Without ever talking about it, Stephanie and I had negotiated the rules of a game that we played whenever we went to the Family Changing Room. I would watch her, and follow her actions. This gave her the power to decide how and when our clothes came off and went back on. As she fully understood that I was ceding these decisions to her, she gradually became bolder.

For my part, I didn't really have an agenda in playing this game. I wanted her to feel comfortable. She would never feel like I was pressuring her. It would kill me to have anything like that come between us, regardless of what else happened.

But I guess I couldn't entirely hide (or hide from) the other prominent thought in my brain. I enjoyed seeing Stephanie naked. I was in the shower at home when this idea first fully formed itself. I was washing my hair, and closed my eyes to rinse, and the image I found painted inside my eyelids was Stephanie in the Family Changing Room. She was bent over, her back to me, stepping out of her swimsuit. Her legs were just far enough apart that the lips of her smooth sex peeked out between her legs.

I was on my morning testosterone high. The image sent a jolt straight to my cock. My eyes popped open, which led to a painful curse-ridden few minutes while I got the soap off of my stinging corneas. Through it all, I was as hard as glass.

I've always been pretty rational. I mean, I can rationalize with the best. At some level I knew that I should have had a feeling of self-loathing. But I didn't. I hadn't done anything wrong. Guys have all kinds of fantasies all the time. Brittany Spears dresses up like a schoolgirl and sings "Hit Me Baby One More Time". I can't control what I think. It's not like I'm going to molest her.

So it seemed ok to me that I liked to look at my daughter naked. I couldn't fully hide this from Stephanie. It must have been obvious from the way I looked at her. She loved knowing that I thought she was pretty, and she understood that when she took off her clothes I thought so even more. At this point, neither of us really thought beyond this simple exchange of visual and emotional intimacy.

And so Steph began to play our new game with increasing enthusiasm. On our next visit, I noticed that she undressed down to her underpants before unpacking her swimsuit from her backpack. I kept pace, stripping to my boxers before opening my own bag. We talked about the new version of High School Musical while we rummaged for our suits and towels. I waited as she turned to face me. She reached for the waistband of her panties, and a few seconds later I hooked my thumbs under the elastic of my boxers. It was almost like a game of Simon Says.

We were now able to regard each other in a more calm, measured way. No need for stolen glances when she knew that she could see as much of me as she wanted. Her eyes still rested mostly on my penis, but they strayed elsewhere as well. I'm in good shape, so hopefully she wasn't recalling her experience in the ladies' locker room.

I drank in all of Stephanie's tiny, perfect form. So flat in front, so rounded in back. I traced the inner line of her slender legs up to the cleft where they met, and up over her elegant tummy, across her boyish chest, and into her bright green eyes. I waited until she pulled on her own suit to step into mine.

On our arrival two days later, Stephanie dropped her backpack on the bench and then proceeded to take off every stitch before opening it to retrieve her suit. As I dutifully followed her lead, I smiled with the realization that she was gradually extending the time that we were naked together.

When we returned from the pool that day, Stephanie stripped off her suit immediately and carried it with her into the shower. We'd always worn our suits into the shower before, taking them off only at the last to rinse them off. As she skinned it off her lithe body, she gave me a defiant look. I'm in charge, she was saying - so drop your pants. I did as I was told.

Since Caroline was with us, we didn't talk about these developments. They formed an unspoken language of their own. It was a language rich with trust, and love, and butterflies in the stomach, and curiosity, and daring and nervousness and uncertainty. And increasingly, for me at least, it was a language of desire.