The Institute, Daddy Issues(101)

Just see­ing it, even on screen, made me feel in­cred­ibly un­com­fort­able. I squirmed in my seat as we watched Salt go down on me, lick­ing and suck­ing my pussy as he in­ser­ted the plug into my tight rose­bud.

Fi­nally, I couldn’t take it any­more.

“Salt,” I said through grit­ted teeth. “Is there a reason we’re watch­ing this? It’s fuck­ing em­bar­rass­ing!”

“Yes,” he growled. “To prove a point. You would not have ac­ted like this—would not have al­lowed me to treat you in this way—if you had not been com­prom­ised by the drug in your sys­tem.”

“Is that what you think? That’s just…it’s not true, Salt.”

“It is true,” he in­sisted. “I took ad­vant­age of you, Andi. Did things I should not have done—things you would not have al­lowed me to do if you had been your­self.”

Which self is that? I wanted to ask. The tough-as-nails, fem­in­ist cop who doesn’t take shit off any­one or the wo­man who’s will­ing to put on a little girl’s clothes and call you “Papa” and let you take care of her in every way—phys­ic­ally, emo­tion­ally, and sexu­ally? God, I was so in­cred­ibly screwed up.

I couldn’t sit still any longer. I jumped up and star­ted pa­cing. On screen, the im­age shif­ted again. This time it was Berkley and Mandy and Salt and me in the Dad­dies' Lounge. Salt fast-for­war­ded through all the angry con­ver­sa­tion and went to the scenes of me beg­ging him to fuck me and him put­ting me over his knee.

“Watch,” he said, his deep voice hoarse.

I stood still for a mo­ment and watched the spank­ing, saw my­self writh­ing against him, beg­ging him for what I knew I shouldn’t have but wanted so badly any­way.

“What does that prove?” I asked. “It just shows that when you knew I was un­der the in­flu­ence of Please, you did the right thing. You spanked me in­stead of…of fuck­ing me.” The words seemed to stick in my throat but I forced them out any­way.

On the screen, Salt pushed me off his lap and rose to un­fasten his belt. I watched my­self walk on shaky legs to the arm of the leather couch and drape my­self over it with my skirts raised. Then Salt’s arm rose and the belt des­cen­ded, mak­ing me jump and gasp.

Watch­ing the beat­ing, now that I was clear-eyed and com­pletely free of the Please which had been in my sys­tem when it happened, was damn dif­fi­cult. It wasn’t just the sav­agery of the act, though it was clear that Salt was beat­ing me hard, it was also the frozen look on his face as he did what was ne­ces­sary. I re­membered think­ing that this must have been hard for him—now I wondered how he had been able to bring him­self to do it at all.

“Oh!” I whispered, un­able to help my­self as the belt rose and fell, strip­ing my na­ked ass with lines of fire. I shif­ted from foot to foot, feel­ing the pain all over again.

I saw Salt wince as the small sound left my lips. The look on his usu­ally im­pass­ive fea­tures was dif­fi­cult to see. There was pain and shame in his ice blue eyes as he forced him­self to watch the scene we had played out to­gether. And self-loath­ing so deep it made my stom­ach twist.

“Do you see this?” he said hoarsely, turn­ing to me at last when the scene changed to show him throw­ing down the belt and gath­er­ing me into his arms. “Do you see what I did to you? Why I do not de­serve to be your part­ner any­more?”

“I know what you did to me, Salt—I was there, re­mem­ber?” I said. “You saved my life.”

“By beat­ing you. The way that I was beaten.” He rubbed a hand over his face and hit the off but­ton so that the screen went black. “The way I never wanted to beat any­one. I never wanted to hurt you, Andi—I swear it.”

“There was no other way,” I re­minded him. “Other than—you know.”

“I could not do that to you,” he said harshly. “Could not take from you what you would not have given me without that damn drug cloud­ing your judg­ment.”

“So that’s why you told Cap­tain Douglas you want a new part­ner?” I de­man­ded. “Be­cause you hurt me to save me?”

“That and be­cause of the way I took ad­vant­age of you the other nights we were at the In­sti­tute,” he said stiffly. “I thought you were act­ing in such a way be­cause you wanted me as…” He sighed. “As I have wanted you, from first mo­ment I saw you.” He shook his head. “I should have known you would not act in this way on your own. Should have known only the damn drug could be re­spons­ible for such be­ha­vior.”