The DLG Club Ch. 08

This is the 8th chapter of a much longer story. If you have not read the previous chapters, I strongly suggest you do so before continuing with this one. This is a long, narrative, and character-driven story with plenty of spicy parts along the way. Enjoy!

DLG Chapter 8

The beeping of her alarm clock is what wakes her. She swats at it, hoping to hit the snooze button, but accidentally knocks it off her nightstand instead.

"Dammit!" she whispers, then feels her face flush from using such a dirty word at home.

She picks up the clock and sets it on the nightstand again.

She looks at her bedroom door. She locked it the night before, so it feels safe to once again pursue her secret desires. She quietly slides open the drawer of her nightstand, removes a book with the title "A Study of Psalms" on the dust cover, and sets it on the bed beside her. She reaches back into her nightstand and pulls out a small, nondescript, rectangular box. It is about six inches long and an inch or so wide. She opens one end and slides the slender, pink, bullet-shaped vibrator out and into her hand. Just looking at it gives her a stirring feeling deep in her groin.

She hasn't used it yet. She's too scared. But the way the smooth, pink plastic reflects and distorts her face, and the tantalizing way it hums when she turns it on, which she does now, sending shivers up and down her arm, makes her wonder what it would feel like in other places. Curious, she places the vibrating tip to her tongue, and immediately draws it away. It feels almost like an electric shock. Her tongue tingles a little afterward.

She looks at her door again. The pink wallpaper that surrounds it, the brass crucifix attached to the raised panels. It's still locked...

She opens "A Study of Psalms", another of her dirty little secrets, to the title page. It reads "The Captain's Songstress" with the byline: "A story of song, surrender, and seduction". An illustration of a nun kneeling in front of a man in a naval uniform, looking longingly up into his face, appears beneath this. She flips to the dog-eared page to one of her favorite passages:

Theresa's heart thundered as Captain von Frapp's weathered hands guided hers across the piano keys. "Feel the music, my dear," he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. "Let it flow through you like the mountain streams."

"Yes, Captain," she whispered, the words catching in her throat. How could she tell him that it wasn't the music making her tremble, but his closeness? That every lesson brought sweet torment as she struggled between her devotion to God and her growing devotion to him?

"Your touch is so gentle," he said, covering her hands with his own. "Yet there's passion beneath that innocent surface, isn't there, Theresa?"

Sister Giselle's cheerful voice, muffled only by the size of her tongue, echoed from the garden: "Theretha! Ithn't it wonderful how the Captain apprethiateth your muthical giftth? Thurely thith ith God'th plan!"

If only she knew, Thresea thought desperately, how ungodly her thoughts had become...

Just reading these lines makes her feel the desire and the anticipation build. A dull slick heat begins to radiate out from beneath her panties.

Maybe she should try...?

She takes the vibrator in one hand, and easing her legs apart, slips it inside the waistband of her panties and-

Knock-knock-knock!

"Shelby? You up? It'sh time for breakfasht."

She jerks the toy out of her panties, and they snap closed against her taut, tanned skin with a small "pop".

"B-be right th-there!" she calls in response, stuffing the vibrator back in the box with trembling hands. "Dammit," she whispers again, then, to the crucifix, "Sorry". She shuts the drawer, gets dressed and goes downstairs to eat breakfast.

"Did you have fun yeshterday?" Chelsea asks as they sit at the table, eating their scrambled eggs and bacon. "I did. It wash sho much fun. I really liked the part where the guy wash all nervoush and then when we..."

Chelsea's retelling of the previous day's events seems to fade away as her dad, Stuart, or Stu for short, walks into the room. He is a tall, thin man with light brown hair, aviator style glasses, and a moustache. He's wearing a white, short-sleeved button-down shirt with little anchors all over it, and a pair of khaki bermuda shorts. Shelby's heart skips a beat when she imagines him naked under his clothes, just like he was in the shower. She can still see him clearly in her mind's eye. The thrill that runs through her is amplified by the idea of asking him on a date. She wants to go out with him so badly, but the thought of him rejecting her is terrifying.

She thinks back to earlier, about the Captain and Theresa, about that small pink bullet that waits for her in her drawer, about slipping it into her panties this morning, and thinks, "Maybe I should try...?"

"Hey, Daddy?" Shelby says, scarlet patches forming on her neck and blooming prettily on her cheeks. Chelsea stops speaking, seeing a different look come across her sister's face.

"Hmm?" He responds, looking through some mail that is sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Do you think maybe you'd want..." she begins, her heart thrumming in her chest. "What I mean to say is... what do you think about, um..." her mind reels, her heart aches, she wants to ask him out, to have him for herself to- "having some of my eggs?" she asks sweetly, then realizing what she just said, gasps and stammers, "l mean... I could, uh, COOK you some eggs... heh... not MY eggs... that'd be... uh, yeah... for breakfast... i-if you like... Daddy," her voice trails off. She can hear the sound of the plane crashing in her mind in her moment of failure. Chelsea looks at her with sympathy and wishful understanding.

"No thanks, darling," he says absently, and walks out of the kitchen carrying a couple of envelopes.

Shelby drops her head, her blonde locks spilling down to cover the disappointment in herself.

"Hey, don't worry, shish. You'll get there. Jusht relax. He'sh gonna shay, yesh."

"Yeah, I guess. It's just that..." Shelby folds her arms, and looks up at her sister through the blonde waterfall and says, "I... I prayed about it last night, you know? But... it felt like I was praying for God to help me commit a sin."

"A shin? How can this be a shin? It'sh love. Love ishn't a shin."

"I know love isn't a sin, but..." Shelby lets out a frustrated sigh. "I'm just scared, Chels."

"Well, shtop it. It'sh jusht going to dinner with Daddy. What'sh sho shcary about that?"

Shelby considers this, but a panicked look falls across her face just the same "What if he says he doesn't want to go, you know?" She argues almost as if she is knowingly feeding her own fears. "I don't know... he already has mom, and now you to go to dinner with. Why would he even need me?"

Chelsea scrunches up her nose. "That doeshn't even make any shenshe," she says. "Daddy lovesh you jusht ash much ash he lovesh me, maybe even mom," she says, wanting to quell her sister's insecurities. "Look, I'll ashk him for you if you want."

Shelby almost takes her up on this offer. Chelsea has always been the more outgoing of the two after all, and Shelby has let her older sister blaze trails for her in the past, but she decides that this is one task she needs to take on herself.

She flips her hair back out of her face and says, "I'll ask him. I promise."

"Promishe?" Chelsea asks, gently teasing.

"Yeah, I promise. Today," she says confidently, then looks a little doubtful, "... m-maybe tonight."

"Shelby," Chelsea says, putting her foot down. "If you don't ashk him out before lunch, I'm gonna ashk him out for a shecond date with me. Then where will you be?"

"But..." she starts worriedly, then turns to panicky anger, "You wouldn't dare!"

Chelsea just raises her eyebrows in a "Really? Are you sure about that?" look.

Shelby sighs, heavily. "Fine..." Shelby says, her voice full of dread but she struggles to hide a shy smile.

"Think of it this way, shish. Onshe you go on your date, we could go on datesh with him together. Won't that be fun? Then we could do other shtuff together, like kishing, and sheeing him naked again, all the fun shexy thingsh!"

"Yeah... I guess... but not all the time. I want... I want him to myself sometimes."

"For sure!" Chelsea agrees. "Sho do I. Shometimesh things are better for jusht two people."

They both take a couple more bites of breakfast.

"What about mom?" Shelby asks quietly.

"I don't know. I think she'll be okay with it. I mean, didn't David have a bunch of wivesh? Even Moshesh had at leasht two wivesh, and they're shome of God'sh favorite people."

Shelby actually laughs at this. Partially because she has never thought about this perspective, but also because of her sister's seeming willful ignorance to reality.

"I mean, sure, but Chels, just because it's in the Bible, doesn't mean people are supposed to do it. There's other stuff in there that we don't really follow either. Stonings, and slavery and stuff."

Chelsea shrugs. "I shay, if it'sh in there, and we're not doing anything but loving people, I'd shay it'sh okay."

This gives Shelby something to think about while they finish up breakfast and put their dishes away.

A little while later, Shelby and Chelsea are sitting on the couch reading. Chelsea is flipping through a swimwear catalog and Shelby has her "A Study of Psalms" open in front of her, devouring its contents for the millionth time.

"I need one of you girls to hold a flashlight for me," Stu says, coming into the living room from the garage."I'm changing the spark plugs on the church van, and I can't see a blessed thing."

"Not it!" Chelsea shouts, quickly hopping up and retreating to her room. "Shorry, Daddy, I have, um, girl problemsh!"

"Then I guess that leaves you, kiddo," he says cheerily, pointing to Shelby from the garage door. "Come on."

Shelby glares in the direction of her fleeing sister, knowing full well it's another three weeks before her next "girl problems" are due.

"Okay, Daddy," she says. She stands and walks out into the garage in her light green sundress and flip-flops, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. "Should I change clothes? I don't want to get my dress all dirty."

"Nope, you'll be fine as long as you don't touch anything."

They get outside, and she sees that her father has removed the "doghouse" from the inside of the van, exposing the engine. She again wonders how her dad knows how to do all of the things he does.

"I just need you posted up right here," he says, opening the driver's side door.

"Yes, Cap-, er, Daddy." She silently scolds herself for the brief slip-up. "'Captain'? Really, Shelby?" Her brain says.

She climbs up into the driver's seat. The dirty engine stares up at her. It smells of burnt motor oil and hot metal.

He hands her a flashlight and shows her where to shine it.

"To be honest," he says as he prepares to remove the plugs," I'm glad it's you, not your sister," he says, chuckling. "I love Chelsea to death, but once she gets going, it's like she is concentrating more on talking than on holding the flashlight."

Shelby giggles a little at the preferential treatment. She watches him as he works. The deliberate and methodical way he labels and disconnects each spark plug wire, the sooty black grime that covers his hands, the way his muscles flex as he breaks each plug free. She wants those hands on her. She wants that sooty black stuff smeared all over her tanned skin, his muscles flexing as he rips her sundress from her body. The dull heat between her legs returns.

"Hey," Stu says, tapping the engine block with his socket wrench, breaking her fantasy, "Here, baby. I need light here."

"Oh, sorry, Daddy," she stammers and gives a soft giggle.

He slides the large socket at the end of the extension deep inside the hole in the engine block. He slips it deeper and deeper into the hole to reach the spark plug. Shelby can't help but blush. Desperate to change the subject, but with nothing but sex on her mind, she blurts out, "Daddy, do you think that the wives in the Bible got jealous of each other?"

Stu stops cranking on the wrench and looks at her a bit puzzled. Seeing that she is asking a genuine question, he returns to his work and responds with a small shrug, "Well, as I recall, the Bible doesn't really get into that, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say... UMPH!" He breaks another plug free. "... maybe," he continues, "But that was just the way things were back then, so, maybe not."

"So you don't think Moses' wives got jealous of each other?" she asks plaintively.

"Well, maybe. But he only had two," he says, pausing from his work to answer her question. "So I could maybe see that not working as well as, say, Solomon, who had over seven hundred wives and a few hundred concubines. I'd say that when you're talking about numbers that big, it might be difficult to imagine one woman being jealous of a thousand others, but," he shrugs, "what do I know?"

"So..." Shelby makes a show of thinking about this concept, "the more wives and concubines a man has, the less chance there is of any one girl being jealous of the others?"

Stu switches sides of the engine to remove the other four spark plugs. "Sure, I guess. Something like that," and he grunts again, breaking another one free with his long extension.

She takes a moment to admire him again, how the sweat beads roll from his brow and drip onto the filthy motor with each jerk of his wrench. The socket disappearing into the hole of yet another wife/spark plug, and how he seems to effortlessly service each one.

Feeling herself getting too flustered, she switches subjects. "So, how was your, uh, dinner with Chelsea? Did you guys have fun?"

"Uh... sure," he says 'sure' in a long, drawn-out way. He quickly ratchets his wrench back and forth. He suddenly seems like he's trying to finish this job quickly. "I always have fun with your sister. Why? Did she say something? Something about the date, er, dinner, I mean?"

"Um... no. Not exactly," Shelby says, remembering Chelsea's telling her about him almost kissing her and then Chelsea's real kiss in the study the next night.

"Dag blast it, Shelby! I need light here!" He snaps, obviously becoming irritable.

Shelby jumps, snapping her attention back to the spark plugs. "Sorry," she says and adjusts the flashlight beam. She watches him remove another plug as fast as he can.

She can feel her chances with him fading away, like sand sifting through her fingers. In a panic, she takes him by the shoulder and says, "Daddy? Will you go to dinner with me? Like... like you did with Chelsea? I... I'd really like to... and I... I promise not to get jealous. Honest."

Stu immediately stops working, but doesn't look up. Everything is quiet except for the cicadas whining in the trees. A few more drops of sweat hit the engine with soft "plit" sounds.

Then Stu resumes cranking on his wrench. "Where would you like to go?"

Shelby's heart almost bursts with excitement. He said yes! A million thoughts blow through her brain at once, but the one that stands firm is "HE SAID YES!". She takes a hitching, relieved breath and says, "Oh, I don't know... Chez Mercel?"

He stops ratcheting again, then after a quick moment, resumes. "Uh... yeah, if you really want to, we can go to that place. I just..."

"What, Daddy?"

"Eh... it's just kinda... snobby for my tastes. What about High Steaks? That's where I wanted to go with Chels, but she insisted on," and he bends close to his daughter and murmurs conspiratorily, "'Shushi'."

Shelby laughs at her dad's gentle teasing of Chelsea's lisp. "Yeah, sure. High Steaks sounds perfect, Daddy. I'd love to go there with you."

Stuart smiles and says, "Good. I can't wait." He stands, wiping his hands on a rag. "What do you say tomorrow night? Your mom has a Bible study class that night, anyway."

Shelby is so overcome with joy that she can't even speak. She just beams at him and nods emphatically.

He takes out the first new spark plug from its little box and smears some anti-seize compound on it. Shelby watches, mesmerized, feeling that dull heat turn into a furnace.

Stu tries to chuckle to lighten the mood, unaware of Shelby's complete elation and building stimulation. "Uh, and, um, as far as jealousy goes," he forces another laugh, " You know, Moses only had one beard and two wives, so he could only tickle one of them at a time with it. I, on the other hand, have a moustache, and it has two sides, left and right. Two sides: one for each daughter," he finishes with a strange, proud flourish.

Shelby isn't sure what he's trying to say, and she's not sure she cares. The only thing in her head right now is, "He said yes!" But she giggles at his awkward attempt at humor just the same.

When Stu is done changing the spark plugs, he sends a giddy, ecstatic Shelby back inside. He stays behind to clean up and put his tools away.

Bursting into the living room, Shelby scares her sister half to death and, blushing, Chelsea drops the book in her hand.

"HE SAID YES!" Shelby gushes.

Chelsea's eyes get wide, and she leaps from the couch. "HE SHAID YESH??!!"

"YES!!"

She grabs Shelby around the waist, and the sisters hug and hop simultaneously in celebration.

"I knew he would!" Chelsea exclaims. "Tell me everything!" she says, plopping back down on the couch and patting the cushion beside her.

Shelby seems to float down to the couch as if riding on a pink cloud made of hearts and butterflies. "It kinda happened so fast, I... I don't know. We were working on the van, and I... I started asking him questions, about you know, like the Bible? About David and Moses and their wives and stuff," Shelby explains.

Chelsea looks a little confused, but gives her the 'go on' gesture.

"And then I asked about your date, and how it went, and he sorta got all flustered and like, weird about it, and so, I just blurted it out and asked before he just completely shut down..."

Shelby reaches out and takes Chelsea by the shoulder like she did her dad. "I asked him," she whispers, eyes shining. "I don't even remember what I said. And... he didn't even say 'yes', he just said, 'where would you like to go?' ISN'T THAT THE CUTEST?? EEEEEEEEE!"

"That'sh sho wonderful! I'm sho happy for you!" Chelsea says through a huge, shiny smile, and watches as Shelby flaps her arms in excitement.

"So now we just need to get you to see him naked... and I think I have an idea."

"What ish it?"

Shelby bends forward and whispers something in Chelsea's ear, and Chelsea begins to giggle...

The soapy water turns grey as Stu scrubs the grease and grime from his hands and forearms. The lukewarm shower is just what he needs after being hot and sweaty and working on a van engine. He lets the water run through his hair, cooling him off even more. With his eyes shut, he can see Chelsea, his dear, sweet daughter, approaching him in his study, a coy look on her face, and all at once, it seemed, they were kissing.

He has played and replayed this scene in his mind a hundred thousand times since she entered his study a few nights ago. It's an exhilarating memory. It floods him with equal parts ecstasy and shame--a memory so tantalizing but so wrong. Religious guilt, social taboos, and his marriage vows all scream condemnation, yet here's Shelby asking for the same experience? Why? What is happening to his daughters? His family? What's happening to him? And those carefully crafted questions about Moses, about multiple wives... suddenly they feel less innocent. More calculated. He opens his eyes and looks at his wet, open palms, questioning them. Are his daughters actually trying to sedu--"

Thump!

The hollow sound comes from inside the room, or at least he thinks it does.

"Hello?" he asks the seemingly empty room. He waits for a response. When none comes, he shakes his head, dismissing it as the tiled room playing auditory tricks on him. He squirts some shampoo into his hand and begins washing his hair.

Inside the bathroom sink vanity, Chelsea is perched on the small stack of towels. Luckily, her parents have a double sink, so there is plenty of room for her to stretch out. As she attempts to open one of the doors to take her first peek, her sleeve gets snagged on a spray bottle of tile cleaner, and it falls over with a thump. She freezes.

She hears Stu say, "Hello?"

With her heart pounding in her ears, she doesn't move until the smell of his shampoo drifts in through the louvered doors, signaling that he has continued to shower.

She slowly opens one of the vanity doors and looks up and out. Disappointment fills her heart. The shower curtain is pulled completely shut. All she can see are the mushrooms and daisies printed on the new, opaque, water resistant curtain. It was apparently installed to replace the clear one. This is presumably in response to Shelby's "accident". She curses her luck internally and slowly lets the door close again, hoping that another opportunity will present itself.

Suddenly, her dad's deep resonant voice fills the room:

"Show'ring Christian soldiers

Washing off the dirt

With the towels of Jesus

Drying off the the... waterrrrrr."

If the universe gives out trophies for not giggling, Chelsea has just earned one.

She buries her face in a towel, and her body is racked with silent giggles.

She hears a few more splashes of her dad rinsing off, signaling the end of his shower. He turns off the water, and she hears the pattering of the dripping showerhead. This could be her chance.

With a soft metallic scraping sound, the shower curtain is pulled aside. Chelsea sticks a finger in a louver and tries to pry it up to be able to see, but it is stationary.

She hears her dad softly say "B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b!" a sign he is shaking the water from his hair like a dog. She knows he does this when he is swimming; she thinks it's cute that he does the same thing in the shower.

From her vantage point, she can see his wet feet appear on the plush bathroom rug, water dripping down from his naked body above.

He sings quietly to himself, almost humming.

"Show'ring Christian soldiers

Washing off the dirt

With the towels of Jesus...

And he whips open the vanity door.

His eyes go wide, and the color drains from his face.

"Ch-Ch-CHELSEA??"

"Uh, hi, Daddy!" She says in her sweetest voice, grinning so her braces glitter in the bathroom light.

Stu clutches at himself, almost falling backwards into the tub, but not before Chelsea has given him a thorough, two-second inspection. She instantly commits every visible square inch to memory.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING??"

"Um, nothing," she says innocently, eyes shifting side to side. "Here," she says, handing him a towel.

"GET OUT OF THERE, NOW!" he demands, snatching the towel from her hand. He does his best to cover himself without revealing anything else to her.

"I'm shorry, Daddy," Chelsea says, wriggling out of her hiding place. "Me and Shelby were playing hide-and-sheek and you came in and got in the shower while I wash hiding."

He looks at her from the corners of his eyes. What girls this age play hide-and-seek? He pushes this thought aside and asks, "And it never occurred to you to speak up?"

"I didn't want to be found," she says, still oozing innocence. "I'm shorry! I didn't shee anything until you opened the door, sho, I mean, when you shtop and think about it, it'sh not totally my fault."

Stu is almost willing to swallow this hook, line, and sinker, but he shakes his head. It's too much. He needs to get to the bottom of this. "No. No. I'm not buying it. What is going on between you two? First Shelby barges in on me, then you kiss me, and now this? What's next? Huh?"

A soft knock from the door. "It's me Daddy, can I come in?"

"NO!" he barks. With his towel secured around his waist, he buries his face in his hands. "At least Noah was drunk when this happened to him. Father in heaven, please make me drunk."

Chelsea touches him on his arm, and he recoils. "Daddy, it's okay. We're not going to hurt you. We love you."

"You... you 'love' me? What exactly do you mean by that?" he asks, clearly becoming aware of this situation as it seems to be quickly spiraling out of his control.

"What do you think we mean, Daddy?" comes Shelby's voice from the door.

Stu shakes his head in utter denial. "No... nope. Not happening, Not here. Not now. Get out. Both of you leave me alone. You're lucky your mother isn't home, or she'd..." He doesn't finish his sentence, but the threat hangs heavily in the air.

"Come on, Daddy. We jusht wanted to shee you, and hang out with you."

"I said, no, and I meant it. NO." Stu says adamantly. "Let me out of here. I need to cool off and figure this out. You two are... are..." he waves a frustrated hand at Chelsea as he leaves the bathroom, gently moving Shelby to the side, and stomping down the hall to his bedroom.

A few minutes later, Chelsea and Shelby are standing in the living room, looking worried and upset. They hear their father's bedroom door click open, and Stu says, "Shelby, Chelsea, come here, please. I'd like to speak with you."

"Y-yes, Daddy," Shelby says and scoot-walks her socked feet across the hardwood floor to her Daddy's room. Chelsea follows behind, wringing her hands anxiously.

When they arrive, he is fully dressed in jeans and an aqua polo shirt. He is sitting on the bed. The window shades are pulled shut, blocking out the bright sunny day. The room is only lit by a single lamp.

"Come. Sit," he says and motions to the bed.

Shelby hops up onto the bed and folds her hands in her lap, and Chelsea kneels on the floor. They sit there in the near-dark for a long moment.

"Let us pray," he says.

The girls obediently bow their heads and close their eyes.

"Dear Lord," he starts. "Forgive my daughters, for they know not what they do."

"Y-yes, we do, Daddy," Shelby whispers.

"Shhh!" He glares at Shelby, bows his head once more, and continues, "And Father, forgive me. For I have had impure thoughts about my daughters as well."

"No, you didn't, you jusht love ush."

"Stop interrupting!" Stu refocuses his energy into the prayer. "Father in heaven, please give us the strength and the guidance we need to overcome this heinous, lustful obstacle that keeps us from your light and your truth. In your name we pray, Amen."

"There. Now, none of us need speak of any of this ever again," he says with finality.

"But, Daddy!" Shelby counters.

"I don't want to hear another word!" he says. "We will leave it up to the Lord."

They sit in silence again.

Chelsea speaks up, hesitantly, "What if... what if the Lord shaysh I should kish you again?"

"He won't," he says, "Trust me."

Shelby pinches her mouth shut and looks as if she's about to pop.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?" he demands.

Shelby, blushing, not used to this type of confrontation, giggles nervously and asks, "Are you saying you know the will of God the Father?"

Stu pauses for a second or two, knowing he has been outflanked, finally saying, "No, but I know the will of Stuart the father, and I say NO."

"Daddy, it'sh okay," Chelsea says soothingly. "We won't attack you and make you do anything you don't want to do. We jusht love you and want to make you happy. Love ishn't a shin. You shaid yourshelf, that you had the shame feelingsh for ush jusht now. And it'sh in the Bible, ishn't it? All thoshe wivesh and concubinesh? We're jusht two girls, not sheven hundred. And we're your girlsh, Daddy. What'sh sho wrong about that?"

"Yeah, Dad," Shelby continues, "I mean, I'm nervous too, but I'm also really excited. If we just take it one small step at a time, it won't seem so scary," Shelby says, making a little too much sense for Stu. "We're sorry if the whole shower thing and the kiss were too... forward, she continues, "We just got excited, that's all. We're excited to make you happy, don't you see, Daddy?"

"Yeah, sho jusht go on the date with Shelby and shee what happensh. No presh... preshsh... worriesh."

Stu sits there in his dimly lit room, his daughters' eyes gleaming with hope and desire, staring up at him.

"One date," he grumbles in defeat, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. Chelsea and Shelby happily attack him, hugging him in loving gratitude.

Mila

There is something sharp poking into her cheek. When Mila opens her eyes, she sees a shiny object, too close for her to focus on. Concerned, she sits up, only to find that it's her tiara. She had fallen asleep wearing it the night before, and it had apparently worked its way out of her hair. She smiles a little, seeing it, remembering the hot dog eating contest, and hearing Lily's teasing echoing through her mind, "What's it like having so many wieners in your mouth at one time?!"

This, of course, makes her think of her dad. She checks the old grandfather clock in her room, its pendulum swinging back and forth, the constant click-clock counting the seconds. Almost 7:00, time to get up, make coffee, and go "birdwatching" during her dad's shower.

She tiptoes to the kitchen and gets out the stepstool. She grabs a bag of coffee from the big cardboard box on the top shelf. This is a box that contains fifty separate bags of coffee. "Ground Colombian Coffee" and "Not For Individual Sale" are printed on the side in bold, black letters on a plain white background. All Mila knows is that her dad brings a box like this home every month and a half. He says, "it fell off the truck". Mila wonders why the school system uses such unreliable delivery drivers.

As she pours the coffee grounds into the hopper of the percolator, she finds her thoughts are still focused on her dad. How he would smile and wink at her as he pushed the dust mop through the school halls, careful not to embarrass her by actually waving and speaking to her. If he only knew how much she wished he'd said something, anything. But he made her promise they wouldn't speak at school, and she wouldn't dare break a promise to her Daddy.

Now that she has graduated, things have changed, but not for the better. He still goes to work to take care of the school during summer classes, but she no longer attends school at all. She doesn't even get the wink or the smile anymore. She's stuck here, alone, caring for her mom. She misses him terribly.

She lights the burner on the stove and sets the old metal percolator there to do its job. She can hear the thumping and bumping of her parents waking up two rooms over. Their bedroom door opens, and she glances down the hall in time to see the bathroom light go on a second before the door closes and locks. Her Daddy turns on the shower.

Her heart jumps. She checks to make sure her tiara is still secured on her head, grabs her mother's birdwatching binoculars from the shelf in the den, and slips out the back door.

The sun has just come up, and the leaves on the trees produce dappled patches of sunlight that dance across the backyard grass. Mila pulls herself up the old, homemade ladder and heaves herself onto the floor of her childhood treehouse. She can feel the place between her legs tingling with anticipation.

She takes up position in the usual place, where two old wooden pickets have fallen away, giving her just enough room to view, while still hiding most of her figure. She puts the binoculars to her eyes, and as she adjusts the focus with practiced ease, her father's wet, naked body leaps into view. She holds the binoculars with one hand, while the other hand finds that delicious spot below. She begins stroking herself, gently at first, but with growing enthusiasm.

Eddie wakes up next to Carol's mountainous form again this morning, just like every morning. He can tell before opening his eyes that she's already watching videos on her phone. Her "stories" is what she calls them. Snippets of reality TV shows and soap operas, compressed into a digest format. With their lids shut, she can't see his eyes roll.

He hears Mila get up and walk to the kitchen to make the morning coffee. His heart aches for her. He can't wait to see her get out of this house and out from under her mom's thumb. He has squirreled away some money for her, kept it hidden in the one place Carol would never look: A book. It's not much, maybe a couple thousand bucks, but enough for a deposit on an apartment. Just enough to get her out of here.

He wishes he could go with her.

He tosses the covers away and stands up. He stretches and feels his spine crackle. He pads his way to the bathroom and closes the door behind him, locking it and, in effect, Carol, out of this room.

He turns on the faucet, letting the water warm up before dropping his underwear, switching on the shower, and stepping in. If he had chosen this particular instant to look out the window, he would've seen his daughter crawling into position in her treehouse.

Mila squats in her treehouse, her fingers moving quickly over the soft surface of her underwear. She sees her Daddy's wet, muscled body and wants to be in the shower with him. The soap suds running down his ribs and muscular stomach, the way his large penis wags and wiggles with each scrubbing movement, makes her bite her bottom lip in a devilish smile. She remembers being a little girl, how they would have lunch under the tree behind the school. A little father-daughter picnic every day. Pleasure shoots through her, whether it's from this thought or from her fingers, she isn't sure.

Finally, the show begins. He lathers up one hand with the bar of soap and starts scrubbing his dirty ding-a-ling. Mila feels a rush run through her body. His ding-a-ling starts to grow.

Eddie finds himself continuing to think of Mila. She's graduated now, she'll be leaving soon, he has no doubt. It's only a matter of time. He's happy for her.

He begins washing himself, unaware he is being studied from afar.

He thinks of all the small smiles and secretive winks they exchanged in the school halls. How they used to have picnics under that tree out back when she was in grade school. How he still saw her eating her lunch there every day once she reached high school, even after he forbade them from continuing that tradition. He convinced himself it was best for her social life. Who wants to be known as "the janitor's daughter"? Plus... a couple of years ago, she had started to... develop... and as she did, he'd find his eyes and mind wandering. He had found himself looking forward to their picnics for a different reason, and he had to put a stop to that.

He thinks of her, coming home last night. She hadn't been wearing a bra, and the points of her nipples pressed against her shirt. He immediately felt a stirring inside himself that he was unable to control, but Carol, sitting in her big polyester recliner, was quick to shut it down. She glanced up from her "stories" long enough to snap in a shrill voice, "Hide those filthy fun-bags! Your father is present!"

Carol's crude outbursts shot through with childish phrases were common now, but this one had a tinge of actual jealousy attached to it. However, Eddie considers it possible that he may have been imagining this.

Mila ducked her head and raced off to her room, shutting the door tight behind her without slamming it.

He noticed Carol hadn't even noticed the small silver crown she was wearing, or asked where it came from. After waiting a believable amount of time, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Carol grunted her acknowledgement, and he walked toward the back of the house. He tapped lightly on Mila's door and heard a small, "Yeah?"

He turned on the bathroom light and closed the door before entering his daughter's room, trying to strengthen his lie to Carol about his destination. Her room was still decorated in the pink and white paint of her youth, but now had much more mature contents. Actual makeup, a hair drier, some posters of movies and bands, instead of princesses and animated characters. A small collection of books that looked new stood out to Eddie. She was sitting on her bed in a bra and her little bedtime shorts, reading one of these newer-looking books. She snapped it shut as he entered.

"Hey, sugarplum. Nice crown. Where'd you get it?" he asked quietly, pushing the door to, but not completely closing it. His eyes lingered on her red and purple plaid bra for a moment, admiring her cleavage and the swell of her perky, young breasts.

Mila pretended not to notice the direction of his stare. If anything, it gave her a bit of a thrill. "At my meeting. I won it," she explained, not telling him why or how. If she had dared to tell her parents she was part of a bikini car wash, her mother would have had a conniption fit.

"Oh, well, congratulations. What're you reading?" he asked, trying to show interest.

"It's a, um, a Japanese comic book."

"Oh, I didn't know you spoke Japanese. Konnichiwa," he said, smiling and bowing awkwardly.

"Daddy, please don't do that. It's disrespectful."

"Sorry. I guess I'm not up on my social graces." He paused, looking around the room once more, then back at his daughter. "Are you, uh, doing okay?"

"Yeah, Daddy, I'm okay," Mila replied, smiling a sad sort of smile.

"You know, I love you puddin', your mom is just... sick," he said, opening the door to leave.

This time she smiled for real, "I know. I love you too, Daddy."

He rode the high of that "I love you, Daddy" all the way back to the living room, to where Carol's chuff of laughter and the resulting ripple through her morbidly obese body immediately stole it away.

"Why can't she be like she was before the accident?" he thinks. "That beautiful, sweet woman. The mother of their daughter. The loving wife." He wishes and prays every day for her to somehow come back, to be miraculously restored to the woman she was before.

And now he stands in the shower, his penis in his hand, thinking about that red and purple plaid bra, the swell of Mila's breasts, the contours of her collarbone, the gorgeous way her dirty blonde hair fell across her shoulders. The way her lips--

Something brilliantly bright catches his eye, glinting in the sunlight. He pauses mid-stroke. He looks out the window and sees a faceted silver crown, peeking up above the picketed walls of Mila's old treehouse, sparkling in the dappled patterns of the morning sun. A split second later, he sees the binoculars trained on him.

A wave of violated shock rips through him, but almost as quickly, a feeling of exhilaration and excitement flows out from his heart. It's Mila. His Mila... and she's watching him.

Mila's fingers have found the spot that makes her feel the best. Rubbing the damp spot on her panties constantly now, her binoculars are trained on his ding-a-ling, the suds fly off of it as he strokes himself. "Clean it, Daddy," she whispers, "Clean your dirty ding-a-ling good. I'll help you someday, I promise."

Suddenly, he stops cleaning. She expects to see the small jet of fluid erupt from the tip, but nothing happens. Puzzled, she pans her view slowly up, and gasps when she sees his eyes staring straight back at hers.

Mila, mouth open in terror, drops the binoculars from her eyes, and they dangle from the strap around her neck. Even without their magnification, she can still see him standing there, holding himself and staring at her. Adrenaline dumps into her bloodstream, and she begins to shake all over. She wants to flee, but there's nowhere to go. With his eyes upon her, the whole world feels like a prison. She glances around, searching desperately for an escape route. When she looks back at her father, she is surprised to see him smiling and waving at her with his soapy hand, his ding-a-ling seeming to deflate.

Mila, completely rattled, almost slips and falls down the ladder on her way back inside. She stumbles and fumbles her way into the house. She shakily pours everyone a cup of coffee and takes hers to her room, shutting the door behind her. She tries to find solace, or at least distraction, in one of her manga books, but she can't concentrate. She starts to gather up some supplies. Maybe she could stay at that Don't Drop Inn place for a couple of nights, at least until this blows over, can't she? If Lily can do it, maybe she can too.

A gentle tapping on her door breaks her panicked whirlwind of thoughts. She knows who it is. Her mother would never knock; she'd just barge in. Dread fills her, and her knees shake as much as her voice as she says, "Come in."

Eddie gently opens the door and comes in. He's wearing his lightly stained work coveralls, with his name tag and position, "Custodial Engineering Manager", attached over his left breast pocket.

"Hey, puddin'," he says, almost whispering.

Mila tries to say hi, but a sob slips out instead. Her face goes bright red, and she begins openly crying. "I'm sorry," comes out in a raspy squeak.

He goes down on one knee and holds his arms out to her. She hesitates for just a moment before flying into his arms and crying into his shoulder.

"It's okay, it's okay," he says soothingly and petting her hair. "You're just... curious is all, aren't you?"

Mila hesitates again before nodding.

"See? Ain't nothin' wrong with that. Curiosity breeds learnin', right?"

"Uh-huh..." she sobs.

They stay like this, Eddie swaying her back and forth in his arms.

She pulls away, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You don't... hate me? You don't think I'm... gross?"

Eddie regards her seriously. "Listen to me, now, puddin'. I'd never, and I mean NEVER, hate you. I don't give a damn what you do or who you do it with. You hear?"

Mila nods again, wiping her nose this time. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I... I shouldn't have been watching you."

Eddie sighs. "No, I don't reckon you should've, but what's done is done," he says, taking her by one hand. "Just... let's not tell your mom, okay? You know how she gets about... sex stuff since the accident."

Again, Mila nods. Despite her mortification, another thrill runs through her at her dad's recognition of this as "sex stuff".

"Alright. I gotta go to work now. You gonna be okay?"

"Daddy?"

"Yes, darlin'?"

"I... I think... I think I might love you," Mila says, staring at her bare feet.

"I love you, too, sweetie. Now I gotta--"

"No, Daddy. I... I think I might, like, really love you."

Eddie pauses, not sure how to address this admission, especially if she means what it sounds like she means.

"I really love you, too, Mila. We'll, uh... we'll talk about this later, 'kay?"

"Okay, Daddy. Bye. Have a good day at work."

"MILA!" Carol's shrill voice calls from the other room.

Mila's face is panic-stricken. She lunges at her father and lets her lips quickly graze his, and whispers "I love you," one last time, before going to see what her mother wants.

Eddie walks out of her room, pressing two fingers to his lips, as if trying to hold onto that fleeting kiss for just a little longer.

AMY

Amy awakens at 6:47am. She awakens every day at 6:47am, unless she forgets to place the marble.

Amy's alarm clock consists of an actual alarm clock triggering a marble to roll down a series of ramps, triggering dominoes that tip a seesaw, launching a toy car down a track, which hits a lever that releases a pendulum that strikes the bell--all to wake her up at 6:47. Her father designed and built this Rube Goldberg alarm clock for her thirteenth birthday. She loved it at first, but didn't enjoy waking up quite so early. She tried to change the time once, but that meant employing her father, who, while attempting to change the alarm time, accidentally swapped AM for PM, and Amy missed school picture day that year. After setting it back to 6:47am, Amy stopped asking for her dad's help.

With the brass bell still ringing, Amy sits up in bed, places her glasses on her nose, and slips out from under the covers. She absently grabs the marble and slips it into her pocket as she walks across the room. She stands in front of her mirror, flinching and shutting her eyes at the automatic lights that come on. They are blindingly bright at first, then dim to a level unharmful to the human eye.

She looks at herself. She's wearing her favorite nightshirt. It's really just a long, blue t-shirt with "Sweetie Pi" written across the front and a chain of numbers beginning with "3.14159265359", and so on, bending and curving, wrapping around the shirt. The shirt was a gift from her dad three birthdays ago. She notices that her boobs have gotten a little bigger, a full 'D' cup now, and how the already threadbare fabric of the shirt is being stretched to its limits. She'll need a new nightshirt soon, she thinks with a sad sigh.

This fact about her growing breasts also makes her smile a little, remembering Randall's comment about how she fills out a bikini very well. She will admit, she has certain... assets that might appeal to a member of the opposite sex, but she dismisses these things. She is a woman of science, an intellectual. She doesn't want some mouth-breathing caveman clubbing her over the head and dragging her back to his troglodyte domicile.

She grabs her neodymium hand weights, another gift from her dad, and attempts to lift them; the magnetic attraction to the steel plate they rest on makes this almost impossible. After struggling to pry them away from the metal, she finally manages to hold them in her hands. She tries to lift them, but the super-strong magnets end up yanking the metal plate up off the floor, and it hits them with a loud CLANG!

"You were supposed to adjust these, Daddy! I could've lost a flipping finger!" she mutters to herself. She does a short workout using the weights, plate, and all, but it isn't the routine for optimized muscle definition she's supposed to be adhering to, according to a study published by The National Academy of Fitness and Biological Wellbeing.

After her workout, she heads downstairs to make breakfast. Just as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, Amy's mom, Debbie, comes in the front door from her night shift at the hospital. Her eyes are a bit bloodshot, and her blue scrubs have seen better days.

"Hey, baby. Momma's tired. Full moon. The E. R. was a freaking nightmare," she rambles exhaustedly, leaning against the front door. With some effort, she pushes herself upright. "I need a nip of brandy, the morning news, and about fifteen hours of sleep. G'night, Amour. Love you," she says and kisses the air in Amy's direction.

"'Night Momma, sweet dreams. I love you, too."

Debbie trudges up the stairs and disappears around the corner.

Suddenly, her dad opens the back door. For some reason, it looks like high noon outside instead of 7:12am.

"Amy! Good, you're awake, come out here!" Dan says, a giddy gleam in his eyes.

Amy has time to think "Oh no..." before obeying his request and heading out the door.

Once outside, she sees the backyard bathed in bright, whitish-blue light, the shadows cast by the porch railing and the patio furniture shimmer and dance starkly across the grass. She can hear the loud whirring of a quadcopter from above her. Just as she's about to look up, Dan says, "Uh, I wouldn't do that if I were you. That orb above you is about the same brightness as a welding torch. It would almost certainly scorch your retinas. But look! Now your mom and I can enjoy a noontime picnic in the middle of the night!"

Amy immediately sees the dangers inherent in this design, but also the sweetness behind his motivations. She tries to be diplomatic, saying, "That's, uh, great, Daddy, but I think I can feel myself already getting a sunburn."

"Yeah, I might need to pack extra sunscreen tonight," he says thoughtfully.

Amy looks alarmed. "You're not really going to take this thing to the hospital, are you?"

"Sure, why not? Deb will love it. It'll be like old times."

"Seriously, Daddy? Did you regularly blind people back in the 'old times'? Daddy, this thing is dangerous!" Amy says as a half-incinerated moth drifts down from above.

For the first time, Dan looks somewhat less than confident. "I... I figure I could hand out some of my specialized sunglasses."

Amy doesn't even want to know what makes these sunglasses so special; she just needs to shut this down. "No, Daddy. Turn it off before someone accidentally looks at it and gets hurt," she demands.

With a heavy sigh, he does as Amy asks, and the brilliant glare of the miniature sun blinks out, returning the backyard to its normal level of morning illumination. As soon as the quadcopter carrying the glass orb touches the grass, the yard ignites around it. Amy, now used to this type of thing, calmly stamps out the flames, being careful not to touch the orb itself.

"Come on inside and get some coffee and a bagel," she offers, her exasperation evident.

"Ooo! Coffee! I've been trying to think of a way to speed up the brewing process. I figure, if I adjust the heating element in relation to the water throughput, I can--"

"Daddy! I swear to God, if you break the coffee maker, I'll break something VERY valuable of yours!"

"Y-yes, dear," Dan says, and slumps.

They go back inside after securing the mini-sun and making sure it won't start any more fires.

Amy prepares the coffee maker while her dad washes up at the sink. She looks at him, shoulders slumped, frowning out the window at his latest failure, and wants him to be happy. She understands that even if his inventions and "improvements" might be harmful if not borderline deadly, he does it all for her and her mom.

And not all of his creations are death traps. Take the automatic plant watering system, for instance. He created that five years ago for her mom's birthday. Just a simple watering system that would take care of her house plants while she was at work. It worked well. So well, in fact, that GreenTech actually bought the rights to the patent. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but it paid for Debbie's nursing school debt and this house. Now, it seems the more he chases the next big thing, the more dangerous and wilder his ideas have become.

Amy pours them each a cup of coffee and gets out the bagels.

"Daddy, I have something I'm working on... an experiment of sorts that I was hoping I could get your input on," she says, knowing exactly how to pique his interest. She attempts to put the bagels in the toaster, and Dan flinches, "I, uh, would be very careful with the toaster, sweetie."

Amy rolls her eyes and turns on the oven instead.

"What type of experiment, dear? Endothermic? Exothermic? Maybe something involving a magnesium-thermite reaction?" he asks, genuinely excited.

"Oh, for God's sake, is that what was inside that orb?" Amy asks, horrified.

"No! Of course not. Elevating a mag-therm reaction could be absolutely devastating if it got out of control. No, this was just a hyperintense LED array I've been developing. It's a little more than 9/10 as bright as the sun, but with only a fraction of the heat."

"And a penchant for wiping out people's retinas? Daddy, you need to dial it back a bit. Think of mom's plant waterer. Small, Daddy. Smaller is bigger."

He nods, and she finds her way back to her original thought.

"Um, anyway, I guess you could say... it's more of a... data collection type of project. It's centered around human nature and, uh, biochemical reactions."

"Biochemical, eh? It sounds like it might be more in your mother's wheelhouse. She's the medical expert around here."

"Yes, but Daddy, it's based on..." She has a hard time vocalizing this part, "the male hominid approach to procreation, and what stimuli result in the male production of genetic material needed for effectively producing viable offspring."

"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" he retorts.

"Daddy!" she whines.

"Don't 'Daddy' me. Talk to your mother about these... female, bodily secretion... sex... things. Leave me out of it."

Amy grumbles to herself, and she realizes that this experiment will obviously need adjustment based on this subject's rejection of vocal or mental stressors.

After breakfast, Amy is in her room, lying on her bed. She feels very alone, not just in this room full of crackpot mechanical devices and "improvements" gone wrong, but in the world as a whole. She applies the same scientific objective lens that she views her dad through to her own life and realizes she doesn't like what she sees: A nerdy girl who has a crush on her father, unable to approach other guys for fear of rejection, and without much inherent physical beauty.

The inaccuracy of this last part is, of course, due to a general lack of self-esteem and not based on reality at all. Amy is a very pretty girl, despite how she perceives herself.

She thinks, if only he could see her the same way he sees her mom. In nature, don't males tend to mate with multiple females? This is true even among primates, so what's so unnatural about her situation? Aren't we, as a species, hard-wired by evolution to procreate with the strongest mate available? Is she so weak and undesirable that the forces of nature themselves are against her?

She looks around her room again, the overly complex Rube Goldberg alarm clock, the pointless blinding mirror, the worthless hand weights that she can't pick up, and she feels her heart sink.

"Am I just another one of my dad's failed inventions?" This last thought guts her completely, and she falls asleep with tears in her eyes.

Her phone buzzing in her pocket pulls her from sleep. It's a few hours later, and she feels much more rested, if not much happier. She pulls the phone from her pocket. It's a text from Mila.

Mila: OMG! I did it! I told my dad how I feel! I'm gonna get my charm this week!

Just when Amy didn't think she could feel any lower...

Amy: That's great! I'm so happy for you! ☺

Mila: I kissed him too!! AHHHHH!!

Amy shakes her head in frustration and sighs. Some girls have all the luck.

Amy: Yay!

Amy wants to break her phone in two. How is this happening?? She brought Mila into the DLG. How is it that she is outperforming Amy in every possible way? IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!

She feels a small, vicious force guiding her fingers, and she begins to type.

Amy: Careful, Mila. You know what Eve said. Some Daddies might not like it if you're too forward.

This seems to shut Mila up for a few minutes, and Amy lies there with a smug look on her face. She tries to smile, to enjoy this moment, but she doesn't feel good at all. She feels small, mean, and petty.

Finally, her phone buzzes again.

Mila: Yeah. I guess you're right. Thanks.

Amy sees now that planting a seed of doubt in Mila's heart has only proven that she isn't being a very good friend. Slowing Mila down won't help Amy with her dad; it will just make her more unhappy with herself. She rolls over onto her side, trying to ascertain what the root cause of the problem is and how to rectify it.

She notices something is digging into her thigh. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small, white sphere. The marble that starts her Rube Goldberg alarm clock in the morning. She looks at it, considering its place in the universe as well as her own. It's just a plain white marble. Nothing special about it. She looks a bit closer and sees that it does have a certain iridescent shimmer, an almost hidden appeal.

She looks at the alarm clock machine again, and then back at the marble. Without it, nothing happens, she considers. This small, seemingly meaningless part is the catalyst that sets everything else in motion.

She looks at the Rube Goldberg machine, and then her scientific objective lens zooms out. She sees herself superimposed on top of the machine, passing the marble along its way towards its destination. She takes a hitching breath and realizes she doesn't have to be a cog in a machine; she can be the catalyst. The marble itself. The one thing that sets everything else in motion.

With a determined look in her eye, she picks up her phone again, smiling.

Amy: But she also said to follow our hearts, so go get it, girl! ♥♥♥

Mila responds almost immediately.

Mila: ♥♥♥♥♥!!!!

With this simple action, she feels a fundamental shift in her heart, and grabs the small notebook and pen. She begins to write.

She first makes a note to include this morning's events that reads:

06/23/25 - 8:13am Phase 1.0.0 Subject shows little to no interest in engaging in verbal communication regarding escalations in intimacy or engaging in homoerotic activities. Must establish a new approach.

Now, she looks out the window of her bedroom and sees that the sun is at its apex. It will now be delivering maximum light to the back patio, giving her an idea. She recalls the car wash, and how Randall and Becky engaged in nonsensical erotic actions. How watching them made her curious, not only about the "why", of what they were doing, but the "how" as well as the "when". As in, When will it be my turn?" She remembers the lewd stares and cat calls from cars passing by. She gets a mischievous twinkle in her eye and begins writing again.

06/23/25 - 12:47pm Hypothesis: Subject may respond more favorably to visual stimuli rather than auditory/verbal. Initiation of phase 2 starts now.

06/23/25 - 12:48pm Phase 2.0.1 Deploying bikini as visual stimulation. Hypothesis: Bikini will cause subject to exhibit flushed skin, stammered speech, and increased sweat production consistent with sexual arousal. Should subject exhibit such symptoms, phase 2.1.0 will then be initiated.

She slips out of her clothes and searches through her drawers for the perfect tool for manifesting maximum attraction. She finds it at the very bottom of one drawer.

A little while later, Dan is in his garage, tinkering, "improving" upon something while listening to a radio station located in a country halfway around the world. The antenna wire from his stereo is fed through some sort of amplifier that absorbs waves that bounce off of the ionosphere. The sitar music coming from the speaker is laced with static, but is still listenable. A light knock at the door grabs his attention, and Amy pokes her head in. Her hair is in braided pigtails, and she is wearing sunglasses.

"Daddy, can you please come help me?" She asks in her sweetest, girliest, Daughter of the Year voice.

Slightly bothered by being pulled away from such "important" work, he stands and says, "Of course."

"Thanks, Daddy." She bubbles, and her head dips back inside.

He enters the kitchen from the garage and says, "Amy? Where are you?"

Amy's voice comes through the screen door to the patio, "Out here, Daddy."

Dan walks through the screen door to find Amy in her bikini from about two years ago. It is red with white piping around the edges. It is noticeably too small for her, and it struggles to completely cover her more intimate parts, the swells of her breasts pouring out the sides. She is lying in a lounge chair, rock music playing softly from a Bluetooth speaker. The sun is reflecting off her mirrored sunglasses. A glass of iced tea, and a small notebook are on the table next to her. An ink pen rests suggestively nestled beneath the bridge of fabric connecting the two cups of her tiny bikini top.

His eyes widen at the sight of her, and he looks away. "W-what did you, uh, need help with, uh, A-Amy?"

"I was hoping you could put some sunscreen on me."

She can hear her dad gulp from eight feet away.

"Uh, sure. I have the spray-on stuff in the garage," he says, pointing in the direction of his safe, drab workshop where no bikini-clad daughters roam. She hears his voice breaking on the second half of "garage" and makes a mental note.

"That stuff is no good," she says dismissively. "Plus, I read about a study in Chemical Digest that says the propellant is carcinogenic." She lifts her glass of tea and seductively guides the straw to her mouth with her tongue.

She sets the glass down and rolls over in the lounge chair; the movement makes her body jiggle in all the right places. Her back muscles stand out, and the swell of her ass is impressive in the too-small bikini.

"I just need you to do me from behind, er, I mean, do my back, please, Daddy."

"Um..." Dan says.

"Here, use this," and she hands him a tube of 30fps sunscreen called Boob'n'Bum Surf'n'Sun.

He approaches her cautiously, like one might approach a writhing live wire from a downed power line. Deadly to the touch... but somehow tempting just the same.

In a trance, he kneels next to her, taking the tube from her. He is about to drizzle some sunscreen on her back when she says, "Oh, hold on a sec." She reaches back and undoes the red back strap of her bikini. It falls away, and he looks down to see the outside curve of her breast being squeezed out to the side by her weight. Now, there is nothing but an acre of smooth, uninterrupted skin before him, a gentle tan line running across the center. His daughter's body aching for his hands.

He squirts a circle of sunscreen on Amy's back, and she flinches and giggles with affected girlishness. "Ooooo! It's so cold!"

He chuckles a little to himself, starting to relax and letting himself enjoy the moment. This is just his daughter, after all... right?

He begins to work the lotion into her back with both hands. The coconut scent fills the air around them, encapsulating them in their own small, tropical bubble.

She can feel the controlled strength in his hands. They're the hands of a builder, a creator. She feels the roughness of the calluses built up over the years. Their courseness sends a chill through her.

"Mmmmmmm..." she purrs. "That feels really nice, Daddy. Can you do it a little longer?"

He finds himself squeezing a heart shape of Boob'n'Bum Surf'n'Sun on his daughter's back this time, trying unsuccessfully not to think of it being another type of milky, white fluid. He slathers it around, squeezing her sides, letting the tips of his fingers graze the sides of her breasts. He massages her shoulders and neck with his sunscreen-slick hands while her sighs, gasps, and purrs drive him on.

Once he has finished, he says, "All done... that is, unless... there's somewhere else you'd like me to--"

Putting her own arousal aside (for the sake of science), she says, "Nope. That's it. Thank you very much," sharply cutting him off. She has gathered all the data she needed from this experiment. It is now time to document her findings and strategize the next stage.

Dan nods, turns, and dejectedly walks back inside.

Amy reties the bikini strap and rolls back over. She takes her sunglasses off and puts her regular glasses back on. She grabs the notebook and pen and begins writing furiously:

06/23/25 - 1:15pm Phase 2.0.1 Results: Bikini visual stimulation protocol yielded immediate positive response. Subject exhibited audible gulp response from a 2.3m distance, confirming hypothesis regarding visual stimuli effectiveness.

06/23/25 - 1:16pm Subject attempted contact avoidance through suggested spray-on sunscreen application. Voice tremulation noted on word "garage" - pitch elevation consistent with nervous arousal. Spray-on suggestion denied. Carcinogen argument provided as support for refusal of spray option.

06/23/25 - 1:18pm Dorsal bikini strap disentaglement resulted in heightened subject interest. Subject's breathing became increasingly erratic. Extremities, including phalanges, trembled consistent with increased emotional/sexual stimulation.

06/23/25 - 1:20pm Direct skin contact initiated. Subject's tactile response positive - bilateral hand application achieved. Vocal encouragement ("Mmmmmmm") appeared to enhance subject engagement, confidence, and enthusiasm. Subject also made noteworthy attempt to achieve manual contact of mammary organs.

06/23/25 - 1:22pm BREAKTHROUGH: Subject initiated request to perform manual contact and application of protective substance to additional dermal areas. This represents a 180-degree behavioral shift from previous verbal rejection. Visual stimulation hypothesis CONFIRMED. Colloquial term "bikini brain" achieved.

06/23/25 - 1:23pm Experiment terminated at peak interest to maintain psychological advantage. Subject exhibited disappointment upon conclusion - dejected posture noted during subject's retreat.

06/23/25 - 1:25pm Conclusion: Phase 2.0.1 SUCCESSFUL. Subject now demonstrably attracted. Ready to proceed to Phase 2.1.0. - escalating visual stimulation protocols.

Phase 2.1.0 will be initiated ASAP. Must seek collaboration with known experts for costume design.

She flips her notebook closed with a satisfied clap. She takes a sip of her tea, eases back down into the lounge chair, takes off her glasses, and places her sunglasses back on her nose, and smiles.

It's now just after dinner. Debbie is awake and finishing up the dishes. She is a stout woman with lovely curves, brown hair shot through with a striking bolt of grey, and a jolly face. Her glasses are sliding down her nose, and she pushes them back up with the back of a wet hand.

"How was your day, Amy-amour?" she asks cheerfully.

Amy is about to respond with an automatic "fine" when she looks at her dad and says, "It was... enlightening." Dan looks up at her from the table and immediately blushes.

"Well, it sounds better than mine. My night last night was... less so," She loads a few more dishes into the dishwasher. "How about you, hon? Did you develop a better mousetrap? The longer-lasting lightbulb? The self-driving car that won't kill anyone?"

Dan glances away from Amy. "What, dear? Sorry, what was that? I didn't see anything." Dan replies nervously, now blushing even more deeply, most likely still having thoughts of Amy in her bikini. He gets up and quickly moves to the living room, flipping on the TV and removing himself from the conversation.

"Nothing, dear," Debbie says, dismissing this flustered denial as one of his typical distracted responses.

Amy makes a mental note to add "lingering anxiety surrounding bikini stimulation" to her documentation.

Deb closes the dishwasher and presses start. It lurches in its place under the sink, and the door flies open. A steak knife shoots out of the dishwasher, across the room, and embeds itself in a cabinet door.

This doesn't surprise Amy or Debbie, of course. They also learned long ago to step aside when first activating any household appliance, so they were out of harm's way when the knife was hurled across the kitchen.

"Again?" Debbie mutters. "Fix the dishwasher tomorrow, okay, honey?" Deb says calmly, while dislodging the steak knife, the handle still quivering, from the cabinet door. She takes a finger and tries to smooth out the gouge, but shrugs, figuring it will blend in with the surrounding gouges.

"Y-yes, dear," Dan says and turns his attention back to the "How it's Made" episode he is watching.

She returns the knife to the dishwasher, performs some small, dexterous manipulation of the door lock mechanism, shuts the door, and restarts the appliance without incident.

A few minutes later, Debbie joins Dan on the couch, kissing him gently and snuggling up to him.

Amy watches this from the kitchen table with a longing, hopeful look. She sees a spot for herself on that couch. She just needs to complete her experiments.

Her phone begins to play the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and she swipes the answer icon, "Hello?"

"Hey Amy, it's Eve."

"Oh, hey, Evie. What can I do for ya?"

"Um, what's this my dad tells me about a workshop?"

"Oh, that!" Amy gets up and walks up the stairs towards her room. "I've been meaning to tell you about that. I've been doing some research, and... well, let's just say, I have a LOT of ideas."

Giggling, she places the marble in its starting position in the alarm clock and shuts the door, locking it behind her.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. To be continued in chapter 9! Drop me a comment and let me know how I did. I'd really appreciate it!