The Rosebud

I am sitting in my armchair in the lounge listening to a quietly playing opera compilation over the stereo when you come out of the bathroom. Wrapped up in a big heavy towel you kneel sideways on to the fire that burns all year round to heat our hot water. I look at you in profile from across the room. When you raise your arms to rub your hair dry with a second towel the one covering you drops away from your torso to form a kind of “puddle” around your bottom and over the tops of your thighs. You ignore the fact that you are now unclothed from the hips up and carry on drying your hair.

The sheer wonder of you stops my breathing. The lamps in the room are dimmed quite low and the shifting flickers of firelight dance on your bare skin. You are a naiad, a mystical sprite sent by the gods to lead men astray. With your arms raised the way they are I can see that your breasts are wonderful, tip-tilted orbs - perfectly rounded, pink-crowned badges of your womanhood. Even from this distance I can see the faint tracery of veins beneath their translucent skin. You appear to be unaware of them. Or are you showing them off? Your eyes are demurely downcast, but I see you flashing glances at me from beneath your lashes to make sure I am observing you. My body reacts.

You finish drying your hair and then you comb out the tangles. I watch on, breathlessly entranced. Hard erect. The opera CD runs out but I don’t notice.

With your eyes still lowered, and with that secret smile still on your lips, you get to your feet and fasten the heavy towel around your waist. You do not bother to cover your chest. You have to walk past me to leave the room. Whether it is by accident or design I cannot tell, but when you are close by me, perhaps a metre away, you tread on the edge of the towel and your momentum pulls it off you. You stand before me, unashamed and gloriously nude – an enchanting nymph. My body almost overreacts. I have not been with a woman since your mother left.

It is then that I see it - a strange mark on your thigh below your sex. I ask you what it is and you walk up close to show me. Your girlhood is mere centimetres away from my eyes. Beneath the dark curls of your hair, I can clearly see the soft pink inside your lips and your tiny hood. I find myself wondering if you are still a virgin. When you move your right thigh to one side, opening yourself up, I catch a faint whiff of your scent.

There, where the leg band of your panties would normally cover it, is a tiny pink rosebud.

The bitches have had you tattooed!

You stroke the back of my neck while I continue to stare at the fork of your thighs and tell me that Jules took you to a tattoo parlour shortly after the marriage break-up. You have had this tattoo for nearly six years now, but have been too worried about how I would react to tell me before. Jules didn’t let on your mother what she had planned, but she told you that your mother wanted it done. You had to take your panties off so that the man could do the tattoo and you were unhappy about that. But Jules told you not to worry because he was gay. Nevertheless, the backs of his fingers constantly brushed against you as he worked and he leant over and kissed you delicately down there when the job was finished. Jules just looked on and laughed. Your mother went bananas when she learned what Jules had done, but by then it was too late.

While you are relating all this you are pressing me down lightly as if you want me to kiss you just as the tattoo artist had done.

My body betrays me.

In confusion and desperation I tell you to get on to bed. You extract a promise from me to come and kiss you goodnight and then you pick up your towel from the floor and leave without bothering to cover yourself again.

I consider raising hell. Between them, Jules, and your mother through weakness and lack of control, disfigured your innocent body. Then I realise that to do so would give them “evidence” that I have been intimate with you - that I have opened your legs and looked at your exposed sex. Nobody will believe that you showed me voluntarily. Even though you are almost old enough to vote, you are here under my care and protection. I could go to jail. I am between a rock and a hard place.

I join you after I have cleaned myself. Your summer-weight duvet hides you to your chin. My heart is still thumping madly and I kiss you chastely on the forehead. The lithe nakedness of your teenage body is still blazing too brightly in my brain for me to dare a hug. You reach up and try to pull me down to you, but I catch your hands. I kiss your fingers to let you know that I am not rejecting your gesture of love.

As I am about to leave you ask me if I will be doing any laundry in the morning. When I say I shall, you indicate a neat pile of soiled clothes on the floor – the tops and underwear and socks you have worn on the first days you have been here. On top of the pile, spread out like an offering, are the dark blue panties you were wearing today. You look into my eyes knowingly. Tens of thousands of years of female intuition are in your gaze. When I am on my own I cannot resist, as you well knew I couldn’t. Your scent is sharply female, but not yet completely woman. I am abjectly ashamed of my depravity.

Sleep will not come. When Adam and Joanna get up and leave for their hunt, I get up as well. I walk straight past your door to the living room without looking in. Adam has refreshed the fire and I sit in my armchair, dressed only in the boxer shorts I normally wear to bed. After an hour spent staring into the flames I doze off.

Your warm form climbing into my lap wakens me. You smell of young woman and bed. You snuggle against me and rest your soft cheek on my bare chest. Your long, dark hair cascades over my belly. It tickles. I start to become aroused again. Unthinkingly I rest my right hand on the outside of your thigh, above your knee. Seconds later I realise that I am breaking the rules and move my hand down to hold your ankle. You reach for it and replace it on you higher on your leg, but this time on the inside of your thigh halfway up. Owing to the size of my hand, my thumb is mere millimetres away from your sex, but thankfully, on the outside of your nightdress. Then you pull the material out from under me and place your hand on top of mine. Your thigh flesh is like warm silk. I long to stroke you but I dare not move, because if I do my fingers will brush against your girlhood and I will be lost. My erection is pressing hard on the outside of your thigh.

You must be able to feel its heat!

Your easy readiness in these matters arouses my suspicions. I ask you if anyone other than the tattoo artist has ever touched you. You are distracted for a moment while you tell me that Jules came to your bed one night and lifted your nightie. I take the opportunity to slide my hand imperceptibly down your silken skin to a safer zone. You tell me that Jules ran her hands all over your body and touched you between the legs. You objected strongly and demanded that she stop and, reluctantly, she gave in to your wishes. But before leaving you alone she swooped and kissed you between the legs. You felt her tongue. Jules told you she can hardly wait for your initiation into their sisterhood and when that happens, the rosebud tattoo will be changed to an open bloom.

I resolve to myself that as long as I live and breath that will never happen - unless it is your free decision to become part of their lesbian scene.

All the lifting and carrying I do on the farm has made me very strong. I stand up with you in my arms and carry you back to your bed. After I have covered you with your duvet I kiss you goodnight again. This time I dare to hug you.

When I stand up to leave you stare at the outline of my still hard penis in my boxers and ask to see it. When I tell you no, it would not be right for me to show you, you pull a face and tell me that I am not being fair because I have looked closely at you. I bury my guilt and relent, because deep down I want to. Your eyes are huge dark saucers as you look at my erect phallus. I rationalise in my mind that if you are that curious it is better for you to see and learn in a safe environment. But it will not be ‘safe’ if I do not get away immediately. I cover myself again and leave you. My heart is crashing so irregularly and so fiercely in my chest I wonder if I am having a seizure.

Day Four: Thursday

Adam and Joanna are still not back from their hunt and the shearing gang has arrived. They will be here for the next three days and the work will be all on, what with all the other jobs that will still have to be done around the property. For part of the time anyway, you will have to help out. However, when I see the way that a couple of the young twenty-year-old roustabouts are sizing you up, I decide it will be a good idea for me to find other work for you – well away from them.

Adam finally returns. Joanna has stayed in the bush tracking another animal. They managed to get one young stag but the second was too quick for them. He brought home the fore and hindquarters for the freezer and the back steaks for the barbecue. As a reward I give Adam one of the least pleasant jobs on the farm – going around all the paddocks to clean out and re-bait the blowfly traps – and tell him to take you with him. You two will be busy for the rest of the day. And in the face of such adversity, if you are not firm friends at the end of it you never will be.

Sleep does not come easily for the third night running. My mind is in overdrive and you are the cause. At about 1.00am I get up to make a cup of tea. As I pass your room I hear you whimper softly. I push your door open slightly to see if you are awake. Your bed is a tangled mess again and, like before, you are laid face down. Only this time your nightie is up around your waist. Your youthful, rounded bottom gleams palely in the moonlight and I can see the shadow of your sex and the rosebud mark between your slightly spread thighs. I stand quietly watching you. You are so beautiful. Only on the verge of full womanhood, but so very desirable.

My groin responds.

Suddenly, you whimper again and you shift on the bed, opening your legs wider and move your abdomen. Then, in your sleep, I clearly hear you say, “No! Daddy! Please don’t…”

My lust subsides as quickly as it arose. I close your door gently and go back to my room, all thoughts of making tea forgotten.

Day Five: Friday

Adam, Joanna and I are up very early. On her way home late yesterday morning Joanna saw some pig sign near one of our patches of bush. It rained briefly but heavily just before dawn to create the ideal conditions for a hunt, so she and Adam have taken his dogs to see what they can get. It is important for us to keep wild pig numbers down because they plough up the paddocks. I am sitting at the kitchen table, in my boxers, supping a mug of tea and checking through some invoices that came in the post yesterday when you surprise me by appearing at my side.

Your hair is a tousled mess and you look to be still half-asleep. You lean against my shoulder and kiss me good morning on my unshaven cheek. Once again I smell your young girl bed-scent and my senses sharpen. Smiling mischievously, you steal my mug and take a swig of my tea. I ask you what you were dreaming about last night. You shake your head and say you can’t remember, but a pink blush suffuses your cheeks.

Without warning you push your way between the table and me and climb into my lap astride my thighs. Your nightie hikes up high and we both look down silently at your exposed sex and the way your sitting position stretches it open. The deep pink rosebud contrasts vividly with the pale shades of your vulva. We also watch my member begin to harden inside my boxers.

I am beyond stopping you when you reach down and begin to undo my shorts’ buttons. My burgeoning tumescence brushes your fingers as it bursts out of their confines and you gasp. When it uncoils to stand upright, the rapidly swelling head almost grazes your open slit. As it is, now that I am fully erect, we are only millimetres apart. You look gravely at what you have created. For my part, I am so keenly alert I can hear Adam’s dogs barking from far across the other side of the farm. They must have a pig bailed-up.

You place your hands on my shoulders and lean forward to kiss me on the lips – a soft, innocent, child’s kiss. At the same time your vaginal lips kiss my penis. A jolt blasts through me and I feel as though my whole body is ready to explode. You press your bare groin closer on me as you twine your arms around my neck. With your mouth close to my ear, you say, “I want YOU to make the flower open, Daddy.” Then just as quickly as you climbed astride me, you get off again. You reach out tentatively and air-touch the bulging mushroom head with your fingertips, then you turn away and leave, to wash and get dressed. I sit at the table with my face buried in my hands until my pounding heart and my excitement subside.

Breakfast is a silent affair with the two of us sat opposite each other across the table. Adam appears when we are almost through, hefting an eighty-pound sow. He asks you if you will help him and Joanna scrape and dress the carcase and you agree. Later on you join me at the shearing shed. You stay close by me all day.

Paradoxically, that night I fall into a deep dreamless sleep almost immediately. I have to get up in the small hours to empty my bladder and look into your room on my way back to my bed. You too have slept serenely, though you are uncovered and your nightie is up around your waist. You lay on your back with your legs parted. The rosebud is a tiny black blemish on the inside of your thigh. Unable to tear myself away I stand enthralled by your beauty. Out of my control, my sex to rears to hardness.

You startle me by whispering, “Hello Daddy.” Your eyes are open. Glittering black pools in the moonlight. You hold out your arms for me to come to you. I am too weak to resist.

I lay down beside you on your bed and once again you free my shaft from its prison. You tug on my shorts, telling me to take them right off. While I obey, you remove your nightie. We do not hold each other - a residue of shyness still remains - but I can feel the radiance of your heat. Starting at my throat you inspect my body minutely. When you arrive at my groin you test the springiness of my pubic curls – the first time you have actually touched me. I feel your breath on my belly, on my shaft. My nerves are stretched to breaking point, begging for and yet dreading the warm caress of your lips.

A small pearl of pre-ejaculate emerges from my tip. You turn and smile to me brilliantly, “It is beautiful.” And then you tell me that you too are wet and ask me if I would like to see. My throat is so dry I can barely croak, “Yes”. Is this really happening? What am I…what are we doing?

You roll onto your back and hold your legs spread wide. I cannot describe the rapture flowing through me as I examine your perfect virginity. Your creases, your folds, the delicate shades of pink, shine softly in the moonlight. Thanks to your arousal, when I breathe in your clean oysters-and-honey aromas you smell more of woman than girl. One touch of your hand on my hair and I will lower my mouth to taste you.

From somewhere inside my skull, the gods of reason tells me that I cannot, must not despoil your youthful beauty and I move away. I kiss your upper lips with all the tender love I feel for you, then gather up my discarded boxers and head for my own room. I hear you weeping softly as I close your door.

Day Six: Saturday

This evening we are laying on a barbecue for the shearing gang. I have found that if one treats these men and women as welcome guests instead of mere contractors, they work faster and do a better job. You, Hine, Newa and Joanna spend most of the day at “woman’s work”, baking bread and preparing side dishes and salads.

After the food everyone lounges around having a few beers and chatting quietly in the lengthening shadows. At your request I bring the stereo speakers out onto the patio and you and Joanna show Hine, her boyfriend Tane and the young roustabouts how you city girls dance. The young bucks find you fascinating and you bask in their hot-blooded attention. But, every so often, you glance in my direction to make sure I am watching.

Hine and her boyfriend disappear. In the rural backcountry sexual liaisons are as natural as breathing and they start at an early age. One of the roustabouts, a handsome Maori lad, is talking to you earnestly. I can see by his gestures that he is trying to get you to leave the crowd, to go out into the darkness with him. You smilingly refuse. You must be doing it very graciously, because he does not look crushed.

The other roustabout tries. He can’t have seen his mate’s earlier lack of success. This one does not take your refusal so easily and he grips you by the upper arm. I remain sat on the old Totara stump we use as a garden seat and carry on my desultory conversation with the shearing gang boss. But I tense, getting ready to intervene. There is no need. As if by magic, Adam appears beside the lad and almost affectionately throws his arm around his shoulders to lead him away and around the side of the house. I see the boy a few minutes later. There is not a mark on him, but he is moving gingerly as though his ribs and gut are extremely sore.

You come to sit beside me and rest your head against my arm. You are wearing a city girl’s perfume for the occasion. I tell you it smells nice and you try to snuggle closer to me. I say, “Bugger it!” mentally and put my arm around your waist to draw you closer. You hold my hand in your warm lap and stroke the backs of my fingers. The only cloud on my horizon looms at midday tomorrow when your mother will come to collect you.

Since I have had a few drinks I cannot trust myself to visit your room, even to say goodnight. But you come to me. Completely naked you slide under my covers, shocking me into a wide-eyed wakefulness. As if reading my mind you tell me that Adam and Joanna are not in the house. At the barbecue Joanna seemed quite taken with one of the shearers, whilst Adam had his eye on a pretty, well-endowed girl from the wool sorting crew. I suspect that they have gone somewhere to do another kind of hunting. Then, despite my initial protestations, you again undo my shorts to release my surging manhood and then pull them from me.

You snuggle against me with your cheek resting on my chest and one leg thrown across mine. My throbbing penis nests against your belly. Your soft flesh burns me. Your mound feels moist against my thigh. You reach for my hand and place it on you, to cup one cheek of your bare bottom. My fingers slip naturally into the valley between your buttocks. If I move my little finger two, maybe three millimetres I will be in the entrance to your vagina. You wriggle slightly and your slippery lips very briefly surround my very fingertip. Then you kiss my chest, tell me that you love me more than anyone else in the world, and wish me goodnight. I lay holding you while you sleep, hardly daring to breathe.

The noise of Adam arriving home in the ute at first light wakes me up. I am alone in my bed and my boxers are on the floor. Did I dream that you slept naked with me last night? I bring my fingertips to my nose. No, it was not a dream.

Day Seven: Sunday…relief and sorrow

There will be no work on the farm this morning. Joanna arrives home shortly after eight. She is positively beaming from her night of sex. After a lazy family breakfast Adam holds you close and tells you “Goodbye”. He says he is going to the back of the farm to sight-in a couple of rifles that have been “off” the last couple of times he’s used them. He is wearing a brave face but I can tell he is close to tears. I know the real reason for his leaving is that he cannot bear to meet his mother, nor to watch you drive away. But I also know he will take the big old Zeiss binoculars with him, the ones that Granddad found close by a dead German officer in the Western Desert, and he will watch from a distance. Joanna goes with him.