Nothing I Won't Do

"So all that stuff about breaking up with Carl, the t-shirt thing over coffee and the stuff about my dream was just a joke? Honey, you had me completely fooled."

Beth immediately sobered up. "Oh, no," she answered. "That was all totally serious. No, I'm talking about just a few minutes ago- the uncrossing my legs thing. Wow. You were really fished in. I just can't believe you fell for it."

"Well," I said in my own defense, "after this morning's... episode, you can only imagine how I might be easily distracted."

"I know," Beth said with an air of gloating. "And I so totally milked it. Hah! C'mon, Dad, you gotta admit it was a good one."

"All right," I conceded. "I'll admit it: you got me."

"Yeah," suddenly she became very serious. "But all that other stuff, I meant every word of it. And that other thing, too? Hmm..." she glanced down at the customary cup of coffee that had been placed at our table when we first sat down to it, "maybe I should change my drink to milk- I could really go for some CREAM. Would you happen to have some CREAM for me, Dad? I only got a little earlier and I think I want some more."

"Oooh-ho-ho," I said, wagging a finger at her, "now that's hitting below the belt." I swear, the words fell out of my mouth before I really had time to think about it and immediately regretted saying them.

"Not yet it isn't," my daughter retorted deftly. "But it's still early. And it IS my birthday." It was the wink and quick wag of her eyebrows that spelled it out for me: I was in more trouble than I had even imagined. Much more.

The waitress showed up just then with our food, blessedly interrupting the conversation and giving me a chance to rethink my situation. I thought that I had redirected my daughter's sexual attentions back to her ex-boyfriend, but I was mistaken. All I'd done was give her another potential choice; I was apparently still on her menu. The old Hall & Oates song "Man-eater" suddenly fluttered through my mind and I couldn't disagree with the thought that a man-eater is exactly what my daughter was shaping up to become. And it seemed that I was the main course.

I ate my breakfast in thoughtful silence after that, my mind reeling at the enormity of what Beth had just said to me. Could she really be that bold? What in the world had happened to her while I was gone during that summer? She had always been sly and good at making puns, but she just never showed this kind of interest in me like this before. Where had it come from and what could I do to evade it? I've seen lots of guys go after women with less assertiveness! Our relationship had always been based on trust and friendship, which were great assets to our parent/child relationship, but this kind of sexual aggression was so unfamiliar to me- I just couldn't believe that it was coming from, of all people, my own daughter. I know I'm not unattractive, but I'm her fucking father for crying out loud! I sired her, raised her from a baby, changed her diapers, taught her how to ride a bike, played card games with her as a child and even did the make-believe tea party thing a few times when she was little. I had watched this girl, the fruit of my own loins, blossom into a fine, upstanding young woman with a bright future ahead of her. I knew practically every detail of her life, from start to finish, and this was a chapter, an aspect of her life that I was totally unprepared to be an audience to, let alone a participant.

The scary thing, I realized at one point, is that she was pressing ALL of the right buttons with me. I mean, it was truly frightening at how effective her advances were. If I had crafted the perfect woman with my own hands and imagination, even accounting for the proper balance of sexual aggression versus coyness, that woman would be pretty much exactly like Beth, down to the last detail. Even her body hit all the right notes with me, which boggled my mind since I was actually, for the first time in my life, seriously looking at her as a potential bedmate. My own daughter! I should have been ashamed of myself, aghast at my own dark thoughts, but there was a part of me that was utterly divorced from my moral compass and it was hooting and hollering in my head with a single word: EUREKA! SHE DOES EXIST!!!

When Beth excused herself to go to the bathroom, I closed my eyes for a long moment to collect my thoughts. What would my wife have told me? What would she have done? How would she have handled this situation? I tried like hell to think of my wife, to call upon my memories of her and, found myself drawing a blank. We'd never discussed this possibility. What parents DO bring up the potential problem of their offspring making sexual advances on them? I had no frame of reference to work from and couldn't figure out how to proceed. I love my daughter dearly and didn't want to chase her away by getting angry at her, but I certainly didn't want to run the risk of possibly screwing her mind up by allowing her behavior to continue. On the other hand, strictly speaking as a male, I couldn't help but admit that I was truly flattered by the attention. In a weird sort of way it made me feel good that a young woman as beautiful and sexy as Beth would find me even remotely interesting enough to flirt with, whether she was serious about it or not. And I guess that was the real question that faced me: was Beth being serious? Was she fully aware of the importance of what she was saying and doing? Hormones can make teenagers do and say some extraordinarily crazy things. Maybe this was just a phase. Maybe the best way to get past it was to simply act like it wasn't happening. Attraction, however, is a tricky thing- if I ignored her advances she could end up having severe rejection issues as a result. Being rejected by her own father might induce her to seek the attention of ANY male, regardless of his character, if only to make up for the feeling that "Daddy doesn't really love me." Oh, boy, what a slippery slope I'd found myself teetering on!

Beth rejoined me at the table and interrupted my ruminations. "Dad? Look, I'm sorry. I've been messing with your head like crazy and it's obvious that it's gotten to you. I'll dial it back a bit, okay? I'm just being flirty and having with you because I know that, of all the men in this world, I can trust you to always do what's right for me."

"Honey, there's NOTHING I won't do for you, but..."

"It's okay, Dad. I'm not, like, throwing myself at you, okay? Just having a little harmless fun. I thought, after being in a war zone for so long and not having a girlfriend, that you'd have a little fun with it, too. Clearly I was wrong and I'm sorry for that. But try to understand, that I won't exactly stop flirting with you altogether because, frankly, I need the practice. I've had only two boyfriends in my life and I guess I'm a little socially stunted in that area because of my limited experience. So, please, just relax, okay? Play around and have fun with it. I promise, I promise, I PROMISE that I won't go over the line with it, but PLEASE let me practice some. Please?"

I looked her in the eye and could see that she meant every word of what she'd said. I could also see the tiniest bit of hope that we could continue playing this strange little game. The beseeching look of appeal writ large on her face was something that I just couldn't ignore. Yes, it was a little fucked up to flirt with my daughter, but when she made a case like that, how could I refuse her? I closed my eyes, slowly nodded, looked at her and said, "Okay, Sweetheart. I'll play along- up to a point- but when I start getting that wild look in my eye, you'd BETTER dial it back more than just 'a bit.' In point of fact, I HAVE been in a war zone for a long time and I DON'T have a girlfriend. I'm in a pretty fucking fragile state of mind these days. I'm your father and I love you to pieces with every ounce of my heart, but I'm also a man and I've got limits. I don't ever want to hurt you, so if it looks like I'm getting off script, even for a second, and I'm about to say or do something you really don't want, you'd better stop me. All it'll take is a word and I'll stop, but I'm putting a lot of control in your hands here: I do NOT want to have you emotionally scarred by anybody, least of all by me. Understood?"

Beth blinked at me in wonderment and surprise and was silent for a long moment. Finally, she smiled hugely at me. "Really?" she asked. "That's it? Those're the ground rules? You're putting ME in control? Dad, I'm not so sure that's-"

I cut her off. "How else are you going to learn? Flirting is a very serious skill and it's an invaluable tool in the dating game. Now, I'm no expert in the flirting game, but I do know my limitations, mostly. I mean, I think I have a pretty good idea of what does and doesn't appeal to men. So I'll follow your lead, see where you take us and, if it seems like you're getting way off the mark with what seems attractive to a guy, I'll let you know. Otherwise, it's up to you to gauge my responses. No matter what, though, you've got to keep in mind that I am your FA-THER, not some guy you can just wrap around your finger. Play to your heart's content, but the moment it gets serious, you stop yourself and think about the situation. You're eighteen now, a legal adult, and as I've told you before, you're going to have to suffer the consequences of your decisions."

Beth smiled and leaped forward across the table just enough to give me a quick peck on the lips. When she sat back, she said, "Thank you, Dad! I KNEW I could count on you to help me. I totally understand where you're coming from and I promise: I won't let you say or do anything that makes me uncomfortable. God, you're so cool! I have got to be, like, the luckiest girl in the world to have a father like you!"

I smiled warmly at her but inside I was wondering just what the hell I'd gotten myself into. Possibly your daughter's knickers, my mind flippantly said. I told my mind to shut up and mind its own fucking business for awhile. I flagged down our waitress and asked for the check, which she promptly put in front of me. As I pulled out a few bills for a tip, I said to my daughter, "Okay. Now... today's your birthday, so it's your day. What do you want to do first?"

Beth's grin grew. "What does any girl want to do on her birthday?" she asked in reply.

I gazed at her, my mind buzzing with potential answers, and then I seized on the most likely of all suspects. "Right then," I said. "Next stop: the mall."

"Bingo," she said.

-----------------------------------------------

Naturally, I truly did have no clue what I was getting myself into. We got to the mall and it was just opening. Not many people were there except for some seniors who took advantage of the relatively clear hallways to get in some walking and window shopping. Beth, hugging her arm around my waist while mine was draped around her shoulder as we walked in through the food court entrance, told me that our first shopping destination would be at Frederick's of Hollywood. "I'm eighteen now and I want to feel pretty," she told me.

"Sweetheart," I said, "you already ARE pretty. You don't need frilly underwear to prove it."

"Screw that! 'Frilly underwear' hell," my daughter retorted, "I want lingerie! I want the sexiest, skimpiest lingerie they have."

I let out a low, long whistle. "I dunno, honey. Have you SEEN their line of lingerie? It gets pretty skimpy."

"The skimpier the better," she replied. "Aaaaand, I want you to be my personal judge."

I looked down at her with a skeptical eyebrow. I wasn't so sure about that, but I had to admit that, as a flirtation tactic, it was a winning choice. "Very well," I said soberly. "I'll try to be as objective as possible."

"Are you kidding me?" she said as she glanced up at me, "I want you to be as SUBjective as you can. I don't want you to tell me what any guy would like! Tell me what YOU like. Capiche?"

I tried to seem indifferent about the prospect and said, "Okay. But you asked for it. I freely warn you: I'm pretty picky."

"Good," Beth said with satisfaction. "So am I."

Twenty minutes later I found myself in the sitting room at Frederick's of Hollywood, waiting for my daughter to step out of the changing room. I was more nervous than a basketful of kittens while I perched on the settee, not sure of what Beth had selected and not entirely certain that the clerk was convinced that I was really her boyfriend, but she seemed like the discrete type who knew better than to pry into the affairs (no pun intended) of others.

"Ready?" Beth called from behind the changing room curtain.

"When you are," I answered and steeled myself.

The curtain parted and my daughter stepped out. She wore a pair of deep burgundy, high-cut thong panties that hugged every crevice of her pelvis like a glove and left very little to the imagination- I could see the clearly defined shape of her shaven pussy lips through the material, their peach/pink hue hiding behind the dark fabric. She also wore a matching, high-riding shelf bra that pushed her sizeable breasts high enough to make them seem like they were two sizes bigger than they actually were. If the panties left little to the imagination, the bra only helped to enhance it- they were translucent, almost bordering on transparent. My eyes roamed up and down my daughter's short, nubile body as though I was visually dining on the finest dish known to man, and I savored every detail with relish. Her feet were bare and unadorned, showing off pink, unpainted toes and her arms were canted around her hips sexily, which pushed her enhanced breasts slightly up and caused them to jut out prominently. The bra had done such a magnificent job of hiking her breasts away from gravity's reach that the very tops of her areolae were just barely visible- they were a slight hue of pinkish-brown and, if I was judging correctly, looked to be no more than about a quarter in diameter. I just stared in stunned silence for several long seconds at this incredible vision before me, unable to speak- or think, for that matter.

"Well?" Beth prompted with a small grin on her face. "What do you think?"

"In a word: wow," I managed to say after clearing my throat. "It's like you were made for each other."

She looked down at herself critically. "I kinda thought so, too, but this bra seems a little... I dunno... over-the-top, don't you think?" She realized that her areolae were showing just then and quickly tucked them in. "Oops! See what I mean, though? They say that less is more, right? But too much of less is too much of more. I should probably get the next size up so that won't happen."

"Negative," I interjected and she looked at me with surprise. "Look, the whole point of lingerie is that it gets worn in the bedroom, right? If you're wearing this, and only this, for a guy, I'm guessing that modesty, at that point, is a bit of an afterthought. Your tits weren't completely hanging out, which, yeah, would've been tacky, but showing just a hint is very sexy and would get just about any guy in the mood."

"Any guy?"

"You gotta take closet homosexuals into account," I pointed out sagaciously.

Beth giggled at that. "Okay. I guess you're right. At least, I hope you're right. I'll put it in the keep pile. Gimme a minute to get into the next one." She wheeled around to head back into the changing room stall and I was privileged with the wonderful view of her backside. I felt so dirty for noting that my daughter had a flawlessly perfect ass, but the evidence of it was hard to refute and I decided that I could forgive myself a tiny bit. I waited for about five minutes before she called out to me again. "Okay, now brace yourself: this one's a bit riskier."

I wondered how anything could be riskier than what she'd just shown me. "Should I close my eyes first?" I asked.

"Uhm... yeah. You probably should." She couldn't see me, but I did indeed close my eyes. She waited for a beat or two and then said, "Okay, I'm coming out. Eyes closed." I heard the rustling of the curtain and then she told me to open my eyes. "Ta-da!"

Beth stood in front of me, one knee canted at an angle and her arms stretched out flamboyantly, with a nervous smile on her face. What she'd chosen to wear was nothing short of jaw-droppingly sexy and all I could do was stare in reverent appreciation, silently thanking God for placing me on this Earth, at this time, in this circumstance, so that I could see this vision before me. Beth wore another thong panty, this one white and made of a translucent, almost mesh-like material with lacy fringe that traced her hips seductively. Her top is was a mix between a camisole and baby-doll nightie that buttoned at the top and left her abdomen completely exposed in an upside-down V, sleeveless with spaghetti straps, also with lace all around its trim. It was made of the same translucent material as the bottoms and looked delicate, like it could rip with hardly any effort. The ensemble was so revealing that I could clearly see her nipples (which were obviously hard- small, pebble-sized protrusions that erupted from, as I'd guessed, quarter-sized areolae), the defined curvature of her full breasts and the faint hint of her clean-shaven vulva. I was seeing more of my little girl than I had since she was four years old. The ultra-thin garments were more of a see-through barrier than actual clothing and their purpose was to obviously get a guy to shut up and drool. On some women such lingerie is a bad idea, but for a select few it's a perfect match of girly demure and tawdriness. Definitely sugar and spice and everything very, very nice.

"Yep," she said after a moment of silence from me, "you like it. Keeper!" Then she turned around and bent down, showing me her flawless ass cheeks. "It doesn't expose too much, does it?"

My pulse raced, my cock was thumping like a jack-rabbit behind my jeans and I felt my sweat glands starting to heat up in overdrive. I wasn't just staring at my daughter's ass, I was worshipping it from five feet away. Her little rosebud was just barely visible behind the thin line, which was exciting enough to see, but it was the sight of her hidden/not-hidden pussy that sent me over the moon. The translucent material hugged every curve and nuanced feature of my daughter's mound in such a way that it was like I was looking at a showcase devoted especially to her private parts. Her small pussy lips were clearly visible through the material and I could just barely make out the faintest hint of her clitoris as she all but showed herself to me. I forced myself to get my shit together and said, "No. I'm pretty sure that it exposes just about enough to cause a heart attack, but 'too much' is a little difficult to define right now."

Beth righted herself and looked at me with something closely resembling pity. "All right, Da- uhm, John. I've got just one more thing to try and then we can go. Deal?"

I looked up at her and tried my best to ignore her near nakedness. "Please?" I begged.

Beth tilted her head back and laughed out loud, the ringlets of her brown hair dancing prettily off her barely-covered breasts. "Okay. Yes. I promise, just one more and then we're through. With this place, anyway." She turned around again, this time to get back into the changing room.

"You mean there's more stuff you want to get?" I asked through closed eyes, trying my best to mentally store what I'd just seen in a place within my mind that even amnesia couldn't touch it.

"Of course!" Beth replied from within the changing room. "Tomorrow IS Halloween and I still have to get my costume together."

I slapped my forehead. "Are you kidding me? Sweetheart, you've had months to prepare. It's your favorite holiday for pete's sake. How on earth could you wait this long?"