Off Limits

by Astra Rose

It’s been a year since I saw my stepfather—a really long, fucking difficult year—and heat rushes to my face as I step towards him, tears threatening.

he’s feeling: relieved, worried, emotional.

And his smell! I forgot how warm, clean, and comforting it is. I take a deep breath and let my body melt into his, enjoying the feeling of safety and security in his arms. It’s the first respite from constant anxiety that I’ve had in months.

Jean-Luc is my father in nearly every imaginable way. It feels like a betrayal that I stopped calling him that.

Sure. I’m fine. My mom ran off five weeks ago and the electricity just got shut off. Couldn’t be better.

the reason I didn’t call him when I began to wonder how long I could make the canned food last. I was ashamed to have him find out that we were here, ashamed of my mother’s behaviour, her tricks.

Tall and powerful-looking, with thick, wavy hair, dark brown eyes, and that cleft right in the centre of

I still can’t imagine why she ever wanted to be with those other men. At forty years old, Jean-Luc is exceptionally handsome, even to my seventeen year old eyes.

I love

that he’s already calling it my room.

Bunners was the first piece of Jean-Luc I could grasp and hold on to, and even now it reminds me so comfortingly of being a

child in Jean-Luc’s care. How safe he always made me feel, how he was always there for me.

But when I carry the dishes to the table, I nearly trip over my own feet at the sight of her back.

I can’t deny that she’s even prettier than Melanie ever was. Her mouth is plumper. Her eyes, the same shade of icy blue, are wider and more innocent. She doesn’t have Mel’s jaded, suspicious look.

She laughs—a little bitterly, I think. “No. And she didn’t answer any texts about that. So yeah…no.”

“I’m so happy you’re here, sweetheart. And I’m going to take care of absolutely everything. There’s nothing you have to worry about.”

I push the red curls off her forehead, gazing tenderly at her soft, flawless face, slack in repose. At my touch, her eyelids flutter lightly and then still, her long, thick lashes resting on her cheeks.

But when I feel my cock start to stiffen in my pants, I’m yanked back into reality with a searing sense of shame.

“Dani, there’s no way that’s an approved way of wearing your uniform.”

I lean into the solid mass of him, feeling grateful, suddenly, to have had the time with him on the way home instead of Kye. Kye might be the hottest guy in school but there’s something about Jean-Luc that makes me so happy. He’s so warm and strong and safe.

Melanie is selfish, chaotic, and destructive in the immediate pursuit of whatever has caught her fancy.

Dani, sitting beside me on the couch, slips her small hand into mine and I squeeze it but let go. I don’t think we should sit in front of a social worker holding hands, but I know that Dani is trying to

comfort me—as if it’s the job of a child to comfort her father.

Melanie had gone to the wrap party for the movie she’d been doing makeup on and gotten into drugs with the lead actor. They ended up flying to Los Angeles for a week, binging on coke and sex, until his PR agent broke up the party and Melanie cam...

Eighteen is not old enough. But then again, I would never abandon Danica at any age.

I unzip my pants and push down my boxers, laying out on Danica’s bed on my back. I’m hard—I’m so inappropriately hard—and I circle the soft silk of the purple panties around my shaft and then use my hand to stroke it up and down, the fabric so smooth and soft it’s almost like a woman’s tongue.

When I come, I cup the panties around the head of my cock, spilling into them like it’s a willing mouth, gasping for breath on my stepdaughter’s bed.

In all that time, I wonder, did he ever think about what it would be like to kiss me?

“Baby.” Jean-Luc pulls me in towards him, and I let him enfold me, pressing my cheek against the soft cotton of his t-shirt, with my arms hanging limply at my sides. For a moment I battle with myself. Something heavy and hot swells in my chest, a balloon of grief rising up through my rib cage and pressing against my heart.

how strong he is, how tall. The defined angles of his face, how broad and firm his jaw is, with the cleft right in the centre of it. And the fierce passion in his dark eyes, so different from his cool and restrained manner, hinting at something so powerful inside.

“You know no boy could ever compare to you.”