I found out. You always find out, don't you? It was something so small, I don't think I'd have noticed unless I already knew, deep down, that we were broken. She left a message on my cell phone. Just a few words, but I immediately knew they weren't meant for me. She'd dialed the wrong number, left the message for the wrong man. "Hi, Baby. I'll be late tonight, the Jensen file is killing me." It just wasn't the way Beth talked to me. She never called me "Baby". I'd never heard of the Jensen file. She'd already told me she would be late, not to wait up, in fact. So, of course, I did. And when she got home I asked the questions I didn't want answered. She was too surprised to lie, I think. She seemed relieved, in fact. And that was pretty much it. She'd moved out a week later. Leaving Lauren with me.
Back to the reason I'd accepted responsibility for a difficult teenager I felt no love—or even like—for. Well, technically, she's my daughter. And much as I disliked her, I knew what that meant. And I knew what kind of life Beth was moving into, what kind of man she was moving in with, and, call me a sucker, I couldn't see sending Lauren there. I thought that if I stuck it out for the rest of the school year and packed her off to State in the fall, I'd have a better chance of being done with the whole thing. Fewer conflicts with the new guy, more of a chance that Beth wouldn't come crawling back to me when Lauren destroyed here love shack. There were other, more calculating, reasons as well. There would be no separation for us; I started divorce proceedings the day after I found out about Beth's betrayal. And I knew that my kindness toward Lauren, and my willingness to support her, would help me in the judge's eyes. Plus, and I'm ashamed to admit this, part of me was still in love with Beth, and keeping Lauren was a way of keeping contact with her mother. I did say you could call me a sucker.
So where did that leave me, now? Stuck in the house with a ticking time bomb, pretty much—in the form of my very own Girl Gone Wild. Accordingly, I'd spent the week avoiding the situation, hoping it would defuse itself. Lauren had clearly been making an effort not to trigger my anger. She'd cleaned up as I'd asked her to—though I was irked to see she'd gotten dressed in a t-shirt that looked like it had fit her five years ago and sweat pants that rode so low I could see her hip bones jutting out—and she'd been home on time every night. She'd done the dishes she'd let pile up, and I hadn't needed to go any farther than a stern warning. Overall, I was hopeful that my lesson had done its work, and that nothing else would be warranted.
That didn't help the fact that I was rock hard nearly all the time thinking about her. For the first time in my life I'd had to go into the bathroom at work and jerk off during the day, just to keep my sanity. By the end of the week I didn't know how I would make it through a weekend in the same house as Lauren without...well, I just didn't know what would happen. Luckily, I had a day of golf planned, and I made a dinner date with Elizabeth, another attorney at my firm. We'd been out several times, and had slept together once. She was beautiful and smart, but cold, as was the sex. She touched my cock like she was handling a crystal champagne flute, and when she sucked it the look on her face told me she didn't particularly enjoy the vintage. But—and I know this is equally cold—I was hoping that fucking someone else would knock Lauren out of my head. I was anticipating riding Elizabeth's bony ass more than I'd ever imagined I would; I needed her that night. But as I was sitting in the bar at the 19th Hole drinking a beer, rehashing every stroke with my buddies, she'd called to cancel: some long, convoluted story about her ex, her son, the car, etc., etc., etc. With a frustrated groan and some barely civil muttered regrets, I ordered another beer, and then headed home, hours ahead of schedule.
