The Libation
By Rex Antioch

    ‘Ariadne’, all fifteen meters of her, sliced her way easily through the blue Aegean with her white wings spread.
  The sea around us was empty from horizon to horizon apart from the last glimpse of Limnos far astern and a cruise-liner hull-down to the west, and I lay naked on the coachroof, soaking up the sun while my daughter Amelia stood her watch by the wheel in the cockpit.
My daughter had seen me naked before.  Not often, but often enough for her not, I hoped, to be bothered by it.  At home I’d walked naked between the shower and my bedroom, or sometimes swum naked in the pool, and if she’d seen me I’d made nothing of it as though it was the most natural thing in the world which, of course, it is.  I’d seen her naked, too.  Most often in the pool, white, lithe and glistening like a seal, and for all that the sight had made my heart pound and my blood sing I’d smiled and passed on as though unconcerned.  We’d seen each other naked on the yacht, too - two people cannot share a fifteen-meter yacht for five days without such intimacies -and I was well aware that my daughter now even enjoyed my seeing her naked while giving my nakedness a discrete close inspection, for what thirteen-year-old girl can be oblivious to the effect her body has on men and resist exploring the effect, even when the man is her father.
I had designed the whole month long vacation to meet the demands of her exploding sexuality.  Greece in the summer is sensuality given form.  We’d spent two weeks touring by land, drinking red wine in little candle-lit tavernas while my daughter enjoyed being undressed by the eyes of swarthy, dark-eyed, smooth-muscled Greek youths, or treading the hot sands of beaches beside the sparkling blue Mediterranean while college drop-outs from California made love to blond Swedish girls or teased frustrated German hausfraus with their fat, sweating husbands asleep on recliners beside them. We’d trod the ruins of Ancient Greece, admiring the statues of the athletes with their crowns of laurel and their limp stone penises, and sat on the worn steps of ruined temples while I had explained Sacred Prostitution to my daughter, in which every woman in the City was required for one day each year to go to the temple steps and have sex with the first man to approach her, be he king or beggar, old or young, hale or cripple.
Then we took over the ‘Ariadne,’ chartered for ten days and the long sail across the Aegean to the island of Lesbos where Sappho had lived, and we had anchored in quiet bays drinking red wine while I read Sappho’s poetry, some of the most erotic ever written, to my daughter.
Now we were sailing back to the mainland through Homer’s ‘wine-dark sea’ which had been furrowed by the keels of the Greek fleet en route to Troy to rescue Helen, the most beautiful woman to ever live, and only a few days of the holiday remained.  I had immersed my beautiful, virgin daughter in sex and now, only now, would I discover if she was ripe for plucking.
I could see her from the corner of my eye, sitting on the cockpit seat with a lazy hand looped over the chrome curve of the wheel, for the autopilot was steering and her main task was to watch the wind.  We were on a broad reach in a good, not too strong breeze with the genoa set and drawing well and the boom almost all the way out to the shrouds.  It was perfect conditions  for the spinnaker but for reasons of my own I hadn’t suggested setting it.
Amelia was topless in little tight shorts she was wearing only, I thought, because the plastic of the cockpit seats could get too hot in the sun for a bare bottom during the day.  Her little breasts were perfect, high on her chest and jutting yet far from fully grown, with tiny pimpled nipples at the centers of slightly protruding inch-wide discs of soft-pink aureol edged by a narrow rose-red ring where it met the smooth honey skin of her breasts.  She was in-between the straight-sided shape of a child and the hour-glass figure of a woman, with the first signs of a narrowing waist and the rounding of hips needed for childbirth, but I knew from my memories of seeing her naked that her bottom was rounding, her thighs were filling out and her legs were losing their boyish skinnyness for a feminine rounding of her calves and slimming around the ankles.
And I could remember from seeing her naked how that little mound, now covered with the first faint grown of soft golden fur, was beginning to pout at the join of her legs with, at its base, the deep, inviting head of the gorge that ran between them and from which I had sometimes glimpsed her tiny clitoris peeking shyly out at the world.
As I caressed my daughter’s breasts and clitoris in my mind my penis swelled to grow hard and rigid.  Lying on my back on a towel spread on the coachroof I took it in a hand and began caressing it, stroking it, rubbing the foreskin back and forth until it grew too long to be contained with the hood of skin.  Clearly in view of my daughter I masturbated, knowing she was watching, excited by the fact she was watching.
She had seen me erect before and was aware it was a sign of sexual excitement.  I had never before, though, drawn attention to it or overtly handled it as I was now.  Picturing my daughter’s breasts I stroked it and teased it. To the memory of that tight little crack between her legs and what lay within it I provoked it to orgasm.
A great gout of white semen fountained from it three-feet vertically into the air, for it was an orgasm which had been building for weeks as I, too, had been soaking in the raw sex of Greece with my beautiful, virgin daughter at my side.  Another and another, each not quite so big or so high but each falling back to spatter on my skin, my body convulsing and my penis jerking.  I did not look towards my daughter but knew she had to be watching, could not help but be watching in her fascination and curiosity.  My orgasm died to a weak trickle of white fluid and I sighed.  Then I rose, took one look toward Amelia to meet wide, startled eyes, and then dived from the coachroof over the rails into the sea.
I went deep, the bubbles hissing in my ears and the sea, the warmth of red wine, washing the semen from my body.  
I was risking my life.  Amelia knew what to do for we had practiced man-overboard often enough on our little sailboat at the lake at home.  But a little sailboat in a lake is not a sea-going yacht in a wide sea and we had always before been recovering life-jackets or squabs thrown overboard, with me there to help Amelia recover it.  Now she was on her own and if she messed up I could die.
My head broke the surface and I shook the water out of my eyes.  The yacht’s Danbuoy was bobbing ten feet away where Amelia had thrown it, the little flag on top of its pole flapping in the breeze, and ‘Ariadne’ was a long twenty yards away, already curving around as she turned downwind.
I swam over to the Danbuoy and let it support me as I watched my daughter handle my rescue. So far she had done everything right but it could still all go wrong for although the ‘man-overboard’ drill I had taught her was just a simple circle which should bring the yacht up into wind almost on top of the man in the water its disadvantage was that it involved a gybe, with the stern of the boat passing through the eye of the wind.  Making a mistake in sail-handling at that time could dismast a boat and although I knew the wind we had was not strong enough to do that to ‘Ariadne’ there was still ample opportunity for the girl to lose control.  If she regained it she would face at best face having to tack directly up to windward to find me again, a hard task solo.  If she didn’t she could quickly be carried far enough to leeward to lose sight of me and the Danbuoy completely.  Then her best bet would be to get onto the radio, but it would be hours before even a helicopter could arrive by which time I would be a very small dot indeed in a very large sea.  The Mediterranean in summer is not cold enough to kill by itself, but it quickly drains strength and even with the support of the Danbuoy I doubted I would survive a night.
With my life completely in my daughter’s hands I watched her avidly.
As the bow turned further downwind I saw her winching the main-sheet in furiously, which meant she’d already taken the genoa’s sheet off the winch and belayed it.  The boom crept inboard and the main blanketed the foresail which collapsed flapping.  “Don’t panic, Honey.  You’re doing fine,” I breathed across a hundred yards of water to my daughter.  The stern passed directly through the wind and the genoa opened with a crack on the other side, forcing the bow down.  The little girl in the cockpit turned from the winch to the wheel to compensate, and as she turned back to the winch the wind hit the other side of the mainsail and flung it and the boom across the boat.  The yacht swayed in the water to the shift of weight and driving force but my daughter was already at the wheel to correct.   The main and foresail bulged out in the breeze and sweetly ‘Ariadne’ picked up speed again, continuing the wide circle it needed.  As the bow came up to wind it obscured my sight of the girl in the cockpit, and also stopped her from seeing the huge sigh of relief I gave.
Growing comfortingly large again the yacht accelerated around the circle as the wind came around her beam and then slowed again as it headed her.  Finally she came to stop nearby head to wind and sails flapping - not as close as was possible perhaps, but close enough.  Towing the Danbuoy by one of its lines I swam through the easy swell to the stern and climbed back aboard by the ladder.
My little girl was standing by the wheel, her face ashen and her pert breasts rising and falling as she panted her fright and relief.  “Are you all right?” she asked.  “What happened?”
“Just testing,” I told her.  Her mouth opened and shut.  She knew as well as I what could have happened had she messed up.
“I knew you could do it,” I told her gently.  “But you needed to know it, too.”
She looked ready to cry so I set the Danbuoy back in its cradle on the stern rails and opened my arms to her.  She stepped into them and I hugged her small, lithe body to mine, crushing her breasts against me.  It was the first time ever I had felt them skin to skin, firm yet gloriously soft.
“Oh Honey,” I breathed into her hair as my penis threw off the effects of its immersion and stirred against her stomach, also skin to skin.  “I so much want to make love to you.”
She was still in my arms, her arms tight around me.  She could surely feel her breasts pressing against my chest, my penis throbbing against her.
“I’d like it too,” she whispered.
A dream come true.
I hugged her fiercely and kissed the top of her head.  “We’d better get this show back on the road first, though,” I said, and let her go.
I backed the genoa to bring ‘Ariadne’s head around and together we settled her back on her original course.  My daughter kept shooting me little glances, as though expecting me to begin having sex with her there and then, but for all that I was quivering with the need I was in no hurry.  Once the autopilot was reset I reminded Amelia it was still her watch and went below to wash the salt from my body.  Returning to the cockpit I took her a glass of chilled white wine, dew settling on the cold glass, and we went through the rescue step by step, discussing what had happened and if it could have been done better.  Then, as the air began to cool for the evening and the breeze began to drop as it usually did, I went below again and returned with our evening meal, a Greek salad.
I knew Amelia was puzzled, and wondering perhaps if she had really heard me say that I wanted to make love with her.  We had more wine with the meal and finished as the sea began to darken and the western horizon burned with a rose and gold sunset.  Against the rising dark to the east another cruise-ship - the Aegean is stiff with them in summer - twinkled like a Christmas Tree while the navigation lights of several other ships appeared against the horizon.  None, though, were within ten miles of us or coming in our direction.  I lit and checked our navigation lights and then hopped back into the cockpit.
Amelia was watching me and when I stood before her and held out my hands as though inviting her to dance she rose.  Gently I took her by the waist and kissed her, not as a father does a daughter but as a man does a woman.  Awkwardly, uncertainly, she kissed me back.  I slid my hands up her sides and down her flanks, behind her shoulders and then around to cup her little breasts.  Each one just filled one of my hands, already firm like a woman’s yet only half-grown.  I felt her very slightly press herself further into my hands and kissed her again.  
Her nipples were tiny and hard, like cherry-pips, and the small pink flower containing each one was softer than new snow. I toyed with them until I felt them protruding slightly and my daughter was pressing herself more fiercely into my hands, her mouth seeking mine and becoming more urgent.  Then I slid my hands down her flanks to the top of her cut-down denims, unsnibbed the rivet at the belt and unzipped the fly.  Gently I began easing them down over her hips but I could only reach so far.  At that point my daughter took over, wriggling them down her legs and kicking them through the companion hatch into the pilot’s berth.
Her stomach was flat and firm with the little pock-hole of her navel.  The mound of Venus below it was soft and velvety with the young virgin growth of her pubic hair and the crack below that, when I slid my finger into it, was dry and tight.
I sat down on the cockpit seat, misted with the forming dew, and pulled her with me into my lap.  I was running my hand more firmly over her body from breasts to thighs and dipping between her legs.  Shyly, uncertainly, she brushed my penis with her hand, took it away and then took it in her hand more firmly.  It twitched and pulsed against her fingers and palm and she giggled.
‘Ariadne’ was chasing the sunset, running easily in the dying breeze and pitching to a slow swell.  It was beautiful, perfect.  I was making slow love to my virgin daughter, bringing to life her sex and sexuality, showing her that sex is not shame but glory, that the fire of sex in her blood is the fire of life itself - and the brighter it burns the more life she has.  I parted my daughter’s knees with my hand and dipped my finger into her vagina, drawing it out slippery with her sex-dew which I spread around her little labia and clitoris.  Her tiny hand was stroking my penis, feeling the urgency of its need and power, and gentling it.  
We were alone on the vast sea, yet I could believe there were others on the boat with us, the spirits of those great women of legend who had sailed that same sea and were now watching and sharing my daughter’s discovery of her sexuality at her father’s hands, for such a thing was not unusual in Antiquity.  Helen, the cause of a ten-year war. Ariadne herself, dying for the want of Theseus’ love on the Island of Naxos nearby.  Persephone, sacrificed by her own father to gain the support of the Gods in his war against Troy to recover Helen. Iphigenia, lost and then recovered by the love of her brother Orestes. Sappho from the island behind us, versed and immersed in love
My finger had well-oiled my daughter and I whispered, “Would you like to try intercourse?” 
I felt her face her apprehension of that vast new step, brace herself and nod. “What do I do?” she asked.
My hands at her waist lifted her to her feet and turned her to face me.  I closed my knees and held my penis steady like a spike in my lap.  
“Straddle me and lower yourself onto it,” I told her.  “But no more than you want.  The first time can be painful and we can try again another day.”
I saw her lips narrow with determination as she moved forward to straddle my thighs.  The last golden light of the sunset painted her body, gilding her breasts and spread thighs. “Ariadne’ slid onward through the wine-dark sea, pitching gently like a living, breathing sea-beast and the water slipped whispering along her hull.  With her hands on my shoulders to steady herself, and mine at her waist to give support, my daughter lowered herself onto my penis.
My finger slipping into her vagina had warned me she was small, perhaps too small.  And she was a virgin.  I could feel the tip of my penis was at the entrance to her vagina, in the correct place, but when only the first half-inch was in her I could tell she was tiny.  It was as though I was trying to push my wedding ring down over my penis.  A fraction more and it was beginning to hurt me as my glans penis was crushed into too small a space.  It was hurting Amelia, too, probably more than me for she had her teeth bared in a small snarl of determination as she tried to force me into her.
She was shifting her hips slightly, trying to wind my penis further into her little vagina with tiny increments and changes of angle but as well as my discomfort I began to feel hers too and closed my hands on her waist.
“Enough,” I breathed, hugely disappointed.  “You’re not old enough yet.  We’ll try again later.  Maybe next year.”
She kept up the pressure a moment more, growling slightly, then the weight on my penis eased.
“You’re too big, dad,” she said accusingly and with, I thought I heard, a hint of disappointment of her own.  She was still kissing the tip of my penis with her vaginal lips and I leaned forward to kiss her on the lips and once on each nipple.
“Sorry,” I said.  
She lifted herself off me and a fluke of the easing breeze gusted across the yacht like a sigh of disappointment from the sea.
“Maybe....” my daughter said and turned back to me from the remains of the meal still set out on the navigation flap.  In her hands was a small glass flask I knew contained olive oil, best extra-virgin olive oil.  Amelia poured some into her hand and smeared it over my penis, the sight and sweet sensation of which nearly caused me to ejaculate into her face.
“Let’s try again,” she said and straddled me once more.
The oil helped a little, as did the fact that I’d lost a little of the rigidity of my erection in my disappointment and tried hard not to let my penis swell again.  Gritting her teeth my daughter wound me millimeter by millimeter into her vagina.  I could feel something resisting my advance, her virginity, and with a grunt Amelia forced herself down brutally against it.
My helmet popped through the gap in her pelvic girdle into the soft folds of her vagina beyond it, tearing her hymen on the way.  My daughter gave a little cry and, as though her knees had given way, she slid down my pole and her weight settled across my lap.
I held myself still for her, melting into the hot, tight clasp of her vagina around my penis as she recovered herself.  After a long moment she let her breath out with a whoosh and said, “Ouch!”
“Oh, Honey.”  I was awed and humbled by what she had done, more challenging by far than saving my life earlier.  “Are you all right?”
I felt her collect herself and straighten up in my lap.  In the last of the light I saw her wrinkle her face in thought and felt her shift her weight slightly as she explored the feel of the thing inside her.
“A bit sore,’ she admitted.  Then she linked her hands behind my neck and leaned back slightly to regard me thoughtfully, her little breasts thrust towards me, the tip of my penis at the mouth of her womb.  “What do we do now?”
My little daughter was woman, with a man inside her.  The others, the women of Antiquity who had once done it for the first time themselves, probably at around the age my daughter was and quite likely with their own fathers, had lent her their strength, seen her succeed and left us.  We were alone in the middle of an ancient sea, the oldest on Earth and I loved my little daughter with the kind of love that had fuelled a ten-year war and launched a thousand ships, brought death by broken heart at Naxos and led a man to journey into the land of the dead to recover his lost love.
“Nothing,” I said gently, stroking her breasts, her flanks and her thighs.  “You hurt and you’re bleeding.  We’ll do it again, as soon as you’re ready and not before.  It will be easier next time.”
I sensed she was a little relieved at this and I held myself still as she lifted herself off me, my penis sliding blood-stained out of her vagina.  Seeing it there, sticking massively out of my thighs, I was staggered that my slight daughter had actually managed to take it into herself.  I drew her head down and kissed her.
“I love you, Honey,” I whispered.
“I love you too, dad,” she whispered back and then made her way rather painfully and stiffly down the companionway and into the master cabin for, I presumed, as shower.
With the fall of full night the breeze had stopped falling away and ‘Ariadne’ was easing her way along almost upright at just under three knots.  I checked the set of the sails and the autopilot setting, marked the GPS reading and time on the chart and then settled back for my watch.  
The cruise-ship had gone and the navigation lights of any others within the horizon were lost among the mass glittering stars that filled the sky with majesty.  Nothing showed on ‘Ariadne’s little radar screen, which meant there was nothing within line of sight from her cross-trees, about eight miles.
My penis was still half-erect as a result of the uncompleted act of sex with my daughter but I could live with that.  In two or three days, perhaps anchored up in a lonely little bay on the mainland of Greece, I would make love to my daughter properly and pump my seed into her as yet unready womb.  In the months to come, back home, I would introduce her to oral sex and anal sex, and make videos of our having sex to console me in the days beyond that when, with a man of her own, she might no longer have any time for her father.
But that was to come.  For the present I was sailing the oldest sea like a god with my penis still sticky with the first oil of the olive and my own pre-cum mixed with the virgin blood and vaginal secretions of my daughter, my lover, my woman, my angel and my goddess.
Carefully I wiped the sticky mess off my penis and shook it off my hand into the sea as the oldest libation of all to the gods who control the fates and fortunes of men, thanking them for Amelia.