The Stepdaughter's Blackmail

It was getting dark. I was lying in my room when a brief, painful memory surfaced out of nowhere.

One year and four months. Enough time, apparently, for the rest of the world to move on. Not enough, in my head, for anything to feel normal again.

I remembered the hospital more than I wanted to — the smell of hand sanitizer, the low beeping of the monitors, my mother’s hand growing lighter and lighter inside mine. I also remembered, with a guilt I never quite knew where to put, how my father had thrown himself into work afterward, as if operating on more patients could somehow make up for not being able to save his own wife. And I remembered how, months later, he had come home with a different light in his eyes — a light I should have been happy to see, and that instead left a strange knot in my throat.

Eva. An elegant, sensual investment manager with a body that would make any woman envious. I admit that, every now and then, I caught myself trying to hide the way my eyes devoured her curves. She had a controlled laugh and an untouchable posture, but the intrusive thoughts spoke louder. Out of nowhere, images would come of me messing up that perfect hair of hers on purpose, yanking it hard while burying my face in her neck, and… I confess, it wasn’t the first time I masturbated while imagining with full force the feeling of that hot, wet tongue sliding over my pussy. I felt bad the first time I came. The second time too. The third as well. It ate at me, but in the end I just took a deep breath and let life go on. Hormones. Always the hormones’ fault. Never mine.

Fuck, I had never felt attraction toward women older than me. I mean, a five-year difference was fine, but Eva was thirty-eight if I wasn’t mistaken. She had literally more than twenty years on me. And still… that energy of a grown woman with her life completely figured out made my teenage hormones — my main excuse — tingle every now and then.

My father introduced her as “an incredible person who showed up right when I least expected it.” I smiled, shook her hand, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine, and said all the right things while my body tightened at that presence, that perfume, that mature, adult energy. And inside, all I felt was the emptiness of comparing, without meaning to, every single gesture of Eva’s to what my mother would have done in her place.

The worst part hadn’t been the first meeting. It was the dinner two months later, when my father was already talking about “making things official.” Eva had been polite the entire night — the kind of polite you are with a new employee, not with a near-stepdaughter — until the moment I accidentally spilled a little wine on the white tablecloth. Something so trivial, but not to her. Her smile didn’t falter for even a second, but the comment, soft, almost inaudible, stayed burned into me, along with a subtle yet unmistakable look of disdain: “Well, she’s still a teenager. I’m sure she’ll learn with time.” A small sentence. A sentence any reasonable person would say I was overreacting for being hurt by. But I knew, right then and there, with absolute certainty, that Eva didn’t like me. And she probably never would. I could feel it.

That was why, when my father knocked lightly on my bedroom door that night, with that hesitant way he only used when he was about to ask for something difficult, my stomach was already tightening before he even opened his mouth.

“Can I come in, sweetheart?”

“You’re already in,” I answered, trying to sound lighter than I felt, glancing over my phone while scrolling through meme reels on Instagram.

My father sat on the edge of the mattress. The initial silence of someone who doesn’t quite know what to say stretched until he finally broke it.

“I’m going to travel next month. That conference in Frankfurt, remember I told you? Three weeks.”

“Yeah, I remember.” I let out a deep sigh, already sensing the rest.

“I wanted to ask you something.” He took a deep breath back, the same way he did before delivering difficult news to a patient. “I’d like you to stay at Eva’s house while I’m gone.”

The silence that followed lasted only a few seconds, but it felt much longer.

“What?! Dad, no. No way.” That was all I managed at first. Then the words came faster, as if they had been trapped behind my teeth waiting for the right cue. “I-I can stay alone, or at Aunt Marisa’s, I don’t know. Why do I have to go there?!” My voice went high, instantly giving away the nervousness.

“Because I think it’s important for you two to get closer.” His voice was gentle, but firm. “You barely know each other, Bia. And I really want us to become a real family. Not just for the casual dinners. You haven’t even met her daughter yet. Your… your sister, so to speak.”

Sister… such a strong word for a family I barely knew and that already seemed to hate me.

“Eva doesn’t like me, Dad.” I heard my own voice tremble a little in the middle of the sentence and hated it for that. “She’s polite, perfect, but you can feel it. She looks at me the way someone looks at a spoiled child. Not to mention those little digs and those damn looks she keeps throwing, like I’m some fucked-up brat.”

“That’s… that’s not fair, sweetheart.” My father frowned. “Eva is trying, in her own way. She hasn’t had much practice with… this kind of closeness. She’s a single mother, came from a turbulent relationship in the past. It’s normal for her to be this closed off. It’s emotional self-defense. And let’s be honest, you haven’t exactly made it easy in the last few meetings either.”

“I haven’t made it easy?” The indignation rose fast, hot, behind my eyes. “I was polite, Dad. I smiled, I talked, I did everything right. But every single second I saw those cutting looks, I saw the disdain on her face, I heard those little contained mocking laughs. The problem isn’t me!”

“I’m not saying the problem is you.” He ran a hand over his face, tired. “I’m just saying relationships take time. And that time isn’t going to happen if everyone keeps avoiding each other.”

My gaze went distant for a moment before focusing back on the absurdity of it all.

“She’s going to treat me badly, Dad. I can feel it. And if I’m going to be treated badly, I’d rather stay alone.”

“And if she does,” my father said, softer now, moving a little closer, “I want you to tell me. I promise I’ll listen. But give it a chance before deciding it’s going to go wrong, okay? For me. I don’t have any solid argument, but I’m asking from the heart.”

“Hmm… Fine… Fine,” I said at last, my voice lower than I wanted, defeated. “I’ll go.” It was useless to argue once he got an idea into his head.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” He smiled, relieved, and kissed the top of my head the way he had been doing since I was six. “It’ll be good. You’ll see. It’s all just that stubborn little head of yours exaggerating.”

I didn’t answer. I kept staring at the door long after he left, with that strange, familiar feeling of having given in not because I agreed, but because I loved the person asking too much, and I hadn’t known how to say no to him ever since the two of us had become, even without ever saying it out loud, all that was left of each other.

In the following days, packing my suitcase became an exercise in pretending everything was fine.

I folded the clothes with exaggerated care, as if precision could somehow make up for the urge to just throw everything into the backpack, tell Eva to go fuck herself, and cancel the trip at the last minute. Every piece I packed came with a thought I tried, without much success, to push to the back of my mind.

“Fuck… Three weeks… Just three damn weeks. That’s all. But… Look on the bright side, at least she’s hot. The view won’t be bad. And her daughter, if she’s really like the photos I saw, is a cutie. Oh my God… I’m so fucked.”

On the last night, my heart was racing, anxiety pounding. I couldn’t hide the disappointed expression that refused to leave my face.

“I deserve this… I deserve this… What a fucking agony.” That was the last thing I remember murmuring before falling asleep.

—

“You like that? You like me sucking this little pussy?”

“Hmmm… Yes, I love it when you suck me.”

Eva stared at me with that filthy look while her mouth was between my legs. I felt her thick, wet, soft tongue sliding through my folds, sucking hard on my clit. I moaned loudly, my hands buried in her hair, forcing her against my pussy.

“Fuck… suck this pussy. Suck it hard… Ngh…”

Her mouth didn’t stop. The wet suction, her tongue flicking against my clit making a filthy wet sound.

I arched, felt heat surge through my lower belly and explode. I came, came in her mouth while she sucked me, while her tongue danced. My legs trembling, my pussy pulsing around her mouth, my cum dripping down my ass. She licked everything, covered in it.

She climbed up. I felt her weight on top of my body.

“That’s it… Now suck these tits. And shove your hand in this pussy…”

I sucked her hard nipple while two of my fingers pushed into her wet cunt. She rolled her hips, moaning low:

“That’s it… good girl… fuck your new ‘mommy’ with your fingers. Deeper. I want to cum on your hand, you little slut. Your father has no idea his sweet little daughter is fingering his wife, that clueless son of a bitch…”

Her pussy clenched, wet, hot. I sucked her tits hard, teeth on her nipple, while my fingers thrust in and out fast. She came on top of me, her cunt contracting, her juices running down my fingers and soaking my bed.

“Ah!… Fuck… What the hell kind of dream was that?”

I woke with a jolt, spasming on the bed. A dream. And one of those dreams. I can’t say it was bad, but it was completely random. It was the first time I had ever dreamed about Eva. I didn’t know what to feel about it, so I just ignored it. Probably all the stress had caused it, and my repressed desires helped too, I don’t know.

I got up and finished getting ready for the big day. I could still feel the texture of her tongue down there, still feel the heat. I brushed my teeth hard and tried to clear my mind, shoving the whole thing into the background.

Finally, my father knocked on the door to say the Uber was already waiting downstairs. I went down the stairs with my face locked in the same expression. I couldn’t hide it, and I didn’t want to.

He hugged me tightly at the gate, the hug a little longer than usual, as if he also knew, deep down, that he was asking for something hard.

“Take care, okay? Anything happens, call me. You two are going to get along. I can feel it.”

“Sure… I can’t wait.”

The car pulled away. My father waved through the window until the corner, and then it was just the road, and the suitcase in the back seat, and the address I had already memorized without meaning to from looking at the map on my phone so many times — a house in a neighborhood I didn’t know, in the life of a woman I was certain didn’t want me around.