The Institute: Daddy Issues (23 page)

“All right,” I whispered. “Do…do what you have to do. I trust you…Papa.”

“Very good.” He stroked my cheek again and then turned me to face the exam table. “Put your hands here and hold on so you do not fall,” he com­manded softly. “I will show him that we have met his de­mands and then we go.”

I nod­ded—I had no more words in me, not then. I heard the door open and Berkley’s sharp voice, want­ing to know if we had “fol­lowed the rules” of the In­sti­tute. Salt replied that we had and, as ex­pec­ted, the dir­ector de­man­ded to see the res­ults.

“Very well.
Mishka,
bend over the table and spread your legs,” Salt com­manded.

I did as he said, feel­ing shaky and un­sure of my­self. I felt him flip up my short skirt, bar­ing my ass.

“A little wider, my darling,” he mur­mured and spread my legs with his big hands.

I let him do it, my head bowed in sub­mis­sion, my legs still trem­bling like a new­born colt’s. I felt the cool air on my bare bot­tom and knew that both men were look­ing at me, look­ing at the black plug which had in­vaded my body.

“Look but do not touch,” I heard Salt say in a low, men­acing voice. “You are never to lay hands on my
mishka
again. You or your staff. To touch her means death—you know this.”

“In­deed.” Berkley cleared his throat, sound­ing a bit nervous. “I, ah, see you got the plug seated prop­erly with no help. Are you cer­tain you’ve never done this be­fore, Mr. Saltanov?”

“Never.” There was a cold an­ger in Salt’s deep voice that made me shiver, even though it wasn’t dir­ec­ted at me. “I would never do such a thing to my little
mishka
if you had not forced my hand. I told you, she was vir­gin there be­fore.”

“Ah, but that’s what the plug will solve for you,” Berkley re­marked. “Once she’s used to hav­ing some­thing in­side her sweet little rose­bud, she’ll be much more ac­com­mod­at­ing when you want to fill her your­self.”

“Enough.” Salt flipped my skirt back down. “You have seen proof that we com­plied with your rules. Now I will take my
mishka
back up to room and tend to her.”

“Just see that you don’t re­move the plug. Or if you do re­move it, that you re­in­sert it be­fore com­ing out into the pub­lic areas of the In­sti­tute,” Berkley warned. “You’ve been warned, Mr. Saltanov.”

Then he left, his shoes tap­ping on the hard­wood floor as he went back to his of­fice.

I had been stand­ing there feel­ing ex­posed and vul­ner­able and ex­tremely shaky for what felt like forever. Sud­denly, a wave of dizzi­ness hit me and I nearly fell. Only the fact that I was still lean­ing on the pseudo exam table saved me but I couldn’t keep my grip on it and began to slip.

“Mishka!”
Salt grabbed me around the waist and lif­ted me quickly into his arms. I wound up with my arms around his neck and my legs wrapped around his waist while he sup­por­ted me with a hand un­der my bare bot­tom. I thought I must look like a tired tod­dler be­ing car­ried by a par­ent and struggled to get down.

“You don’t…don’t have to do this, Salt,” I pro­tested. “I’m fine—I can walk.”

“Like hell you can,” he said roughly. “Don’t struggle. Hold on to me,
mishka.
I will carry you to room.”

“But I’m too heavy to carry all that way up and down stairs,” I pro­tested, even as he left the med­ical room, still hold­ing me.

Salt gave a deep, rum­bling laugh that seemed to vi­brate my en­tire body.

“Non­sense,” he mur­mured. “You are light as a flower—I could hold you all day.”

“Light as a feather,” I mur­mured against his neck, de­cid­ing to give up the fight and just let him carry me.

“What?” He soun­ded dis­trac­ted as he walked briskly down the stairs for the pun­ish­ment wing and began climb­ing the steps which led to the guest suites.

“A feather. The phrase is ‘light as a
feather,’”
I cor­rec­ted him.

“But why? Flowers are light too,” Salt pro­tested, sound­ing mildly amused. “And they smell nicer.” He pressed his face to my hair and in­haled deeply. “Is just as ac­cur­ate to say light as a flower.”

“Fine, say whatever you want.” I nuzzled closer to him and wrapped my legs just a little tighter around his waist. Salt re­spon­ded by put­ting his free arm around me and squeez­ing me gently, re­turn­ing my em­brace. I couldn’t re­mem­ber ever feel­ing so safe and loved in someone’s arms—well, not since my father had left me, any­way.

“I will say whatever I wish,
mishka,”
he mur­mured softly, as he fi­nally came to our room and opened the door. “But first what I wish is to get you cleaned and com­fort­able.”

He took me in­side the suite and drew a warm bubble bath for me, even though it was the middle of the day. He bathed me gently, wash­ing my hair him­self as I leaned against the side of the tub, let­ting him do what he wanted to me. Part of me knew this was an un­ne­ces­sary in­dul­gence. We should be work­ing on the case—now we knew where the secret view­ing room was, a whole new world of pos­sible evid­ence had opened up to us. In­stead, we were tak­ing time for Salt to care for me as though I was a little girl who had got­ten hurt and needed her Daddy to heal and com­fort her.

Yes, I couldn’t make my­self com­plain when he treated me so ten­derly, tak­ing me out of the tub and tow­el­ing me off gently as he knelt be­fore me, blot­ting the wa­ter from my skin. He in­spec­ted my pussy too and I let him, even spread­ing my legs when he wanted to part my outer lips and be cer­tain that the swell­ing from my earlier spank­ing was go­ing down. Who was I to stop my Papa from do­ing what he wanted with me—es­pe­cially when all he wanted was to give me pleas­ure and heal me?

“I think you are go­ing to be fine, my darling,” he mur­mured after pla­cing a soft kiss on the top of my mound. “Your skin is not so red as it was. There is no per­man­ent harm done, I think. Now…” He moved the towel around to pat my bot­tom dry. “What about this?”

“What do you—oh,” I whispered be­cause he was tra­cing the flat end of the plug care­fully with one fin­ger and look­ing at me ques­tion­ingly.

“Do you wish to take it out?” he asked me. “Or leave it in since you will be re­quired to put it back in later?”

“I really want to take it out, but…” I bit my lip.

“But what,
mishka?
Say what you need to,” he urged gently.

“But, well…” I took a deep breath. “What if I can’t…can’t get it back in by my­self?”

“Then I will help you,” Salt said gravely.

“Help me like you did when you put it in?” I asked, my heart pound­ing. He was still kneel­ing be­fore me, look­ing up, al­though the dif­fer­ence in our height was so ex­treme he didn’t have to look very far.

“If you like,” he said quietly. “I thought that giv­ing you pleas­ure would help you to bear the pain. Was I right?”

“You know you were,” I whispered. “You saw me…saw how I re­acted.”

“I saw you come, just for me.” Salt put his hands around my waist, en­circ­ling it with his long fin­gers pos­sess­ively. “I saw you open­ing your­self for your Papa and it was beau­ti­ful,
mishka.
Al­ways so beau­ti­ful to me.”

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and leaned into him, tak­ing com­fort from his big body against mine. He felt so warm and solid and good—his large, clothed form against my own small, na­ked one. I was vul­ner­able in his arms—vul­ner­able but not afraid.

Salt made a deep rum­bling sound in his chest and pulled me close, press­ing his cheek to my chest, his stubble scratchy against the tender skin of my breasts. Then we just stayed there for a long mo­ment—me stand­ing and him kneel­ing, both of us pressed to­gether, as close as we could get.

Some­where in the back of my head I heard a little voice re­mind­ing me that only that morn­ing I had been telling my­self I should avoid this at all costs. That I should trust no one with my heart—not even my part­ner. I knew I should point out that we were only play­ing roles—roles which both of us seemed to be get­ting into much too deeply. Un­less Salt was still just act­ing and none of this meant any­thing to him. But the way he held me so ten­derly, the feel­ing of his big, warm hands run­ning slowly over my back and legs and bot­tom made me feel like that couldn’t be true. Surely he wouldn’t do this—wouldn’t act this way with me—if he didn’t at least feel it on some level. Right?

That was what I told my­self, any­way, as I re­laxed in my part­ner’s strong arms. Or should I say, in my
Papa’s
strong arms. I told my­self that I was safe—that Salt would never hurt me and that everything was go­ing to be okay.

How could I be so wrong?

“Well, now that you’re com­ply­ing with the rules of the In­sti­tute, I feel it would be good to ex­tend an in­vit­a­tion to the Dad­dies' Lounge after sup­per.” Berkley nod­ded at Salt and me ap­prov­ingly.

“This sounds good. Most in­triguing.” Salt nod­ded stiffly and I glanced up briefly and then back down at my din­ner plate, which had some kind of chicken I had barely touched.

I was wear­ing a dif­fer­ent out­fit to­night, an­other little girl dress since I wanted noth­ing more to do with the naughty school­girl out­fit. Not after what had happened to me while I was wear­ing it earlier. I didn’t much care for the frilly pink thing, which Salt had picked out, but it was bet­ter than the al­tern­at­ive.

Of course, I was
also
wear­ing the black plug deep in­side me. I had taken it out while Salt and I had re­laxed in the room. And then I had spent all of lunch time and most of the time be­fore din­ner just be­ing com­for­ted by my part­ner. It sounds ri­dicu­lous but I felt so fra­gile and un­sure—so vul­ner­able after what I had just been through. And Salt seemed to un­der­stand. We lay on the bed to­gether and he read me fairy tales in Rus­sian while I snuggled against his broad chest and let his deep voice roll over me, push­ing away the troubles and anxi­ety that wanted to take over my mind.

Just be­fore din­ner, Salt had helped me re­in­sert the damn plug, though not quite in the same way he had the first time. He’d had me stand at the side of the bed and bend over it with my ass stick­ing out. Then, very gently and with the use of a lot of lube, he’d eased it back in­side me. I had been too tight at first—too anxious to let the plug get past my rose­bud un­til Salt had mur­mured in my ear, “
Mishka,
do you need some help?”

“Yes, Papa,” I whispered at once, not ask­ing what “help” he was talk­ing about. I didn’t need to—I already knew be­cause his other hand was cup­ping my pussy. Without an­other word, Salt had slipped one long fin­ger into my slip­pery folds and star­ted circ­ling my swollen clit. It was a slow, gentle mas­sage that had me climb­ing the walls in very short or­der. Be­fore I knew it I was com­ing as he slid the thick black plug home in­side me. Com­ing with his name on my lips and my en­tire body on fire for his touch.

It oc­curred to me now, as I shif­ted on the booster seat and felt the plug move within me, that I was get­ting alarm­ingly used to my part­ner’s big hands on my body. He could touch me any­where and I didn’t mind—while I was in Little-space I felt like he owned me. It was a dan­ger­ously ad­dict­ive feel­ing.

Not much longer,
I told my­self.
I won’t have to dress like this or wear this damn plug much longer. We’re close here—I can feel it.
Already Mandy had been hint­ing that she had some­thing im­port­ant to show me after din­ner. And when Berkley in­vited us to the Dad­dies' Lounge, she nod­ded at me and winked broadly.

I was al­most sure we were go­ing to be offered Please once we got to the lounge. Or more likely, Salt would be offered some to give to me. And then we would have all the evid­ence we needed to bust this place and bring the en­tire In­sti­tute tum­bling down.

But then what? Would we just go back to nor­mal—to our reg­u­lar re­la­tion­ship? Our reg­u­lar part­ner­ship? I looked up at Salt and couldn’t ima­gine that. I liked be­ing able to crawl into his lap for com­fort and play­ing his Baby­girl. I liked his big hands on my body, touch­ing me in­tim­ately, mak­ing me come. I couldn’t ima­gine go­ing back to the time when we had only touched cas­u­ally or not at all. Couldn’t ima­gine just be­ing friends where there was so much more between us now.

My, my—didn’t take you long to change your tune, did it?
whispered a sar­castic little voice in my head.
What about Age Play be­ing “sick” and “dis­gust­ing”?

I felt a surge of shame. The voice was right. Was I really so ready to em­brace this weird kink just be­cause of some Daddy is­sues I might have? Right now I had an ex­cuse to do this, to play these roles with my part­ner—we
had
to, we were un­der­cover and had no choice. But how would Salt feel if I told him that I wanted to con­tinue do­ing this kind of thing once this case was over? Would he think I was sick? Or weak? Would he be dis­gus­ted? Would he even want any­thing to do with me ro­mantic­ally once we were out of here or would it be busi­ness as usual?

He won’t be dis­gus­ted,
I told my­self un­eas­ily.
He’s the one who in­sists that I call him “Papa” while we play. He must like it on some level—right?

But maybe he was only telling me to call him by our role-play­ing names in or­der to keep some kind of dis­tance from our reg­u­lar re­la­tion­ship. Maybe he would be happy to be done with this charade, happy to walk away from the In­sti­tute when this was all over…

Maybe he would want to walk away from me.

The thought nearly stopped my heart in my chest. Though I hadn’t meant to do it, I had some­how al­lowed my­self to be­come de­pend­ent on him—on the way he com­for­ted and held me and just let me be Little. In a way, it was al­most as though I had found my way back to the trust­ing in­ner part of me who had been hid­den since child­hood. I was cau­tiously let­ting her out into the light—that little girl who had been so hurt and bruised by her father’s be­trayal. But would she be hurt all over again once this was all over?

“…must drink all of your punch if you wish to visit the lounge with your Daddy.”

“Huh?” I looked up, real­iz­ing that the words were dir­ec­ted at me. Berkley was star­ing at me sternly and point­ing to the glass of bright pink punch in front of me. I couldn’t repress a shiver. Ugh—why did they in­sist on serving this stuff with every meal? It really was dis­gust­ing.

“I think it’s yummy,” Mandy chirped. To­night she was on her best be­ha­vior—she hadn’t been sent un­der the table once. She giggled and drained her glass of punch, then looked at me chal­len­gingly.

“Why do I—” I began and then stopped my­self. What good would it do to ask why all the Littles had to fin­ish their punch at din­ner? Might as well ask why we all had to wear plugs in our asses. It was just an­other ri­dicu­lous, ar­bit­rary rule that made no sense.

Since we wanted to get into the Lounge and this was ap­par­ently the only way, I picked up my glass and drank it down, try­ing not to shud­der as I swal­lowed the cloy­ingly sweet stuff. It was al­most like drink­ing a glass full of cough syrup—it seemed to coat my throat and I couldn’t get rid of the af­ter­taste even after Salt gave me his wa­ter gob­let and I drained it too.

“Very good.” Berkley nod­ded ap­prov­ingly and Mandy giggled.

I sat quietly and wished I hadn’t drunk the en­tire glass of wa­ter after the punch. I had barely touched my din­ner and my stom­ach felt too full of li­quid.

I leaned my head against Salt’s broad shoulder and closed my eyes a minute. Damn, but I felt
strange
. It wasn’t just my too-full stom­ach either. I was be­gin­ning to feel sort of light headed—maybe I should try to eat my din­ner after all.

But the thought of the now-cold chicken on my plate wasn’t at all ap­peal­ing. In­stead, I only wanted to be close to my Papa. With a sigh, I snuggled closer.

“Mishka,
are you well?” he mur­mured, put­ting an arm around me.

“Fine,” I said dream­ily. “Just fine as long as you’re near me, Papa.”

He stroked my hair gently and all I wanted to do was rest against him. But soon din­ner was end­ing and Berkley was say­ing that it was time to re­tire to the Dad­dies’ Lounge for brandy and ci­gars and
other things.

What those things were, I didn’t know but I wasn’t wor­ried. As long as I was with Salt, I would be okay. It oc­curred to me as we left the table that I seemed to have some­how drif­ted even fur­ther into Little-space—maybe fur­ther than I ever had be­fore. But it didn’t bother me. It was kind of nice just to re­lax and put all my trust in Salt, know­ing that my Papa would take care of me.

You’re sup­posed to be tak­ing care of your­self—you’re a trained de­tect­ive! A po­lice of­ficer,
shouted a dis­tant little voice in my head.
Salt can’t carry the whole case on his own—and he shouldn’t have to. This is your re­spons­ib­il­ity too so snap out of it and get your mind right!

I tried—tried to do what the voice ordered, but some­how I just couldn’t. It was as though I had fallen into a day­dream I couldn’t wake up from. But soon my dreamy state gave way to some­thing else.

It star­ted as a tingle at the tips of my breasts as we walked down the long hall­way to a door marked
Private,
and con­tin­ued to spread as Berkley, trailed closely by Mandy, ushered us into a large room.

The room was dec­or­ated like an old fash­ioned man’s study or lib­rary. Shelves of books lined the walls and deep, oxblood leather fur­niture was ar­ranged in front of a large fire­place.

The flick­er­ing flames danced and leapt in the grate and I stared at them, mes­mer­ized. They were so pretty but why did I feel so strange when I watched them? The tingling had spread from my nipples down to my pussy. I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably, spread­ing my legs to ease some of the pres­sure and ache I sud­denly felt down there. What was go­ing on with me?

“As you can see, you and
mishka
are our only guests here in the Dad­dies’ Lounge to­night,” Berkley said.

His words broke my con­cen­tra­tion on the fire and I looked around and saw that though the lounge area was very large, Salt and I were the only people there other than Mandy and Berkley. Where were all the other Dad­dies and Baby­girls? What was go­ing on?

“So I see,” Salt said war­ily. “There is reason for this?”

“Of course there is, Mr. Saltanov.” Berkley soun­ded ex­tremely smug.

“We brought you here to give you the medi­cine you keep ask­ing for,” Mandy chimed in and for once Berkley didn’t rep­rim­and her for talk­ing out of turn. She looked at me. “The kind that makes you
ex­tra
horny for your Daddy.”

“You have such medi­cine?” Salt asked and I could feel his ex­cite­ment. Fi­nally, we were get­ting to the heart of the mat­ter—we were go­ing to find the source of the Please that was com­ing out of this place!

I tried to feel ex­cited too, but all I could feel was weird. The tingling in my nipples and pussy was in­tensi­fy­ing un­til it was al­most pain­ful. It was dis­tract­ing and made it hard to keep my mind, which was already hazy at best, on the case.

“We
do
have such medi­cine,” Berkley said mock­ingly. “And you’re go­ing to get the full be­ne­fit of it to­night.”

“I don’t know.” Salt soun­ded guarded. “What is it ex­actly? And what does it do?”

“Maybe you’ve heard of it—it’s called ‘Please Daddy’ or just ‘Please’ for short,” Mandy said, smil­ing.

There it was—she had said the ma­gic word! I wished I could be more ex­cited but I was be­gin­ning to be really un­com­fort­able and it was hard to con­cen­trate.

“I have heard of this, yes,” Salt said, frown­ing. “But I have also heard it can have ser­i­ous side ef­fects. Will make a girl feel like she is des­per­ate need of…”

“In des­per­ate need of be­ing
fucked,
yes in­deed, it will. It will make her beg you to shove your cock in her sweet little cunt and pump un­til you fill her with your cum.”

The ob­scene lan­guage com­ing out of Berkley’s mouth made me jerk my head up and look at him. What was go­ing on? Was this the same man who had got­ten so up­set about me say­ing “hell” when we first came to the In­sti­tute? Why the sud­den about-face on his stance on “filthy lan­guage?”

“I do not wish to make my little
mishka
feel so des­per­ate and un­happy as that,” Salt was ob­ject­ing. “But maybe you could give me half dose for her?”

“Too late.” Mandy gave an­other one of her an­noy­ing giggles. “She’s already had a
double dose.”

“What? What are you talk­ing about?” Salt de­man­ded. At the same time I said,
“What double dose?”

“A double dose of Please. What do you think was in the punch?” Mandy grinned at me. “What’s wrong,
De­tect­ive
Sug­ar­baker? Aren’t you happy? You’ve been try­ing to get your hands on some Please since the minute you got here and now you’ve had enough for
two
Baby­girls.”

“What did you call my
mishka?”
Salt’s voice was low and dan­ger­ous.

“Oh please, De­tect­ive Saltanov—enough pre­tense,” Berkley said. “We know who you are—we have from the minute you first ar­rived. Don’t feel bad though—it wasn’t your ac­tions that tipped us off. I have a little
friend
in the po­lice de­part­ment.”

“So you…let us play along for all this time?” I asked through grit­ted teeth. God, I was on fire here! And my mind kept want­ing to go back to Little-space where I was ab­so­lutely use­less.

“Yes, it was most amus­ing to see the two of you try­ing so hard to pre­tend you
wanted
to be here as a Daddy and Baby­girl.” He cocked his head at me. “Al­though to be hon­est, I won­der if pre­tense might have turned to real­ity. At least in
your
case, De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker.”