The Institute: Daddy Issues (6 page)

“Leave it to Deirdre, our cos­tume lady,” Dir­ector Berkley said cheer­fully. “She has im­pec­cable taste. Now fur­ther down the hall­way we have a private in­door swim­ming pool, sauna, and spa. Littles can have beauty treat­ments just like big girls.”

“Do you have a mas­seuse on staff then?” I asked without think­ing. I was think­ing that the pat­ent leather little girl shoes that went with the damn dress I was wear­ing were pinch­ing my toes like crazy. A foot mas­sage right about now would be nice.

“Nat­ur­ally not.” Berkley glared at me but re­frained from telling me to shut up—barely. “That job is re­served for the Dad­dies or Bigs, as we some­times call them.” He nod­ded at the door­way again, which had a little wave sign on it. “You can find any kind of mas­sage oil or cream you need to soothe or stim­u­late your Little.”

Ugh.
I shivered in­vol­un­tar­ily. But then I thought of Salt rub­bing me all over with mas­sage oil, of those big, warm hands caress­ing my bare back and then mov­ing lower… Sud­denly my dis­gust melted away to be re­placed with in­terest.

But no—we were try­ing to keep this as­sign­ment as
un
sexual as pos­sible. I needed to stop hav­ing thoughts like this—it was too weird and con­fus­ing.

“Tell me,” Salt asked Berkley. “You say you have things to
stim­u­late
the Littles. Do you per­haps have some­thing to stim­u­late li­bido as well?
Mishka
and I have been tak­ing things slowly but maybe with a little help…”

Berkley frowned. “If you’re talk­ing about an aph­ro­dis­iac, no cer­tainly not. We do not have a doc­tor on staff, so it wouldn’t be safe to dis­pense med­ic­a­tion.”

“I see,” Salt said neut­rally. “But I have come all the way from Rus­sia be­cause you prom­ise some­thing dif­fer­ent here. Some­thing
stim­u­lat­ing.”

Berkley nod­ded. “Well, Mr. Saltanov, we
do
have a nurse in our med­ical wing. She can re­com­mend vari­ous salves that we have mixed at a local apo­thecary which will give your Little new and stim­u­lat­ing sen­sa­tions. I think you’ll find the res­ults are most sat­is­fact­ory with even the most
re­luct­ant
of Littles.”

He shot me a glance which I re­turned blandly.

“Why do you have a med­ical wing if you don’t have a doc­tor?” I asked. To hell with the little girl per­sona—he already thought I was a hor­rible Little any­way. Might as well get some an­swers.

“Be­cause, young lady, some of our Dad­dies and Baby­girls like to par­ti­cip­ate in med­ical play,” snapped Berkley.

“Med­ical play?” I asked, squeez­ing Salt’s hand more tightly. “What the hell is that?”

“Young Lady.” Berkley was pos­it­ively glower­ing at me now. “While you are here at the In­sti­tute, please be aware that any swear­ing is
severely
pun­ished.” He looked at Salt. “If your Little can­not curb her­self, Mr. Saltanov, I’m afraid
you
will be re­quired to.”

I stared at the man. Was he really
that
up­set be­cause I’d said “hell”?

“I am sorry, Dir­ector Berkley. Will not hap­pen again.” Salt turned to me and held up one fin­ger.
“Mishka,
I real­ize you are tired after long jour­ney but this kind of be­ha­vior is un­ac­cept­able. You will start be­hav­ing
at once.”

“But—” I began

Salt leaned even closer, his ice blue eyes blaz­ing into mine.

“
Mishka,”
he rumbled. “This is your last warn­ing.
Do not make me put you over my knee.”

I felt my heart rate start to quicken. Was Salt
ser­i­ous?
Would he really spank me? Surely not but… I saw no lev­ity in that ice blue gaze, no ac­know­ledge­ment that he was just talk­ing to make Berkley happy. For a mo­ment, I was con­vinced that he really would put me over his knee, pull up my skirt, push down my panties and whip me un­til my back­side stung.

“All right, Papa,” I said, try­ing to sound con­trite. “I’m sorry. I was just…just curi­ous.”

“Well, let us sat­isfy your curi­os­ity about our med­ical fa­cil­it­ies at once,” Berkley said. “It’s up­stairs along with the other pun­ish­ment areas. I think we have just enough time for a quick tour be­fore din­ner starts.” He glanced at his watch—a Rolex by the look of it. Clearly the In­sti­tute was mak­ing bank—or else he was mak­ing a tidy profit from push­ing Please. I didn’t buy his protests that they didn’t dis­pense any med­ic­a­tion around here.

We fol­lowed him back the way we had come but I couldn’t help no­ti­cing there was an­other hall­way lead­ing off the main one that he had failed to men­tion. What was back there? Was it just ser­vice areas? Or maybe a secret lab full of chem­istry equip­ment for cook­ing Please?

I nudged Salt and nod­ded at the other hall­way.

“What is there?” he asked Berkley, point­ing.

“A private of­fice,” Berkley said shortly. “And you should know that I am show­ing you all of the ad­miss­ible areas at the In­sti­tute on our little tour. We warn all our guests—our curi­ous Littles es­pe­cially—that other areas are
off lim­its
for safety reas­ons.”

“Safety reas­ons?” Salt rumbled.

“Of course. The kit­chen, for in­stance. We don’t want any of our Littles cut­ting them­selves on knives or get­ting burned on a hot stove. It’s purely com­mon sense.”

“Oh, of course.” Salt nod­ded but I cast one last glace at the private hall­way and prom­ised my­self I would look into it later, when Salt and I didn’t have Berkley to con­tend with.

We came back to the entry­way and the dir­ector led us up the left hand curving stair­case. My little black shoes clattered on the wooden stairs and I winced as they pinched my toes un­mer­ci­fully. Maybe we could visit the cos­tume shop and find me some­thing more com­fort­able—I swore these were go­ing to give me blisters if I didn’t get them off soon!

The stair­case ended in a for­bid­ding look­ing set of double doors, both painted black. There was a sign hanging on one that said,
Naughty Girls.

I tried not to roll my eyes. Were they
ser­i­ous
with this crap?

“Here we are,” Berkley said in a hushed voice. “Come right this way.” He opened the
Naughty Girls
door and stood back, wait­ing for Salt and I to go in be­fore him.

Though I had scoffed to my­self about the door, I was strangely re­luct­ant to enter the pun­ish­ment wing of the In­sti­tute. But Berkley wanted to show us and we needed to look every­where for traces of the drug we had come to find. This was ac­tu­ally a good op­por­tun­ity, I told my­self. Still, part of me didn’t want to go past that black door.

I made my­self any­way, fol­low­ing Salt un­til we stood in an­other plain wooden hall­way. It smelled very faintly of the ghost of to­bacco from the ci­gars that had doubt­less been rolled here so many years ago when the build­ing was a fact­ory.

“Here we are,” Berkley said, push­ing the door closed be­hind us. “Now—we have sev­eral private areas as well as an aud­it­or­ium for pub­lic pun­ish­ments.”

“Pub­lic pun­ish­ments?” Salt raised an eye­brow at him.

“Some­times a Baby­girl is so bad, a private pun­ish­ment won’t do.” Berkley fixed his gaze on me. “Some­times she needs the hu­mi­li­ation of hav­ing all the other Bigs and Littles watch­ing her while she is spanked or paddled to really learn her les­son.”

Was he
ser­i­ous?
I could hardly be­lieve it but I knew bet­ter than to say any­thing. I simply stared back at him un­til he mo­tioned to both of us.

“Come, I’ll show you the private areas first. Now, all of these doors on the left side are spank­ing rooms.”

He opened one of the wooden doors and ex­posed an ar­ray of equip­ment. Flip­ping on the switch, he il­lu­min­ated the room and stepped in­side.

“What is all this?” Salt asked, look­ing around.

I wanted to ask the same thing. Hanging against the walls were rows of whips, paddles, canes, and some things with mul­tiple, long leather strands I was pretty sure were called ‘flog­gers.’ The cen­ter of the room was taken up by a long pad­ded bench that was about waist-high. There were hand­cuffs dangling from it on one side.

“These are in­stru­ments of pun­ish­ment, Mr. Saltanov,” Berkley said mat­ter-of-factly. This is the spank­ing bench.” He pat­ted the pad­ded bench in the cen­ter of the room. “You can bend your Little over the bench and cuff her hands here…” He poin­ted to the cuffs. “So she can­not es­cape her just desserts.”

“But all of this…” Salt poin­ted along the row of whips and canes. “Usu­ally when I spank my
mishka
I only use my hand. She is too small and del­ic­ate for rough treat­ment.”

“I think you’d be sur­prised what your Little can bear,” Berkley said. “A gentle spank­ing does no good. You have to really red­den those but­tocks to get your point across some­times. And don’t stop un­til your Baby­girl is truly con­trite.”

The way Berkley was look­ing at me made me want to either shoot him or pis­tol whip him into sub­mis­sion. My fin­gers itched for my gun and I wished there was any place to hide it on the flouncy little girl cos­tume I was wear­ing. How
dare
he sug­gest that I needed this kind of pun­ish­ment just for speak­ing up? Be­cause clearly that was what he was say­ing. He was telling Salt that he was too soft on me. As if he
owned
me or had the right to pun­ish me in any way! I was my own wo­man, damn it! I’d been on my own from an early age and I could take care of my­self.

I could have taken care of Berkley, too, if I’d only had my gun.

Salt must have felt the ten­sion flow­ing through my body be­cause he simply nod­ded to Berkley.

“I will take your ad­vice un­der con­sid­er­a­tion. In the mean­time, what other areas are here?”

“Well…” Berkley turned off the lights in the spank­ing room and led us down the hall­way to an­other door. “Here we have the med­ical suites. Now this is where you’ll want to come when you need to change your Little’s plug.”

“Ex­cuse me? Plug?” Salt asked po­litely.

Berkley raised one salt and pep­per eye­brow at him.

“My, you really
are
new to the scene, aren’t you?”

“I have been in­ter­ested for a long time but only de­cided to pur­sue when I found my little
mishka,”
Salt said apo­lo­get­ic­ally. “So please ex­plain.”

From the time spent in Vice, I thought I knew what Berkley was go­ing to say but I sin­cerely hoped I was wrong.

“Why, her bot­tom plug, of course,” he said, con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cion. “Every Baby­girl at the In­sti­tute gets one. It’s ne­ces­sary to get her ready to take her Daddy’s cock deep in­side her back pas­sage.”

I felt cold all over and looked up at Salt with wide eyes.

“Papa?” My voice was a croak.

“This will not be ne­ces­sary for us,” he said quickly, speak­ing to Berkley. “I do not…take my little
mishka
in this way.”

Berkley frowned. “I’m afraid it’s one of the rules here at the In­sti­tute. Your Little
must
have a plug. But don’t worry if you don’t have one—we have a full se­lec­tion along with plenty of lube and other ac­cessor­ies. And all our med­ical suites are fully equipped for the pro­ced­ure. Here, see for your­self…”

He opened one of the wooden doors. I ex­pec­ted to see an­other room full of strange and kinky equip­ment and I wasn’t dis­ap­poin­ted. There was an exam table in the middle of the room with stir­rups at­tached to one end and a lot of weird equip­ment on a rolling metal tray be­side it. But the room was already oc­cu­pied.

“Oh!” The noise of sur­prise was made by a girl who looked to be in her mid-twen­ties. She had long, curly red hair and was kneel­ing on the exam table on her hands and knees. Her short skirt was flipped up to show she wasn’t wear­ing any un­der­wear. Her bare but­tocks were bright red, as though she’d just got­ten a harsh spank­ing. Be­hind her stood a middle aged man in a gray suit and glasses and be­side
him,
stood a stern look­ing wo­man wear­ing an old fash­ioned white nurse’s uni­form, com­plete with a little white cap pinned to her hair.

“Ex­cuse us, Nurse Nancy,” Berkley said. “I was just giv­ing our new Daddy and his Little a tour of the fa­cil­it­ies. I didn’t real­ize this room was oc­cu­pied.”

He star­ted to shut the door but the nurse stopped him.

“No, that’s all right, Dir­ector Berkley,” she said. “Ac­tu­ally, I think it’s quite a
good
thing you opened the door when you did. Little Patty here has been act­ing up out­rageously. It will be good for her to have the hu­mi­li­ation of let­ting strangers see her shame—it will help her learn her les­son. Don’t you think so, Daddy Thomas?”

“In­deed, I do.” The middle aged man nod­ded his head vig­or­ously. Nobody asked the girl but then, I sup­posed she didn’t have any say in the mat­ter.

“Well, well—and what seems to be the prob­lem?” Berkley mo­tioned us in­side and though I
really
didn’t want to go, Salt had me firmly by the hand and I had to fol­low him into the room.