It was late summer, on a Friday afternoon, after a long week, as I turned into my driveway, and there was Sonya, playing a solo game of basketball with the hoop over the garage door. The weather was still warm, and she was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a pink sleeveless top, and as she jumped gracefully into the air to take a shot, I thought, She moves just like her mother.
She put the ball straight through the hoop, caught it on its first bounce off the concrete, and then turned to face me, smiling happily and dribbling the ball on the spot, as I put the car into Park and switched off the engine. “Hey, Leon,” she said, as I got out. She always called me by my first name.
“Hi,” I answered, as I shut the car door.
“Did’ya have a good day?” she asked.
“Yeah, it was good. Productive, too,” I replied.
“Well, I’ve been productive, too. Dinner’s in the oven,” she said, “It’ll be ready in about half an hour.”
“Sounds good,” I said, catching the ball as she tossed it to me, “What are we having tonight?”
“Lamb roast,” she said, with just a hint of pride in her voice.
“You’re too good to me,” I said, with a smile.
“No, I’m not,” she said quickly, with a little shake of her head, “You look after me, so I try to look after you, too.”
“And you do a good job,” I said.
Her smile widened a little, and she added, “Well, I am the lady of the house, these days.”
She walked ahead of me towards the back door, and I couldn’t help noticing how grown up she was looking lately. Then I caught myself looking at the sway of her hips in those little blue shorts, and I told myself, Don’t look down there. She’s your daughter, or at least, she may as well be.
We went inside, and Sonya made me some coffee, and as I sat at the table and drank it, I watched her buzzing around the kitchen, preparing for dinner, and I thought, She looks so confident, so poised.
That was the word: “poised”. Her mother, Joanne, was many things, but if you had to come up with one word to sum up everything she was, to define her, that was the word. Joanne had poise.
Sonya asked me if my coffee was okay, and went on with what she was doing, and as I watched her moving around, once again, it occurred to me how grown up she was becoming.
Sonya, I thought to myself. It always seemed such a grown-up name for a little girl. It was a name that seemed like it should have belonged to a sophisticated woman of the world, not a skinny, pig-tailed little streak of activity, who always had a smile on her face. Then again, I guess even sophisticated women of the world have to start somewhere. Lately, it was almost as though Sonya was finally growing into her name.
Yes, things were good now, but it wasn’t always this way.
I had moved in with Joanne, Sonya’s mother, when she was 26, and I was 32. Sonya had been eight years old then, being born when her mother was just 18, and fathered by a total loser called Jeremy, who promptly disappeared off the face of the earth when he found out Joanne was pregnant with his child. Sonya had never met her father, and then when I came along, she had been the only child of a single mother all her life, so the adjustment wasn’t easy in the beginning. I got a lot of attitude, and a lot of, “You’re not my father!” and, “You can’t make me do that!” for the first couple of years, but over time, things got better.
A big turning point was when Sonya was about ten. She was always afraid of thunderstorms, and whenever there was a storm at night, she would come into our bedroom and climb in between Joanne and me. In the mornings, she would always be asleep, cuddled up to Joanne in the bed, but one night, during a big storm, she came into our room as usual, and in the morning, she was cuddled up to me, sound asleep.
“I think you’ve won her heart,” Joanne said, smiling at me in the bed.
Things were a lot better from then on, and I found the best way to work things out was to give Sonya her own space, and to try to be the father figure, but not necessarily the father, if that makes sense, and we had a pretty happy family.
Joanne and I tried to have more kids, but after three years of trying, the doctor told me I could never father a child of my own, and in his words, I “only shoot blanks.” Still, we had Sonya, and we were happy.
I must have asked Joanne to marry me at least a dozen times over the years, but she would always say something like, “Why do you want to risk ruining a great relationship by getting married?” or “We’re really happy the way we are. There’s plenty of time for that later on. Let’s just leave it for now.” She probably had her reasons, but then Joanne was very much her own person.
I finally got her to come round, after nearly seven years together, and she let me slip an engagement ring on her finger. Then, within months, she was gone.
Toxaemia, was the cause, the doctors said, brought on by an infected cyst, and aside from the grief, I just couldn’t understand how, in this day and age, medical science couldn’t save her, but just like that, my beautiful, smart, funny, witty, intelligent Joanne was gone forever, and at nearly forty, I was left with a fifteen-year-old girl, on the very verge of womanhood herself, to bring up on my own.
Now, a little over a year later, Sonya was sixteen and a half years old, and was definitely growing into the beautiful young woman she was to become. She was about five feet, five inches tall, with a slim build that had only developed some womanly curves over the past few months. She had wavy, ash blonde hair, growing to just past her shoulders, blue-grey eyes, a pretty face, and a fair to medium complexion. Her breasts were still fairly small, but pert, rounded and well-shaped, and her bottom was cute, round, and getting more perfect by the month. Her shapely legs were starting fill out as well, so in a couple of years, she was probably going to be a stunner, but then, so was her mother. We had one solitary picture of her father, the “sperm donor,” as Sonya referred to him, that her mother had kept to show her what he looked like, but really about the only resemblance was in the shape of her head, and when she had certain expressions on her face, you could see Jeremy’s eyes.
Sonya was a remarkable girl, really. Although I tried to help around the house, my work sometimes involved long hours, so in addition to keeping the house in order, she still kept her school work on track, and managed to find time for a social life, and she kept herself fit with regular basketball.
After I had lost Joanne, a lawyer friend of mine had told me that, theoretically at least, if Jeremy ever came back on the scene, he could have been given custody of Sonya after her mother’s death, but this possibility seemed as remote as me becoming King of Denmark, and as Sonya herself had said, she would be eighteen years old in three years time, and legally an adult, so we decided it wasn’t an issue, and we left things the way they were.
Over dinner that night, Sonya and I chatted about my day at work, her day at school, and the comings and goings of her friends, and after I helped her to clean up the kitchen, we watched some TV in the family room. We watched a new detective drama, both of us chuckling at the over-acting, and the absurd storyline, and after the late news, I decided to go to bed. I said goodnight to Sonya, kissed the top of her head as she sat on the couch, and retired to my bedroom. I had an en-suite bathroom off my bedroom, and after a quick shower, I put on some short summer pyjamas, and got into bed.
I lay in the dark, and I could hear Sonya in the shower down the hall. As I lay there, I had a pleasant train of thought going through my head. My love life, of course, had been zero since I lost Joanne, and it had been over a year now. I had not been with a woman in that time, although to be honest, my right hand had been getting some action, but I was thinking that this might change soon. One of my clients had an office assistant, good-looking and aged around her mid-thirties. There was no sign of a ring on her finger, and over the last month or so, she had been sending me signals, and making it clear she was available and interested, each time I visited his office. In fact, on my last visit, the previous day, she had given me her private phone number, “just in case” her boss was unavailable after hours.
As I contemplated where this might lead, if I followed her up, I began to hear the first sounds of rain outside. Oh well, the farmers will be happy, I told myself, lying there in the dark.
Then, after a few minutes, I heard the first crack of thunder, and I saw flickers of light through the gap in the curtains, signalling that there were more to come. A second crack of thunder came, rolling and booming off into the distance, and a moment or two later, I heard Sonya’s voice at my door. “Leon,” she called in the dark, “can I come in?”
“Yeah,” I said, flicking on the bedside light. Sonya came into the room, wearing a very short, pale blue silk nightdress, with ruffled sleeves and a low v-neck, trimmed with lace. She walked to the left side of my bed, and said, “Can I get in with you? That thunder’s a bit scary up in my room.”
I took note of what she was wearing, and said, “Look, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” she asked right back.
“Umm, I think you’re a little old to be getting in here with me,” I said, trying to make it sound non-negotiable.
“Come on, Leon,” she continued, undeterred, “Can you hear that outside?”
“Look, I know, but…,” Suddenly, there was a huge clap of thunder, that seemed to go straight over the house, shaking the ceiling, and rattling the windows and pictures on the wall. In a flash, Sonya dived under the covers, next to me. I gave up, lying there on my left side, and I said, “Okay, but stay over on your side,” and just for a laugh, I added, “and no snoring.”
“You ought to talk,” she smiled, “ Some nights I can hear you up in my room. Anybody’d think you were revving up a chainsaw in here.”
“You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you,” said, flicking off the bedside light.
“All depends on the question,” Sonya answered, still smiling, but giving no clue what she really meant. I turned over on my right side, with my back to her, and said, “Good night.”
“Night, Leon,” she answered, as we lay there in the dark, with the rain hammering down outside.
I must have dozed off fairly quickly, and I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it probably wasn’t long. When I woke up, I was on my back again, and I found that Sonya was lying on her right side, on my left, with her left leg over my hips, and her left arm over my chest. My left shoulder felt like it was in between her soft breasts.
Immediately, my cock went hard. At forty, I no longer had the hair trigger, crystal-hard erection I had at eighteen, but spurred on by this lovely female body wrapped around me, and the sweet, girly smell of her skin and hair, my cock felt harder than it had been for years. Worse yet, it was poking into her leg, or at least I was hoping it was only her leg.
Thank God she’s asleep, I thought to myself, but as I was about to gently move away from her, my heart sank when I heard her say, “What’s that?”
Her voice was wide-awake, and she sounded like she was smiling. “Nothing,” I said.
“That’s not ‘nothing’,” Sonya said, “I can feel it.”
I started to turn myself, to move my hips, and to stop my hard tool from pressing into her, and she said, “What are you doing?”
“Just getting comfortable,” I said, my voice a little strained from the effort.
“No you’re not,” Sonya said, still with that smile in her voice, “You’re moving so that thing won’t stick into me like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea for you to get in here with me.”
“You don’t have to apologise. It’s only natural,” Sonya said brightly, “You’ve got a girl cuddled up to you, and your hormones took over. You can’t help it.”
“But you’re, …” I started, but Sonya cut me off.
“Your daughter?” she began, “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m really not even your stepdaughter.” Sonya paused to let that sink in, and continued, “You and Mum were never married, and you didn’t adopt me, so technically, you and I are just a girl and a guy living in the same house.”
“Well, technically,” I said, mocking her tone, “I’m still your guardian.”
“Just because you’re my guardian doesn’t mean you have to be an angel,” Sonya replied, smugly. As I had said to her earlier, she had always had an answer.
I reached over with my right hand and flicked on the bedside light. Fortunately, I could reach it without moving. “Look,” I started, “this has gone far enough. You better get off me and go back to your room.”
“Or what?” Sonya said, mischievously, “You’ll put me over your knee?”
“Maybe I should have done that a long time ago,” I said, trying to sound serious, “Now come on, hop up.”
“You want me off, you’ve gotta get me off,” she said, pausing and adding, “And when I say ‘get me off’, I mean ‘lift me off,” pausing again, and smiling, “not the other kind of getting off.
You know what I mean.”
I chose to ignore that, and said, as seriously as I could, “This has gone a bit too far. Now come on, you’ve gotta get out of here.”
Sonya was still wrapped around me, her left thigh over my hips, and she said, “It hasn’t gone anywhere, yet.” Her smile was very mischievous.
“Come on, get off me,” I said, determined not to play around with her. Sonya had never done anything like this.
“I’ll consider getting off, if you answer one question, truthfully,” she said, looking me in the eyes.
“Anything,” I sighed.
Sonya continued looking me in the eyes, and said, suddenly very serious, “Leon, have you ever thought about me in a sexual way?” She kind of sounded like she expected me to answer ‘yes’.
“No,” I said, truthfully, giving my head a little shake. I will admit that I fantasised about some of her friends from time to time, but in all honesty, the closest I had ever come to having a sexual thought about her was that afternoon, when I caught myself looking at her bottom in her little shorts, and I really didn’t think that counted.
“We’re not really related, you know,” Sonya said, “and if we did anything, you know, like, having sex, you couldn’t get me pregnant, either.”
“I know that,” I replied, “but it just wouldn’t be right.”
“Why not?” she persisted.
“Because it just wouldn’t be right,” I said.
“You’re talking in circles,” Sonya said, “That’s not like you.”
“Look,” I said, thinking I had an answer that would shut her down completely, “I’ve lived half my life already. You’re just starting yours. Besides, what girl wants to lose her virginity to her stepfather?”
“Who says I’m a virgin?” she answered, meeting the challenge head-on.
That was news to me. “Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know that. You’re more grown up than I thought, then, aren’t you?”
“Do you want to know how many times?” she asked, with that mischievous smile.
“I think it would be inappropriate if I asked,” I said, flatly.
“Inappropriate,” Sonya repeated, her smile even wider, “Leon, that’s so cute! Look at me! Look at us! And you don’t want to say anything inappropriate.”
I didn’t answer. I was still coming to terms with the fact that Sonya had already had sex.
“Anyway,” she said, proudly, “I’ve done it a grand total of seven times.”
“Son-ya,” I said, “I hope you were safe.”
“Safe sex all the way,” she…
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