The Institute: Daddy Issues (12 page)

“Look at your part­ner—your Papa,
mishka,”
Dr. Lucy mur­mured. “He wants so badly to com­fort you—he wants to pro­tect you from the pain you’re ex­press­ing, just the way you wanted to pro­tect him.”

I looked at Salt. He was lean­ing to­wards me, his big hands clenched into fists on his knees. There was a look in his blue eyes I couldn’t read. A yearn­ing maybe…a long­ing so deep it made me ache just to see it.

“Andi…
mishka,”
he said in a low voice. And then stood up and strode across the room to me in two steps. Lift­ing me, he car­ried me back to the love seat and settled back down with me in his lap.

“No, stop it! Put me down!” I meant for the words to come out in a shout but some­how they were barely a whis­per.

“No,” Salt growled softly. And then he was kiss­ing my cheeks again, as he had the night be­fore—hold­ing me close and kiss­ing away the tears that I couldn’t seem to help shed­ding.

“Salt,” I whispered. “God…” And then some­how his lips found the corner of my mouth in­stead of my cheek. The next time he kissed me, I moved so that his lips met mine.

A sweet, sharp, elec­trical tingle went through me—the feel­ing of be­ing plugged into some im­mense source of power I had never even sus­pec­ted of ex­ist­ing.

Salt froze and I wondered if he was feel­ing the same thing—that same in­cred­ibly in­tense high. Then he kissed me again and I kissed him back—hun­grily,
raven­ously—
it was as though an ap­pet­ite I’d kept in check for years was fi­nally com­ing for­ward, de­mand­ing to be fed.

His mouth was salty with my tears—hot and wet and per­fect. I wound my arms around his neck and pressed my­self against him, my heart pound­ing. He crushed me to him and kissed me un­til I couldn’t breathe—not that I wanted to. I just wanted to go on kiss­ing him forever.

It was ma­gical…amaz­ing…

Wrong.

What are you do­ing?
shouted the voice of san­ity, fi­nally mak­ing it­self heard in­side my head.
He’s your part­ner—the only good re­la­tion­ship you have in your whole shitty life. And if you’re not care­ful, you’re go­ing to ruin everything!

I pulled away ab­ruptly, break­ing the kiss.

“Wait,” I said. “Stop!”

The hun­ger in Salt’s pale blue eyes mirrored my own. But to his credit, when I said ‘stop’, he stopped.

“Andi,” he said hoarsely. “I…” But then he just shook his head and we sat there star­ing at each other.

“Well…” Dr. Love gave a soft laugh which made me tear my eyes from my part­ner’s in­tense gaze. “I sup­pose that an­swers my next ques­tion—I was go­ing to ask if the two of you are truly sexu­ally at­trac­ted to each other.”

“I…we…don’t usu­ally act like that,” I pro­tested, wish­ing my voice didn’t sound so breathy.

“Not in this con­text at least. Now…” She tapped her stylus. “I have been told that the two of you have been ab­stain­ing from sexual activ­ity in your play—at least up un­til now. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said, truth­fully enough.

“But I think you would
like
to be sexual.”

“Well, um…” I shif­ted on Salt’s lap un­com­fort­ably and felt that hard, hot lump I knew was his cock press­ing against my ass.

“Yes,” Salt said at the same time I said,

“I guess so.” I wasn’t sure if that was true or not but it came out of my mouth be­fore I could stop it.

“Very good.” She nod­ded. “And tell me,
mishka,
what would that look like? What would it feel like to be sexual with your part­ner…with your Papa?”

“Um…you want me to de­scribe it?” I was get­ting more and more un­com­fort­able.

She nod­ded. “In the con­text of your play, yes.”

“So you mean I would get…get into Little-space and let him touch me?” I asked flatly. The idea still bothered me a lot, even though she had made it crys­tal clear that what we were do­ing was just role play­ing.

“Ex­actly.” She nod­ded again.

“What if I can’t?” I asked, try­ing des­per­ately to get back to the case and away from the for­bid­den ter­rit­ory Salt and I were stum­bling around in like a deadly mine field. “Are you go­ing to help me? Can you pre­scribe some­thing that will make me be a bet­ter, more, uh, sexual Little?”

“Nat­ur­ally not. We don’t pre­scribe phar­ma­ceut­ic­als here.” She frowned. “I don’t think you need such help, any­way. What I
will
give you is an as­sign­ment. To­night, when the two of you are alone in your suite, I want you to do your best to go into Little-space and let your part­ner—your Papa—touch you.”

“But—”

“Now, you don’t have to be in the head­space of the age you’re play­ing now,” she said quickly be­fore I could get my protest out. “In fact, I think it would be bet­ter if you weren’t. But you can ima­gine your­self as older, if you like. A girl in the first flush of wo­man­hood, just dis­cov­er­ing her body.”

“But…how will that be for Sa—I mean, for my Papa?” I asked lamely, cast­ing a glance at him and shift­ing awk­wardly on his lap. My heart was pound­ing and my face felt hot—I couldn’t re­mem­ber ever feel­ing so un­com­fort­able. But some­how it didn’t oc­cur to me to simply leave and go back to my own chair.

“I think it will be good,” Dr. Lucy said simply. “Those that have a crav­ing for Age Play in the Big as­pect of­ten find the nur­tur­ing role a very ful­filling one. It al­lows them to en­gulf their Little with everything deep and power­ful within them. When that play be­comes sexual—as it of­ten does—and the Big guides his Little and shows her ways to en­joy her body, the en­ergy between them…the com­plex­ity of sen­sa­tions and emo­tions, well, it can be ex­tremely in­tense.”

“It, uh,
sounds
in­tense,” I said.

“But what about you, Mr. Saltanov?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing at Salt. “I can’t pre­sume to speak for you in this. How do you feel about this as­sign­ment? Do you
want
to touch
mishka
sexu­ally?”

“Yes,” he said in a low voice.

I looked back at him, won­der­ing if he was just say­ing this be­cause he thought the doc­tor wanted to hear it.

“And how would you like to touch her? What do you want to do?” Dr. Lucy in­quired, lean­ing for­ward with her el­bows on her knees.

Wow, I
really
wished she wouldn’t be so dir­ect! I had never heard of a ther­ap­ist be­ing so head-on, so un­flinch­ingly hon­est. Maybe this was just her tech­nique or maybe, as she had said at the be­gin­ning, she just felt like we had a lot of ground to cover and little time to cover it in.

“I want…” Salt cleared his throat. “Mostly I want to hold her. To touch her every­where. To bring her pleas­ure.”

“You…you do?” I couldn’t help ask­ing.

Hold­ing my eyes with his own, he nod­ded. I felt like my heart was beat­ing triple time but I couldn’t look away. Oh God, the idea of ly­ing com­pletely na­ked in his arms and let­ting him run those big, warm hands all over me…The im­age formed in my brain and some­how I couldn’t get rid of it.

“And?” Dr. Lucy promp­ted. “What else? Do you wish to pen­et­rate her…en­vel­ope her? Make love to her?”

“I want to taste her,” Salt said softly, still look­ing at me. “I wish to spread her thighs and taste her soft, sweet pussy un­til I feel her com­ing against my tongue.”

I felt a strange quiv­er­ing in my stom­ach. Yes­ter­day the thought of let­ting any man give me “spe­cial kisses” between my thighs had made me feel in­tensely un­com­fort­able. But that was be­fore I’d bared my emo­tions to Salt and found noth­ing but un­der­stand­ing and ac­cept­ance. Be­fore I’d cried in his arms and tasted his mouth when he kissed me so des­per­ately I could tell he was starving for me—starving the same way I was for him.

Wait—what was I think­ing? I dragged my eyes from his and looked down at my hands.

“Well…I think we know where both of you stand. And it’s a good deal closer to­gether than you thought.” There was a fi­nal­ity in Dr. Lucy’s voice that made me think we were fi­nally wrap­ping things up.

“I guess our time is up,” I said, fi­nally hop­ping off Salt’s lap with a mixed feel­ing of re­lief and re­gret.

“For now. If you have fur­ther prob­lems, please be sure to come back. How long will you be at the In­sti­tute?” she asked.

“For as long as we have to be,” I muttered.

“To cul­tiv­ate our new roles,” Salt fin­ished for me, smoothly. “We wish for best pos­sible re­la­tion­ship and do not in­tend to leave un­til we feel com­pletely com­fort­able to­gether as Papa and
mishka.”

“That’s an ad­mir­able goal, Mr. Saltanov.” We were all stand­ing now and she held out a hand to Salt. He took it and they shook. I no­ticed she did
not
of­fer me the same cour­tesy.

Dr. Lucy seemed to know what I was think­ing.

“You’re won­der­ing why I didn’t of­fer to shake your hand too, right?” she asked me.

“It
would
have been po­lite,” I said a bit stiffly.

“But I wouldn’t have offered to shake the hand of a bio­lo­gical little girl who was here with her Daddy,” she poin­ted out. “Your trip into Little-space be­gins
now, mishka.
I want you to do the best you can to really get into it be­fore you go back to your suite to­night. In fact, right after lunch, I want you to go to the play­room and have a play-date with some of the other Littles. Maybe that will help you.”

“Wow, two as­sign­ments in one ses­sion,” I re­marked. “I bet you’d be pop­u­lar as a teacher—prob­ably as­sign a whole pile of home­work.”

She smiled. “Now there’s a younger thought. Dwell on that. And hold your Papa’s hand—he’s here to keep you safe, you know.”

Re­luct­antly, I held out a hand to Salt who took it and en­twined our fin­gers.

I didn’t really mind this part—I liked the feel­ing of his big hand en­vel­op­ing mine. But if she thought we were ac­tu­ally go­ing to do the other piece of “home­work” she had as­signed us, she was crazy. There was no way I was let­ting him touch me in­tim­ately—es­pe­cially not while I was in Little-space—as if I could even get
into
that mind set!

Of course, we couldn’t let Dr. Lucy know that. Hope­fully this would be our first and last ses­sion with her and we could go on to solve this case without get­ting fur­ther en­tangled in the mess of con­fus­ing emo­tions which threatened to con­sume us.

But as I held Salt’s hand trust­ingly and let him lead me from the room, I thought of the pas­sion­ate kiss we’d shared and wondered if it was already too late. If we had already done ir­re­par­able harm to the part­ner­ship which was the most im­port­ant thing in my life.

The play­room was a large space filled with all kinds of toys and play equip­ment. In one corner was a low, round table stacked with col­or­ing books and cray­ons where sev­eral Baby­girls were col­or­ing. In an­other were some easels, paint pots and brushes. One of the Littles, who ap­peared to be a girl in her twen­ties, was paint­ing a house with a stick fig­ure fam­ily out front. There was a play castle com­plete with prin­cess and dragon cos­tumes, a set of mon­key bars with a mat un­der­neath it, in case someone fell, I guessed, and a lib­rary corner with a shelf full of brightly colored pic­ture books.

I saw one of the Dad­dies who had been at din­ner the night be­fore sit­ting in an over­sized rock­ing chair and read­ing a book to his Baby­girl who was cuddled up on his lap. She had long, white-blonde hair and ap­peared to be in her late thirties. She was snuggled close to his chest as they per­used the pages to­gether and there didn’t ap­pear to be any­thing sexual go­ing on—just a sweet, in­no­cent scene of com­fort and love.

Part of me wanted to think how sick it was—her dress­ing up like a little girl and sit­ting on a grown man’s lap. But then I re­membered what Dr. Lucy had said—that so many Littles were try­ing to find things they’d missed out on when they were younger. I re­membered how com­for­ted and se­cure I’d felt when Salt read the Rus­sian fairy tale to me the night be­fore. It had felt nice…safe to be so close to him be­ing treated like I was little and spe­cial and cher­ished. It was just the way my own father used to make me feel when I was younger but with Salt there was some­thing more—an ex­tra com­pon­ent that hadn’t been there when I was truly a bio­lo­gical little girl.

Ex­tra com­pon­ent my ass,
whispered a little voice in my head.
You mean the fact that you just sat on your part­ner’s lap and made out with him like a horny teen­ager? And wanted to do more—
would
have done more if you hadn’t man­aged to stop your­self?

Neither Salt nor I had men­tioned the in­tense kiss after the ther­apy ses­sion. I had a feel­ing he would have liked to broach the sub­ject but didn’t know how to bring it up. As for me, I just wanted to for­get it. We were get­ting in deep here—way over our heads.

Look­ing at my tall part­ner in his im­macu­late suit, I re­flec­ted that the In­sti­tute was chan­ging us and we hadn’t even been here two days yet. We had to snap out of it or our part­ner­ship was go­ing to be ruined. It was bad luck in the ex­treme that our par­tic­u­lar is­sues played into the place—that Salt happened to have strong pro­tect­ive and pos­sess­ive in­stincts to­wards me and I still had a broken little girl in­side that had never got­ten over the loss of her father. But is­sues or not, we had to at least
try
to work on the damn case!

As I con­tin­ued to ana­lyze what had happened between me and Salt, I saw Mandy, Berkley’s Baby­girl, stand­ing over by the play castle set and look­ing through the cos­tumes.

“Look,” I muttered to Salt. “It’s Mandy—Berkley’s brat. I’m go­ing to try and talk to her.”

“All right. I will go sit on the bench with the oth­ers and see what I can find out.” He nod­ded to one side of the room where the Dad­dies who weren’t in­ter­act­ing with their Littles waited as they played.

I star­ted to go but he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Wait.” He pulled a clean white linen handker­chief from the pocket of his dark suit and used it to dab un­der my eyes.

“What are you do­ing?” I asked im­pa­tiently.

“I don’t want it to look like you have been cry­ing,” he ex­plained pa­tiently, still work­ing on my face. “That might be taken as a sign of weak­ness and this Mandy girl is
mean.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I ex­claimed im­pa­tiently, push­ing the handker­chief away. I didn’t know whether to feel ex­as­per­ated or af­fec­tion­ate at his at­ten­tion.

Salt raised his eye­brows. “Such
lan­guage
. Do you wish me to spank your bot­tom,
mishka
?”

“Of course not,” I said, frown­ing.

He shook a fin­ger in my face. “Then watch your mouth, young lady.”

“Ha-ha, very funny.”

“You think I am jok­ing.” Salt gave me a stern look. “I am not. We must start act­ing as the oth­ers here do. If you mis­be­have, I
will
pun­ish you.”

My mouth went dry. “You…you wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, but I would, my little
mishka.”
He bent down and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Now go play with the oth­ers,” he said in a slightly louder voice. “Have fun but be sure you mind your man­ners.” Then he sent me off, with a pat on the bot­tom.

Of course, I never would have put up with such treat­ment in our lives out­side the In­sti­tute but I found it strangely com­fort­ing now. It was good to know that Salt was here with me—that he had my back in this weird situ­ation. Though I still didn’t know how to feel about his threat to pun­ish me and know­ing that he ac­tu­ally meant it.

I walked over to the fairy tale play­house where Mandy was try­ing on one of the prin­cess out­fits. A slutty prin­cess, I saw. It had a tight, lace up bod­ice that her full breasts were spill­ing out of and the skirt split all the way up, show­ing her pink panties. I looked around for Berkley, think­ing she must be show­ing off for him, but he was no place to be seen. Maybe she was just an ex­hib­i­tion­ist? At any rate, I was hop­ing she would be more pleas­ant without her Daddy around.

“Hi,” I said awk­wardly when she had ig­nored me for al­most a whole minute. “Um…want to play?”

“Not with a good little girl like
you
I don’t.” Her pretty face twis­ted into a de­ris­ive sneer.

“What’s that sup­posed to mean?” I de­man­ded, be­gin­ning to get pissed.

“Ex­actly what it sounds like.” She spared a mo­ment from ad­mir­ing her­self in the mir­ror and gave me an arch look. “You don’t even have a plug.”

“So what?” I said, frown­ing.

“So every­one knows how you freaked out when you saw Patty get her plug changed. I mean, it’s nor­mal to throw a tan­trum every now and then but you—you’re just
weird.”

“If not hav­ing a freak­ing plug up my ass makes me weird then yes, I’m weird,” I snapped. God, this place was crazy!

“And my Daddy says that your Daddy hasn’t even had sex with you yet. You’re a
vir­gin,”
Mandy taunted, giv­ing me a nasty look. “I bet you’re fri­gid. Is that why you deny your Daddy his right­ful ac­cess to your body?” She looked me up and down and gave a de­ris­ive sniff. “Not that he’s miss­ing much.”

“I am not fri­gid!” I ex­claimed, stung into re­tort­ing. “And just be­cause I don’t dress like a slut doesn’t mean I’m a vir­gin.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked at me, her pale green eyes flash­ing like a cat’s. “Tell me the last time your Daddy fucked you then?”

“I…” Sud­denly my mind was crowded with im­ages of Salt cov­er­ing me with his big body, spread­ing my legs, tak­ing me…

“You can’t, can you? Be­cause he
hasn’t.”
Mandy gave a mean laugh. “Too bad you have so many
is­sues
you can’t even give your Daddy what he needs. I heard how you had to go to see Dr. Lucy today. What did you talk about?”

“That’s private,” I said tightly.

She shrugged. “Whatever. All I’m say­ing is that if you’re not care­ful your Daddy is go­ing to go look­ing for a new Baby­girl.” She cast a pred­at­ory look across the room at Salt who was talk­ing to the other Dad­dies. “And look­ing like
that
, I’m sure he won’t have any trouble find­ing one who’ll be happy to take his fat cock up their pussy and ass. So much bet­ter than be­ing with a scared little
vir­gin
like
you.”

Her words and the way she was look­ing at my part­ner caused a sud­den bolt of jeal­ousy to stab through me.

“You stay away from Sal—from my Papa,” I said an­grily.

“Oh, don’t worry. I be­long to my Daddy Berkley. I wouldn’t want any­one else.” She sniffed. “I’m just say­ing, if you don’t give it up for that hot Daddy of yours some­body else will. Just take it as ad­vice from one Little to an­other—I’ve seen it hap­pen be­fore. In fact, I
re­placed
the Baby­girl be­fore me be­cause she couldn’t give it up for Daddy Berkley just right. That’s how I got here.” She spread her hands tri­umphantly as though be­ing the Queen-bitch of the In­sti­tute was the best thing that could pos­sibly have happened to her. Well, maybe in her mind it was.

I took a deep breath. I needed to re­mem­ber why I was here and it wasn’t to get into a hair-pulling, name call­ing, cat-fight with this little blonde bitch.

“You’re right,” I said, look­ing down at my new san­dals. “I…I
do
have is­sues. But one of the reas­ons my Daddy, uh, Papa brought me here was be­cause we heard they have medi­cine to help girls like me. Littles who have a hard time let­ting…let­ting their Bigs do what they want to do to them.”

“God, you can’t even say it, can you? You can’t let your Daddy
fuck
you.” Mandy gave me a mean glance. “You’re pathetic.”

I was hold­ing on to my tem­per with both hands.

“Okay, maybe I am,” I said. “But is it true? About the medi­cine?”

“Maybe.” She gave me a mys­ter­i­ous smile. “You cer­tainly need
some­thing,
I can tell that.”

“But who can give it to me?” I pressed. “Should I make an ap­point­ment to go see the Nurse?”

“Nurse Nancy?” She laughed in­cred­u­lously. “That old bat is only here to make sure some clue­less Daddy doesn’t try to fit a King Kong-sized plug in a Baby­girl with a Tinker­bell-sized hole. She’s
use­less
.”

“Well then who—”

“I’m tired of talk­ing to you.” Mandy turned poin­tedly and went back to ad­mir­ing her re­flec­tion in the oval mir­ror. “Come see me again when you’re not such a bor­ing goody-two-shoes.”

I tried speak­ing to her two or three more times but she poin­tedly ig­nored me. At last, I had no choice but to go back to Salt, who was just fin­ish­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Patty’s Daddy. They were shak­ing hands when I got there and then the other man stood and began call­ing for his Little.

“Patty? Patty, come on now, it’s time to go.”

Patty looked up from the clay an­imal she’d been build­ing in the art corner.

“But Daddy, I don’t want to go yet. I’m hav­ing
fun.”

“Patty…” His voice got stern. “Come on now, we don’t have time for this non­sense.”

“But I don’t
want
to go.” She stood up and stomped her foot, a child­ish pout on her pretty face.

“Patty, do I have to spank you? Is that the only way you’ll learn your les­son?”

“I’m not scared of you!” she yelled at him. Tak­ing the lump of wet clay she’d been work­ing with, she threw it at him. It landed with a splat on his con­ser­vat­ive blue suit, mak­ing a big gray, smeary stain.

Her Daddy’s face darkened. “That’s it, young lady! You de­serve a spank­ing and you’re get­ting one
right now.”

He grabbed her by the arm, sat down in one of the wooden chairs, and dragged her over his lap.

“No, Daddy! No, no,
no!”
Patty wailed. She kicked and struggled but he se­cured her firmly with one arm around her waist and raised the little pleated skirt she had on to bare her in­no­cent blue cot­ton panties.

Every eye in the play­room was on them now, in­clud­ing mine and Salt’s, and I had an idea that was ex­actly how Patty wanted it. She con­tin­ued to cry and thrash as loudly as pos­sible as her Daddy pulled down her panties and began spank­ing her with a small, black leather paddle he’d ap­par­ently had in his pocket the whole time.

“Quite a show,” Salt re­marked in a low voice as we watched Patty’s ass get red­der and red­der. She was still wear­ing the pink, rhinestone-stud­ded plug which stuck out from between her plump cheeks prom­in­ently.

“Prob­ably one they re­peat a lot,” I re­marked. “Why else would he carry a paddle with him every­where he goes?”

“Do you think she is in real pain…or en­joy­ing it as she did last night?” he mur­mured softly.

“I…I don’t know.” I glanced up at him un­cer­tainly and saw that he was look­ing at me again, the same way he had been the night be­fore when Patty was moan­ing and com­ing as her Daddy put her new plug in. What was he think­ing?

I knew what
I
was think­ing—I was won­der­ing what it would be like to be in that po­s­i­tion. To be help­less over someone’s knee tak­ing a spank­ing I knew I de­served…Then I pushed the idea away. It was just too weird.

At last the scene between Patty and her stern Daddy seemed to be wind­ing down.

“Have you learned your les­son, kit­ten?” he was croon­ing, rub­bing her glow­ing red ass cheeks gently.

“Y-yes, Daddy,” Patty was sob­bing, her red hair hanging in her face. “I’m sorry I was bad.”

“It’s all right, kit­ten—I for­give you,” he said sooth­ingly. “Now come up to the room so Daddy can put some spe­cial cool­ing gel on your poor little bot­tom.”