I pulled Katherine into my chest, arms scraping against the cheap motel quilt. It was dark, but I could feel her eyes beating into mine. Our legs rubbed together. My arms slid down her body, feeling the spot where her t-shirt had rolled up and the soft crevices in her hips. Her nose touched mine.

I let my fingers slide up beneath Kat's shirt, remembering how she'd pulled out her bra before bed and left it dangling from the back of the armchair by the window. Her breath came heavily against my face. I could feel her writhing against me and the sheets, arching her back into me and away from me.

"Daddy," she whispered. "Take me."

My hand passed into the small of her back. I touched her shoulder blades, feeling her shirt rise up to her chest as my fingers cupped the back of her neck.

My daughter's lips pressed into mine. I let out a soft moan and forgave myself before pulling her shirt up over her head. Katherine, I thought to myself.

I knew it was wrong, but I hadn't planned it this way. In a way, we planned it together. In a way, it was inevitable.

Light returns about the same time every year. When the last snow melted and the first fields became ready for tilling, Kat and I would drive down to get him with my pickup and trailer. It was something we hadn't done together since she'd gone away to college, but now that she was home again, Kat was the first to tell me the trip was back on.

We talked about our trip every morning at the breakfast table. It could just have been that she was excited to see Light again, but I never thought so. It was her idea to turn the three-hour drive south into a father/daughter getaway. 

"We can visit the pier," she'd said. "By Singing Beach?"

"It's a little out of the way."

"So we'll make a day of it. Stay the night? Find a hotel somewhere. Get waffles in the morning?"

Kat had tilted her head to the side the way she had in every Facebook profile picture or whenever she wanted something she knew she couldn't have. I saw it last when she was looking at Joshua last summer long before I caught them together.

She'd started planning the trip the day after the snow storm, the day after our night in each other's arms. Whenever we talked about it now, I was reminded of how close we had come that night.

Over time the trip became two days, then three. Slowly, I came to feel guilty planning it in front of my wife.

But it was innocent. It wasn't different than anything Katherine and I would have done as a family before. Though it may have been the only time we'd ever planned something without my wife since her mother died.

"Daddy," she said one morning. "After we pick up Light we should rent you a horse and go riding on the trails down there. I found out about a place we have to try."

And so the trip became four days.

She reminded me of her mother more than ever when we were planning the trip--the way our plans grew and grew, the way she became more excited with each passing day. Agatha thought it was nice. She told me so while we lay awake in bed and she pawed at me.

"I love seeing you two together," she said. "You're so much happier with her home."

I fucked my wife out of guilt more than anything now, out of a sense that it was what I was supposed to do. All the while, I thought of Kat and being with her, seeing her pale skin glowing beneath me in the night. She was probably awake on the other side of that wall, listening. I wondered what she was doing, what she was feeling.

After a while, sleeping with my wife made me feel like I was cheating on my daughter. I felt guilty all over again for remarrying. Would it have been easier without Agatha around?

It was a warm winter that year. Kat started going out for walks, tracing the paths she would later ride with Light. I watched her go through the living room windows, remembering how I'd often catch sight of her bare chest riding along the county road. Her hips wove down the street and out of sight.

She'd come home and shed her winter coat, her scarf, her hat. She'd sweat through her tank top and would peel it off in the doorway while I watched. I would wait for her in the living room. Pretty quickly, she stopped wearing her bra. I would play at averting my eyes but twice, I caught her watching me look. Then she'd toss her dirty shirt into her room and step into the shower.

I'd hear the water hiss on, knowing it was running down her skin and wrapping her in a glistening cloak. She was so close and I wanted her.

And then we left and we were alone. I could have reached out and touched her face, her lips, her neck. She rode beside me in the pickup with the window down, looking from her phone to the dashboard, playing songs on the radio that I didn't know but would smile along to anyway, playing songs that her mother and I taught her, playing songs that she taught me. She was smiling and patting my arm and leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.

So we meandered south into western Massachusetts, stopping every time she saw a cute diner or a gift shop. We walked a trail together and she held my hand. We sat across from one another at lunch and dinner and her foot rubbed against my leg once or twice.

We slept in neighboring rooms at a bed and breakfast for our first night away together, the doors pressed up against each other with just a thin wall keeping us apart. We lingered two beats too long in the hallway to say goodnight. Wrapped in each other's arms, we said a whispered goodnight. I breathed her in and nearly asked her if she wanted to come into my room instead. We'd checked it out earlier. I had a double bed. She had a twin.

"Don't let me catch you with another woman in there, Dad," she had joked. "This is our weekend, remember?"

I caught a glimmer in her eye as she turned away for bed, as if she knew what I was thinking. As if she would have said yes. But we didn't have deniability then.

On our second night, after a day of wandering trails by the coast and sitting on cold March beaches, our hotel "misplaced" our reservation. We had ordered a room with two beds but they'd given it away to a family that had checked in early. When we arrived towards the end of our check-in window, all they had left was a king.

"We booked it weeks ago," I told the clerk.

"I'm sorry, sir. I see that," she said. "I assure you, our kings are plenty big for the two of you. I can comp your room service up to $25 for your inconvenience."

Katherine was waiting on a plush chair in the lobby, yawning, with her feet kicked over the arm. The only other hotel we'd seen on the way in was on the other side of town. 

"Fine," I said. "We'll take it."

In the elevator, we were alone. Kat entwined her fingers with mine and put her head on my shoulder. I didn't want her to let go, but I pulled us apart to unlock our hotel room door.

It was a nice room. The lobby clerk was right about the bed. Kat dropped our shared suitcase onto the floor at the end of the bed and sat down. She blinked at me while I eased the door shut.

"What should we do?" she said.

"I guess we should sleep," I said. "We have a few hours yet to drive tomorrow."

"No room service?"

"What would you get?"

"Nightcap?" she said, reaching for the menu in the nightstand.

So we ordered beers and someone from the kitchen brought it up to us. He looked past me and saw my Kat waiting on the bed. He raised his eyebrows in either admiration or interest. I scowled at him, took our beers, and didn't tip.

"I'm glad we did this," Kat said when I handed her a beer and sat down on the bed with her. "How long has it been since it was just the two of us?"

I was reminded of spending a night away with my wife when we had just met. She was so young then. I loved her like I love my Katherine. They were the same to me. It was the same love.

"Too long," I said. We clinked and drank. That was the only sip either of us had.

She was looking at me and nervously peeling the label off her beer.

"I'm glad we can do this," she said.

Then she leaned her head on my shoulder. I revelled in the contact, in our privacy. We relaxed into the pillows. We kicked off our shoes. I couldn't get up to switch off the light, but I was ready for bed with her.

Beer forgotten, we slipped under the covers. I felt her body moving against mine as she nestled into me. I could feel myself becoming erect. The last time this had happened, she was asleep. Now, I knew she could tell. But she didn't move away. Instead, she turned her hips so that my dick fell between her ass against the layers of our clothing.

We lay there, innocently denying what was happening for what felt like hours. Evening broke into night around us and I was still hard for my Kat, breathing into her ear as we pretended to try to sleep.

"Daddy?" she said.

"Yes, Kitty?" I whispered back, using the name I gave to her mother.

"I love you," she said. 

In response, I kissed her neck. I kissed her cheek, moving up to her ear. I could feel her skin tighten as she smiled. Then she turned her head around and held the back of my head with her hand. We kissed for the first time in a Massachusetts hotel room, far from home.

When we kissed, I gave her all of the feelings I had felt for her over the course of the year and she understood.

We played all night, kissing gently and removing each other's clothing at intervals of a half an hour, each time saying things like, "It's too hot," or "Does this bother you?" until finally I was in my underwear and Kat was in her panties without her bra. Still spooning, I felt her small nipples in my fingers. I began to rub my penis against her ass and lower back, involuntarily inching out of my underwear until I could feel her skin on mine.

"Yes, Daddy," she said, letting out the softest moan.

I ran my hands down her smooth sides and pushed her panties away. I entered her slowly, feeling her wet pussy give way to my erection.

I pulled her hips into mine, rocking her on the bed. We went gently at first, almost as though we were pretending it wasn't happening, like so long as we were quiet, it wasn't wrong. But as her pleasure increased, my self-consciousness fell away and I fucked her harder. I wound an arm around her neck and choked her.

I pulled out of her and looked into her eyes. She kissed me and we entered missionary position, looking at each other and kissing and fucking.

I finished inside of Kat and we fell asleep, wordlessly in love.

That wasn't the last time. As if we had been unlocked by the night before, Katherine woke me up with my dick in her mouth. I knew then that the night had not been a dream, nor a fluke. My daughter was as attracted to me as I was to her.

That was the day we picked up Light from the boarders. I borrowed a horse from the barn and together we wound our way through the trails of western Massachusetts, setting down from our mounts at regular intervals to kiss and play together in the woods. She rode ahead of me and twice turned around to bare her breasts in the afternoon light. I was reminded again of those long rides on the county road she would take in the summer, the rides that began my lust, and wondered if they had been for my benefit the whole time.

I spent my money with reckless abandon on wine and fine dinners. We happily shared whatever bed we were assigned no matter the size and lay together in marital bliss, unlike anything I'd had since my first honeymoon with Katherine's mother.

But we knew it couldn't last this way forever. We made good time on our last leg of the journey. Home was practically in sight but we weren't expected until the next day. Kat and I looked at each other. She placed her hand over mine on the gear shift.  

We got a room.