Chapter 8

If you want to call having a baby seventeen years after the last one a bump, it was the only real bump in the road. The road I’m talking about, of course, is the two-lane-in-one-direction road I was rushing down. I was driving Amanda at times, and Riley at other times. It was fun to steer. All I had to do was put my hands on their breasts and apply pressure and they’d go in whatever direction I wanted them to.

Riley’s attitude about things was typically adolescent. She eventually got bored with anticipating having a sibling. After that she acted like her mother wasn’t pregnant. When her mother’s belly began to pooch, and then got bigger and bigger, though, Riley couldn’t ignore it any longer. I found her one night lying on our bed on her stomach, perpendicular to Amanda, who was lying on her back. Riley was talking to the baby while she stroked Amanda’s bump. That bump was in its second trimester. She stopped talking when she realized I was in the room.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I said. “I talk to him too.”

“You talk to her,” said my daughter.

“Okay,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. We had a daughter and she turned out at least half good.” I grinned.

“So are you saying I’m half bad?” Riley rolled to her side and glared at me.

“Not bad. Naughty, maybe. Yeah, you’re definitely naughty,” I said.

“Only because I was molested by my father,” she grumped. “I’m probably scarred for life.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“Stop being mean in front of the baby,” ordered Amanda. “It can hear you.”

“Actually, she can’t hear yet,” said Riley. “I’ve been reading up. She won’t be able to hear until 29 weeks. You’re only 26.”

“Then why were you talking to him?” I asked.

“Because it’s fun,” said my daughter. “At least until you barged in here and disturbed us.”

“Hey, that’s my baby,” I complained.

“All you did was wiggle around on top of her and cum. She’s the one doing all the work.”

She actually sounded upset, and Amanda sat up.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, with mother’s intuition.

“I don’t know,” moaned Riley. She looked around the room like the answer might be there, somewhere. “Yes I do.”

“What?” asked Amanda.

“I’m jealous,” sighed Riley. “You’re so beautiful, and there’s a real, live tiny human being inside you, and all I can do is watch.”

“You want to be my coach?” asked Amanda. We’d been talking about Lamaze techniques. Riley had been born without drugs.

“Daddy’s your coach,” said Riley.

“I can have two coaches,” said Amanda. “You can be the team captain.”

“Really?”

“We have to talk about it, though,” said Amanda.

“I can learn the things to do,” said Riley.

“No, I mean about what you’ll see. It isn’t pretty, Honey. I don’t want it to scare you away from having your own baby some day.”

“It didn’t scare you away from doing it again,” Riley pointed out.

“Yes, but when a woman gives birth, her body creates hormones that make her forget the pain and discomfort. Your body won’t be doing that.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“We’ll prepare you for it,” said Amanda. “You’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Riley, brightening. She stood up and faced me. “I need a hug.”

“From me? The evil impregnator?” I teased.

She ignored me and came in for a close hug.

“Mom?” She spoke over my shoulder, facing away from Amanda.

“Yes?”

“Was Daddy helpful when you were in labor with me?”

“Very much,” said Amanda.

“I’m surprised,” said Riley.

“Why?”

“Because while you were talking about how bad it is, he got a hardon.”

“Hey,” I said into her hair. “Nobody’s giving birth right now.”

“You are such a pervert,” she said.

But she hugged me tighter.

It was February and Spring Break was coming up. Riley wanted to go on a trip with some friends ... to Vegas.

I was completely against it. My wife, for reasons I could not fathom, said she could go.

I argued, with all the typical arguments. She was too young. We didn’t know (and couldn’t trust) her friends. There would be boys. There would be booze. It was fucking Vegas.

Her mantra was, “Trust her, Bob. You have to let go eventually. Call this a trial run.”

Riley, for her part, once she had parental permission in hand, put her arms around my neck and kissed me.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she breathed into my face.

“Thank your mother. She’s the one who’s letting you go.”

“I’ll be good,” she said. “I promise. I just want to have fun with my friends.”

“How can you have fun and be good?” I asked.

“I guess I’ll find out,” she said, grinning.

The night before she left, she wanted to be tucked in. If she asked to be tucked in, Amanda and I knew she wanted to ‘borrow the car’. I expected to be there an hour. It was the first time I spent all night in my daughter’s bed.

She had pulled my lips to her breasts, and spread her legs as I slid a finger deep into her, to rim the mouth of her womb with a fingertip. She’d loved all that, just like she’d loved it before. And before, it had been just the kind of orgasm to put her to sleep. On this night, though, she wanted me on top of her, with something longer than my finger in her.

As I was rocking into her, her hands came to drift across my back.

“What if I get horny in Vegas, Daddy?” she moaned.

“Why do you think I don’t want you to go?” I panted.

“I’ll take my toy,” she said. Then she whined, “Nooo, I can’t do that. We have to share rooms.”

“It’s only a few days,” I said, sliding in and out of her clasping pussy. “You can go without sex for a few days.”

“But Daddy, I’m used to having you any time I need you,” she complained. “What if I get horny and there’s some cute guy there?”

I started going faster, pounding her a little.

“No,” I said. “No cute guys.”

“But what if I can’t help myself?” she whimpered.

I was bottoming out hard, now. I wasn’t going fast, but I was nailing her to the bed with each stroke.

“This is my pussy,” I rasped. “No other prick had better even get close to it!”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll be good. I promise.”

“I’m going to cum in my pussy!” I panted. I was marking my territory.

“Yes, Daddy, cum in me,” she moaned.

I did and she had a noisy orgasm with me.

And when she kept her arms around me, and whispered, “Don’t go yet, Daddy,” I stayed.

It was all bullshit, of course, but I was too blinded by jealousy to see it.

She wasn’t afraid she’d get weak in Vegas and let some guy climb on top of her. She just wanted to push my buttons, like her mother did. Like mother, like daughter. She loved it when I got possessive. She knew it wasn’t ‘my’ pussy, but she loved letting me think that way. I found out later that the girls all made a pact that the only sexual pleasure they’d allow themselves in Vegas was of the masturbatory or lesbian type. Two of the girls who went were a couple. The others had all been to sleepovers where being naked wasn’t a problem. Most had learned how to masturbate at a sleepover. So sharing a room was no impediment to being able to fuck themselves all night with a dildo, if that’s what they felt like doing.

Of course I didn’t find that out until years later, when Riley got a little tipsy and had fun teasing me about it.

I would have been a wreck the whole time she was gone, except she called every night to check in and Amanda basically fucked me until my penis got sore.

It was my first taste of the fact that Riley would, in just a few months, be all grown up and on her own.

I didn’t much like the taste.

When she got back, and didn’t look or act any different, I calmed down. She was all business, getting ready for finals. There was only one problem, and that was that she hadn’t gotten any letters from colleges, either declining or accepting her admission. I hadn’t worried about it up to that point, because Amanda had said she was on top of it.

She waited until April to tell me Riley wasn’t going to go to college. Not traditional college, anyway. She waited that long because she knew it would be harder for me to be mad at her.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t hard for me to get mad about it. I just couldn’t be mad. It’s a maximum guilt trip when you want to yell at a woman who looks like she swallowed a basketball, and walks around like an old woman, with her hands in her back, shuffling here and there, groaning when she sits and goes through the laborious process of getting up again.

“It’s insane,” I said, trying to keep my calm. “You can’t get anywhere without a college degree.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” said Amanda. “It’s a tech world. Things are changing.”

“What kind of tech?” I asked. “She’s never shown any interest in techie stuff.”

“She wants to be a turbine technician and work for the Smoky Hills Wind Farm. She’s already been accepted into the program.”

“And nobody thought I might want to know about this?” I yelled.

She gripped her belly and I calmed down.

“Sorry,” I said. “It hurts my feelings that you guys left me out of the loop.”

“Bob, you’d have tried to talk her out of it,” said Amanda. “You’d have said it was too dangerous, or too arduous. But it’s what she wants to do and it’s a secure job. Wind energy is only going to grow and they’re desperately short of technicians.”

“What do you mean dangerous, and arduous?” I asked.

“See? All you think about is protecting her, but she’s all grown up, Bob. You have to let her spread her wings and leave the nest.”

When I confronted Riley about it, she joined forces with her mother to present a united front against grumpy, old, mean, old Daddy.

It didn’t help that I found out just how dangerous and arduous being a turbine tech is at a wind farm.

Riley didn’t fight fair. During one argument about it she said, “I suppose you want me to wear a frilly gingham dress, like I did when I was in first grade!”

“What?” I said.

She went and got the picture album and opened it to pictures in that time frame. There she was, standing demurely with Amanda and me at Old Faithful in Yellowstone, wearing a red and white gingham dress. She was cute.

“You want me to be that little girl for the rest of my life, Father. Just admit it.” She was yelling. “You want me to hold your hand when I cross the street! You won’t let me climb a tree, because I might scrape my knee. You want to stifle me forever!“

“No I don’t,” I said, trying to calm her down. “I’m your dad. I have to worry about you. It’s my job.”

“It’s not your job to worry about me,” she argued, still scowling. “It’s your job to love me ... and support me ... and help me be who I want to be!”

“Okay, okay,” I said, reaching to touch her. “I get it. It’s hard, but I’ll try.”

And then she hugged me and cried and I said, “Honey, whatever you want to do, I’ll be there rooting you on.”

In other words, she used my overreact-to-get-what-you-want technique against me.

The tears were fake.

She played me like a fiddle.

It turned out that Riley meant every word she said while she was manipulating me into supporting her career choice.

She did expect me to love her. And I don’t mean in the usual sense. For graduation, she wanted another night with me, spending all night (after she got back from a party with her friends) with my prick deep in her. I should have tumbled, by then, to the fact that she never seemed to date the same guy more than two or three times, and never talked about any of the boys she went out with as anything other than boys she knew. Again, she used my natural instincts against me. She knew I would resist her having a steady “serious” boyfriend, so when one never materialized, I was happy. I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t think it was odd that she was basically ignoring boys. I think Amanda already knew our daughter had no intention of having a conventional love life after she left home.