Kat and I were rabid all summer.

When we returned with Light in the secrecy of our love from our springtime trip south, Katherine and I could hardly keep apart from one another. Agatha, my wife, had taken her own trip while we were gone--off to see her sister in Maine--and I had hoped against all logic that she would have chosen to stay there for another week, another month, or, better still, that she would melt away to nothing in the heat of the passion I had awakened for my daughter.

Katherine was her mother come again, a radiant summer in all climates, a mischievous ball of golden energy, and mine. I had thought that in her mother's mythic reincarnation, life might have returned to the way it was before her death, before Agatha, before I became old in my time.

Lying with Katherine in the sweat of early spring, I felt old for the first time. Where my body had gone soft with age and atrophy, hers remained hard and young. Her fingers traced the crow's feet around my eyes and mine followed the curve of her supple lips. My hair grayed and thinned and hers shone with the glimmer of life. In my lust, in my madness, I came to believe her a woman out of my youth, my wife plucked from time and all collapsed in on itself. It was for me to live my life again.

But when we returned, Agatha was still there, a haunted shadow of Katherine and her mother--the women I loved--to wedge us apart.

I kissed her hello, as I was expected to, and saw the first shadow pass over my daughter's unlined face.

Our first night home, Kat and I stayed up late with Agatha, drinking and regaling her with real and imagined stories from our trip--recalling our first night of passion as a cramped, uncomfortable stay in a single bed. The telling and the recollection of the truth of that night brought a hardness to my cock.

Agatha retired early and Kat returned to my arms. She fit there better than Agatha ever had. We pressed our lips together and when she came away, I saw tears blur her clear eyes.

"Is this over?" she whispered.

She had given voice to what I had feared. She had seen the same truth that I knew--it had to be over. And yet...

"No," I said. "It can't be over."

I held her closer to me, feeling gentle waves of sadness roll through her body. I was scared too, but certain. As certain Kat and I would be together as I had been moments ago that we must be apart. We would hide it if we had to.

After that night, we always found time for one another. The fantasy life I had imagined for us--one where I could take Kat for my wife--could never be, but whenever my real wife was gone, Kat found her way to my bed.

It happened in the middle of the day, during the hours we could snatch for ourselves when Agatha was at the grocery store or out for a walk. Kat would find me or I her, and we would fall together in a heap. In moments, she would be riding me, thrusting my cock up inside of her.

It would happen in the middle of the night. I would hear the floorboards creak or a lightswitch flick on and know Kat was awake. If my wife was soundly asleep, I would leave her in bed and pin my daughter against a wall in the hallway. Sometimes it would just be for a kiss. Sometimes it would be more. But always, I would steal back to my bedroom, thinking about the halcyon days when we were together openly.

But I loved her before the world, still, in my own way.

I bought her little gifts, sent her secret smiles that might have been from a father to a daughter but, in the silent revelry of our love, became more than that. I kissed her lingeringly on the cheek, slid hands along her lower back, brushed the hair out of her eyes to catch her loving glow--all of it in sight of the world shedding only a fatherly devotion. She returned the favors with surreptitious kisses and breast-pressing hugs in public and opened legs in private.

When we were apart, I felt as though I had died. I was alive only when we were together and when I was inside of her, I was in ecstasy.

During the summer, we could be together, alone in the wild. No one could begrudge a father long afternoon horseback rides in the woods with his daughter. None could suspect that anything was more than paternal about a father buying a second horse--a black stallion, Shadow, to Katherine's mare, Light--to share an interest with her. Long father-daughter visits to the barn were to be expected. Lengthy picnics in the woods were normal. 

So when I bought Shadow, Kat was thrilled and Agatha was worried.

"Can we afford this?" my wife had asked me in hushed tones when Katherine took the new horse out to the barn to meet Light. We hadn't boarded another horse with Katherine's mare since her mother had died, but we had the capacity and the feed.

I watched Katherine go, her hips swaying in tune to her blonde braid, bleached to a fine gold by the sun. She was wearing a cropped flannel shirt and tight riding pants. I happened to know there was nothing on under her shirt. It was her standard attire in summer--she was always ready to hop on her horse and go for a topless ride along the road.

"We'll manage," I told Agatha, dismissing her. My real love, the only woman I needed to approve had squealed in delight to see the horse. "It's been too long since I've ridden."

I followed Katherine out to the barn then, leaving Agatha behind in the house to glower disapprovingly at the purchase.

She was there, tucking Shadow away into his new stall beside Light, running fingers through his mane. I let the barn door slide shut behind me and wound my arms around her narrow waist, tucking my lips into the hollow of her neck.

"Do you like him?" I said.

She giggled and cringed away from me, tickled by my breath. I spun her around and pressed into her, planting a soft kiss on her lips.

"Yes, Daddy," she said when we broke apart. "I love him."

"We can go out riding together, now," I told her. "Just the two of us."

A devious glint touched her blue eyes and she kissed me again.

"Can we take him out now?" she said.

I smiled and touched my nose to hers.

"Shouldn't we give him time to settle in?" I said, slipping my hand under her loose-fitting shirt to take hold of an already hardening nipple.

Kat bit her lower lip, looking up at me.

"Is it okay?" she said. "Here?"

I slipped her top button open. Then another. I could see her tanned breasts poking out to greet me and bent to put her nipple in my mouth.

"Mmm," she moaned. "Are you sure?"

Through the little barn window, I could see the house and knew Agatha was there. Discovery was close. But my Katherine was closer and my cock was rising.

"In the loft," I said. "Quick."

Kat giggled and leapt for the ladder the led to the mostly empty hayloft. I pinched her ass as it went by and she stopped to stick out her tongue. I chased her up and threw my arms around her waist, wrestling her down, kicking and giggling into the hay.

Possessed by the sight of her beneath me, I tore her shirt the rest of the way from her shoulders hastily and took her breasts in my hands. I kissed her and felt her wriggling under my weight. She reached down and pushed her pants down around her ankles before reaching for my own pants.

She had them off just as fast and let me grind my hard cock against her panties.

"You want to fuck me, Daddy?" she said.

I pumped across her panties harder.

"Yes, baby," I said, quietly into her ear.

I reached down and peeled off her panties, pressing myself inside of her. Her back arched with pleasure as I went in and lifted her up into my chest. Her mouth found mine and her tongue searched hungrily for mine. I placed a hand on her throat and guided her back down into the hay. 

Her body glistened with sweat beneath me. Her hips rocked upwards into mine at a fever pitch. We came together, again and again, locked together like animals in hiding, hiding our secret from my wife in the house beyond. Kat stifled a few screams of pleasure as I pumped into her and exhaled a skittering of moans and squeals.

The whole barn seemed to shake until I exploded inside of her, collapsing into her, our sweat bodies collecting dust and straw and timber.

She kissed my ear, my cheek. I kissed my daughter's nose, then let our mouths become one.

"I love you, daddy," she said.

"I love you," I told her.

We lay there in the close summer heat of the barn loft for as long as we dared, until we dressed again, bridled the horses, and took Light and Shadow out into the woods for a ride, returning only in the evening when Agatha had left our dinner cold on the table.

That night, while sitting around watching TV, Katherine stole secret smiles from me and pecks on the lips when Agatha stepped out for the bathroom or for a drink. We had our secret then and we had our opportunity.

Summertime jaunts into the forests that surrounded our home became our cover. We could find a meadow and make love in the grass with our horses hobbled behind us. We could strip to nothing and swim in the deep river and kiss until our mouths were numb. 

The horses became our honeymoon, guiding us out beyond the prying eyes of those who wouldn't understand so we could be together properly, my Katherine and I. Katherine was golden in the summer. Her skin was bronze and her hair a sun-streaked white. Even on our rides together, she would take her shirt off and look teasingly at me until I heeled Shadow to a run to chase her to our secret place where I could undress her with my hands instead of my eyes.

The summer wore on in that way--green and gold, naked and hot. My muscles hardened from the riding and the fucking. And my skin turned the same shade as hers, shoulders tanning from when I lay on top of her in the open air. 

But August rolled away. And then September. Long summer afternoons dwindled and Kat and I would make our love in the mid-morning beneath the warm eye of the sun to ride home in the cool afternoons. Our rides grew infrequent, our physical love translated into significant looks, lingering touches. A shorthand of language grew between us beneath Agatha's unsuspecting eyes.

"I love you," I would say aloud and, when Kat returned the sentiment, we knew it went beyond what Agatha had heard.

I want you, I could say with a touch. You're beautiful and you're mine, she could say with a look.

Some things had to be said aloud to be heard, however. 

Katherine said it one afternoon while Agatha was five minutes gone on one of her walks and Kat and I briefly had the house to ourselves. I was drinking coffee over the paper, watching a wind gather in the trees, promising rain.

"Daddy," Kat said. "I think I might be pregnant."

I looked over at her, eyebrows raised. One hand rested on her flat stomach. Her clear eyes approached fear. I looked back out the window as yellow leaves drifted down from the trees.