The Night My Father Looked at Me Differently

The afternoon was slowly fading over my aunt’s house. I was curled up on the sofa, my legs tucked under me and a notebook resting on my knees, pretending I was making progress on my history homework. The truth was, I wasn’t reading a thing. My attention kept slipping again and again toward the television my cousin had left on before heading out.

They were showing one of those late-night talk shows, light and loose, where people spoke without much restraint. The conversation drifted toward relationships and desire. A woman laughed while a man, in a calm, confident voice, said something that hung in the air of the room.

—In the end, women like you are made to be the center of all that. To be looked at, to stir up what men can’t help feeling. You’re the prize so many dream of claiming.

They weren’t vulgar words. Just direct, spoken with that naturalness that makes something stir inside you. The camera cut for a moment to the host: a restrained smile, a faint blush on her cheeks. I stayed still, the pencil frozen between my fingers.

I didn’t say anything. I only felt a subtle heat spreading from my chest down to my belly, as if those words had brushed against something I still didn’t fully know. My gaze stayed on the screen a few seconds longer, but I no longer heard the voices. Made to be the prize. The idea kept turning over, soft and persistent.

That night, when I got back home, I stopped in front of the bathroom mirror while I washed my face. Cold water ran over my cheeks. I lifted my eyes and looked at myself more carefully than usual.

My long, dark lashes cast a delicate shadow over my eyes whenever I blinked. My black hair fell wet and heavy over my shoulders, brushing the skin of my neck in a way that sent a slight shiver through me. My lips looked soft under the white light. I lowered my gaze a little: the blouse clung, without meaning to, to the curve my breasts had taken over the last few months, shaping a silhouette that was no longer that of the little girl I had been before.

I stayed there longer than I needed to, simply looking at myself. It wasn’t vanity. It was curiosity. A new feeling, calm but insistent. I liked what I saw. I liked how my eyes seemed deeper under the light, how my hair framed my face, how my body had changed without asking my permission. But I didn’t understand why looking at myself gave me that peculiar tingling on my skin.

I turned off the tap and dried my face slowly. The line from the show came back to me as I switched off the bathroom light. Made to be looked at, to awaken what can’t be avoided. I went to bed with that idea circling in my head. I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Just intrigued, as if something inside me had begun to wake up very slowly, unhurriedly, with a warmth I still didn’t know how to name.

***

The years passed with that stillness that important things have when they are gestating in silence. Now I’m nineteen and I live alone with my father. My name is Renata, though that matters little for what I’m about to tell. My mother left a few months ago, wrapped in arguments that filled the house with raised voices and doors slamming shut. The divorce moved forward among papers and awkward silences.

Dad came home late from work, ate something quick, and shut himself in his room. I did more or less the same: classes in the morning and then back to an increasingly empty house. We crossed paths in the hallways like two polite tenants sharing the same roof and little else.

One night, after a warm shower, I was in my room. The bedside lamp cast a soft, golden glow. I sat down at the vanity, still wearing the light robe, and began brushing my hair with slow strokes.

The mirror returned my reflection clearly. My long lashes shadowed my gaze whenever I lowered my lids. My dark hair fell in soft waves over one shoulder, brushing the robe’s fabric and the skin of my neck. My lips looked delicate, still damp from the shower. The robe fit gently to the shape of my breasts and followed the line of my waist before opening modestly over my crossed legs.

I stopped for a moment, the brush still in the air. I was looking at myself without haste. It wasn’t a quick check: it was as if I were rediscovering my own face and body little by little. I liked the way I had begun to look at myself, the way my fingertips could feel the softness of my skin. I liked how my silhouette was drawn beneath the thin fabric, how the curve of my breasts rose and fell with each measured breath.

I set the brush down on the vanity and let my fingers slide down the robe’s neckline. I slowly moved the fabric aside, and my breasts were left bare, round, full, the nipples already tightening from the cold of the room and from the way I was looking at myself. I caressed one breast with an open palm, feeling it warm, heavy, mine. I pinched the nipple between thumb and forefinger and a brief jolt shot straight down to my cunt. A low, rough gasp escaped me, surprising even myself.

I didn’t fully understand that attraction to my own reflection. It wasn’t something I consciously sought out. It simply happened. Lately, every time I passed in front of a mirror, I lingered a little longer. I felt a quiet, intimate pleasure at noticing how much more beautiful my body looked: the soft fullness of my shapes, the delicacy of my features, that feminine presence that seemed to grow more obvious with time.

The robe slid a little off one shoulder as I leaned forward slightly. The exposed skin looked warm under the light. A soft sigh slipped from my lips before I could stop it. It wasn’t a calculated gesture. Just a natural reaction to the brush of the fabric and my own gaze lingering. I brought one hand down over my belly, below my navel, and slipped it between my thighs. At the first touch of my fingers against my cunt lips I realized I was already wet, soaked, slippery. I parted myself with two fingers and began stroking my clit in slow circles, watching myself do all of it in the mirror. Seeing my own face while I touched myself, my lips parted, my cheeks flushed, was a new and addictive spectacle. I slid one finger in, then two, and felt them enter without any resistance. Fucking myself in front of the mirror, watching my hand work between my legs while the other kneaded a breast, made me let out a longer moan. I came slowly, pressing my thighs against my hand, biting my lower lip so I wouldn’t make more noise. My fingers came out shining with slick. I looked at them for a moment and, without thinking too much about it, brought them to my mouth. I tasted myself while looking into my own eyes in the glass.

That old line from the program came back to me, like so many other times. Made to be the center, to awaken what men can’t help feeling. Back then it hadn’t offended me. Now, in the solitude of my room, with my fingers still damp and my cunt pulsing faintly, that idea returned with a different warmth. Not as something that defined me completely, but as a question hanging in the air: was there any truth in it? Was it possible that my body, my eyes, my lips, and the way it all came together had that subtle, natural power?

I ran my fingers through my hair, moving it off my neck. The touch against sensitive skin sent a slight tremor down my back. I kept looking into my own eyes. I didn’t feel bold or provocative. Just curious. And that curiosity brought with it a slow, elegant heat that settled at the center of my chest and spread gently toward deeper places.

The house remained silent. Dad still hadn’t come back. I stayed there, in front of the mirror, slowly discovering that I liked looking at myself, that I enjoyed the image the glass gave me back, and that I still didn’t quite understand why I liked it so much.

***

A few weeks later, one night, the house was silent when I heard the key turning in the front door. It was past eleven. I was in the living room, sitting on the sofa with my legs tucked up, idly scrolling through my phone. I was wearing black shorts, a bit tight, that clung to the curve of my hips and left most of my thighs exposed. On top, just a plain gray T-shirt, no bra underneath, with my nipples barely showing through the thin cotton. Nothing special. Comfortable clothes for being at home.

Dad came in with a somewhat slow step. He had had a few drinks, not many, but enough for his eyes to look heavier and his voice deeper. He closed the door carefully and stood there for a moment, looking at me. He didn’t speak right away. His gaze moved over my figure with an unusual slowness: it stopped on my bare legs, on the way the shorts hugged my hips, on the way the T-shirt fell over my chest. It was only an instant, but I felt it clearly.

—Renata —he murmured at last, with a tired but sincere smile—. You’re beautiful tonight. All of you. I don’t know how to explain it, but you look really beautiful.

I blushed. I wasn’t used to him speaking to me like that. I got up from the sofa slowly, feeling the fabric brush against my skin.

—Thanks, Dad —I answered in a low voice—. Are you okay? Come on, let me help you to your room.

He nodded and held out his hand to me. I took his arm gently and guided him down the hall. His body leaned a little into mine, heavier than usual. When we went into his room, the bedside lamp was on with a dim light.

—Come here —he said in a rough voice, opening his arms—. Give me a hug. I need one today.

I hesitated for just a second. Then I went closer. His arms wrapped around me with restrained strength, pulling me against his chest. The hug was warm, familiar, and something more I couldn’t name right away. He slowly buried his face in the hollow of my neck and breathed in deeply. I felt his warm breath against my skin, the subtle brush of his nose just below my ear. And against my lower belly, through the pants, I felt a bulge growing, hard, insistent, pressing into me.

—It’s been so long since I’ve been with a woman —he whispered against my neck, his voice low and thick—. So long. I miss that warmth, that soft scent only a woman has.

At that instant, something changed inside me. I realized, with sudden and disturbing clarity, how beautiful I must look to him. Just from wearing those simple shorts, from the way my legs were on display, from the natural curve of my body beneath the T-shirt. I understood the effect I could have without meaning to. A soft, confusing heat spread through my belly, slow and deep, and I noticed my panties beginning to dampen inside the shorts.

I tried to pull away a little, but my balance failed. We both fell gently onto the bed, him half on top of me, his weight distributed carefully. It wasn’t rough. It just happened. His body covered mine partly, warm and solid. I felt his face bury itself again in my neck, breathing harder, and his tongue just barely came out to lick the skin below my ear. An electric shiver ran through me from top to bottom. The smell of his skin, mixed with a faint trace of alcohol, enveloped me completely. His cock, hard as a rock inside his pants, pressed against the inner part of my thigh and I could feel it throbbing through the fabric.

His hands slid slowly down my sides, barely brushing the fabric of the shorts, then moved up the outer part of my thighs. The touch was brief, almost accidental, but deliberate in its softness. I felt his fingers caressing the sensitive skin of my legs, lingering in the contact, climbing higher by the centimeter, until they reached the edge of the shorts and stayed there, trembling, as if unsure. His hips moved slowly, rubbing his bulge against my cunt over our clothes. The seam of the shorts dug right between my cunt lips and the friction tore a low moan from me that I couldn’t hold back. It slipped out of my mouth before I could think. My breathing grew heavier. A wave of contradictory sensations flooded me: shock, heat, a deep curiosity about what my own body was awakening in him, and in me.

He moved only slightly, a slow, contained rubbing against me, pushing his hard cock between my thighs through the fabric once, twice, three times. With every thrust, the shorts’ seam rubbed my swollen clit and I clenched my teeth to keep from moaning louder. I felt his hand close over one of my breasts through the T-shirt, his thumb brushing over my erect nipple, and that clumsy, drunken pressure made me even wetter. A low gasp escaped his throat, rough, strangled. Then he tensed completely and a shudder ran through his whole body. Against my thigh I felt a hot pulse and then a warm wetness spreading inside his pants, soaking them through. I knew, without needing words, what had just happened. He had come just from that minimal contact, just from breathing into my neck, groping one breast and rubbing his cock against me. Without taking off his clothes. Without looking for anything else. My father’s orgasm warming the rough fabric against the skin of my inner thigh.

He stayed still for a few seconds, breathing hard against my skin, his cock still throbbing between my legs while he finished emptying himself. Then he slowly pulled away, rolling to one side of the bed. His gaze avoided mine for a moment. He ran a hand over his face, as if trying to regain his composure. The dark stain in the crotch of his pants was impossible to hide.

—Sorry —he murmured under his breath, his voice broken—. I don’t know what came over me.

He sat up with difficulty and left the room without saying anything else, leaving the door half-open.

I stayed there, lying on his bed, my heart pounding hard and my panties soaked with my own fluid inside the shorts. The skin on my thighs still burned from the touch of his hands, and on the inner side of one of them I could still feel the warm wetness of his semen through the fabric. My neck still held the warmth of his breath and the invisible mark of his tongue. A deep confusion flooded me: the shock of what had just happened —he was my father, and I was in a kind of shock— but also a new and exciting awareness of my own body. Of what I could provoke with so little. Of how my beauty, so ordinary to me, had been enough to make a man come on me without undressing me, without kissing me, without barely touching my bare skin.

I took one hand to my neck, right where he had buried his face, and slowly slid it down over my chest, over my belly, until I slipped it inside the shorts. My fingers sank into my soaked cunt without any effort. I was so wet that I felt them glide on their own between my swollen lips. I started rubbing my clit with the tip of my middle finger, in quick, desperate circles, breathing through my mouth. With my other hand I pulled up my T-shirt and pinched a hard nipple, tugging at it firmly. I was thinking about his heavy breathing against my neck, the hard bulge against my thigh, the way he had shuddered on top of me. I slid two fingers inside and curled them, searching for that spot that made me lose my mind. I came almost at once, biting my arm to muffle the cry, shaking myself on my father’s bed, with his smell still clinging to the pillow. When the trembling eased, I pulled my hand out and looked at it. My fingers were shining, sticky.

I didn’t fully understand what I was feeling. But that night, for the first time, the question from years ago came back stronger than ever: was I really made to awaken that kind of desire?

And most disturbing of all: why didn’t a part of me want that feeling to disappear so quickly?