Chapter 6: The Odette D.

"Why not?" I said.

"Not that bridge."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I've got." He looked at the dark windshield, not at me. "Not tonight, Monalisa. Not with you."

I could have argued.

I had my father in my chest, a weight I'd carried since sixteen, and I thought: he can't drive it either, because of Papa.

It seemed a good enough reason, and it was one I could love him for.

"Then take me somewhere else," I said.

He drove us back to the dock without a word.

It was past midnight, and the dock was black except for the red light on the ice house roof.

The Odette D. sat against her pilings with her lines creaking.

He took my hand and walked me aboard, across a gangway that bounced under his boots, and unlocked the cabin hatch with a key from his neck.

Below, it was a small clean room that smelled of diesel and coffee and him.

There was a bunk along one wall made up tight with a grey wool blanket.

He shut the hatch.

He turned on one lamp, low and yellow, and set his hat on a hook.

"Say it plain," he said. "What do you want?"

I said it plain.

"You inside me. All the way. Tonight, here, and I want you to take as long as you like."

"Take your dress off."

I did it myself.

I pulled it over my head and dropped it, and stood in my underwear and the cheap lace bra I had worn on purpose.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Come here."

I went.

He took me by the hips and drew me against him.

His mouth came down on mine, slow, deep.

I felt the whole length of him from chest to knee.

I got my hands under his shirt.

He had scars, a long pale seam across his ribs and a puckered mark on his shoulder.

A gold ring on a chain swung between us.

I touched the ring.

His hand closed over mine and put it away from there.

"Don't," he said, gently. "Touch the rest."

I pulled the shirt up and over his head and kissed his chest, hard, and a low groan rumbled in his chest.

He was solid and warm and grey-haired, and every inch of him looked like it had been worked for.

I undid his belt, and this time he let me.

He stepped out of his jeans and his boots, and stood in the lamplight.

I wasn't ready for the size of him.

He was thick and flushed and curved a little, and I'd had him in my mouth two days before and still wasn't ready.

"Mm," he said. "You're staring."

"I'm taking inventory."

"Take it on the bunk."

I wrapped my hand around him first, because I wanted to.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Dad's Best Friend Said No Daddy Jokes, So I Made Him Say Yes from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.