The Institute, Daddy Issues(22)

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.”