Chapter 4
The next day Mrs. Davis showed up at the office. It gave Karen a start when she saw her walk in, but of course there was nothing to do but smile and say hello and ask her what she wanted.
"I came to talk to your father, dear," Mrs. Davis said. She smiled down at Karen, who was sitting behind her old metal desk, and looked about the waiting room. There were no patients at the moment.
Karen felt a twitching nervousness. She began to wonder about all the things she had said to Mrs. Davis, she had thought in confidence, though now she realized that had never been established.
"Is it some health problem?" she asked probingly. "Or does it have to do with my schoolwork?"
"It has to do with you, Karen," Mrs. Davis said, flashing another one of those brilliant smiles of hers. At twenty-six, Mrs. Davis was the youngest member of the faculty. She looked even younger. Many times she had been mistaken for a student by people who didn't know her, and not a few times. Mrs. Davis and Karen had been mistaken for each other. There was no blood relationship that either of them knew of, but they were both blondes, both slender and short, and there was a startling resemblance between them. Besides being the youngest teacher in the school, Mrs. Davis was also the one with the most boys who had crushes on her. She was prettier than most of the cheerleaders, if not all of them.
"I'll see if he can talk to you," Karen said. She was really scared now. Daddy wasn't going to like it if Mrs. Davis told him about the things she had discussed with her. Karen went back to the supply room, wondering if she might be able to pretend she had spoken to Daddy and that he had said he couldn't seen her now. She decided to give it a try. She stood in the supply room for five minutes, feeling that nervousness crowding her brain; then she went back to the front.
Daddy was already there. He and Mrs. Davis were just going back to Daddy's private office. Daddy smiled pleasantly at Karen, but she was sure he was displeased or disappointed with her. "Karen, would you come on back with us?" Daddy asked.
His voice was as pleasant, outwardly, as his smile. But Karen had learned to read him, and she knew that he was unhappy with her. She felt that familiar stab of guilt that always came over her when she knew she had done something wrong. Mrs. Davis didn't seem to like the idea of Karen coming along, but she didn't object.
They went into the office. Daddy offered Mrs. Davis a chair and asked Karen to sit down, too. Then he sat behind his desk. "Now," he said, leaning back in his swivel chair, "what can I do for you, Mrs. Davis?"
"I've come to talk to you about Karen," Mrs. Davis said. "You may feel that what I'm about to launch into is none of my business, Doctor Arthur, and I don't blame you if you feel that way. But as Karen's teacher, I'm concerned about her."
"Has her schoolwork been falling off?"
"Oh, no, she's doing excellent work, Doctor. As a matter-of-fact, I'd say she is my best student. She has a great deal of natural talent where drama is concerned."
"Karen has always been a straight-A student. But if that's the case still, then just what is it that you are concerned about?"
"Karen isn't a very popular girl in school, Doctor Arthur."
"Oh? I'm sorry. She's never complained about not being liked. Not to me, that is."
"Well, it isn't that people wouldn't like to like her. But I think they have the idea that Karen is a snob." Mrs. Davis looked at Karen and smiled reassuringly.
The smile didn't do a thing for Karen's composure. She was worried about what Daddy was thinking, not about the truth behind Mrs. Davis' statements.
"A snob?" Daddy smiled with amusement. "But that's ludicrous."
"Of course it is. But you see, she never takes part in any extracurricular activities."
"She's in the Christmas play."
"An exception, and I'm very grateful to you for letting her take the part. She's going to be excellent. But even there she never goes out with the younger people after rehearsals."
"Karen has a great deal of work to do around here. And she also has her schoolwork to think about. And I insist on having her keep up her rest, too. She just doesn't have time for going out after rehearsals. Frankly, I allowed her to take that part against my better judgment. I still think it was a mistake."
Daddy's voice was bland, but Karen knew the threat that lurked behind his words. He could still pull her out of the play. That would be the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to her, and she wished that Mrs. Davis would take the hint and shut up. But Mrs. Davis didn't take the hint, and she didn't shut up.
"Doctor Arthur, I know you love your daughter. That's obvious, or you wouldn't be so strict with her. But Karen is at an age at which she should be learning to associate with people her own age. She has to-"
"Mrs. Davis, I'm afraid that you're right," Daddy said in that same bland voice. "I do think that you're launching into something that's none of your business. I'm certain that you think you're working for Karen's best interests, but until Karen is of age, and at any rate while she is living under my roof, her best interests will be my concern, and my decision. Now, if that's all...." Daddy rose, implying that the conversation was over.
Mrs. Davis looked a bit flustered, obviously unaccustomed to being treated in such a manner, particularly by men. But she rose graciously, and used that smile on Daddy. It glanced off of him with no apparent effect.
"It's all for the moment, Doctor. But I repeat that I know you love your daughter, and have her best interests at heart. So the only thing for me to do is to keep trying to convince you that what I am urging is indeed for her own good. I haven't given up on you yet, Doctor."
"I wish you would, quite earnestly. You'll only be wasting your time and mine if you don't." He smiled that same pleasant but noncommittal smile and led Mrs. Davis out into the hall and toward the front office.
Karen didn't even rise. She knew Daddy would want to talk to her. He was back in a minute. He sat in the chair that Mrs. Davis had vacated.
"Princess, have you been talking to Mrs. Davis about family matters?" he asked.
"Oh, no, Daddy," she lied, but then she flushed as she looked into the depths of those cool gray eyes, so sympathetic and unaccusing, and so subject to being hurt by her. She looked down at the white skirt, stretched tautly over her shapely lap. "All I said was that you wouldn't let me go out after the rehearsals, Daddy. Then she started asking me why I never dated, when I was such a pretty girl, and I said first that I just didn't want to, but she wouldn't believe me, and she just got it out of me. I said that you didn't want me to date."
"And that's all?"
"Yes, Daddy-honestly-that's all!" Karen cried, looking up at him again. He looked back at her for a moment, and apparently decided that she was telling the truth.
"Honey, if you have any complaints about the rules I make for you, you can always talk to me about it. Have I ever been mean to you? Have I ever been arbitrary with you, or refused to listen when you were unhappy about something?"
"No, Daddy," Karen said, shaking her head, looking down again and fighting to keep her voice from breaking. She wanted to cry, and she didn't even know why, except that Daddy's voice sounded so sad, so hurt, and she felt that she had let him down terribly by going behind his back and talking to Mrs. Davis that way. It was disloyal. It was as though she were complaining about him as a father, and of course she hadn't intended that at all. She loved him more than she loved her own life. He was the greatest daddy in the world, and she would never have said anything against him to anyone.
"Well?" Daddy asked softly. "Do you have any complaints?"
"No, Daddy." She wished he would just drop it. She knew she was going to cry soon.
"Now, don't just say that, honey. If you feel there's something missing from your life, I want you to tell me. We've always been honest with each other, haven't we?"
"Daddy, please." Her voice cracked a little, and tears began to splash on her skirt.
"I mean it, Karen. I want to hear you how feel."
"Well," Karen said tentatively. "I just wonder why you won't let me date. The other girls all date. Is it because you want me to stay here with you? Is that it?"
"Well, of course I want that, Princess. You know I love you very much, and I like to have you here with me. But there's more to it than that. You're not a common, ordinary kind of girl, honey. And I just don't think it's best for you to date yet. That's my opinion, and right or wrong, it's going to have to stand."
"You know, I really am unpopular, Daddy. Everybody thinks I'm a swell-head. I heard two girls talking the other day, and they said that Patty McCandless would never have been voted the prettiest girl in the school if I weren't such a snob. They said everyone knew I was the prettiest girl in the school, by far, but that no one would vote for me because I had my nose stuck too high in the air."
"And would being voted the prettiest girl in the school mean that much to you, honey?"
"No, it's not that. Nobody likes me. Daddy, nobody likes me!"
She began to cry. Daddy sat looking at her for a long time as she sat huddled, her face buried in her hands.
"Well, I'm sorry, honey," he said. "I'm sorry you're unhappy. And if you blame me for it, I guess you have a right to. It hurts, of course, but I can't blame you, because you're very young. I'll just have to do what I think is best, and hope that someday, when you're older, you'll understand why I had to do what I did."
Karen threw herself forward, landing at his knees. She hugged his legs tightly, burying her face against his pant legs and sobbing hysterically. "Oh, Daddy, no! I don't blame you for anything! Don't say that, please. I know you're thinking of my own good! I'm sorry, Daddy-I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you, or disappoint you. Please don't hate me-I couldn't stand that! I love you so much...."
Daddy reached down and stroked her golden hair lightly.
"It's all right, Princess. Don't cry, please. I don't hate you. I love you. You should know that. That's why I'm so strict with you. If I didn't care about you, I'd let you do anything you wanted, as some of the other fathers apparently do. Honey, it's all right. Now don't cry."
But, of course, the gender and more forgiving he was the more she cried. She just couldn't help it. She wanted him to know how much she loved him, and there didn't seem to be any way to prove it except by her crying, and the tears and the sobs just kept coming.
Then, she remembered that there was another way, a better way to prove her love for him....
She rose up to a straight, kneeling position and moved between his legs. She pushed back the white smock he was wearing over his shirt, Still blinded by tears, she fumbled blindly with the zipper of his fly. Finally she managed to get the fly open all the way down. Daddy sat looking down on her benignly, and she smiled up at him gratefully. She reached into the front of his pants and fished inside his shorts, closing her hand around the already stiffened shaft of his prick. It felt good in her fingers, hard and strong and comforting. She took it out of his pants, handling it with respect verging on reverence. It sprang out stiff and sound, pointing at her face as though it had some instinct of its own, as though it knew where it belonged.
Karen felt an overwhelming flood of tenderness at the sight of it, and the feel of it. She leaned forward gently and kissed the tip of the cock, touching it lingeringly with her tongue. A tremor passed over her body at the feel and the taste of the prick against her tongue, and she sighed softly. Daddy's body shifted in response to the sigh, and she looked up at him again, smiling briefly and tenderly, and then, holding the stiff, heavy cock in her fingers, she began to lick it with slow, luxurious relish. She could already feel the comfort that came from performing a familiar and beloved function, for a person she adored.
Daddy sat back in the chair, his hands resting lightly on the arms, his fingers curled down over the naugahyde. She caught a glimpse of his hands there, the hairs black and bristly, and the sight excited her afresh. She continued to lick his cock lightly, pushing back the foreskin and licking the shaft. He began to shift in the chair slightly as she worked, the pleasure becoming intense in him; then she decided to take a moment to open the top of his pants. She unfastened his belt and pulled open the hook that held his pants closed at the top. Then she reached in and took out his balls and kissed and caressed them, licking the scrotum, delighting in the slight tang of sweat, and the smell of his crotch, so manly and beautiful. She had pulled his shorts down after opening the top of his pants, and now she buried her face in his crotch, licking it and kissing it and inhaling deeply the aromas of his body. The bristliness of his body hairs against her face was a delight.
"Uhhh," Daddy murmured, and the sound of his joy was like lovely music to her.
She felt absolved from her sins, at least for the moment, by this act of love and this giving of pleasure to him. She took his cock in her mouth and began to work her lips back and forth over the head of the shaft of his prick. She used all the expertise she had gained in seven years of pleasing him in this manner. She lessened the pressure and the friction as her lips passed over the corona of his glans penis, because that was the most exquisitely sensitive part of his cock, and she didn't want to excite that much pleasure yet. She wanted to wait for that, to keep things going and delight him all the more and all the longer, to baby him along and hold off the culmination that would mean the end of her act of adoration.
He responded beautifully, almost violently, his cock growing ever more stiff and formidable, his body twitching and jerking with little fits of pleasure. His voice reached her ears excitingly, in grunts and short swear words as his joy grew too great to contain.
"Uh! Uh! Oh, Jesus! Oh-oh, God! Mmmm...." and she knew that she was pleasing him, and was grateful for that. She worked up a fresh load of saliva, partly for lubrication and partly because she knew that the sound of it excited Daddy. She took hold of his hard, slender waist to brace herself, and began to rock back and forth, exerting pressure and striking friction against his prick. She worked in long, slow strokes because she knew he liked that, and she used her tongue in conjunction with her lips to excite him, dragging it across the surface of the cock in different places, spilling spit along it as she went.
"Oh, Christ! CHRIST!" Daddy grunted, and she saw his hands again. They were still in the same places on the arms of the chair, but now they weren't resting there. They were gripping the arms tightly, as though he might fly up through the ceiling if he didn't have something to anchor him. Then the cock began to quake and whip in her mouth, and she knew that he was going to come, and she didn't have any way to put it off any longer. She accelerated her movements, exerting maximum pressure against the corona, giving him as much joy as she knew how, which was considerable. He grunted and swore again, and his body twisted and shook and his legs clamped in against her shoulders. She felt imprisoned, locked into his crotch, and the feeling excited her. She felt her pussy flooding with the juices of her excitement, and she tightened her legs against the flow, still concentrating on him, on that big, wonderful prick in her mouth. Her tongue and lips did their educated job; then she got that little foretaste that always told her when the moment was at hand, he came, and the fluid shot into her mouth so hard it was almost painful. She tasted the burning, alkaline flavor of it, and felt her body melt with happiness. She swallowed hard, and as quickly as she could, and she managed to get all of it, although it was flooding out of his prick in sudden and copious jets. Several times she thought she was going to lose some of it. His cock finally gave a last, smaller spurt, and began to go limp.
Karen knelt there for a while, the softened cock still in her mouth, still comforting to her, like a mother's nipple to a baby. Then, reluctantly, she pulled away. Daddy looked down at her with a tired but happy smile, and she knew that she had made up in a small way for what she had done. She would make up for it some more tonight, and every night he would let her. She didn't know how it was possible to love anyone as much as she loved her daddy.
He rose, and she moved back and came to her feet. He was hooking his pants up again and she reached up, pushing his hands away softly, and pulled the zipper back up. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Then his face grew more serious, and she wondered if she had done something wrong. But she couldn't see what it could have been. Unless he was still angry with her about what she had done before. Of course he was. He had every right to be. Daddy and she had always been so close, a closed corporation, a separate and distinct island away from all of humanity, and now she had violated the sanctity of their territory by telling things to Mrs. Davis.
But she wasn't prepared for what Daddy had to say to her. He reached down and took her by the shoulder, bringing her to her feet. Then he sat down again, pulling her down to perch on his lap. His hand stroked her thick blonde hair, and she knew that he was going to say something important to her, something that she wouldn't like, and that he was preparing her for it by these signs of affection. She determined to accept whatever he said without question, no matter what it was.
"Princess," he said, "I told you just now that I love you, and I do, very much. So I want you to know that what I am about to tell you is going to cause me more pain than it will cause you. And I hope you'll understand that it's for your own good."
"Of course, Daddy." She looked up at him trustingly, sure that he meant her only good.
"Honey, I want you to drop out of that play."
His words fell upon her like a numbing blow. It took a moment before she felt them, before she knew what he had said, and what it meant to her. Fresh tears sprang into her eyes, because even before she spoke she knew that her pleas would be futile, that he had made up his mind and nothing she could say would change it.
"Daddy, no," she breathed, ready to try nonetheless. "Please, Daddy, you don't know what you're asking."
"I do, Princess, and I'm afraid I'm not asking it.
I'm telling you that you're going to have to do it."
"But, Daddy, you don't understand. The play opens in two weeks, and I have the lead. I can't drop out now. Everyone would hate me if I did. They've all worked so hard and if I don't go on, there just won't be any play."
"Maybe Mrs. Davis can find someone to fill your place, honey. At least I hope so, because I don't want to ruin things for everyone else. But this thing that's happened has convinced me that I made a mistake in letting you take the part in the first place."
"But why? I've kept my schoolwork up, and I've kept up my housework, and I haven't fallen behind at the office. I've been right up to snuff on everything, Daddy. How can you say-"
"I don't think you'd have done what you did if you hadn't been overtired, Princess. You've just been biting off too much lately. Something has to give. And you know how I feel about responsibility. Your first responsibility is to this family unit, to you and me. After that, to schoolwork. If you have to give something up, then it only makes sense to give up the extra thing, the thing that you were only doing for fun."
"Daddy, I'll never ask to do anything else as long as I live, I promise, but please don't make me give up the play now. I won't be able to face anyone. I'll die-I'll just die!" She buried her face in his chest and sobbed an incoherent plea. Daddy's arm tightened on her shoulders, and his other hand slipped up along her thigh, under her skirt, to give her leg a possessive squeeze.
"I'm sorry, Princess," he said softly. "But the matter isn't open for discussion."