The Institute, Daddy Issues(31)

“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.”





Chapter Five

“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.