The Stepdaughter Who Stayed Awake Waiting for Her Stepfather

Daniela was nineteen the summer her mother moved into Marcos’s house in Rosario. At first it was only a trial period, then a promise of a quick marriage, and in the end a ring on her mother’s hand and a new room for Daniela on the first floor, overlooking the back patio. There, among lemon trees and a couple of old jacarandas, Marcos had his workshop. He repaired criolla guitars and bandoneons that people brought him from all over the littoral. He spent his afternoons there with the radio on and his hands always smelling of shellac.

Marcos was thirty-eight. He was lean, tall, with black hair going gray at the temples and dark eyes that seemed to be laughing even when he spoke seriously. He was not the typical man who makes a nineteen-year-old girl fall in love. And yet, from the very first dinner the three of them shared, Daniela felt something clumsy taking up residence between her stomach and her chest. A heat she didn’t understand, that left her mute at the table, that forced her to leave the kitchen when he came in looking for water. She avoided him with a constancy her mother had already begun to notice.

“Are you fighting with Marcos?” she asked one morning, while braiding sweet bread.

“No, Mom. Why?”

“You barely talk to him. He’s a good man, Daniela. Make an effort.”

That was the word that stuck to her all day. Effort. As if the discomfort were on her side, as if it weren’t him who, without meaning to, looked at her a second too long every time they crossed paths in the hallway.

Two weeks after the permanent move, her mother started double shifts at the clinic. She was a duty nurse and there was no way around it. Then the private dinners began. Daniela and Marcos at the kitchen table, with a plate of noodles and a conversation that kept breaking apart in silence at first.

“What are you studying?” he asked her one of those nights.

“Literature,” she said, looking at her plate.

“I saw you last night with a Borges book.”

“I’m rereading it.”

“I’ve got it underlined in the workshop. I’ll lend it to you if you want.”

That was the first time he invited her to the workshop, and she lied, saying she was tired. That night, in bed, she couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking about the way he’d said “I’ll lend it to you,” without pressure, without any obvious double meaning, and at the same time loaded with an intimacy that shouldn’t have existed between them. She slid her hand under the elastic of her panties almost without meaning to, and found herself already wet, soaked, with her cunt swollen and throbbing as if it had a pulse of its own. She touched herself slowly, drawing circles over her clit, biting the pillow so she wouldn’t moan. She imagined Marcos’s rough hands there, between her legs, and came with a dull shudder that left her thighs wet and her shame even deeper.

***

The weeks passed and the tension became a taut thread in the air of the house. Daniela started noticing things she hadn’t seen before. That he watched her when she tied her hair up in the kitchen. That he lingered an instant too long when he handed her the sugar. That he laughed with a different cadence when she was in the room. It was nothing she could put into words. And at the same time, it was everything.

One afternoon in February, with the heat clinging to the walls and the whole siesta ahead of them, Daniela went down to the workshop. The door was half open. It smelled of freshly sanded wood and something bitter, like dried orange peel. Marcos was bent over a guitar, a warm light illuminating only his hands.

“Hi,” she said, and her voice trembled without permission.

“I thought you’d never come,” he answered, without looking at her yet.

Daniela went in. The workshop was smaller than she had imagined. A long table, two stools, shelves with jars of varnish, a window that faced the jacaranda tree. And an old sofa against the back wall, covered with an Indian blanket.

“I brought you the book,” he said, and handed it to her without touching her hand.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t have to leave. Sit down for a while. If you want.”

She sat on the sofa. He went back to his guitar, but his movements had become slower, more deliberate. Daniela opened the book at random. She didn’t read a single word. What she read was the pounding in her own temples, Marcos’s breathing three meters away, the way the workshop air was growing thicker.

“Daniela,” he said suddenly, without lifting his head.

“Yes?”

“If what’s between us makes you uncomfortable, tell me and I won’t look at you like this again. I swear I won’t.”

There was a silence. Daniela closed the book. Swallowing was hard. She felt a mix of panic and relief, both at once, as if a door had just opened and she didn’t know whether she wanted to go through.

“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable,” she said, in a thread of a voice.

He lifted his head. Looked at her. He didn’t come closer.

“Think about it,” he said. “Think about it carefully, and if you still feel the same, come by one night, when she’s on duty.”

Daniela stood up, left the workshop with the book pressed to her chest, and went up to her room without saying anything else. That night she didn’t read. She thought. And while she thought, she spread her legs over the sheets, licked two fingers and pushed them into her cunt, imagining they were his. She came three times, one after the other, until her hand was sticky and her hair was soaked at her temples.

***

She thought about it all week. She thought it was wrong. She thought he was her mother’s husband. She thought about how it would look from the outside, what her aunt would say, the expression on her mother’s face if she ever found out. She also thought that Marcos wasn’t her father, that they hadn’t known each other since childhood, that nobody had written rules for a situation this recent. She thought about his hands. She thought about his voice. She thought about the old sofa in the workshop and the way he had said “come by.” She thought about his cock, about what it would be like to have it in her mouth, the hot weight against her tongue. She thought about it splitting her in half and didn’t know whether that scared her or made her hotter.

The following Thursday, her mother took the night shift. Daniela helped her pack her bag and walked her to the door. She kissed her on the forehead. Told her, “Take care, Mom.” She closed the door. She stood there for a moment, leaning against it, eyes closed, listening to the engine of the car fade down the street. And then she crossed the house barefoot, her heart pounding in her throat, and went down to the patio. She wasn’t wearing anything under her dress. She had taken everything off before going down, as if she needed to arrive like that, without defenses, with her nipples already hard brushing the fabric and her cunt wetting the inside of her thighs with every step.

The workshop light was on.

Marcos was standing there, not working. He was waiting for her.

“You came,” he said, very quietly.

“I came.”

She approached slowly. He brushed a lock of hair from her face with two fingers. His skin smelled of wood and something cleaner, a faint cologne. Daniela closed her eyes. She felt him touch her temple first with his lips, then her cheek, then the angle of her jaw, and only then her mouth, slowly, as if asking permission in every millimeter.

She kissed him back, and when she did, she stopped thinking. She pushed her tongue deep into his mouth, with an urgency she had been storing up for weeks, and felt him answer with the same hunger, biting her lip, sucking her tongue, pressing her against his body until the hard bulge in his zipper dug into her belly. Daniela moaned softly. She lowered her hand and squeezed his cock over his pants. It was hard, thick, throbbing.

“God,” she murmured. “You’re huge.”

“It’s all for you,” he said against her mouth. “All night.”

***

The sofa blanket smelled of sun. Marcos guided her there, unhurried, stopping every so often to look at her face, as if he needed to make sure she was still with him. He ran his hands over her back, under her dress, and Daniela felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. When he discovered she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, a rough growl escaped him.

“Fuck,” he said. “You came like this.”

“I came like this for you.”

He yanked the dress off over her head. He looked at her for a full second without saying anything, and for Daniela that silence branded her more than any words. Her nipples went even harder under that gaze. Then he grabbed her breasts with both hands, squeezed them, bent down and sucked one nipple while pinching the other between his fingers. Daniela arched her back and let out a long moan she no longer tried to hold back. He bit her tits, licked her areolas, gathered them together with both hands to suck them at the same time, and she buried her fingers in his hair, begging for more.

Marcos knelt in front of the sofa. He sat her on the edge. He spread her legs with both hands, not gently this time, and kept staring at her wet, open cunt with a hungry expression that made Daniela’s clit throb just from being seen.

“Look at you,” he said, running his thumb over her dripping lips. “You’re soaked, baby.”

“Eat me out,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Please, eat me out.”

He buried his face between her legs and ran his tongue from her ass to her clit, slowly, with his whole tongue flat. Daniela spasmed so hard she almost fell off the sofa. He held her by the hips and kept going, sucking her clit between his lips, pushing his tongue into her cunt, lapping at the wetness like he hadn’t eaten in days. He slid two fingers inside her and curled them while he kept licking her clit, and Daniela clutched the blanket with both hands, kicked the air, bit her arm to keep from screaming. The house was empty, but still.

“I’m going to come,” she panted. “Marcos, I’m going to come in your mouth.”

“Come in my mouth,” he said against her cunt. “Come on, come on, give me everything.”

Daniela broke in a long orgasm, her whole body shaking, and he kept sucking her clit while she came, prolonging the convulsion until tears slipped out of her. When she finally pushed him away, she grabbed his face with both hands, lifted it to hers, and kissed his mouth, tasting herself on his lips.

“Now you,” she murmured.

She got off the sofa. She fumbled with his pants buttons. Pulled them down with his boxer briefs and his cock sprang free, hard, thick, with a red head and a thick drop gathered at the tip. Daniela opened her eyes wide. She had never seen a cock like that, so close, so swollen. Her mouth watered. She grabbed it with her hand, felt its weight, its pulse. She stuck out her tongue and licked the drop from the tip. Marcos moaned over her.

“Take it all,” he begged. “Suck my dick, Daniela.”

She took it into her mouth. First the tip, sucking hard, then half the shaft, then all she could fit. Marcos grabbed the back of her neck with one hand and set the rhythm, carefully at first, firmer after that, fucking her mouth with short thrusts while she looked up at him with watery eyes. Saliva leaked from the corner of her mouth, ran down her chin, soaked her breasts. She grabbed his balls with her other hand and squeezed them gently, and he jerked.

“Enough,” Marcos said, pulling away. “Enough or I’ll come in your mouth and I want to fuck you first.”

He lifted her from the floor and threw her back onto the sofa. He took off his shirt. His chest was lean, marked by work, an old scar on his side. Daniela ran her hand over that scar as if she wanted to memorize it. He laughed silently against her forehead.

“Are you sure?” he asked once more.

“Put it in me already,” she said. “Fuck me, Marcos. Break me.”

He settled between her legs. He took his cock in his hand and ran it over the lips of her cunt, up and down, soaking it, teasing her. Daniela lifted her hips, desperate for him. He made her wait one second longer, looking into her eyes, and then drove into her in one thrust, all the way, to the hilt. Daniela let out a strangled cry that wasn’t pain, it was a kind of recognition, the exact sensation of a void being filled. She dug her nails into his shoulders. He stayed still for a second, letting her breathe, feeling her squeeze him from the inside, and then he started moving.

He fucked her slowly at first, his cock coming in and out whole, letting her feel every centimeter. Then harder, his hips slamming into her thighs, making the sofa shake. Daniela wrapped her legs around his waist and clung to his back as if the current were going to carry her away.

“Like that,” she panted. “Harder, Marcos, harder.”

“Look how I’m fucking you,” he told her, never stopping. “Look how all of it goes in.”

He lifted her off the sofa without pulling out. He carried her to the long table in the workshop, swept a few tools aside with one hand and laid her on her back, legs hanging off. He grabbed her hips with both hands and started fucking her at a rhythm that shook her breasts and made her cunt splash with every thrust. Daniela clutched the edge of the table, moaning louder and louder, beyond caring about the noise. He spat on her tits and kneaded them, pinched her nipples until she screamed, put his thumb in her mouth and she sucked it as if it were his cock.

“Turn over,” he ordered.

She turned over on the table, face down. He lifted her hips. He gave her a hard slap that cracked through the silence of the workshop, then another, and another, until her skin was red. Then he penetrated her from behind again, grabbing her hair, and fucked her like that, on all fours over the workbench, while she moaned against the wood. He ran his thumb, wet with saliva, over her ass, pressing slowly, and Daniela tightened all over at the feeling.

“All of it,” she said. “I want all of you.”

He lifted her again. Took her back to the sofa and sat down, then sat her on top of him, his cock buried to the hilt. Daniela started moving on him, riding him, her hands braced on his shoulders and her breasts bouncing against his face. He sucked them, bit them, grabbed her ass and set the rhythm from below. She locked eyes with him.

“Marcos, I’m going to come again.”

“Come on, baby. Come on my dick.”

Daniela bit the curve of his shoulder to keep from screaming and shattered in a long wave, squeezing him with her cunt in spasms, while he held her by the nape of the neck with one firm hand, watching her as if he never wanted to miss that moment for anything. He kept fucking her while she came, prolonging the tremor, and when she started to come down he threw her back onto the sofa again.

“Inside,” Daniela begged, gasping. “Come inside. I’m on birth control. Come inside.”

“Holy fuck, Daniela.”

He sped up. He fucked her with short, furious thrusts, his cock going all the way in every time, and Daniela dug her heels into his ass to push him deeper. Marcos moaned hoarsely, turned red, and broke with a dull shudder, coming inside her in three hot spurts that Daniela felt hit the back of her. She wrapped her legs around his waist to hold him there, to not let him out, while his breathing slowly returned against her neck.

They stayed like that for a while, locked together, with his cock still hard inside her, throbbing. When he finally pulled out, the semen spilled warm between her thighs, dripping onto the sofa.

***

They stayed for a long while on the workshop sofa, covered with the Indian blanket. Outside, the patio was still. A lone cicada sang in the jacaranda tree.

“I don’t know what we do now,” she said, against his neck.

“Whatever we can. Slowly.”

“And Mom?”

Marcos didn’t answer right away. He stroked her hair with an open hand.

“That’s the one thing we can’t know tonight, Daniela. Tonight we can only know this.”

She nodded. She had no answers. She had a body still humming, a thread of semen running down her thigh, one hand still warm on his back, and the certainty that the line she had crossed could no longer be drawn back. That something in her life had just split into before and after, and that the before was never coming back, even if she wanted it to.

Marcos kissed her forehead.

“Go upstairs before it gets light,” he told her.

She dressed in silence. Took Borges’s book with her. When she left the workshop and crossed the patio, the sky was just beginning to turn the color of embers. As she climbed the stairs, she thought that the effort her mother had spoken of had turned out to be something else, something she didn’t know how to name yet and didn’t want to name either.

She slipped into bed under the cool sheets. Closed her eyes. Fell asleep at once, without guilt, with Marcos’s smell still between her legs and his slow breathing pressed against hers somewhere in memory.