The Institute, Daddy Issues(112)

The dress wasn’t quite as ob­vi­ously a little girl out­fit as the dresses I had worn at the In­sti­tute but it wasn’t far from it. It had a short skirt with a bow in the back and Salt had re­ques­ted that I wear the san­dals he’d got­ten me at the In­sti­tute with it. I felt con­spicu­ous in it and not just be­cause I don’t nor­mally wear dresses.

“You look beau­ti­ful.” Salt smiled at me ap­prov­ingly as he steered the car. He had picked me up at my house at ex­actly seven o’clock and I still didn’t know where we were go­ing. No place too pub­lic, I hoped. Valentine’s Day or not, I didn’t want any­one I knew see­ing me dressed like this. Not that they would prob­ably guess at our hid­den re­la­tion­ship of “Papa and mishka,” but I would know and that would make me un­com­fort­able.

Salt him­self was dressed in an im­macu­late black suit—what I now thought of as his “Papa out­fit” since he rarely dressed that way un­less we were “play­ing.” He seemed much more at ease in our new roles than I was, al­though I was try­ing to let go and re­lax—try­ing to trust him more as time went by. It had been nearly three months since our time at the In­sti­tute and I was still get­ting used to hav­ing Salt as more than just a part­ner—at home, any­way.

At work, we ab­so­lutely never played—there we were just two good part­ners as we had been for the last three and a half years. But on our off hours…well, that was a dif­fer­ent story.

We weren’t al­ways Papa and mishka but I had learned that Salt was will­ing and able to slip into the role any­time I needed him to. At first I felt nervous and shy about ask­ing for what I wanted. Part of me still saw it as a weak­ness—a sick­ness that I shouldn’t be in­dul­ging.

Salt, how­ever, had ab­so­lutely no shame about it. If I wanted him to be my part­ner and talk shop about whatever case we were work­ing, he was will­ing. If I needed him to be my Papa and cuddle me in his lap, he was more than happy to do that too. And dur­ing sex, he fell into the role nat­ur­ally, keep­ing up a stream of dirty talk in his low, gut­tural voice that made me help­lessly hot, even when I wasn’t quite sure I should be.

I couldn’t com­plain about our new and ex­pan­ded re­la­tion­ship—deep down I seemed to need it and Salt al­ways made it so good for me. He made me come over and over and lately he had re­in­tro­duced the plug, adding a whole new di­men­sion to our play.

He hadn’t spanked me again though—that was one place he drew the line. I un­der­stood why. The way he had spanked me at the In­sti­tute had nearly ended our re­la­tion­ship. So I didn’t blame him but still, I couldn’t help feel­ing like there was a tiny piece miss­ing from our Daddy/Baby­girl dy­namic be­cause of the lack of dis­cip­line.

Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t com­plain­ing. Quite the op­pos­ite, in fact. After all, it’s not like I en­joyed be­ing spanked—at least, I didn’t think I did. And I ad­ored the time I spent with Salt and the new re­la­tion­ship that was blos­som­ing between us. Everything was just so won­der­ful I guess I was won­der­ing when it would all end. If I was hon­est with my­self, I still had my father’s deser­tion in the back of my mind. Everything had been won­der­ful with him too…un­til it sud­denly wasn’t any­more and he’d left, never to re­turn.

I think part of me was wait­ing for that to hap­pen with Salt. After all, he’d already tried to end our part­ner­ship once and though that had been cleared up as a mis­un­der­stand­ing, it had left a gap­ing hole in the already flimsy fab­ric of my trust. I was try­ing to have faith that everything would be okay, but it was hard—so damn hard.

What it boiled down to is that things were too good and I was wait­ing for them to go bad. Wait­ing to see if Salt would get tired of this little game I needed so des­per­ately it made me feel sick in­side—and leave me for someone who didn’t have so many is­sues.

After all, we had never clearly stated that we were ex­clus­ive or a couple, al­though I was cer­tain we were, at least in Salt’s mind. And though my part­ner of­ten told me how much he cared for me and needed me, both of us were care­fully skirt­ing around the “L” word like it was a bomb that might go off in our faces if we in­voked it too soon. Part of me was scared to death be­cause what I had with Salt was both the longest ro­mantic re­la­tion­ship and the best friend­ship I’d ever had in my life—I didn’t want to do any­thing to ruin it.