On the day before Christmas you can see two people threading their way through an overcrowded supermarket. One is a man, the other is a woman; he looks to be in his mid-forties while she can't be much older than eighteen. If that is not enough, the similarity of their features and the free-flowing conversation between them clearly marks them as father and daughter. Follow them for a few paces and you will hear him calling her Christina; his name we do not learn, because she simply calls him 'Pa'.

Christina's face is flush with excitement in a way you don't expect to see in a girl over the age of twelve. This is the first time since her parents' divorce four years ago that she gets to celebrate Christmas with her dad rather than with her mom and younger sister. She's always been a daddy's girl, preferring her father's straight and easygoing manner to the roundabout way in which her mother likes to do things, full of hints and implications so you're left to figure out on your own exactly what she is trying to tell you. With her father, she can simply chat away without fear of being misunderstood, because if Pa doesn't understand something, he simply asks.

So she's happily chattering away at his side, commenting on this and that and leaning on his shoulder every now and then, and he is laughing in all the right places and putting his hand around her hips and once, when she compares him very favourably with a fellow customer, he even kisses her on the forehead, making her blush and giggle. In many ways she feels as if the last four years had never happened, feels like the little girl of fourteen years who goes shopping on her daddy's arm, blissfully oblivious to the stresses that are tearing her parents' marriage apart.

Nothing of that matters now; the sad stories are a thing of the past. In the present she is at her father's side, as close to him as decency allows, and they indulge in consumerism, they encourage each other in shoveling things into their shopping cart simply because they like the looks of them or because they've never tried them before. At the peak of their shopping orgy they stand giggling in front of the spirits shelf for five minutes before deciding to buy the most expensive whisky the shop has to offer. "I've heard it tastes like rotten wood," her father says, "but I guess we'll have to see for ourselves."

Giddy with excess and surreality, Christina kisses her father on the cheek.

***

Two hours later, Christina's feelings are still hovering somewhere beyond reality as she undresses in her father's bathroom. The hot water pouring into the tub sends clouds of steam wafting all around her and she has to wipe the mirror with the corner of her towel before she can look at herself. There she is, naked and gleaming, her small nipples taut and dark with excitement, her face flushed with more than heat.

The moment she steps into the tub, she remembers that she has not locked the door. It's hard to tell now if she did that on purpose or not, and she doesn't want to think too hard about it. It's alright, she tells herself as she lies back and lets the warm water embrace her. It's alright.

Ten dreamy minutes later there's a knock on the door. "Everything alright in there?" her father asks.

Christina smiles: a lazy smile that belies the thrill suddenly coursing through her veins. "Sure," she says. "You can come in if you want, door's open."

She is lying supine in the bathtub, with only her head and knees above the water. When her father enters she has moved one hand between her legs in what looks like a protective gesture only at first glance; look more closely and you'll see her middle finger stretching and relaxing at regular intervals, so guess again what she's doing down there. She keeps her eyes on her father as he walks in and sits down on the rim of the bathtub. "Having it comfy there?" he asks, looking her in the eye, his face all gentle love.

"Very," his daughter purrs. "You want to come in?"

"I'd love to."

Christina watches in the cloudy mirror as her father pulls his shirt over his head, revealing a tanned, muscular breast. Then she closes her eyes and lets her hand drift lazily away from where it was, revealing her bush and the dark labia beneath. Let him see, she thinks, her eyes still closed. It's a very particular feeling, that, resting languidly, doing nothing but being seen.

She does not move when his feet break the water, so he has no choice but to make room between her legs. She feels the water level rise over her chin, his feet wriggling past her buttocks and coming to rest on either side of her waist, his fingers, then palms touching her knees and going away again. Then something hard and pointy, a fingernail probably, is softly sliding down the inside of her thigh, and she shivers, electrified.

***

"Wow," Christina breathes, letting out the lungful of air she's been holding for what felt like a thousand heartbeats. She is lying on her back on the bed, glistening with sweat, both her own and her father's who is still upon her, kissing the corners of her eyes and softly grinding his hips between her tender thighs. "Why did nobody ever tell me you're such a great lover?"

"Well," he says, equally out of breath, "I guess it's just one of the things that you don't talk about over family breakfast."

"But why?" his daughter protests. "I mean... why did I waste my virginity on that jerk Giorgio when it could have been like THIS?"

"That's Giorgio as in Lenny's boy Giorgio? Your cousin Giorgio?"

"Yeah, well it seems I've had that incestuous streak in me since the beginning." It's only now that Christina notices how she can't seem to stop smiling, and smiling in the broadest way possible, as she looks up at the patch of ceiling with the occasional wisp of her father's unruly hair protruding into it. "No, don't pull out just yet," she adds, clenching his hips with her thighs to emphasize her point. "Please, Pa, stay just a little longer."

She can feel his member slowly going limp inside her, easing the tension in her labia, but every now and then it still gives a little jerk as if hit by an electric shock, sending an ecstatic shiver all the way from the small of her back to the top of her head. To her relief, her father reverses his previous motion and instead pushes it back in as far as it will go.

"Yeah, well, that guy's really a jerk," her father says. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen. Barely."

"What?" His shock seems genuine, but at the same time Christina can feel his member hardening inside her, turned on by the thought of his barely pubescent daughter getting laid. "I mean, I thought you weren't sexually active until that thing with Carl..."

That thing with Carl, Christina thinks wistfully, when you came to knock on my door in the middle night to ask us if we could go at it a little more quietly, for the sake of your sleep and my little sister's. I was fourteen then, going on fifteen, and you knew very well there was no stopping me.

Now he does pull out, gently and tenderly, without reproach, and Christina closes her eyes once again as she feels her inner labia relaxing, slowly returning to their natural state. With a slow, luxurious gesture she slides one finger over her sweaty belly and between her legs, where she scoops up some of the semen that is drooling out between her labia in gelatinous blobs.

"And you taste better," she says after licking her fingers and relishing the unfamiliar aroma.

Her father smiles down at her gleaming body. "You're rather delicious, too," he says.

***

Wearing only a loose-fitting white shirt, Christina once again looks at her image in the bathroom mirror. Her nipples are still poking out through the thin fabric and she doubts that they'll get any rest as long as she's here, in her father's flat.

Her father is standing behind her, brushing his teeth with animal ferocity, and she flashes him a smile through the mirror. "Did we just actually do this?" she asks, as if awakening from a dream.

"Do what?" he replies, grinning.

Christina runs a hand down her body, over her sensitive breasts and belly down to her flushed thighs below the hem of the shirt. "Fuck like rabbits," she says.

"I think so." He moves one hand down to his crotch, grimacing a little as he cups his testicles. "Certainly feels like it."

"Can we do it again?"

You should see her now as her father sees her, her pink buttocks half-exposed under his shirt, the aroma of her arousal thick in the air. "You mean, like, now?" he asks, for the moment resisting the urge to grab one of these sweet firm hillocks, to slide his hand between them and push a finger up her still-wet pussy to see if she's ready for another round.

"I mean, like, whenever."

"Whenever you feel like it," he says.

His daughter turns around, clasping her hands behind her neck so that the shirt rides up to expose her swollen labia. "I do now."