Raymond & Raya: Forbidden Passion
Copyright© 2025 by R.R. Ryan
Chapter 4: Masturbation, Breakfast, Masturbation
Rayanna’s Tablet Diary
After leaving my father in the den, I climbed the stairs and headed to my bedroom. Closing the door behind me, with the softest click I could manage, as if the tremor of the latch might send a wave through the floorboards.
Or was I dreaming, and was I afraid it would wake me? Rip me out of whatever fantasy I’d let myself live in. The thick lath and plaster walls muffled even the memory of his voice. Only the hush of running water from somewhere else in the house kept me company.
Wait, sitting up in bed, Daddy was running a bath. I’d been sleeping and woke to the sound of him in the master bath.
Rushing out of my room, I stood there in the narrow hallway for a moment. Watching the faded patterns of carpet swim before my eyes, listening for any movement behind Dad’s door. Nothing but the constant presence of silence.
I tiptoed into the bathroom and locked it with the old trick of holding the bolt in place until it sat, just so, in its little groove. My mother had always bemoaned the state of this bathroom. The ancient pink tile, the perpetually tarnished sink. The cracked soap dish that had outlived two renovations.
She’d left her ghost in every fingerprint of mine on the mirror. I ran a finger along the edge of the glass and shivered at the chill.
Stripping off my nightgown, yanking it off like a bandage. I left it pooled in a puddle on the cold tile. Catching my reflection in the mirror as I moved to turn on the water, my body was a pale, narrow shape outlined in blue. My skin flushed in places from my terrible confession.
Or from the way my father looked at me.
Leaning in, I pressed my cheek to the glass until the steam of my breath frosted it. Trying to imagine what he saw when he stared at me. A daughter? A stranger? Something he wouldn’t admit, even in the privacy of his own head.
Stepping into the shower, I cranked the faucet as hot as I could stand. The ancient pipes groaned in protest. The water battered my scalp and shoulders with the doggedness of a summer thunderstorm. My hair flattened to my skull and ran brown down my back in soggy ropes. I shut my eyes and let the heat drive the cold from my bones.
This was supposed to be cleansing.
I’d scrub the day off me, erase the memory of my father’s hand wrapped around mine. Guilt should have stung, but what I felt was more like sweetness. A sticky thread winding tighter every time I replayed the moment. I squeezed a palmful of body wash into my hands, rubbed it between my fingers until it frothed, and smoothed it over my collarbones.
The scent of jasmine and sugar bloomed in the steam, overwhelming the metallic tang of the water.
I started with my neck. Thumbs circled the base of my throat, my pulse beating slowly and thick against my knuckles. I could pretend, here in the hush and heat, my hands weren’t mine. That Daddy touched, not my hands, and he traced the lines of my face.
Touching the slope of my shoulder lingered at the edge of my breast. The fantasy came too effortlessly. All I had to do was close my eyes, let the stream of water become the warmth of Dad’s breath.
My palms become the ones that belonged to him.
I let my fingers skate down the curve of my chest. Tracing the wet, slick skin, circling the soft swell of breast. Until my nipples drew tight and pebbled. I squeezed one gently, and harder, the way I’d seen him grip the whiskey bottle when he thought I wasn’t looking. Like he was trying to wring the last drop of comfort out of it. My free hand slid down, past my ribs, to the flat of my stomach. Where the fine trail of hair pointed the way to where I wanted to go, but still wouldn’t let myself.
Not yet.
I took my time, working soap into every crease and hollow, mapping my body with methodical reverence. When I reached my thighs, I pressed them together and let the lather build up, slippery and rich, before sliding my hand between them. My heart kicked in my chest at the touch. I braced myself with one arm against the tile and let the other explore, learning the landscape of my desire, a foreign, forbidden territory.
I thought about his hands. How big they were, how capable. They trembled only a little when he raised his glass, but never when he raised his voice. I imagined him standing behind me. The way he did the time, I was thirteen and split my knee open on the curb. His arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders to keep me still while he washed the blood away.
The memory was sharp, but the emotions changed. Now, Daddy’s arms were powerful not with the panic of a parent, but with something else. Some secret strength that came from holding me in place.
My fingers circled, drawing steady patterns through the lather. My breath hitched and rasped above the water. I imagined what I’d say if he could see me now—nothing.
I wouldn’t’ve said a word.
The thought made me bolder. So, I dipped my fingers lower, finding the spot that made me gasp, and pressed there. Gentle at first, and after a moment, with more confidence. My knees buckled a little. Spreading my legs wider, I shifted my weight, letting the showerhead pummel my chest as my hand worked between my thighs.
I leaned into the wall and let myself go, not bothering to muffle the little sounds that escaped. My thoughts tunneled inward, vision swimming with heat and want, until all I could picture was Daddy. The roughness of his stubble against my skin, his mouth, his hands. Letting the image pull me under, stripping away the shame until there was nothing left but need.
When I came, it was sudden and bright, a shock of pleasure that pounded the air from my lungs.
When my hand spasmed against my clit, my hips jerked once, twice, before I slumped against the tile in ecstasy. With my forehead pressed to the cool, hard surface. The water ran over my back and legs. Washing away the suds and the evidence of my sin, but not the memory. The recollection lingered, stubborn as the ache in my belly.
Breathing hard, I stayed there while the shower did its work. When I finally stepped out, the bathroom was thick with steam. Toweling off, careful and slow, awash in thick emotions. Lingering over the patches of skin that still tingled. My hair was a tangled, wet curtain down my back, and I let it stay that way.
Wrapped in the towel, I waded back to my room.
The house was quieter than ever. The quiet made you wonder if the world outside had stopped entirely. With my window open a crack, I moved to bed. It let in the faintest sigh of wind and the distant rumble of a car passing on the street.
Dressed in a loose wife-beater T and nothing else. The hem cleared the top of my bare thighs. For a few minutes, I sat at the edge of my bed. Staring at the book on my nightstand, something I’d read a dozen times.
A cheap paperback with a lurid cover that promised more drama than it delivered. I picked it up, thumbed through a few pages, and tossed it back onto the nightstand with a dull thud.
Even fiction couldn’t distract me tonight.
So, I drifted to the mirror and picked up my brush, working it through the snarls with absentminded care. Still flushed with my passion, my eyes shone bright and wild. I tried to smooth out the tangles. To coax some normalcy back into my reflection, but it didn’t work. I could see the truth with my own eyes. I was in love with my father. And I hoped against all reason that he loved me.
Indeed, he needed me, but alleged he didn’t.
At last, I dropped the hairbrush onto the dresser and crawled into bed. Pulling the covers up to my chin. The sheets were cold and smelled faintly of lavender. A scent my mother had loved, and I’d grown to hate. I curled onto my side and shut my eyes, willing myself to sleep.
But my mind spun, replaying the day in loops, stuck on when his hand stroked mine, on the way he’d said “Raya” with a tenderness I hadn’t heard in years.
I wondered if he was awake, in his own bed, thinking of me the way I thought of him. Actually, I doubted he dreamed of me. Even questioned what he would do if I ever told him the truth.
Eyes open in the dark, I lay there, listening to the house settle and breathe. In the darkness of my room, I imagined the walls between us thinned and crumbled. Until there was nothing left but the two of us.
Lost together in the ruins.
The sleep I got was restless and filled with dreams of him.
Dressing at five a.m., even though I hadn’t really slept. I’d stayed in my bedroom, my childhood bedroom. Which was now my adult bedroom. Just another room, more of the same small box I’d always lived inside.
After reading half a page of the dusty paperback, I tossed it aside and stared at my phone. The wall, and my reflection in the window. With my alarm set for six, there was no use in setting alarms now. There was only the quiet of my breathing. The occasional subsonic thud of my father moving through the house, restless and directionless. A bear in the off-season, searching for a meal.
Sneaking into their bedroom, I put on my mother’s skirt first. It was navy blue, hemmed at the knee. The skirt lacked all sense of sexiness, manufactured to appear respectable. I’d taken it from the cardboard box, along with the matching blouse. A white polyester, with the high-neck ruffle my mother hated but wore anyway because it “looked right” for PTA meetings and funerals.
The shoes were cheap department-store flats, but the real prize was in the jewelry box.
A pair of thin gold hoops and, more importantly, my mother’s engagement ring and wedding band, perfectly polished. I worked the rings over the knuckle, feeling the pressure, the squeeze, the moment of capture. When I flexed my fingers, they ached, but they looked right. My hand on the dressing table looked like Mom’s.
Making my way surreptitiously to the garage, I left in her car. Driving the old Honda downtown, the same route she used to take when she worked in the city. The engine sounded as tired as I felt. Every shift came with a whine, but it held together. If I made it to the diner in one piece, I told myself, I’d let myself have two pancakes and not just one.
In those days, I fibbed to myself constantly, told myself little harmless lies to keep moving forward.
The city was still more or less asleep, and the pale orange sunrise hit the buildings in a way that made everything look theatrical. The only cars on Broadway were the ones that had nowhere else to be. Utility vans, old and worn, battered sedans with frost-licked hoods, and already parked in the lot near the Downtown Diner, a turquoise ‘93 Civic.
The diner itself looked like it dropped from another planet, with all chrome siding and red-vinyl booths. The “OPEN” sign flickered in a way suggesting a desperate hope, like a signal fire. I pushed the door open, and the bell rang, sharp and lonely. The one customer in the place, a man in a dark hoodie, hunched over the bar, face lost in his coffee’s steam.
And he didn’t turn around.
The waitress, whose name tag read Sandy, glanced my way from behind the counter and gave me the minimum required nod. Without further ado, she went right back to polishing the inside of a coffee cup with a towel that had definitely seen better days.
Walking past stools on one side and booths on the other, I picked the farthest booth. The one by a window with the empty bus stop outside. With The Ride printed on a sign in bold white letters on a forest green rectangle. And I slid into the seat and waited for Sandy to finish whatever micro-ritual she had going on behind the counter.
When she finally came over, she brought the entire pot of coffee with her and set it on the table next to my elbow.
“Refills are free,” she said, voice hoarse and almost genderless in its exhaustion. “You want a menu, or you already know?”
I told her I’d take a menu, even though I’d already memorized every page.
She handed it over without looking at me and pulled a pen from the bun at the back of her head. Her hair was dark and shiny in a way that made my fingers itch. The fingernails painted in a shade of a purplish bruise, and she wore exactly zero jewelry. Check that, a thin, pink elastic bracelet that looked like she picked it off a dirty sidewalk. It sported “Walk for Life” in black letters.
With a waitress’s accuracy, she poured the coffee, black and volcanic. Waiting until she’d walked back to the counter before I took a sip. It was perfect, as diner coffee goes, the good side of bitter. The taste of a thousand heartbreaks percolated into a million and one iotas floating in the pot.
She came back a minute later with her order pad in hand, hovering just over the edge of the table.
“Ready, or need another sec?”
“I’m ready. But before you write it down, I was wondering if you could take a break before I finish breakfast. Just to have a conversation.”
She looked at me as if I’d asked if she wanted to go shoplifting.
“A conversation?”
I nodded, fighting the urge to fidget with the ring.
“Just a little one. Like, five minutes of your time. I’ll make it worth your while.”
She eyed the clock on the wall, the empty booths, and back at the counter where the hoodie guy was still motionless.
“You in trouble?” But there was no concern in it, the blunt curiosity of someone who’d seen too many real messes to care about the hypothetical ones.
“No. Not the kind of trouble you mean.”
She gave it another few seconds, called over her shoulder, “Taking a load off for ten, Boss!”
Her voice rang out into the not-quite-empty kitchen, where a man with a walrus mustache stuck his head out, squinted, and disappeared again.
Sandy slid into the seat opposite me, her hands folded on the table like she wanted to sell me insurance.
“Okay. Spill it.”
I looked down at the menu, even though I didn’t need to.
“I just ... I need to talk to someone other than myself. Or my ... family.” I felt the word snag in my throat, razor-blade sharp.
She cocked her head, scanning my face the way people scan a lottery ticket. Hoping for a win, expecting nothing.
“Alright,” she said. “Talk.”
“I think I got married too soon,” I said. My voice went weirdly soft, breathy. “I mean, we were together for, like, two months, and after she died. His first wife, I mean. It wasn’t even supposed to be real, at first.”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed, but not in suspicion, more in trying to fit the story into her own worldview.
“His wife died?”
I nodded, staring down into my coffee.
“I didn’t even know her, really. But now I have to be her. All the time.”
In an oddness, Sandy let a little bark of laughter slip free. The kind that says she’s not making fun of you, you’re absolutely full of shit, but she respects you anyway.
“So, what’s your problem exactly? You don’t know how to be sad? Or you don’t know how to be a wife?”
It was easier to talk to her than I thought it would be.