What Dad Awakened in Me That Afternoon

It was eight o’clock at night when Valeria got to the door of her house. Four hours of classes in the morning, an endless swim practice in the afternoon, and the bus ride back with her bag full of books and her muscles still aching from the cold water. She put the key in the lock more out of habit than desire.

From the hallway she could see the living room light. The television was on, men’s voices, the unmistakable sound of bottles being set down on the table. Her father, Eduardo, was there with two friends. Valeria poked her head through the half-open door and raised a hand in greeting.

—Daughter, you’re late —Eduardo said from the sofa.

—Long practice, Daddy. I don’t even have the energy to talk.

Diego, the old friend, with a graying mustache and a laugh always a little louder than necessary, looked at her with a smile from his armchair.

—Hi, Valeria. You’ve cut your hair, haven’t you?

—Three months ago —she replied, and kept walking toward the stairs without stopping.

Upstairs, she closed her bedroom door without locking it. She took off her sneakers and left them where they fell, beside the wall. She didn’t turn on the light: the one filtering in from the hallway beneath the door was enough. She let herself fall face down onto the bed, still dressed. The leggings from practice and a gray T-shirt from the university swim team. Her hair, still with traces of chlorine, was tied up in a bun that had half come undone during the trip.

That night her mother wasn’t home. She worked at the hospital three or four nights a week, and when she had the night shift the house had a different silence. A bigger silence. Valeria had lived with that silence for twenty-one years and knew exactly what it meant.

Face down in the dark, she thought about what might happen that night. Her father would keep drinking with his friends until eleven, maybe later. The voices would rise, they would laugh at things that didn’t interest her, and in the end each of them would go home and Eduardo would go upstairs to bed. Or maybe not.

Through the floor came fragments of the living-room conversation. Not all of it, just pieces. Diego’s voice, louder than the others, was the one that stood out most among the television’s constant murmur.

—Eduardo, seriously. Valeria has gotten really hot these last few years.

Her father took a moment to answer. She recognized that silence of his: the silence of someone who thinks before speaking.

—She’s twenty-one now. She’s a real woman. And this year they made her captain of the swim team.

—You can tell she trains —Diego said, and the others laughed—. What a ass that girl has. And those hard swimmer tits. You get hard just seeing her go up the stairs, man, no shit.

Valeria closed her eyes. It didn’t bother her to hear it. On the contrary: there was something comforting in the way her father spoke well of her when she wasn’t in front of him, without exaggerating, simply with that calm pride she had known since she was little. He had always been like that. Direct. No embellishment. The voices grew more diffuse, the hum of the television blended with the slow breathing of her own body, and without realizing it she fell asleep.

***

The first thing that came was heat. Not the heat of the room, but a specific heat, localized, on her thighs. A soft pressure moving in very slow circles. It took her several seconds to understand what it was. The brain, when it comes out of deep sleep, takes a moment to sort things out.

She opened her eyes. The room was dim. Outside, it had gone completely dark. The phone on the nightstand said eleven fifteen at night.

Her father was seated on the edge of the bed beside her. One hand rested on her right thigh and moved with that particular slowness, in circles, with no hurry at all. As if he had been doing it for a while. As if he had started long before she opened her eyes.

Valeria didn’t move. She breathed slowly.

—Daddy —she said, her voice still rough with sleep.

—I’m here, daughter —he answered, without stopping—. Don’t move. Let me.

She didn’t move.

Eduardo’s hand moved along her thigh from top to bottom, from inside to outside, with a pressure that kept changing. Sometimes just the fingertips, sometimes the whole palm. The thin fabric of the leggings barely softened anything. Valeria felt the heat with precision, and she also felt, with no surprise or alarm, that her body was responding. A wet tingling between her legs, the nipples hardened against the mattress, her breathing getting shorter and shorter.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened between them. There had been other times, briefer, more ambiguous: a hand on the back that lingered a few seconds too long, a touch on the sofa that lasted longer than it should have, a tongue on the neck while her mother slept in the next room. They had never talked about it. Never named it. But she had thought about it many times, alone, at night, sliding her fingers into her cunt and biting the pillow while she imagined her father doing it for her, with a mix of confusion and desire she still didn’t quite know how to classify.

Eduardo’s hands reached the hem of the leggings. He hesitated only a moment, then tucked his fingers inside and began to pull them down slowly, centimeter by centimeter. Valeria lifted her hips without thinking, out of pure instinct. He slid them down her legs and let them fall to the floor without a sound.

The panties she wore were white cotton, the ones from practice. Simple, with no decoration. Eduardo looked at them for a moment, and in that instant Valeria’s heart was beating too hard for the room’s silence.

He didn’t take them off right away. He ran his fingers over the fabric, following its shape with the same methodical slowness as before. He pressed right over the clit with his thumb and she had to bite her lip not to moan. Valeria clenched her teeth. She was soaked and he knew it. The fabric said it without needing words: the dark stain of wetness spread over the white cotton, and when Eduardo spread his fingers apart, a thin thread of fluid clung to the fingertip.

—Look how you are, daughter —he murmured, and brought the finger to his mouth to suck it—. Dripping like a bitch.

Valeria felt her throat close. He had never spoken to her like that. Never out loud.

When he finally slid her panties down and left them on the floor beside the leggings, the cool air of the room was the first thing she felt on her bare cunt. Then came the shame.

She hadn’t showered. She had been like this for hours: the pool practice, the bus, the nap. She wasn’t clean. She wanted to say something, to warn him somehow. But the words didn’t come, and he was already leaning between her legs, parting them with both hands, opening her thighs until she was fully spread, her cunt exposed, shining, throbbing.

His breath came first. Warm, close. Then his lips, closed, barely brushing the inner skin of her thigh. And then his tongue.

He dragged it the full length, flat and broad, from the opening of her cunt to the clit, in a slow, continuous lick that made her arch her back against the bed. Then another. And another. Eduardo licked without rushing, stopping to suck each labia minora one by one, taking them into his mouth and releasing them, nibbling them with his lips closed over his teeth. When he reached the clit he circled it with the tip of his tongue, then trapped it between his lips and pulled it gently upward.

I shouldn’t. I’m dirty. I should have showered.

But Eduardo was completely focused, with a precision that left no room for anything else. His lips worked slowly, as if he had all the time in the world and nothing existed outside that room. He shoved his whole tongue into his daughter’s cunt and moved it, in and out, fucking her with his mouth. Valeria heard, despite herself, a sound come out of her own throat. Small, involuntary. A muffled moan born from her belly. The shame was still there, somewhere in a corner of her head. But the pleasure was bigger.

She opened her legs a little wider. It was almost involuntary. Her body did it before she could decide it with her mind.

—That’s it —he said against her cunt, and she felt the vibration of his voice on the wet flesh—. Open up for Daddy. All of it.

Eduardo answered the movement by changing the rhythm. His tongue became more direct, more precise in what it sought, whipping the clit from top to bottom, fast, without pause. Valeria felt her own hips beginning to move in small circles, following the rhythm he set, rubbing herself against her father’s mouth without a hint of shame. She grabbed his head with both hands and pressed his face down between her legs.

—Daddy —she whispered. Not really knowing why she was saying it. Just because she needed to say something, to name him somehow—. Daddy, please.

That was when she felt his fingers. Two, entering very slowly into her soaked cunt while his mouth never stopped on her clit. Valeria’s body answered with an arch she couldn’t control. Eduardo’s fingers sank all the way in, curling upward, searching for that exact spot on the inner wall that made her close her eyes and see lights. They moved in short, steady rhythms, in and out with a wet, obscene sound that filled the room. In that he had an experience she still didn’t: a reading of the other body that went beyond the mechanical. He knew when to speed up. He knew when to press and when to ease off. He slid a third finger in when he felt she could take it, and kept going, deeper, faster, while his tongue kept its own parallel rhythm over the swollen clit, never losing the thread.

—What a delicious cunt you have, daughter. So tight. You’re dripping all over.

Valeria could feel his saliva mixed with her own fluid running down to her ass, soaking the bedspread. She grabbed his hair. She pushed his face against her. There was no shame left now.

The pressure grew inexorably. She closed her eyes and clutched the blanket with her free hand. Everything inside her concentrated into a single point that became more intense by the moment. The voices downstairs had vanished. There was nothing but that room, that darkness, her father’s fingers and mouth.

When she came, it was almost in silence. She clenched her teeth and turned her head toward the pillow, muffling a cry that broke in her throat, and her body tensed in a long contraction around Eduardo’s fingers, squeezing them with spasms she couldn’t control. The orgasm unraveled in smaller waves, each one a little less intense than the last, until she was left trembling, her cunt still throbbing against her father’s tongue. Eduardo waited. He didn’t withdraw his mouth or his fingers until she stopped moving completely. When he finally pulled them out, he brought them to his mouth one by one and sucked them, looking her in the eyes.

***

They stayed still for a few seconds. Valeria’s breathing slowly calmed in the dark.

She knew what came next. She had done it before. She sat up until she was on the edge of the bed, and Eduardo stood in front of her. He didn’t say anything. It wasn’t necessary.

She unbuckled his belt with both hands, then the button on his pants, and pulled down the zipper. His pants fell to his knees. Underneath, the white underwear was distorted by the erection, with a stain of pre-cum at the tip. Valeria hooked her fingers in the elastic and pulled them down too.

Her father’s cock sprang up, thick, hard, with veins marked along the shaft and the head shiny and swollen. She looked at it for a moment, as always, and then took it in her right hand at the base. It was hot. It throbbed. She started moving it slowly, her hand closed, up and down, while bringing her face close.

She stuck out her tongue and ran it the full length, from base to tip, very slowly, with her mouth open. Then she circled the head with her lips and went down, taking it all the way in, until she felt the tip at the back of her throat. Eduardo let out a low groan and braced one hand on the edge of the wardrobe to steady himself. He put the other on the back of his daughter’s neck, not pushing, just accompanying.

Valeria started to suck. She went up and down with her mouth, pressing her lips around the shaft, forming a constant suction that made wet sounds in the room’s silence. When she got to the top, she paused at the head and circled it with her tongue, sucking it like candy, dipping the tip into the small opening of the urethra. Then she went all the way down again, eyes closed, until her nose touched her father’s pubic hair and her throat tightened around the tip.

Her hand kept working the base, turning it just slightly, coordinated with her mouth. She held his balls with the other hand, weighing them, tugging them gently. She could feel them tightening, drawing up against the body. She knew it was almost over.

—Like that, daughter, like that —he whispered—. Take it all in. Good girl.

She sped up. Her head went up and down faster, her hand matching the rhythm, saliva dripping from her chin and running down to her breasts beneath her T-shirt. Eduardo pressed a little harder on the back of Valeria’s neck and she knew he was about to finish. She pulled his cock out of her mouth at the last second, kept her tongue pressed to the head, and kept stroking him with her hand, fast, until the first jet of semen hit her tongue, hot and thick. Three or four more followed, one after another, filling her mouth. She closed her lips around the head and swallowed every bit, not letting go, sucking what remained while Eduardo trembled above her.

When it was over, Valeria wiped her lip with the back of her wrist, swallowed the last of it, and stayed seated with her hands on her knees.

Her father quietly straightened his clothes. He looked at her for a moment with that same calm expression he always had, as if nothing that had just happened were extraordinary. Then he briefly put a hand on her shoulder and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

***

Valeria was left alone in the dark. The phone said twelve fifteen. Her mother would get home at six in the morning.

She thought about showering. She thought about eating something. She thought that the next day she had Constitutional Law at nine and still hadn’t gone over the notes for next week’s midterm.

But above all she thought about what had never happened between them.

Her father had never penetrated her. In all that time, in all those encounters that had followed one another without anyone naming them, he had always kept a boundary she never quite understood. He licked her. He opened her with his fingers. He let himself be sucked. He took and let her give. But never that. He had never put his cock in her cunt. He had never really fucked her. She didn’t know whether it was fear on his part, or respect, or something that had no name in the silent language of what happened between them. But that line existed, and they both knew it.

And every time she was left alone afterward, like now, with her cunt still warm and throbbing, with the taste of her father’s semen still in her mouth, with the bedspread soaked beneath her ass, Valeria slipped a hand between her legs and thought about how much she wanted him to cross it. How much she wanted to feel that cock she had just swallowed sinking into her thighs all the way in. How much she wanted her father, at last, to fuck her.