The Institute: Daddy Issues (8 page)

I forced my­self to take an­other sip of the sickly-sweet pink punch even though I didn’t like it at all and then set the gob­let down. A server ap­peared be­hind me and sud­denly the empty china plate in front of me was whisked away and a full one took its place.

After all the op­u­lence of the fur­niture and sur­round­ings, I’d been ex­pect­ing gour­met frou-frou food like frog legs or
foie gras
or some other in­ed­ible del­ic­acy. I was pleas­antly sur­prised to see that the plate in front of me con­tained fairly plain stuff. Rare roast beef, mashed pota­toes and gravy, fresh green beans with tiny pearl onions in them…it ac­tu­ally looked good. And des­pite all the tur­moil I’d just been through, I found I was hungry.

Salt must have been too be­cause he dug in eagerly. As we ate, I scanned the table, look­ing at the other couples. They all seemed to fit a pat­tern, I saw. The men were all fairly tall—though none was as tall as Salt—and the wo­men were all ex­tra petite, like me. I didn’t be­lieve a single one of them was over 5’3. This made it easy for them to sit in their Dad­dies’ laps, which most of them were do­ing.

Many of the Dad­dies ap­peared to be ten to twenty years older than their Baby­girls. How­ever there were a few couples where they looked to be about the same age. I did see one couple, though, where the Daddy looked to be around sixty and his Baby­girl was prob­ably only around twenty. I was pretty sure I knew who was pay­ing for
that
re­la­tion­ship.

The only thing I didn’t like about din­ner was the weird pink punch which I no­ticed that all the other Baby­girls had in their gob­lets too. The Dad­dies, how­ever, had both wa­ter and a crys­tal gob­let of red wine in front of them. I sipped a little more of my punch and made a face.

“Hey,” I muttered to Salt. “Can I have some of your wa­ter?”

“Cer­tainly.” He star­ted to hand it to me but just then a petite blonde girl flounced into the din­ing room, draw­ing all eyes to her.

It wasn’t like I wanted to look at her but I couldn’t help it. She was wear­ing an out­fit that made the slutty school­girl getup I’d tried on the night be­fore look ab­so­lutely tame.

Her top was an off-the-shoulder white blouse which hardly de­served the name. It tied in front, barely cov­er­ing her full breasts and clearly show­ing the out­line of her pink nipples press­ing against the thin fab­ric. Then there was a long ex­panse of tanned, toned ab­do­men and a tiny little blue skirt which barely covered her ass. Peek­ing out from un­der the skirt were white lace garters con­nec­ted to white thigh-high hose. High-heeled Mary Jane shoes and a golden neck­lace which said
Prin­cess
com­pleted the out­fit.

“Hi Daddy.” She came to sit across from me, in the empty chair at Berkley’s side and dropped a kiss on his cheek.

Berkley’s face darkened.

“Prin­cess, what have I told you about be­ing late for din­ner?”

The blonde girl pouted.

“Not to be. And I’m sorry, Daddy but I had to let my new nail pol­ish dry. She held out one hand, show­ing off glit­tery pink pol­ish a girl in high school might like. “See? Isn’t it pretty?”

“It is but I’m still not pleased with you.” Berkley frowned. “If you’re not care­ful, you’re go­ing to earn your­self a pun­ish­ment. Now come and sit on Daddy’s lap and eat your sup­per.”

“Yes, Daddy,” the girl said de­murely. She scooted over and settled on the Dir­ector’s lap, grind­ing against him in a way that was pos­it­ively in­de­cent as she began to take bird-like bites from his plate.

“Bring some punch for my prin­cess,” Berkley com­manded one of his ser­vants. At once, a large gob­let of the bright pink stuff was put in front of her. She drank it eagerly, still rub­bing against Berkley’s lap.

“Mmm, Daddy, I just
love
sit­ting in your lap for din­ner,” she purred.

Berkley laughed and put down his fork. Reach­ing around the blonde girl, he cas­u­ally cupped one of her thrust­ing breasts and held it in his hand like a ripe fruit.

“As you have prob­ably guessed,” he said to Salt. “This is my own Baby­girl, Mandy. She’s my sweet little prin­cess—well, most of the time when she’s not be­ing naughty.”

“Daddy!” the blonde girl ob­jec­ted. “I’m not naughty!
Most
of the time, any­way.” She giggled.

“Yes, you are, prin­cess. That’s why Daddy has to pun­ish you so of­ten,” Berkley mur­mured. He was tra­cing her nipple now, I saw, mak­ing it stick out even fur­ther through the thin fab­ric. Tug­ging at the edge of her white top, he slid it down un­til her na­ked breast was re­vealed. Her nipple was very dark pink and looked achingly tight.

“Oh, Daddy!” Mandy ex­claimed, look­ing down at her­self without mak­ing any move to cover her breast. “Now just
look
what you did to my top!”

“That’s all right, prin­cess, just fin­ish your punch,” Berkley mur­mured. He pinched her ex­posed nipple lightly and she moaned and rubbed against him some more. God, were they go­ing to go for it right here at the din­ner table?

I tried to ima­gine act­ing that way with Salt and felt a strange flut­ter in my stom­ach. Sud­denly I found I had lost my ap­pet­ite.

“But I’m be­ing rude,” Berkley said, still fond­ling the blonde girl in his lap. “Prin­cess, this is the new couple I told you about. This is Mr. Saltanov—he’s from Rus­sia. And this is his Baby­girl,
mishka.”

“Hi.” Mandy barely looked at us—she was too busy writh­ing around in Berkley’s lap. Ap­par­ently he thought her in­at­ten­tion was a prob­lem be­cause he re­luct­antly re­leased her breast and pulled her white top back into po­s­i­tion.

“Now, Mandy, that’s not a very nice way to greet our new guests,” he said to her re­prov­ingly. “I thought maybe you and
mishka
here could have a play-date to­mor­row.”

“Huh…” Mandy looked me up and down, ap­par­ently see­ing me for the first time. “I don’t think so, Daddy,” she sneered. “She doesn’t look grown up enough to play with me.”

I felt sud­denly grubby and way too young in the blue party dress. I wish I had worn my own slutty school­girl out­fit even though I didn’t think I could pos­sibly out-slut Mandy. She ap­peared to be a pro at it.

“Now, Mandy—that is
not
nice. Not nice at all! I warned you that you were go­ing to get a pun­ish­ment, didn’t I?”

“Daddy?” Mandy’s pale green eyes got wide and her bot­tom lip trembled. “Please, Daddy, you’re not go­ing to
spank
me, are you?”

“I most cer­tainly am, young lady,” Berkley said, frown­ing. “Now get over my knee and pull up your skirt this in­stant.”

Mandy moaned and pro­tested but I no­ticed she moved pretty quickly to get into po­s­i­tion over Berkley’s knee. Every­one at the table was watch­ing their little dis­play by now and I had a feel­ing that was just ex­actly the way they wanted it.

Berkley pushed up her little blue skirt, bar­ing tiny white lace panties that were barely more than a thong. Even though most of her ass was already bare, he made a show of pulling the tiny scrap of lace down past her hips be­fore spank­ing her soundly on both cheeks.

“Daddy! Daddy, no—
please!”
Mandy wailed, wrig­gling like a fish as tears filled her eyes. I no­ticed though, that she never wiggled com­pletely off his lap, which she could eas­ily have done if she tried. I wondered if she was get­ting wet from this, like the red­head, Patty, had earlier from get­ting her new plug put in. Then I de­cided I really didn’t want to know.

Berkley spanked un­til both of his Baby­girl’s ass cheeks were a glow­ing red. Then he gave her a fi­nal
smack
and pulled her panties back up.

“Now,” he said sternly, look­ing into Mandy’s tearstained face. “Have you learned your les­son, prin­cess?”

“Yes.” Mandy gave a little sob. “I…I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll have a play-date with the new little girl if you want me to.”

“Very good, Prin­cess,” Berkley said gravely.

Mandy’s eyes flashed. “Even if she
does
look like she got her clothes from the Good Will.” She gave me a wicked sneer and I real­ized she wasn’t really con­trite at all. In fact, it seemed to me she was angling for an­other pun­ish­ment.

“Mandy!” Berkley roared. “That is
un­ac­cept­able.
Get down—you’re spend­ing the rest of din­ner un­der the table.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Without even a protest, Mandy dropped to her knees and slithered out of sight, un­der the long white linen table­cloth.

“My deep­est apo­lo­gies,” Berkley said, frown­ing. “Mandy is…is…” There was a muffled sound from un­der the table that soun­ded like a zip­per com­ing down and Berkley’s’ eyes crossed for a mo­ment. “Mandy is some­thing of a brat,” he con­tin­ued at last, ob­vi­ously for­cing him­self to talk. “I have to…have to pun­ish her…con­tinu­ously.”

Salt and I ex­changed a glance. Was Mandy do­ing what we
thought
she was do­ing? From the way Berkley was grip­ping the table­cloth, it seemed likely. I wanted to take a peek un­der the table to be sure, but then I de­cided again that I really didn’t want to know.

“Is un­der­stand­able,” Salt said blandly. “Some­times Littles can be…trouble­some.”

“Trouble­some…yes, that’s it ex­actly. That’s my little Mandy in a…in a nut­shell,” Berkley groaned.

I bit my lip and looked down at my plate. We hadn’t even been in this per­ver­ted place two hours and already I was com­pletely over it. How in the world had I al­lowed the Cap­tain to talk us into this in the first place?

“Per­haps now is good time to say good night,” Salt said, ob­vi­ously pick­ing up on my mood. “We are very tired and jet­lagged from long flight. Is there any­thing else we should do be­fore we say go to our suite?”

“Hmm?” Berkley looked up, glassy eyed. “Uh, no. No, of course not,” he mumbled.” He mo­tioned at one of the ser­vants. “Show Mr. Saltanov and his Little…to their…to their room.”

“Well,
that
was creepy,” I re­marked as we fi­nally stepped in­side our suite and shut the doors be­hind us.

The area as­signed to us was a richly ap­poin­ted set of rooms with a fire­place in the sit­ting room, a vast king sized bed and an over­sized rock­ing chair in the bed­room. There was also a marble tub big enough to swim in right in the cen­ter of the bath­room. All of the dec­or­a­tions with the ex­cep­tion of the tub looked like some­thing out of a turn of the cen­tury bor­dello. There was deep red car­pet on the floor and gold and black vel­vet wall­pa­per on the walls. The bed­spread was a deep, an­tique gold which looked ex­pens­ive and tacky at the same time.

“To say the least,” Salt said shortly. He sighed. “At least now we have brief re­prieve. We will not have to deal with these people again un­til to­mor­row.”

“You don’t think we should go out and scout around a little to­night?” I asked in a low voice. “Maybe check out the lay of the land while every­one is asleep?”

He shook his head. “I think we are still un­der some sus­pi­cion. Is bet­ter we stay in to­night. Be­sides…” He looked at me crit­ic­ally. “I think you are need­ing some sleep, Andi. A good long rest.”

“I’m fine,” I said brist­ling an­grily. “At least I will be if I can ever get this per­ver­ted cos­tume and these hor­rible shoes off. They
hurt.”

“Come. Sit.”

Salt drew me to the plush, gold up­holstered sofa in front of the fire­place. Someone had built a small fire in the fire­place which should have been too hot for Tampa—even in the fall. But the AC must have been cranked up be­cause the warm glow of the fire was pleas­ant rather than op­press­ive.

In the light of the flick­er­ing flames I thought my part­ner looked pos­it­ively huge—a vast, black shadow that would have frightened me if I was really the little girl I was pre­tend­ing to be. Yet, when he pulled me onto the sofa with him, he was amaz­ingly gentle.

“Why are we just sit­ting here?” I asked him. “I want to get out of this aw­ful dress and get a shower.”

“You will see.” He drew my feet into his lap and star­ted tak­ing off the pat­ent leather shoes.

“Salt, no!” I ex­claimed, try­ing to pull my feet away. “You don’t have to do that.”

“But I want to.” He held me firmly and stripped off the little white lace ankle socks that went with the dress. “You said you hurt—yes?”

“Well, yes…” I was still strug­gling fu­tilely. Salt was al­ways so care­ful around me that some­times I for­got how in­cred­ibly strong my part­ner was. I would prob­ably have as much luck try­ing to get out of a pair of steel hand­cuffs as I would get­ting away from his grip on me. Still, I tried. “I wasn’t say­ing I wanted a foot mas­sage. Hon­estly!” I pro­tested, wig­gling.

“Maybe I want to give one,” he said reas­on­ably. Tak­ing one of my feet in his large hands, he began to press the sole of my foot gently with his thumbs. “After all, what kind of a Papa would I be if I did not take care of my little
mishka?”
he said giv­ing me one of his rare half-smiles. “If I didn’t take care of this little foot?” He com­pared it briefly to his hand and I saw that from heel to toes, my foot was not quite as long as his hand was from palm to fin­gers. Then he star­ted rub­bing again.

“I don’t…don’t know.
Ahhh,”
I moaned softly when he pressed the arch of my foot in just the right way. Wow, he
really
knew what he was do­ing! Who knew my part­ner had such hid­den tal­ents?

“Just re­lax,” Salt ad­vised me. “Let me take care of you, Andi.”

“You really don’t have to, though,” I pro­tested, but I had stopped strug­gling to get away. His hands felt too good to fight any­more. “I mean, this isn’t the kind of thing we usu­ally, you know, do for each other,” I poin­ted out.

Which was true. Though, as I men­tioned earlier, Salt touched me a lot, none of the touches were really
in­tim­ate.
Or maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, I don’t know. The point was, he had never pulled me down on the sofa, taken off my socks and shoes, and star­ted rub­bing my feet be­fore. That was just some­place we didn’t go and it felt kind of weird to go there now.

Weird, but nice, I ad­mit­ted to my­self. Salt’s big hands felt like ma­gic and I couldn’t help re­lax­ing back into the couch as he con­tin­ued to rub me.

“Just be­cause we do not do these things for each other does not mean we
should
not do them,” he re­marked. “Any time you wish for a mas­sage, you have only to ask. You know this, Andi.”

“Ac­tu­ally, I
didn’t
know it,” I said. “But I do now.
God,
you’re good at that!”

“I am glad you like.” He star­ted on the other foot. “To­mor­row we will go to cos­tume shop and get you new shoes that do not hurt.”

“A new dress, too,” I said quickly. “I
hate
this one.”

“Be­cause you think is per­ver­ted?” Salt in­quired, rais­ing one eye­brow at me as he con­tin­ued to rub my foot.

“No,” I said guardedly. “Be­cause it re­minds me of one…one I had when I was a kid, I think. I didn’t re­mem­ber it un­til I saw my­self in that big, old mir­ror in the entry­way.”

“Is
that
why you kept star­ing at the re­flec­tion?” he asked. “I was wor­ried—you seemed…what is the word? With­drawn. Like you had gone some­place else—some­place I could not fol­low.”

I was sur­prised that my part­ner was so at­tuned to my emo­tions.

“Well, yes,” I said care­fully. “I guess you could say that. I was…re­mem­ber­ing. I…my dad bought me a dress like this one be­fore…be­fore he left.”

“Yes?” Salt asked softly.

“Yes.” I nod­ded. “He…he bought it for a Father/daugh­ter Valentine’s Day dance we were hav­ing at my school.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this but some­how I couldn’t seem to stop. My mouth kept mov­ing and as I talked, more and more memor­ies seemed to rush in from the dusty corners of my brain where I’d locked them away so many years ago. “We used to prac­tice for it,” I heard my­self say. “I would put on the dress and he would have me stand on his feet and dance me around the room. I looked for­ward to it for
months
.”

“This Father/daugh­ter dance—was it good?” Salt asked.

“I don’t know.” I looked down at my hands. “He—my father—left us about a month be­fore it happened. On the…on the night of the dance…” I cleared my throat. “I…I…”

“Go on,” Salt said, so softly I felt the words more than heard them.

“I put on the dress,” I said, still talk­ing to my hands. “I was sure—so
sure—
he would come back just for that stu­pid dance. After all, he’d bought me the dress for that ex­act reason. He said he wanted to see his ‘pretty little sweet­heart’ twirl­ing around on the dance floor in it.” I gave a bit­ter laugh that seemed to stick in my throat. “That’s what he called me—his little sweet­heart. I knew he wouldn’t stand me up—I knew he’d come back for the Valentine’s Day dance at least.”

“And did he?” Salt asked.

I looked up at him. “I’m sure you already know the an­swer to that. No.” I sighed. “No, he didn’t come back. I sat in front of the house for hours un­til it was way past my bed­time—way after the dance was over with. Fi­nally my mom came out and dragged me in­side. She kept say­ing, ‘he’s not com­ing back. I told you, Ant­oinette, he’s never com­ing back.’ Then she made me take off the dress and she stuffed it…stuffed it into the…the garbage…”

“Andi…” Salt’s voice was in­fin­itely gentle. He stopped mas­sa­ging my foot and reached out to cup my cheek in­stead.

I pulled away from his touch.

“You don’t have to do that—don’t have to com­fort me,” I said sharply. “I’m
fine.”

“Then why are you cry­ing?” Salt asked softly.

“I’m not!” I put my fin­gers to my cheek and they came away wet. “I…I have some­thing in my eye,” I said, de­fend­ing my­self.

“I see much in your eyes,” Salt rumbled. “And none of it is very happy.”

“I have to go. I need to take a shower.” I pulled my feet off his lap and this time he let me.

I hur­ried past him, not look­ing at his face, and locked my­self into the huge bath­room. There I stripped off the aw­ful dress and threw it on the floor. In my head, I kept hear­ing my mother say­ing over and over that my father wasn’t com­ing back. But there was one other thing she’d said that I hadn’t told Salt—and now I was glad I hadn’t. She’d said…

“He left be­cause of you,” I whispered to my­self as I stood na­ked in the middle of the vast bath­room, shiv­er­ing. “Your father left be­cause of
you
, Andi. And he’s never com­ing back.”

*

By the time I fin­ished my long, hot shower and toweled my hair dry, I had mostly got­ten my­self to­gether. It was just a bad memory, I told my­self, blot­ting my eyes and tak­ing a deep breath. Just an old, bad memory that had been brought up by that stu­pid little girl party dress.

I would get rid of the dress and wear some­thing else. Salt and I would get on with the mis­sion and find out who was cook­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing Please. And then we would go back to our old lives and everything would get back to nor­mal. I just had to make it through a few more days and everything would be fine.

I wrapped my­self in a towel, since I had no other clothes in the bath­room and I re­fused to put the dress back on un­der any cir­cum­stances. Then I came out into the sit­ting room.

Salt was stand­ing in front of the fire with his shirt off, wear­ing a pair of black, silky sleep trousers. It oc­curred to me that in the three years we’d been part­ners, I’d never seen him with his shirt all the way off. We had gone to the beach once or twice but even there, he’d worn a t-shirt with his swim trunks.

He had his back to me and was in the act of put­ting on a t-shirt now but he paused for a mo­ment—I think be­cause the shirt was in­side-out and he wanted to switch it around. I was go­ing to say some­thing to him—some glib re­mark about how I had rinsed the speck in my eye out in the shower—but a flash of sil­very white caught my at­ten­tion.

Salt moved, his broad shoulders flex­ing and I saw it again—the fire­light skated along a criss-crossed pat­tern of sil­ver scars on his mus­cu­lar back.

“Salt?” I said softly, go­ing to him.

“Andi?” He turned quickly, put­ting his back out of sight. “I did not hear you come out of the shower.”

“What happened to your back?” I asked, ges­tur­ing at him. “Those scars—they look—”

“Old in­jury,” he said in a man­ner I thought was just a little too off­hand. “When I was in Mo­scow po­lice. The sus­pect had a knife—”

“Those weren’t made with a knife,” I in­ter­rup­ted him. “They’re too even. They look like some kind of
lash
marks.” I walked be­hind him and put my hand on his back. He jumped away from my touch at first but when I touched him again, he sighed and let me. “Salt, what
happened?”
I asked, tra­cing the pat­tern of sil­very scars with my fin­gers.

For a mo­ment, his en­tire big body tensed and I thought he was go­ing to shout at me or maybe just with­draw and re­fuse to speak at all. But fi­nally he turned to face me.

“It
was
old in­jury,” he said quietly. “But not from knife fight. These scars are from a belt.”

It took a minute to click but when it did my eyes went wide.

“You mean from when your father beat you? Your
father
did that to you?”

He nod­ded. “
Da—
he did.”

“But…why?” I shook my head, un­com­pre­hend­ing. Though I had seen a lot of aw­ful things in my time at the PD, I still couldn’t un­der­stand what would cause a per­son to ab­use a help­less child.

Salt sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“I would rather not speak of it now, if is all the same to you, Andi.”

I didn’t feel like I had the right to in­vade his pri­vacy. Not about some­thing like this, any­way. After all, my dad might have left me but at least he had never beaten me and from the look of the scars on my part­ner’s back, those beat­ings must have been par­tic­u­larly sav­age.

“All right, I’m sorry,” I said awk­wardly. “I guess we both had pretty shitty dads.”

“Is all right,” he said stolidly. “It was a long time ago. I was…re­luct­ant to let you see.” He gave a hu­mor­less laugh. “Now, at least, I can take off my shirt at the beach next time.”

“You could have taken it off be­fore,” I said, frown­ing. “You could have told me—I would have un­der­stood.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I did not want you to pity me.”

“Me either,” I said softly. “About…I mean…you know what I mean.”

“Bet­ter than any­one else would,” Salt mur­mured. “Well, since now you know…” He dropped the t-shirt he’d been hold­ing on the couch. “I will sleep without. Is too hot for shirt any­way.”

“I don’t think so.” I shivered. “I’m freez­ing and I just now real­ized I didn’t bring any pa­ja­mas.”

“This is no prob­lem. Look in the bed­room—some have been left for you.”