“Have you had a pleasant day?” He tried to keep his voice normal.
“Oh, I've had a wonderful day, papa.”
“Has Cesare been good to you?”
She looked up at him and he could see those deep eyes in the moonlight! They were not a bit apprehensive, but she was searching his eyes, as if wondering.
“He's always good to me, father. I sometimes think he'd die for me.”
“A very romantic notion, my dear young lady. Maybe you mean you'd die for him, eh?”
He squeezed her shoulder and ran his hand down her arm, as if in affection. She moved her other hand onto his and pressed it.
“Perhaps that is what I mean, papa. I never feel I can hide anything from you.”
“Ah, you'll learn, my sweet, to have admiration for others than your brother.”
“Oh but I have, papa. I love you at least as much as Cesare.”
Am I reading into those words what I want to read into them, the Cardinal asked himself? Are they as innocent as they could be — were it not for what I'd witnessed this afternoon? Or is she really being provocative again in a way that only a she-devil could be?
He bent and kissed the top of her golden head, moving his hand from her shoulder, under her armpit so that his fingers lay lightly along the outside bulge of her womanly breast.
“You speak like someone very old in years, my dear.”
“I often feel very old in years, father. Much older than Cesare.”
He laughed gently. The breast under his fingers was solid and sleek-feeling even through the nightdress. He longed to tear off that flimsy garment and grasp her breast in his hands while he devoured her lips and felt his penis riding up between her thighs.
“Well, you'd better go to bed,” he said. “Come, I'll carry you.”
And with that he reached down and swung her from her feet, insuring as he did so that his arm rested under her thighs with his hand against the intimate, rounded crevice formed by the tops of her thighs and the beginnings of her buttocks.
He swung her playfully to and fro once or twice, enabling himself thus to let his hand slip, as if accidentally, between her legs where he could actually feel the slim flanges of her sex.
“Oh, papa!” she uttered sharply. And then she added quickly, to hide the real motive for her cry: “I thought you were going to drop me.”
“Drop you,” he cried jocularly. “As if I'd drop my beautiful daughter.”
He swung her again, his hand slipping along her vaginal lips with every movement. She threw back her head over his arm and closed her eyes with a smile on her lips.
Got you now, my beauty, he thought. A little more of this and you're mine.
“Heave ho, heave ho!” he cried in a jolly tone, while his hand pressed and slid along her vagina which he could clearly feel through the thin cloth.
For a minute or two he swung her back and forth, turning in an occasional circle, raising her, lowering her, all the time his hand working on that newly-initiated core of her being. She remained with her head back, laughing nervously every now and then, saying “Oh, papa!” and flushing with ill-concealed excitement for the rest.
Suddenly, his intruding hand felt wetness through her gown. His hand slipped more easily against her vagina. She was getting really excited. The time had come where a facade of fun and games was no longer necessary.
He carried her to the bed and laid her out on it. He stood up then as if to go, eager to see her reaction. She opened her eyes. Her position was one of abandon, with her legs apart under the nightshift.
“Kiss me goodnight, papa,” she said. And it seemed to him that even if he made no further move she would embark on an attempt at seduction.
He leaned down over the bed. Her beautiful young face with those full, indefinitely formed lips was very close. She put up her arms and caught his neck to pull his head down. He kissed her on the lips and it was certainly like no father-and-daughter kiss they'd ever had before. He felt those soft lips pushing hard against him, heard her body rustling, knew that she was rubbing her legs together.
Even now, for the last vestige of delicacy, he pretended to lose his balance as she pulled his head. He tumbled down beside her on the bed. She was still kissing him, but now she released him and laughed delightedly. Such a laugh, he thought. It was a mixture of amusement at his fall, of sensuality, of nervous excitement, of triumph — yes, perhaps, even triumph.
“You little minx,” he said aloud.
“Why little minx, papa, darling?” she asked.
“I heard you 'darling' Cesare by the pool today,” he retorted. “If I were a father like some I'd send you to a convent.”
Lucrezia was obviously taken aback, but his attitude reassured her.
“Didn't you mind, papa? Was it very wicked?”
“Very wicked in the eyes of the world, my dear. But, in your father's eyes it was enviable.”
“Papa — are you going to kiss me goodnight again?”
Her thighs were working together and the gown rising and falling. from her breathing. With an ecstatic sigh he kissed her mouth, hard and then harder, forcing her lips apart so that his teeth grazed hers before he pushed his tongue through and into her mouth.
His hand went away, wandering over her body, trembling over the luscious, still-hidden flesh. He reached right down to the hem of her gown and slid his hand along her leg, up over the knee and up the thigh. He played with the thighs, teasing them with his fingertips, drawing his nails over the glossy, young flesh, right up to her vagina, teasing her without touching her cranny. She moved and slithered on the bed, eyes closed, in a heat of sensuality.
He too was fluttering inside. This was it. This beautiful, precocious daughter of his with her firm, fleshy body was his. His penis was taut with strain. He moved his mouth from hers and ran his lips over her slim, soft face.
“Put your tongue in my mouth,” he murmured.
Her lips sought his and then he felt the soft, wet sliver of her tongue edge between his lips and push into his mouth. She flicked it in and out like a cobra; she breathed into his mouth, breathing her passion.
Good God, your mother would never believe it, he thought.
He sucked her tongue, his saliva mingling with hers. He forced it to retreat with his, filling her mouth with his, like a prick in a wide-open female orifice.
Her hands moved around his head and neck the way they had around Cesare's, but occasionally they jerked when his experienced technique gave her more of a shock.
Softly he began to brush her labia with his fingertips. Gently, gently, back and forth, until the moisture began to ooze out and trickle along her smooth, young thighs. Then he moved the lips apart and inserted two fingers, searched for and found the wet, hard little clitoris. This was something Cesare hadn't known. He'd have to tell him.
Gently he massaged it, feeling it thicken, harden in his fingers. Lucrezia began to squeal and jerked her head away from his and then back in little gusts of uncontrollable passion.
He caught the bud of flesh between two fingers and nipped it, drawing his fingers from its base up to the hard little point.
“Oh, papa! Oh, papa!” she squealed and thrust her tongue wildly into his mouth the way he'd instructed her.
The Cardinal, his face hot, perspiration beading on his almost bald pate, worked his fingers along the inside of the lips, easing them apart until he found the little hole nestling between them. He wormed his finger into it, pushing up through the tight, moist flesh which was as wet and smooth as sealskin. Lucrezia jerked and pressed her thighs tightly over his hand, hindering his progress. He felt the warm flesh of her thighs bulging around his hand. Gently he tickled her vagina with his fingers and gradually she relaxed again and opened her legs.