Good Behavior

"You mean you were watching me before you came in here?"

"Yes. What were you thinking about while you were doing that?"

"Oh, nothing." The last thing I wanted was to tell her the kinds of things that turned me on.

"I thought maybe you were thinking about me, and it got me all excited." I could almost hear her teasing grin.

"I thought we decided we weren't going to go down that road."

We laid there silent for a bit, trying to come up with something else to say.

"Dad?"

"Yes..."

"Will you eat my pussy?"

"Valerie! I said no sex."

"It's not really sex, dad. No sex means no fucking, but I'm really horny right now and I heard mom say you are the best at that."

If one could hear one's eyes rolling, mine would have sounded like thunder right then. Her definition of sex was way different than mine, and I just couldn't believe we were lying there naked having this conversation.

"Come on, dad. Please! I think about that all the time, and I can't exactly lick it myself. I gave you blowjobs and tasted your cum. I swear I'm clean down there. It won't taste bad, I promise."

"I'm sorry Val, I can't."

"Don't make me tell mom about all those blowjobs, okay?"

Fuck! I was letting her manipulate me again. When would I ever learn?

The next thing I knew, she was pulling me over to her and pushing down on my head. She was dead serious about me doing this. I know I shouldn't have, but I almost felt like I owed her. So I gave in and licked her tight little twat while she panted, moaned, and squirmed... making her come until she no longer could. Then I flopped back onto my side of the bed, wondering what I should do with the seemingly permanent erection I had.

As Val got up to leave, she stood at the end of the bed for a moment and said, "You're going to take care of that money I need, right?" Then she walked out of the room, once again acting as if she had just completed some menial chore.

Dammit. This whole thing was all about the eighteen hundred dollars Val wanted. She had been playing me for weeks. Using sex to get her way, just like she had likely done to get that job. I could only wonder how many other times she had sucked, fucked, or jerked some guy off to make him do her bidding. Then I wondered if she made other guys eat her pussy too, or if that was some kind of payback for me coming in her mouth.

A couple of days after Val visited my room, I saw Billy. I had just gotten home from work, and he met me as I got out of my car. I could see Val watching from the front window. I knew why he was there, So I put on a show while I talked to Billy, making it look to all the world like we were making a street deal.

We didn't really talk about much. Mainly idle chit-chat. At one point, Billy asked me if I really was a sniper. I told him it was true and then added to my lie by saying how far away I could be and still take someone out. Astonishingly, he thought that was kind of cool. Then he related some stuff he had seen on TV about a sniper's ability to hide in plain sight.

When we were all done talking, I handed Billy what looked to be a wad of cash. Passing it to him as we shook hands, making the exchange look every bit like a 1970's TV drug deal. Then he rode off on his bicycle. So much for the boy being the master of scamming car dealers. The kid was a punk.

It took about a week for Val to figure out she wouldn't get the money. As soon as her mom left for work that following Monday, she came to me all pissed off and ready for a fight.

"You cheated me." She scowled.

"How so?" I asked as if I had no idea what she was talking about.

"You didn't give Billy my money."

"Sure I did. You even saw me."

"No you didn't. He was supposed to give it back to me. All eighteen hundred of it. I worked for that money. We had a deal, remember? I sucked you off just like I said I would, and you are supposed to pay me."

The little fucking whore!

"Well, I don't remember saying we ever had a deal, but you did suck me off. So I agree. You did keep your end of some bargain you seem to think we had. And technically, I kept my end as well. You asked me to pay off your supplier, and I did. If you expected something else to happen, maybe you shouldn't do business with the likes of Billy. Guys like him will cheat you every chance they get."

"Well, I don't care if he cheated me. I worked for that money, and I'm going to get it. Now give it to me, or I really am going to tell mom you made me suck your dick. And I'm not kidding this time."

Well, there it was. My little girl... acting entirely the way I had expected. Always working an angle. Always on the take. Dishonest to the core.

"Go ahead and do what you have to do." I practically invited her to rat me out. "Tell anyone. Tell everyone. No one is going to believe you, including your mom. You've lied so often that no one trusts a single word you say."

"Oh, she will believe me about this one. I've got evidence. You know that shirt I wore? It's got your cum mixed with my spit all over it. That will prove I'm not lying."

"Okay, shoot yourself," I said with a smug grin using the word shoot instead of suit. "If that's how you want to play this, go ahead. In the end, you will only be hurting yourself, and you will be just another bad kid trying to scam her own dad."

"So what! I'll still get my money."

"No, you won't, and doing what you are doing won't end well for you. And I shouldn't have to point out that when things go south on this little scam of yours, I won't be offering to fix it."

As she stomped off, I could only smile. I knew about the stains on that shirt. I figured that was what that second blowjob was all about. She fucked up her plan when she swallowed all of the first one. She thought she was so fucking clever.

I didn't care. Even with the so-called evidence she collected, that t-shirt wasn't going to be a problem. In fact, the cash Val saw me give Billy made sure of that. I didn't pay Billy for drugs. I paid him to steal the shirt, and he was glad to do it. Little bastards like him will do anything for a buck.

Well, it didn't take long for Val to notice that shirt was gone, and it was also pretty obvious when she discovered it was missing. She came to me wearing this impossibly short dress and started exposing herself. After she was satisfied that I knew she wasn't wearing panties, she plopped into my lap and tried to get me to fuck her, offering to suck me off at the end.

I pushed her off my lap, and she hit the floor with a thud. Then I emphatically told her to stop trying to use me. There was no way I would provide her with any more of my DNA. I took every precaution after that. I even started flushing the Kleenex down the toilet after I jerked off.

Then of all the crazy things... that stained shirt of hers showed up in her dresser drawer just two days after it went missing. It was perfectly clean and neatly folded like nothing had happened. I needed her to find that shirt. She needed to understand that it didn't simply disappear. I wanted her to know that I knew what she had planned to do and had been one step ahead of her.

The day after that shirt miraculously showed up, I came home from work to a surprise. Val and most of her belongings were gone. It wasn't like she was a runaway, but that's basically what she did. The thing is, Val was eighteen and could do whatever she wanted.

Earlier that day, in a tearful goodbye, she told her mom she was moving in with a friend from her GED classes, another lie but who's counting. Of course, Val didn't say goodbye to me. She was still really pissed off at her dear old dad.

I'd wrecked her scam, and in a way, that was like saying no to her. Just like when she was little, she was now having the kind of tantrum a teenage girl has. Of course I know I should have said no when this whole thing started. I don't need a lecture on that. In fact, I should have been saying no to her for years, but I couldn't.

The thing is, in the past I couldn't stand to see her tantrums. Back then, it hurt to have her mad at me. Things were different now. She had pushed me too far. She had threatened to ruin me. Indeed, she was utterly pissed off at me, but now I just didn't care.

Now don't get me wrong. It's not like I didn't care about her at all. On some level, what I did was in her best interest. Eventually, she would have to learn that she couldn't be in charge all of the time. She needed to see that a life of crime and pulling cons would end badly for her.

I know she didn't see my pushing her away as something good for her, but I was hoping she would come around one day. She was lucky in a way. Had she tried that blowjob scam on someone else, she would likely have taken a beating, ended up walking the streets turning tricks, or even worse.

Six or seven months after Val moved out, she stopped by the house with a big announcement. She was leaving. Moving out of state with these new friends of hers. While it was a shock to learn she was leaving, at least she was talking to me again.

It was hard to believe how much she had changed. She seemed wiser, calmer, more grown up. Val didn't need to ask permission to move out of state. After all, she was nineteen years old now. But the more grown-up Val realized how disappointed her mother and I would have been if she just left without telling us.

As she told us about her move, her new friends did much of the talking. Their story was that they had all met while working on their GEDs. Now that they had them, they were headed off to a college that accepted GED students. It seemed these kids had turned their lives around, and Val was one of them.

These new friends were polite, clean-cut young adults. Unlike the miserably lost kids with distant stares that she used to associate with, they all seemed like good people and had each other's backs. To help Val out, I handed her the thirty-five hundred dollars I'd stashed away and let her take my old car to drive.

Val could hardly believe what I had done, considering what she tried to pull. She even offered to fuck me again as a thank you. She promised this time it would be with no gimmicks. I had to decline and told her to just pay it forward by living an honest life from now on. Then I told her to work hard and make her mom proud, and to bring my car back when she was done.

A year and a half later, someone kept calling my wife around the same time every day and hanging up. Jennifer thought it might be this guy from work who was fired for sexual harassment. She was fed up with it and wanted to call the police. I told Jennifer to let me answer the next one, and that I would take care of it. Sure enough, the phone rang right on schedule. I answered, and of course, it was Val.

It seemed that her newfound friends weren't quite the clean-cut and honest people they claimed to be. They had been making Val work at some crappy fast food joint to pay the rent while they basically fucked off and smoked pot all day. When she finally stood up to them, they stole everything she owned and left her abandoned in some crappy little town in the middle of nowhere.

They had left her stranded with no money and only the clothes on her back. She had been stealing food from a local convenience store and calling home from a library. Still, if Jennifer answered, she would hang up. Even in dire straights, Val couldn't bear to disappoint her mom.

After talking to Val, I wired her some money. Then I called the state police. They found the car stripped and abandoned in a neighboring state. There were a few odds and ends of Val's belongings still in the car, but everything of any value was gone for good.

The one saving grace was they had stolen her ATM card and duped her into giving them the PIN. It didn't take long for the cops to use that card to catch these clowns. No one ever said that criminals were smart.

Val had gone through a terrible ordeal. She had been cast aside by people pretending to be her friends. She should have been bitter, but she wasn't. She an epiphany of sorts. Had she still been part of that little gang of criminals, she likely would have gone to prison along with them. In a way, she considered herself lucky.

We packed up the truck, her mom and I, and headed out to save Val. Along the way, we bought a car hauling trailer. As we drove, I told my wife the long story of everything I did to get Val out of trouble and keep her on the right side of the law.

Most of what I told Jennifer was how Val had started trusting me. How she relied on me to fix things when she screwed up. I told her how I fixed the car deal, and let Billy know he wasn't to mess with her anymore. I explained how that drew Val into me and made us closer. Of course, I left out the part about Val offering to suck my dick. After all, I did promise her I wouldn't tell her mom.

It turned out that Val's experience dealing with people who were just like her had left quite an impression. It seemed that being a victim didn't sit well with her. After we got back home, she was different. Gone was the daughter who always seemed to be harboring a secret. Gone was the girl who stayed out all night to hang out with questionable people. She even freely admitted she had never done a stitch of work on getting her GED. Our daughter had come home truly changed.

Within a month, she found a job. This time without telling any lies. And once she started putting in an effort, she found that she was actually good at it. Shortly after that, she got promoted to a supervisor position. Who knew that all those years of leading the bad kids could be turned into a business skill.

Her new position came with a small pay raise. When she got her first bigger paycheck she offered to give me some money to help rebuild my old car. I thanked her and refused. Then explained how insurance works.

For the next year, Val lived at home with us. We had become as close as ever, and we would have these deep conversations from time to time. At the end of those talks, Val would always hug me and give me a kiss. Occasionally those hugs and kisses were a bit too friendly. She also no longer seemed to care if I saw her in her underwear or sometimes even naked. I knew what she was after, but I didn't give in. As tempting as it was, that's one thing that was still very wrong. Besides, I still couldn't trust her, no matter how much she had changed.

Then came the day she met a nice young man, and after a few short months of dating, he asked her to marry him. Neither one of them could have been any happier. Her mom and I loved this guy like he was our own son. He was perfect for her, and I don't think she could have done any better if she had picked him from a catalog.

They were married in a small ceremony in our backyard. Soon after the honeymoon, Val and Jake moved down south where he had the opportunity to run a commercial supply house. Val quickly found work similar to the job she had back home, which turned into a contract business doing billing and accounting for a prominent medical practice.

Three kids and a house in the suburbs later, it seemed that Val had finally found the perfect life. But it was not to last. Late one day, I got a call from Val. It was that call. Her one call. She had been arrested for embezzlement.

The old Val was back. The lure of easy money drew her in and she didn't think there was any way she would get caught. In her mind, she had covered all of her tracks. All of her lies and excuses were at the ready. Of course, the government auditors found a mountain of evidence that she had no idea existed, and she was hauled off to jail.

There was nothing I could do. I had no magic to get Val out of this one. My only advice was to gather up the quarter of a million she stole and give it back, then appeal to the court for leniency.

She did neither of those. She got on the stand and told obvious lies, fabricated stories, shifted blame, and deflected responsibility all the way to the bitter end. The result of her bullshit on the stand was the maximum sentence. Val and Jake ended up losing their home, their cars, and all of their savings. I was amazed that Jake didn't leave her, but it seems he meant every word when he said 'for better or for worse'.

Three to five years. That's a lot of time what she did. It felt like she wasn't the only one being punished. Sure, she was the one doing time, but that sent ripples of woe through the entire family. Her husband and children had to move, change schools, and scrape to make ends meet. It was a miracle Jake kept his job.

Of course, the ripple effect didn't stop there. My wife wanted to go and save her... Well, save the grandkids anyway. She was dead set on us pulling up stakes and moving across the country so we could all be close to the prison.

I had to tell Jennifer no, we wouldn't be moving. This wasn't our battle. Val was going to have to fight this one all on her own. If we went and made this okay, Val wouldn't learn anything. My wife didn't agree. She still firmly believed that Val had been railroaded.

It took some well-placed words from big sister Shannon to get Jennifer to understand. Then my wife quit her job and left anyway so she could be the grandkids' built-in babysitter while Jake was at work. I flew down to join them whenever I could.

A little over a year after she was incarcerated, we got the news. Val was being released early because of good behavior. Good behavior... I didn't even know that was a thing anymore. I flew down so we could all be there to greet her when she got out. There were hugs to go all around that day. First the kids, of course, then Jake, and finally her mother... then me.

There was quite a celebration at their place that night. Drinks were flowing freely, but Val didn't partake. She said a year of being sober in 'the can' changed her life. Later that night, Val confided in me. Telling me that she finally understood what I had been saying about being honest all those years. Drinking and smoking pot just didn't seem to go well with honesty.

Six months later, Val and her husband announced they were having another baby. I guess that's what happens when you've been apart that long. At her mother's insistence, we planned to be there when the baby was born. She planned to stay on a bit longer to help out. After all, we offered to do this with their other kids, and doing a stretch in prison shouldn't change how we treated our daughter.

I didn't quite make it on time for the delivery. This baby was premature. Born well before the due date. And there was a little problem of sorts. The baby's skin was pretty dark. One look, and it was obvious. Their new baby had been fathered by a black man.

It seems I was right. You can be on your very best behavior in prison, but that isn't going to cut two years off a minimum sentence. Now, if you seduce a prison guard and get knocked up, you might be able to claim you were sexually assaulted and get an early release. There was clear evidence that could easily happen.

I fully expected Jake to leave Val at that point, but he didn't. He'd been in on it the whole time. He had hidden the money she embezzled and was glad to give up their crappy house and cars. They also sued the prison system and the man she had sex with. I never found out how much they netted out of the deal, but it was enough that they both stopped working for a while.

Over the next few months the fact that Jake never blew a gasket over Val having a black man's baby kept gnawing at me. It just didn't seem normal. Something wasn't right. Once again Val's sister knew more than she ever let on. Seems she was friends with one of Jake's old girlfriends, and there was more to the guy than we could ever have imagined. Knowing that former girlfriend opened some doors. It didn't take much to find people who knew Jake back in the day, and they all had stories to tell.