The Institute, Daddy Issues(10)

Pro­fessor Stevens was stand­ing just out­side the door­way with a drycleaner’s bag in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

“Hi,” he said, smil­ing broadly. “I thought maybe we got off on the wrong foot earlier so I’d like to make amends and start fresh.” He handed me the bottle which looked like a pretty de­cent red.

“Thanks.” I stepped aside to let him in. “And I’m sorry if I was what Salt calls ‘prickly’ earlier. I’m just not really thrilled about this as­sign­ment.”

“I un­der­stand,” he said quickly, fol­low­ing me into the kit­chen. “It’s a lot to take in if you’re not already into kink.”

“Well, I’m not,” I said bluntly. “I can’t speak for Salt, here, but I know for my­self, I’m about as vanilla as they come.”

“Vanilla?” Salt asked, frown­ing.

“Non-kinky,” I ex­plained. “Not into whips and chains and spank­ing—that kind of thing.”

“Ah.” He nod­ded.

Stevens frowned. “Well, you don’t have to worry about whips and chains at the In­sti­tute but paddles and hair­brushes is an­other story en­tirely. A big part of the Daddy/Baby­girl dy­namic is dis­cip­line.”

“What? Are you ser­i­ous? Salt might have to…to spank me for real?” I felt a strange little quiver in my belly as I said it and I couldn’t look at my part­ner. “But that’s crazy.”

“No, that’s part of the Big/Little re­la­tion­ship,” Stevens said mat­ter-of-factly. “The stern Daddy cor­rects his way­ward little girl and them com­forts her af­ter­wards. Look, why don’t we eat and then I can tell you a little more about it.”

“Please…” Salt in­dic­ated a seat for him at the end of the rect­an­gu­lar table. He him­self took the other end and I sat at his right hand. It was how we al­ways sat when we ate to­gether. I liked be­ing able to have a good con­ver­sa­tion with my part­ner without shout­ing. Salt was already so tall I felt like I was talk­ing up to him half the time so it made sense to sit closer.

I served out the soup and sand­wiches, play­ing the little wo­man, and Salt de­can­ted and poured out the wine Stevens had brought. We ate in si­lence for a few minutes un­til I couldn’t stand it any­more.

“Okay, let’s stop beat­ing around the bush,” I said to Stevens. “Tell us what we can ex­pect.”

“I’ll tell you what you can’t ex­pect,” he said grimly. “You can’t ex­pect to go into the In­sti­tute and shoot off your mouth to your Daddy without arous­ing sus­pi­cion. You can’t talk to him the way you were talk­ing to your Cap­tain dur­ing your brief­ing.”

“Shoot off my mouth?” I put my soup spoon down and raised an eye­brow at him. “Did you really just say that to me?”

Salt had also lowered his spoon and there was a mur­der­ous glint in his pale blue eyes.

“You will re­spect my part­ner,” he said in a low growl. “Or there will be con­sequences.” It was about as much of a warn­ing as he ever gave.

Stevens paled a little but held his ground.

“I’m just telling you that a slave—a Baby­girl in this case—can’t talk so freely to her Mas­ter or Daddy without be­ing seen as a ‘brat.’ And un­less you’re look­ing for a pun­ish­ment, brat­ting will get you into big trouble.”

“Brat­ting?” I shook my head. “What the hell is that?”

“Speak­ing out too freely to your Daddy—sas­sing is the term they use at the In­sti­tute. Among other things,” Stevens said. “Be­ing sassy to your Daddy or other Bigs will earn you a repu­ta­tion you don’t want.”

I put a hand on my hip. “In other words, don’t speak my opin­ion. Just shut up like a good little girl and do what Daddy tells me.”

“Es­sen­tially, yes.” The pro­fessor nod­ded.

“You have got to be kid­ding me,” I said, frown­ing. “This is ri­dicu­lous. How can any self-re­spect­ing wo­man even con­sider go­ing to this place?”

“Be­lieve it or not, many of the Baby­girls you’re go­ing to meet are savvy busi­ness­wo­men. Some are even Doc­tors, law­yers, CEOs—and I’m sure all of them would identify as fem­in­ists,” Stevens told me. “They’re at the In­sti­tute be­cause it al­lows them to ex­plore a side of them­selves they’ve kept hid­den and locked away for years. It’s a place of safety for them—a place where they can re­gress to a sim­pler time when the weight of the world wasn’t on their shoulders.”