Ace

PRESENT DAY

“It’s our anniversary. And your birthday, you big grouch. That’s why.”  She presses her tiny fist into a womanly hip and narrows those golden eyes in my direction.  The platinum hedgehog ring I had made for her for last Christmas catches the light.  She wears it on her middle finger, and I remember when I gave it to her thinking I’ve never seen a bigger smile on her face than when she opened that package.

She’s fuller now in the years that have passed, but her girlish innocence never wavers.  Her hair is longer, nearly to the center of her back and her neck still is graced by that cross I learned was actually Emily’s.  It had been in Emily’s family for a hundred years, passed down to her by her own grandmother at a time in her life when she was lost as well.  Not knowing her own father when she was a young girl left her with a soft spot in her heart for Brinna.

Emily gifted it to her the day she arrived here at the tender age of seven after her own mother, Anna, left to go out one night with one of her many man friends and never returned.  Brinna managed to get herself to school for a week before she fainted in class from lack of food. The state finally tracked down Brinna’s grandmother who was unaware she had a granddaughter at all. No father was even listed on Brinna’s birth certificate and the one thing for which I am thankful is her mother kept her safe from so many of the possible horrors that could have befallen her in those years with her mother.

Brinna’s mother ran away from home when she was just fourteen with a boyfriend who had so kindly introduced her to meth.  Miriam, Brinna’s grandmother, did what she could over the years to find her daughter, but after a few futile attempts to bring her daughter home and get her help, Anna disappeared for good and Miriam did her best to move on with her life.

Now, our life is so very different, and here we are in the kitchen, where we are having this all-too-familiar battle, and it is fit for a master chef. An expanse of stainless steel forms the professional range and oven.  There’s a large, glass-fronted refrigerator and freezer, along with everything else a trained epicurean would need.  The enormous space is filled with the scent of chicken soup and everything my dreams are made of.

The house is pushing on a century in age, stone outside and the feel of an English country estate all around. Emily kept things classic yet updated here.  When I moved Brinna into a room closer to mine from the small apartment on the third floor where she and her Grandmother had lived before the accident, I insisted on her redecorating her space the way she wanted it. 

In the end, she succumbed to my insistence, allowing me to have the walls painted in her signature favorite colors of lavender and green with tulip bedding and hedgehog stuffed animals and accents. But other than her room, we’ve not changed much in the house over the years. 

The warm hickory cabinets in the kitchen sit in contrast to the cool, black granite that covers the flat surfaces.  Clean white paint hugs the walls and the soaring ceiling.  In such an opulent space it feels cozy. 

Like a home should. 

She’s pouting, but I know exactly what day it is.  I pretend every year I have no idea the significance of April 28^th.

“You’re making a mess.”  I grouse, and my surly demeanor is a pathetic defense mechanism. 

And those defenses are in full force, because every year, every day, it becomes more and more impossible to fight off the urges that tear at me.

“You love my messes.” She twirls on a bare-footed toe, stirring the chicken and dumplings she’s made in a giant steel pot, and I swallow hard, trying to tell my hard-on to behave.  “Oh.” She turns her pout into that perfect smile. “And thank you for my present.”

“I’m predictable,” I grunt, watching the swell of her ass shift back and forth and thinking about how my hands would fit there so perfectly.

“You know I love it.  Today, four years ago, is the day I won the lottery.”  Brinna leaves the spoon in the pot and reaches over to where she’s set aside the stack of the fifty scratch-off tickets I left on her nightstand, wrapped in a lavender ribbon before she woke.  “Maybe the lucky one is in here.”

“Could be, Little Lamb,” I agree, stabbing glances at parts of her that an honorable man shouldn’t.

In the four years, we’ve been together, I’ve bought her lottery tickets on the day we celebrate me signing the papers to become her guardian.  Just so happens to also be my birthday.  So, my pretending I don’t know the significance of this day is bullshit, and we both know it.

The day I signed those papers taking on her guardianship, I asked her a lot of questions.  Just little things to break the ice.  Who was her favorite cartoon character, what music did she listen to, what was her favorite thing to do. 

She giggled her way deeper into my heart as she told me how her grandmother loved playing the lottery.  It was something they did together, and she’d missed it since losing her, as she wasn’t old enough to buy the tickets herself.  I stopped on our way home and bought her a stack of scratch-offs that day.  From there, the tradition has continued.

She doesn’t know it, but I’ve never taken more joy in anything than I do in seeing her win even just two dollars on one of those stupid tickets.  I know she doesn’t care that much about the money.  If she won a million dollars, I doubt she’d show much more glee than she does when she wins a couple bucks. 

“I don’t know what I’d want different about my life if I did win.”  She fingers the stack of tickets and brushes her hair off her forehead with the back of her other hand. “Maybe open a hedgehog sanctuary,” she giggles.  “Are there enough neglected and suffering hedgehogs in the world they need a sanctuary do you think?” The way she stands with one hip against the counter and that dreamy, faraway look in her eyes has me wishing I could give her everything she wants in this world.

I could give it to her, not the inheritance.  Not the circumstances that put us together.

Me.  The man. Taking care of her on my own. As my own.

She should be out in the world finding her own life, not here taking care of me, but I’m selfish.  Every morning when I wake up and know she’s here, sleeping in the next room, it brings me peace. 

It also brings me an erection, of course, but that is my near constant burden.  Each morning as I lie in my bed, I try to ease the ache that started in me the day we met, but it is a temporary distraction at best.  I dream of my release coating the walls inside of her.  I dream of eating her sweet cunt until the only word she knows is what drives me to near insanity every day.

Daddy.

In every dream, she calls me Daddy.

“You should have everything you want in life, Lamb.”

“What more is there?  I mean, look at our life.  It’s what most dream of.”

My heart clenches in my chest, knowing a twenty-year-old girl like her shouldn’t be here with me nearly 24/7, but her fate is sealed.  I can’t help myself.  She is my obsession every second of every day.

An hour ago, as I listened to her sweet singing in the kitchen, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the flavor of that sweet as fuck pussy she keeps between her legs.  I retreated to my workshop, which is an old stable a short walk from the main house.  Behind the locked door, I leaned a straight arm on the worn brick wall, released the hard length with her name on it from my pants with my other hand and fisted myself, hoping to ease the ache even just for a moment.

The image in my head had me sitting her plump swell of an ass on the kitchen counter, stepping back to admire her, commanding her to spread her legs for my view.  In my fantasy her face turned pink with embarrassment as she pulled her white panties aside at my bidding, exposing her slippery gash.  Guiding her with my voice to do everything as I ask.  One finger lightly teasing her outer lips until I’m ready for her to spread herself and show me how wet she is.

By the time my fantasy got to where she was calling me Daddy, begging for me and her middle finger disappeared into her innocent soaking heaven, I was spraying all over the wall, gritting my teeth and struggling to stand.

I can’t imagine if I ever were to feel her true touch how I would survive my climax.  Just stroking off to thoughts of her nearly stops my fucking heart.

I know she’s still pure. She’s as much as told me so a few times. 

It’s not that she has not spent time away from me these past four years.  I’m a madman, sure, but there are times I force myself to let her out into the world if even for a short time.

There was school, one high school dance which I pushed her to attend thinking it was what she should do.  I chaperoned, of course, watching her every move and unable to stomach the thought of a boy even looking her way, let alone touching what I knew in my soul belonged to me.

In the end, we left after a couple hours.  She seemed as unhappy being there as I was watching.  We ended up stopping for ice cream on the way home, then staying up until after midnight, playing poker with Pixy Stix as our collateral.

She stomped me like she does nearly every time.

She’s had one friend that she’s spent time with over the years.  Michaela lives across town with her family.  Decent, good folk and even if Michaela is a bit wild for my taste, after settling into the idea of being a guardian to a sixteen-year-old girl I knew I had to let her have at least one friend.

I found some solace in Michaela’s jaded view of boys as well.  She was one of those girls that unfortunately had gathered an opinion that the male species were all dogs.  I hate to say, but I liked that she felt that way and tried to impart her own opinions onto Brinna.  I’m not sure the details over the years that formed Michaela’s continued low opinion of men, but I knew it helped to keep Brinna safe and that was all that mattered.

Brinna still doesn’t know that every time she went to Michaela’s house, or out somewhere with her, I tracked her phone or followed her.  It’s the only way I could breathe, so I have no apologies for what I did to keep her safe and keep myself sane.

She’s the sugar to my salt. Even before my injury, I wasn’t slick.  I always had an edge to me, both in looks and manner.  I’ve kept my head shaved, Brinna likes it that way, and my beard is the balance to the lack of hair up top.  Brinna says I look dangerous. She loves when she sees people move away from me, glance with wary eyes up and down then sidestep to give me room.

I don’t notice that though, because my focus is always on her, on where she is and whether she’s safe.  The first time she told me about it I was taken aback, but I love the pride in her eyes when we are out in the world together.  I love the way she walks beside and slightly behind me, sometimes clutching my arm if we are in a crowd. A thousand times a day I imagine twisting my fingers into her dark hair, pulling her face toward mine and taking what I want from her over and over until the only word she knows is my name.

Daddy.

The word loops in my head fills every dream.

I’m not worthy of her.  She deserves so much more. 

Over the smells of her cooking, it is her scent that cuts through it all.  I inhale through my nose, close my eyes for a moment and dwell on the soft lavender and honey she exudes on the outside.  Over the years I’ve taken in the smell of her sex an infinite number of times, it’s not lost on me, and even now it’s here in the space between us.  My cock pounds with need again and the fight to keep my promise to myself becomes nearly unbearable.

“Dinner’s ready.”  She sashays over to the table, and I follow, taking a seat in my usual spot at the head.  She places two steaming bowls of the soup she’s been slaving over since mid-morning, one in front of me and one on the next placemat, so close to mine that the rims of the bowls are almost touching.

Sliding in next to me, she takes her seat to my right where she’s sat for nearly every meal in the house since the day we came home.  She folds her tiny hands in her lap.  Waiting for me.  She never takes the first bite. Always waiting for me to go first.  Not something I taught her, yet one of a billion tiny things that have bound her to me in ways she could never understand.

“Here’s to four years.”  I raise my glass, and she does the same, clinking them together, and I silently wish for the strength to keep my promise.  I can’t bear to set her out into the world, I just can’t.

“And the best Daddy ever.” 

Her words steal my breath, and cum leaks out of my cock as I growl at her and give her the look.  She pokes her tongue out at me, and it only serves to make the sticky wet spot in my boxers bigger.

“I don’t know why you hate that name so much.”  She takes a sip of water, and I imagine her lips ringing the base of my cock while I empty down her throat.  “It suits you.” 

The trusting look in her eyes tells me she still to this day has no idea the filthy things I long to do to her. The ways I would teach her love and lust and pain, and how it would feed me.  The light and the dark.  Serving us both in ways she doesn’t know.

“I don’t hate it, Lamb.”  It’s all I can get out before my throat clutches around what I want to say. But you have no idea what it actually means to me.

I lock my jaw muscle until I can breathe again, and we finish our meal with a bit of small talk about the events of the week and my upcoming appointments.  We talk about her friend Michaela’s recent move to a new apartment and how excited she’s been about buying furniture and paint. 

It’s hard to hold coherent thoughts in my head as we finish the soup and I help Brinna clean up.  She doesn’t know how I watch her every move, listen intently to the way she hums the B-52’s Love Shack under her breath as we wash the dishes together. The way I try not to touch her fingers as she hands me the wet dishes to dry and I breathe as deeply as I can to draw in as much of her as humanly possible without a touch.

I notice everything.  Today, she’s changed her nail color from yellow to some sparkly pink that looks like a unicorn licked each nail.

“I’ll make a fire.”  I shift from the sink as soon as we are done, needing some space.  My need to touch her feels like a living thing inside me desperate to claw its way to the surface.

As I turn, a twinge from my old wounds shoots up my leg, and I battle to keep from letting the pain show on my face.  Instead, I reach out and steady myself against the worktop, hoping it looks like I’ve casually turned to face her and not like I’m an invalid in her care.

If she’s noticed anything odd, she doesn’t give it away.

“Sounds good.  It’s cool tonight.”  As she turns to set the last dish on the towel next to the sink I can’t help noticing the way her nipples press out on the thin white fabric of my T-shirt.  Yes, my T-shirt.

I quit fighting her about wearing my clothes long ago.  It was a hill I wasn’t willing to die on and, in my heart, knowing at least a part of me was touching her body...it somehow brought me comfort.

I bring a hand to my forehead and squeeze my temples to settle the pain, then make my way over to the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace in the open room where the kitchen and living room flow together.  It’s nearly ten o’clock, and the chill is starting to settle in the big open space.  Her soup took hours longer than she expected to get just right, but I secretly enjoyed the hunger the late meal created in me. 

When she finally skips into the room, I ask, “So, poker or Alice in Wonderland?”

“I think Alice.  Your pride took a hit the other night, I’ll give you a break.  Besides, how am I ever going to eat the ten thousand Pixy Stix I already have?”  She grins and crinkles her nose, sending more blood rushing to my hard-on.

The next couple hours she sits across from me on the sofa, legs curled under her while she reads Through the Looking Glass to me.  Her reading to me is another of our traditions and listening to her voice I’m taken to places I am ashamed of and yet find far too familiar. 

Occasionally, when she pauses to take a breath or turn the page, I ask her a question just to hear her own thoughts and opinions.  I ask what color I should have the kitchen painted and what she would do about the economy if she was in charge.  I ask about her friend, and what she thinks of her decisions. 

I don’t care what the question is, it’s just that I want to access her mind, to see inside her head, instead of just hearing her voice uttering someone else’s words.

There are some subjects we never touch on.  I never bring up her medical condition, the one that means she’ll never carry a child.  After her period cramps left her curled in her bed for days in the months after I arrived, I insisted we have her completely checked out.  Some tests and an ultrasound determined that her cramps were not necessarily due to any major underlying condition, just bad luck.  It also revealed a structural defect in her uterus which would prevent her from becoming pregnant. She feels in some way it makes her less of a woman and has on many occasions when I’ve tried to reassure her she’s asked me to not bring it up, and I respect her request.

As for me, she knows not to ask about my time in the service.  There was a hell of a lot of good, but that one moment of bad overshadows it all.  I also steer any of her questions away from anything that would pointedly reveal my own diminished cognitive skills over the years.  My head was fucked due to the bomb blast.  My reading level reverted to grade school, and my math skills evaporated completely.  Like I was trying to read fucking Sanskrit or something.

I’ve been working on my issues, but it still makes me wonder if she would think less of me if she knew.

I do my best to smooth over questions that may give me away.  Feeling like less of a man because of my loss of some abilities is not something I care to reveal to her.  It’s my job to take care of us, not her job to soothe my ego.

Seems we both have our Achilles heels when it comes to how we feel about ourselves in those ways.

When she starts to yawn, I walk over to the fireplace and poke at the low burning logs that are left, then pull the grate in front of the fire and turn to look at the way her cheeks rise pink as she looks at me.  I’ve not allowed myself to dream that she may have any feelings for me other than something paternal. 

Even from here, I catch her scent and wonder if she’s ever had an orgasm before.  If she touches herself and, God help me, who she thinks of when she does.  I imagine again how she would taste.  My mouth is watering right now and knowing that if I ever were to put my mouth on her, I would live between those lush thighs and die the happiest man on Earth.

“One more thing.”  I step sideways to where I’ve hidden something I found for her last week, saving it for tonight.  “This little guy needed a home.”

Her eyes sparkle as I hand her the gift.

“Daddy.”  She wiggles her legs and claps before taking it from me.  “Sorry.”  She shrugs knowing she’s again dancing on that line when she calls me by that name.  When I let out a sigh and a low growl of both reprimand and forgiveness she continues. “I love him!  How do you find hedgehogs everywhere?  I never see any.”

“Just luck.”  The small stuffed animal caught my eye in the window of an antique shop.  He’s in perfect condition but is handmade with glass button eyes and the softest fur. “Or maybe my eyes are just trained now.  I’ll never forget that first day when we came home.  You showed me your room and you had hedgehog posters and pictures all over your walls.  A couple stuffed toys all lonely on your bed.”

She crinkles her nose.  “Yep. They aren’t lonely, now are they?  Last count I had one hundred and six. And I’ve named them all.  This one I’ll name Gunter because he looks German. I told you that day how hard it was to find hedgehog things and you’d asked why I loved hedgehogs so much.”

“I remember.”  I draw in a long breath, remembering that moment. No, I remember that entire day when my life started over.  “You said, they are prickly on the outside but loveable on the inside and that people shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”

“Right. And then you remember what I said?”  She squints her right eye and brings that shoulder to her ear.

Like it was yesterday.

“Not really.”  I lie because hearing her say it is infinitely better than me.

“Fibber.” She narrows both eyes this time and moves her fingers to tussle the top tuft of fur on the new addition. “I said, just like you. Prickly on the outside but loveable on the inside. You just grunted at me.”

“Oh yeah.”  I shift my weight feeling the length in my pants pressing upward.

“If you’ll ever let me get a tattoo I’m getting a hedgehog you know.”  She sets the furry creature on the soft and crosses her arms.  This is a playful battle we’ve had many times.

“Uh huh.  I don’t think so.  Maybe a press-on tattoo.”  I run my hands down my chest and tap pat my stomach still full and comforted from the soup.

She pouts but I secretly love that she defers to me when it comes to this tattoo issue. 

I’m hard, painfully tonight as her golden eyes yield to my glance and she closes the book into her lap. 

“Bedtime.”  I manage. 

“Yes, Dadd—” She catches herself, and her teeth nip into her bottom lip as she gathers herself to her feet.  The T-shirt catches on her nipples and her teeth retreat, her tongue replacing them to back and forth.

My heart nearly through my chest wall. Something is different tonight.  I’m in pain.  Physical pain. This time it’s not in my legs or my head. 

It’s in my soul.

And the only cure I know is what I can’t have.  I can’t touch her. I won’t.  It’s wrong.

The worst part is from years past on this night, I know what’s coming.  I pray she’s forgotten but from the way she steps toward me I know. 

Tonight, I’m going to have to raise my shields and don my thickest armor.  I have to get through the next few minutes.  Answer the question I know is about to come and then retreat into my bedroom, where once again I will spend hours grunting out unsatisfied release after release into my own hand, trying to stem the ache that’s been my companion for four years.

We move silently a few steps toward the hallway that leads to our rooms.  Her bare feet make the softest patting noises on the wood planks of the floor as my boot-steps match her stride with their own muffled scrapes.

“Happy Birthday.”  I swear I hear lust in those sweet words.  “Is there anything else I can give you for your birthday?  Anything you want?”

It’s been the same question for four years now.  Just as we finish this evening.  The anniversary of the day we met and the anniversary of the day I came back to life. 

My fingertips twitch.  She stops, and I nearly shatter into a million pieces as her tiny hand curls around my left wrist, stopping my forward motion.  The contact is like coming home.  Like everything is right in the world in that moment.

I fight myself, but I lose and turn to look down into those wide eyes that speak to my mind, to the deepest desires of my soul, telling me things I dare not dream.  Is there desire in those eyes? 

I swallow hard, waging war on my thoughts. Daring myself to tell her what I want and yet trying to force out the words that will save us both.

Tell her no. There’s nothing else you want.  Just like every other year.  Tell her now before it’s too late.

“Tell me,” she whispers, and the longing in her face is undeniable.

I close my eyes, praying if I stop looking at her I’ll find my strength.  The feel of her hand on me is pushing me over the edge.  I do everything in my power to prevent us from ever touching. 

I think she knows she’s breaking me.

I think of all the things I want to teach her.  All her firsts that could be mine.  I would kiss every inch of her, knowing no one else has been there before.  Nor will they ever be there.  Her orgasms would belong to me. 

Every.  Single.  One. 

From this day forward. 

I would take her and guard her like the vengeful owner of a priceless treasure.  Keeping my property for me and me alone.  Taking her innocence would be the honor of my lifetime.

I open my eyes and see she’s staring at me.

She leans in, this time her other hand pressing onto my chest over where my heart is racing.  She raises her chin and opens her mouth.  “Please, tell me something else you want.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, blood spreading over my tongue and rushing in my ears.  The throbbing in my erection is so painful I see white dots in my vision.

The words bank in my throat and I lose the battle to contain them.

“Kiss me goodnight.”