LOGINMillie’s POV
The atmosphere was so cold. And it became frustrating for Millie, as she was unable to sleep.
The darkness inside the tent felt alive. Millie lay on her back, staring at the faint mesh ceiling where moonlight bled through in silver threads. Her heart refused to slow down. Every small sound magnified with the distant hoot of an owl, the soft lap of lake water against the shore, and worst of all, the steady rhythm of Richard’s breathing just a foot away.
She was burning up.
Even though the night air had cooled, her skin felt feverish under the thin sleeping bag. She’d changed into a loose tank top and sleep shorts, but the fabric clung to her curves. She turned onto her side, facing away from him, trying to create distance. It didn’t help. She could still feel his presence like a physical weight. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours.
“Millie…” Richard’s voice came low and rough in the dark. “Are you still awake?”
She swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
There was a long pause. Then, “This is… different without your mom here.”
Different. That was one way to put it. Millie bit her lip, thighs pressing together. The memory of his hand brushing hers while setting up the tent earlier kept replaying. The way his eyes had lingered. The way her body had reacted. She shifted again, the sleeping bag rustling. Her ass accidentally brushed against his leg. She froze.
And neither of them moved. The air grew thicker, charged with something dangerous. Millie’s breath hitched. Shame flooded her chest… “he’s your stepfather, you idiot” but it was drowned out by a hotter, wetter ache between her legs. Before she could talk herself out of it, her hand moved. Slowly and tentatively. Her fingers brushed the side of his thigh through his sleep shorts. She waited for him to pull away. To say something. Or to stop her. But he didn’t. Emboldened by his silence, she let her fingertips trace higher, gliding over the hard muscle of his thigh. Richard’s breathing changed. It became deeper, and heavier. She felt his body tense under her touch.
“Millie…” he whispered, a warning and something else mixed in his voice. Something darker with a bit hungrier.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she breathed, voice trembling with shame and excitement. Her hand kept moving, sliding up until she felt the growing bulge straining against his shorts. God, he was already hard. Thick. Her pussy clenched at the realization.
Richard let out a low groan when her palm pressed against his cock. “Fuck, baby girl…”
The pet name hit her like lightning. She squeezed gently, exploring the impressive length of him through the thin fabric. He was big. Much bigger than she’d imagined in her guilty late-night fantasies.
Richard’s hand suddenly covered hers, pressing her palm firmer against him. “You have no idea what you’re starting,” he murmured, his voice becoming rough with restraint.
“Maybe I do,” she whispered back, shocking herself with her own boldness.
She felt him throb under her hand. The guilt twisting in her stomach only made her wetter. This was wrong. So fucking wrong. But the tent felt like another world. Somewhere isolated, in secret, theirs. Richard rolled onto his side to face her. In the dim moonlight, she could see the hunger in his eyes. His free hand reached out, hesitant at first, then bolder. His large palm settled on her hip, sliding down to cup her ass and pull her closer. Their bodies pressed together. Chest to chest. His hard cock trapped between them.
“You’ve been driving me crazy for years,” he admitted in a low growl, as he allowed his forehead to rest against hers. “Walking around in those tiny shorts… pretending you hate me when I can see how you look at me.”
Millie whimpered. Her hand slipped inside his shorts, wrapping around his thick, bare cock for the first time. It felt hot, velvety, and pulsing. She stroked him slowly, learning the feel of him.
“Richard…” she moaned softly.
“Call me Daddy,” he whispered against her ear, voice dark and commanding. “Just for tonight.”
A fresh wave of shame and arousal crashed over her. “Daddy…” The word felt filthy and perfect on her tongue.
His hand slid between her thighs, cupping her soaked pussy through her shorts. “So fucking wet already,” he groaned. “My dirty little girl.”
He pushed her shorts aside and dragged two thick fingers along her slick folds. Millie gasped, her hips bucking into his touch. He circled her swollen clit with practiced precision, then dipped a finger inside her.
“So tight,” he murmured, making his fingers move inside of her slowly. “You’re going to feel incredibly stretched around my cock.”
Millie stroked him faster, thumb swirling over the leaking tip. Precum coated her fingers, making the glide smoother. She wanted more. She needed more.
“Daddy, please…” she whimpered.
Richard pulled his fingers out and brought them to his mouth, tasting her with a deep, satisfied groan. Then he gently pushed her onto her back and moved down her body. He peeled her shorts off completely, spreading her legs wide. The cool night air kissed her dripping pussy. For a moment, he just stared, breathing heavily.
“Look at this pretty little pussy,” he growled. “All wet for your stepdaddy.”
Millie covered her face with her hands in embarrassment, but her hips lifted toward him anyway. Richard gripped her thighs and buried his face between them. The first long, slow lick from her entrance to her clit made her cry out. He licked her like a man starved in deep, hungry strokes, sucking gently on her clit before fucking her with his tongue. Millie’s hands flew to his hair, gripping tight as pleasure tore through her.
“Oh god… Daddy… fuck…”
He groaned against her, the vibration making her thighs shake. Two thick fingers pushed inside her again, curling against that perfect spot while his tongue worked her clit relentlessly. Increasing his pace gradually. Millie came hard, biting her lip to stifle her moans, body arching off the sleeping bag. Richard didn’t stop. He kept licking her through the orgasm, drawing it out until she was trembling and oversensitive. When he finally pulled back, his chin glistened with her juices. He crawled up her body and kissed her deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
Millie reached for his cock again, stroking desperately. “I want to taste you too, Daddy.”
Richard’s eyes darkened. He knelt beside her head, guiding his thick cock to her lips. “Open that pretty mouth, baby girl.”
She did. The head of his cock stretched her lips wide as she took him in, sucking eagerly. He was so big she could barely handle half, but she tried, bobbing her head and using her hand on the rest. Richard’s hand tangled gently in her hair, guiding but not forcing.
“That’s it,” he praised, voice strained. “Such a good girl sucking Daddy’s cock.”
The dirty words made her moan around him. She sucked harder, hollowing her cheeks, tongue swirling. Richard’s hips rocked gently, fucking her mouth with careful restraint.
“Fuck, Millie… you’re going to make me cum if you keep that up.”
She wanted it. She wanted to taste him. But Richard pulled out with a groan, breathing hard.
“Not yet,” he said, his voice rough. “I want to feel that tight pussy first.”
He moved between her legs again, rubbing his thick cockhead up and down her soaked slit. Teasing her entrance. Making her whimper with need. Millie looked up at him, eyes glassy with lust and lingering shame.
“Daddy… please ruin me.”
(Millie POV)I picked a fight at six forty-five on a Wednesday evening because I am not, at twenty-three, the kind of woman who is good at waiting for explanations at night. I had been good at waiting for explanations for months. I had been good at waiting at the lake, in the garage, on the kitchen counter, in the pantry, on the lawn at the lake shore, in his bed, on the back porch, under the throw blanket in front of the bay window. I had been waiting with my body the way a person waits at a bus stop in the rain. I had been waiting for him to come to me with the explanation. He had not come. Adrianna was downstairs making dinner. He was not coming tonight either, and I was tired of being the woman he had spent the afternoon not coming to.“Mother,” I said at dinner.“Yes, baby?”“Did you ever have a roommate named Vivienne?”The kitchen went quiet in the way kitchens go quiet when something has been said that someone was not expecting. Adrianna set her fork down. “Vivienne Ashford?”
Richard POVThe photo came in at 11:48, three minutes after Millie came home and told me about the woman at Mercury.Vivienne Ashford — 11:48 AM[photo attached]The photo was of Millie. From this morning. From Mercury Café. From the booth next to mine. Millie was looking down at her toast with the angle that she holds toast when she is cutting it with a knife to make it easier to butter, and the reflection on the back of her phone was caught in the photo at the corner, and in the corner you could just make out the faintest suggestion of auburn hair, which was mine, which was Vivienne's, which was the only thing about Vivienne I have ever been able to identify at a distance.The caption read: “Pretty and young. Does Adrianna know? — V”I had been sitting at the island with a glass of water I did not want, watching Millie sleep in our bed and not yet going to her, not because I was being careful but because I was being afraid, and the photo came in, and the photo did the thing Vivienne
Millie POVMercury Cafe on a Wednesday morning is a thing I have learned to love. I sit at the corner table by the window and I order the same thing every time. A lavender latte and a piece of toast I do not finish, because Mercury is the only place in town where my mother has never once in my life walked in and asked for the check. Mercury is Adrianna-safe. Mercury is mine. I was on my second lavender latte when the woman sat down at the table next to mine. I did not look up. I do not look up at strangers at Mercury. I look up at Adriannas and Richards and Mrs. Halbrooks and the friendly checkout kid at the bookstore who will not stop making eye contact with me because I am, in his peripheral vision, possibly the twenty-three-year-old woman of his dreams. I do not look up at strange women. But the strange woman was looking at me. I know this because I was holding my toast at the angle that you hold toast when you are cutting it with a knife to make it easier to butter, and I was look
Richard POVShe had put the phone back in the wrong place.I notice where my phone is the way I notice where my keys are. I always notice. The phone is a MagSafe to a stand on the nightstand I put it on. The stand is angled at forty-five degrees toward the bed. The phone charger cord runs under the nightstand in a particular coil I have done every night for three years. The phone is always at a particular angle on the stand. Tonight the phone was at a different angle. The angle was off by perhaps ten degrees. The angle was off because a woman had picked it up and put it back and had tried to put it back exactly the way she had found it. Millie had picked up my phone.I did not say anything. I went into the bathroom. I looked at my own face in the mirror and what I felt about this was complicated. Shame because she had caught me, shame because she had caught me seeing someone I had not yet told her about, and something small and ugly underneath both of those, which was satisfaction. M
Millie POVThe pause lived in my chest for two days.“There's no her,” he had said. “There's no her.”But he had not said “there was never a her.” He had said something smaller, slower, more careful, and the space between “no her now” and “never a her” was the space I had begun to live in. It was a small, ugly furnished room of a space, and I had moved my things into it without deciding to. Adrianna was back. Friday at sundown, pink suitcase, perfume cloud, three new stories about Marcy and Dee and cousin Pippa that I would not remember by Sunday. The cab dropped her at the curb. Richard kissed her in the driveway. Long. Loud. The little practiced sound.“How was Tahoe, baby?” “Divine, just divine, you have to see this cabin, Richard, this… Richard, did you water the ferns? Millie's birthday gift… of course, the closet… of course.”I watched her unpack her suitcase in the master bedroom down the hall and I stood in the doorway of my own bedroom and I knew exactly what she had packed
Richard POVIt rained on the Thursday of the five days. Adrianna would not call it rain. She would call it "a little weather" if she were here, and she was not here, so I let it be rain. We could not go outside. Millie brought the throw blanket from the couch and laid it on the rug in the living room in front of the bay window, because the bay window looked out at the street and she wanted to see the street. She had been wanting to see the street a lot this week. She had a thing about Mrs. Halbrook now. I did not like the thing about Mrs. Halbrook. I did not like that Millie had started watching the neighbors on my behalf because I had asked her to and because watching the neighbors was not something I wanted her to have to do. I sat down on the rug beside her. She leaned into me immediately with the small cold thing of her fitting against the warm thing of me, cheek on my shoulder, hip against my hip.“We're playing a game,” she said.“What game.”“Truth. Dare. Quarters. Whatever.”I







