Chapter 11
The cold night wind cut against Jodie's face as she drove her open sports car in the direction of her home. The wind buffeted her gently as she sharpened her resolution.
Tonight, come what may, she was going to resolve this hang-up between her and her father. Either resolve it or come to terms with it. Terms that would permit both of them to do their own thing and function within the bounds of their own complex relationship.
Jodie changed gear, her familiarity with the machine giving her the dexterity to make a faultless downshift. There was a certain satisfaction in being able to do things well. And the only way to achieve this was through practice. That and knowing what you were at.
As she threaded her way through the midnight, late theater traffic, she drew a parallel between her ability to handle the Triumph, a knowledge that had come through a long period of learning, and her newfound ability to handle the complexities of living.
This thing with her old man, for instance. Now she knew what it was, both with him and with herself, she should be able to do something about it. She speculated on ways and means as she drove.
With a jolt, she realized that she was nearing the corner of her old street. She took her foot off the gas pedal, easing the car silently down the street, and swung quietly into the driveway. As she pulled the handbrake on, she looked at the half-shadowy moonlit scene around her.
She shook her head disbelievingly. How could everything look so much as it used to? So much had happened to change her in the headlong rush of the last few days that she expected everything else to have altered as well.
It hadn't. The lights were still on as they had been the last time she had returned home late. The last action-packed time when she had opened the floor to face the unpredictable fury of her father's deviated love for her. This time, though, it was going to be he that was due for the surprises.
Her fingers shook a little as she inserted the key into the front door lock. Noiselessly the door swung open and she eased herself into the shadowy hallway. Not a sound came from the seemingly sleeping household as she made her way up the staircase.
She opened the door of her room and looked around the old, familiar surroundings. Again, nothing had changed. All her things were just as she had left them. The settled, false security of the atmosphere seemed to beckon to her, lulling her into the belief that she could just slip back unnoticed into the old familiar pattern of her past life.
It was with a feeling of anticlimax that she undressed and stood, ready to slip into a night dress. Some sixth sense made the delicate hairs on her naked skin stand up in a primitive warning.
She gasped and turned round to see her pajama-clad father inspecting her critically.
Again she felt the flood of shame as she felt his eyes toying with her well-formed, inviting body. She bit her lip and fought back her mounting revulsion. With a conscious effort she dropped her arms to her side, exposing the tip-tilted firmness of her breasts to her father's avid eyes.
As if acting a well-rehearsed part, she heard herself talking to him.
"Well, I'm back. Glad to see me?"
Her father tore his eyes away from their inspection of her boobs. He swallowed once or twice to clear his throat, allowing himself to work up the anger that he knew he should feel.
"And where the hell do you think you've been, running off like that and worrying..."
Jodie's voice was under control as she cut into his irate flow of words. She walked over to the bed and lay down as she spoke.
"Come over here and make yourself comfortable." She patted the bed beside her invitingly. "You and I are going to level with each other. It may take a while for this to sink into the middle class, middle-aged, middle-minded head of yours, but the sooner it does, the sooner we will both be able to live with each other. And ourselves, too."
As she had expected, her attitude seemed to throw her father. With a visible effort, he controlled his mounting rage and, complying with her invitation, walked across and sat uncertainly on the bed beside his naked daughter.
Jodie looked at him questioningly. "Where's mother? This is strictly between you and me. Let's keep her out of it, okay?'
Her father nodded. "She's in bed, fast asleep. She's been upset, you know," he said accusingly.
"Haven't we all?" was Jodie's pointed reply. "But let's stop fencing with each other and get down to you and me. You know, the father and daughter bit."
She looked up quickly at her father and intercepted his fixed stare as he inspected the contours of her naked body. She smiled at him knowingly.
"And that's about where it's at, isn't it?" she questioned him. "You want me, don't you? Deep down inside of you there is one half of you that wants me... wants to prove your love for me in the only way you know how. Physically."
She took his hand in hers and placed it on the soft curve of her breasts. A look of alarm flashed across her father's face and he tried to withdraw his hand as if her flesh burned him.
There was triumph in Jodie's voice as she continued. "That helps prove what I'm saying. The other half of you just won't admit to your need of me. It's bogged down by thousands of years of tribal taboos. This is what makes you beat me. You think I threaten you. There's a name for this in a book I read. But don't feel bad. I've got news for you. I figured out that I have the same hang-ups. I want you in the same way."
She held his hand close to her, making it captive against the warmth of her body.
"Do you know something else? There are cultures in the world-Margaret Mead talks about them-that would see nothing wrong in us carrying this thing through to its logical conclusion."
Her father had ceased to struggle. His hand lay still on the comforting mound of her tit while his mind listened to the flow of his daughter's words.
"So it all boils down to this, then. Either you screw me now and get it over and done with. That way, you will be playing the dominant role and your ego won't get too badly bent out of shape. Or you admit that though your prick is ready, your conscience won't let you. In other words, you just haven't got the guts to go through with it. That way, I win, and you'll never be able to throw your weight around again."
As she talked to him, she had been slowly working his captive hand off her boobs, over the delicate swell of her stomach, until it was placed between her open legs. She slid her hand over his until their fingers were interlocked.
Her father's hand was limp and unresisting, a vague extension of the uncertainty in his incredulous mind. Gently she guided his yielding fingers between the smooth outer lips of her waiting snatch until they were dabbling in the warm dew of her honeypot.
Instinctively his fingers fumbled among the fleshy folds until they found her quivering love button. His breathing hardened into short panting gasps as he felt the surge of raw naked passion sweep through him.
Bending over her, he brushed his lips across the pink fruits of her firming nipples. Jodie settled back with a sigh of contentment.
Perhaps it was for the best. Now they could bring the incestuous longings out into the open. Learn to live with them. Let them burn themselves out in a wild rocketing burst of illicit love.
She reached down and fumbled at the drawstring of her father's pajama bottoms. She could feel the hot throb of his penis through the thin covering of the fabric. The string came undone, letting the pants burst open and the forbidden secrecy of her father's penis fall into her waiting outstretched hand.
The hot, sticky lubricating emissions wet her palm as she cupped the monster in her clenched fingers. A sudden gasp of fear escaped from the constriction of her father's throat. He pulled himself away from her and stood up angrily. His face was red and congested as he fought for words.
"You little slut... you've made it up. You're trying to put something over on me. I don't want to screw you. I couldn't... not my own daughter."
His voice gained conviction as he felt the righteousness mounting within him. "You're trying to get me to lay you so that I'll let you off. Not punish you for catting around. Well, I can see right through you. It won't work. I'm going to beat the shit out of you. You're wicked. Depraved. I'll knock it out of you. No daughter of mine is going to carry on like this. Making me the laughing stock of all my friends. 'There goes poor old Hamilton. Nice guy. His daughter gives good head jobs, too.' I'll give you something to take your mind off hot pricks for a while."
He stood up and searched frantically for a belt -anything to work off the hot, unclean passion that he felt destroying, polluting every principle that he had ever held.
Through the swirling mist of his anger, he heard the bed squeak as Jodie sat up. He turned to face her as she spoke, "Quit acting, will you, for once? I've got you licked and you know it. But just to help convince you, take a look at these."
She stood up and walked over to her purse. Opening it up with maddening slowness, she rummaged inside and brought out two Polaroid pictures. Handing them to him, she went on in an even voice.
"Remember what you just said. The bit about being the talk of the neighborhood? Right. How would you like a set of these prints going the rounds of the golf club?"
She held her hand up as her father made as if to tear them up. "It's no use. There are others. The pictures don't matter. They just record a fact. The fact that, by your standards, your daughter is a slut. By mine, I'm not. I tried to level with you. Bring a little truth into our relationship. But you haven't the courage to admit that you're just as horny as I am. Okay. Have it your way. Live a lie. But know this and know it good. If ever you come the hypocrite with me again-if ever you step out of line-I'll have those pictures going the rounds. Big beautiful pictures of your sweet little cock-sucking daughter for all your friends to gloat over. Now, you don't want that, do you?"
Her father shook his head, confused and broken. "Right then. I'll draw up my terms tomorrow. Close the door as you go out. In the future, knock before you come in. Pleasant dreams, Daddy dear."
The door closed behind him and she listened to his footsteps disappearing down the corridor. They were no longer the purposeful tread of a confident, bullying tyrant, but the sad shuffle of a man who had seen the truth and hadn't got the ability to live with it.
Jodie pulled the sheets up around her. She was young, but she was truthful. She had learned what she was and, secure in the knowledge, she could work out the threads of her own destiny.
The bedside light clicked off and the sound of her steady, unhurried breathing filled the darkened room. She had won the first round in the game of life. She was free to do her own thing. To soar or fall according to her own ability.
Relaxed and confident, no longer uptight about her inability to cope. Her mind was drowsy with sleep. She surrendered to its soft insistence. Sleep... this was what she wanted right now. And she'd never cop out on a single need again.
Somewhere outside, a dog barked in a hidden corner of the night. She smiled at it in the darkness of her room.
"All right dog, if that's your bag, stay up and bark all night. Me, I'm going to sleep. There's room in this world for all of us, I guess. Even my chicken-shit old man."
Silence drifted over the bedroom like a dark blanket. Jodie's measured breathing was confident and secure. Things were going to be all right from now on. The distant dog barked his agreement from outside in the wide, waiting world.