Gloria's Daughter Ch. 01

I nuzzled her earlobe a little. "Did I really make you, Brandy?"

"What? Yeah, you blackmailed me and said my mom would pay for it if I didn't -"

"And you think your mom would have talked about me the way you said she talked about me, called me 'one of the good ones,' if I was the kind of guy who would follow through on that threat?"

"Maybe she doesn't really get what kind of guy you are."

"Maybe she doesn't," I said. "Or maybe you do, and you just don't want to admit it."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you talked to me at the gas station, and then you deliberately set things up so you'd be able to confront me here, alone, where I could have barged in and done anything I wanted. But you weren't afraid of that happening. So either you believed your mom that I'm a nice guy, or you were perfectly willing to have a not-nice guy come here and push himself on you."

"Which you did."

"And which you didn't even ask me 'please' not to do. And honestly, I don't really think I'm that good an actor. Are you telling me you completely believed I meant all that stuff?"

She lay quiet for a moment. Then: "But if you thought I wanted it, why didn't you just ask me?"

"Because you didn't want me to ask you. You wanted me to be a dirty, nasty, woman-using prick, and you wanted to get a taste of that. You wanted to put yourself in a position to be used, to have all your opinions justified, and also to get a good, hard, filthy fucking. Tell me I'm wrong."

More silence. I kissed her shoulder.

"So the question is, does either one of us really want to have you call your mom and stretch her wild goose chase out longer, just so we can have some fun together in bed?"

"No," she said. "Christ, it was so wrong of me to lie to her in the first place. You must think I'm a real shit of a daughter."

Lifting up, I said, "Roll over."

She did, and I settled back onto her, face to face, looking her right in the eyes.

"I think you're a smart young woman who cares about her mom but who has the same problem most young people have. You want to know better than your parents. I think that's completely normal, and the thing that's unusual about you is that you're challenging her for her own good, when most kids your age would be challenging her out of selfishness."

Quietly, with her eyes shining just a little wetly, she asked, "Is that really what you think?"

"It's what I thought when we were talking at the gas station, and it's what I think now."

The ghost of an out-of-character smile crossed her face, and she brought her hands up, sliding across my shoulders, up my neck, into my hair.

"You really are nice, aren't you?"

"Isn't that what your mom told you?"

"What she told me ..." She paused, eyes flickering with hesitation, then settling into a decision. "What she told me was that you're her favorite. Her very favorite, ever."

I shivered at that. The cynic in me should have doubted it, should have at least considered that maybe she told a lot of her customers that. But looking down at her, I just couldn't. I had no choice but to believe.

"I -" Something caught in my throat, made me swallow. "Thanks. It means a lot to me, that you'd let me in on that. I mean, I've gotten the impression I'm pretty high up on her client list, but I didn't think" I didn't want to hope "I was at the top of it."

She smiled, opened her mouth, closed it again.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. Then she scraped her fingertips down my spine. "You should get up, let me up. One of us should call her. And we both ought to clean up before she gets home. She's going to be pissed that I faked her out, and you're going to need to be extra nice to her to calm her down. I can't imagine what it will be like if she gets a whiff of our fuck smell on you."

"Hiding things from her isn't how I work."

"Yeah, well shoving things in her face is how I usually work, but in this case I really don't want to. I want to apologize to her as soon as she gets back, and I want you to make her feel ... the way you're making me feel, right now. Like you care."

I smiled and pushed myself up, stood. "That part will be easy."

Wincing and wrinkling up her nose, Gloria tugged out the used condom and got to her feet, holding it thumb-and-forefinger like it was a dead rat. "Shit, you spew like a horse."

"Only when I'm having sex with the best."

We both laughed, and she walked over to the door into the house. Turned the knob. Pulled it open. Halfway out, she turned and looked at me - her lips had clamped together in a thin line. Then they loosened, blood rushing in and filling them pink.

"Dennis?"

"Yeah, what?"

A deep breath moved her breasts high, then eased out.

"She didn't say 'on her client list.'"

"What?" I didn't quite get it. Or maybe I got it and couldn't quite believe she'd said it.

"When she told me you were her favorite. She didn't say 'client.'"

Then she held my gaze just a beat longer, backed from the room and let the door fall shut between us.

* * *

Gloria's boudoir has its own tiny bathroom - a powder room really, toilet and sink and a hanging ring for a hand towel by the lightswitch. I urinated there, used toilet paper to wipe a couple of stray drops from the porcelain rim, then washed my hands and splashed cold water on my face to rinse off most of the sweat. I looked around wishing there was a washcloth to dab the rest of me a little cleaner with, but there wasn't, so I went back out and stood at the foot of the bed with the ceiling fan on, turning and air-drying the rest of my perspiration in the downdraft. By the time I'd mostly finished, the door opened and Gloria came back in, her face cleansed bare of makeup.

I stepped toward her, and she hurried to meet me, but just as I caught her up in my arms, she said, "I went too far, and before anything else, I've got to clear that up."

That made my stomach sink a foot or two.

"Um," I said, taking a wishful stab, "too far playing the bitchy daughter?"

She laughed and tip-toe kissed my cheek. "God no. That was so much fun, and such a ... release."

I nodded and tried to smile back, head hanging a little lower than I would have liked. "Well, it's okay. You don't have to tell me what you did and didn't mean. It was wonderful, and I've got plenty of practice separating our games from reality."

She looked up at my hairline, lifted a hand to smooth it into what I assume was more presentable shape. It felt so right, her doing that while standing in my arms, breasts warmly cushioning my chest, face looking so at ease, even as it showed the mind behind it searching for the next words to say.

Maybe she did go to far, I thought, make me feel a little too special. But it was great, and it was worth it, and this moment now is more than worth it too. Somehow the self-pep-talk didn't quite convince me, though. Those last few words before she'd left the room ...

"Denny," she said, bringing her hands to my cheeks.

"Yes?"

"I didn't mean I went too far play-acting for the game." She took a couple of breaths, just looking at me. "I meant I went too far opening up. She's got three more years of school for me to pay for, and then there's another year more on the mortgage and on ... another big long-term debt. What I am right now is what I have to be for that long. I can't be anything else for anybody else, except my daughter, or I'll crumple and it will all fall apart and I won't be able to stand myself." Her fingers spread out across my chest. "And that means who we are right now is who we have to be for a while. Even if one or both of us wish it could be different."

I tried to come up with a reply. But I could barely breathe, much less think.

"So ... can you pretend that all I did just now was fuck you like my daughter would have fucked you? Can you keep going on being my very good customer and letting me be your paid woman?" Her eyes were tearing up now. "Because there's no way to take back the things I said, and I'm not going to lie and tell you I was pretending. But those words just can't be out there right now. I can't even - I can't know how you would even respond to them. Okay? Can we bottle them up, and just stick to being a whore and her trick?"

"No," I said, taking her by the shoulders and staring down at her. "For two reasons. One, I don't like that word. You can be my paid woman, but you can't be my whore. And two, you can't just be my paid woman, and I can't just be your very good customer, because you're already my very good friend, and that was before anything you said while you were pretending to be Brandy. Or whatever her real name is. The least I'll take is you being my exclusive provider of sexual services, with whom I am also on the most wonderfully friendly terms. And if that friend wants me to pretend I didn't hear something, I'll do it. Is that close enough?"

"Yes." She pulled herself tight to me and put her head against my chest. I felt a tear trickle down where her cheek met my skin. "Yes, that's perfect. Thank you so much, Denny."

"You're welcome," I said, squeezing her in return and working very consciously not to crush her. Then I let go with one arm and used a finger to tip her chin up so she'd look at me. "Now, if you don't mind, I think I've got at least an hour left on the clock, and I intend on fucking the shit out of you until your closing bell rings."

Laughing, eyes full of fire and relief, she jumped up so that I had to catch her under the thighs. Our lips met, our eyes closed, and in short order, we took each other to bed.

(Author's Note: Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear any and all feedback, so if you're of a notion, please leave a comment, send me an individual message, or visit me on my blog. This is part one of three, so if you liked it, watch for the next one in a week or so.)