The Institute, Daddy Issues(46)

I saw one of the Dad­dies who had been at din­ner the night be­fore sit­ting in an over­sized rock­ing chair and read­ing a book to his Baby­girl who was cuddled up on his lap. She had long, white-blonde hair and ap­peared to be in her late thirties. She was snuggled close to his chest as they per­used the pages to­gether and there didn’t ap­pear to be any­thing sexual go­ing on—just a sweet, in­no­cent scene of com­fort and love.

Part of me wanted to think how sick it was—her dress­ing up like a little girl and sit­ting on a grown man’s lap. But then I re­membered what Dr. Lucy had said—that so many Littles were try­ing to find things they’d missed out on when they were younger. I re­membered how com­for­ted and se­cure I’d felt when Salt read the Rus­sian fairy tale to me the night be­fore. It had felt nice…safe to be so close to him be­ing treated like I was little and spe­cial and cher­ished. It was just the way my own father used to make me feel when I was younger but with Salt there was some­thing more—an ex­tra com­pon­ent that hadn’t been there when I was truly a bio­lo­gical little girl.

Ex­tra com­pon­ent my ass, whispered a little voice in my head. You mean the fact that you just sat on your part­ner’s lap and made out with him like a horny teen­ager? And wanted to do more—would have done more if you hadn’t man­aged to stop your­self?

Neither Salt nor I had men­tioned the in­tense kiss after the ther­apy ses­sion. I had a feel­ing he would have liked to broach the sub­ject but didn’t know how to bring it up. As for me, I just wanted to for­get it. We were get­ting in deep here—way over our heads.

Look­ing at my tall part­ner in his im­macu­late suit, I re­flec­ted that the In­sti­tute was chan­ging us and we hadn’t even been here two days yet. We had to snap out of it or our part­ner­ship was go­ing to be ruined. It was bad luck in the ex­treme that our par­tic­u­lar is­sues played into the place—that Salt happened to have strong pro­tect­ive and pos­sess­ive in­stincts to­wards me and I still had a broken little girl in­side that had never got­ten over the loss of her father. But is­sues or not, we had to at least try to work on the damn case!

As I con­tin­ued to ana­lyze what had happened between me and Salt, I saw Mandy, Berkley’s Baby­girl, stand­ing over by the play castle set and look­ing through the cos­tumes.

“Look,” I muttered to Salt. “It’s Mandy—Berkley’s brat. I’m go­ing to try and talk to her.”

“All right. I will go sit on the bench with the oth­ers and see what I can find out.” He nod­ded to one side of the room where the Dad­dies who weren’t in­ter­act­ing with their Littles waited as they played.

I star­ted to go but he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Wait.” He pulled a clean white linen handker­chief from the pocket of his dark suit and used it to dab un­der my eyes.

“What are you do­ing?” I asked im­pa­tiently.

“I don’t want it to look like you have been cry­ing,” he ex­plained pa­tiently, still work­ing on my face. “That might be taken as a sign of weak­ness and this Mandy girl is mean.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I ex­claimed im­pa­tiently, push­ing the handker­chief away. I didn’t know whether to feel ex­as­per­ated or af­fec­tion­ate at his at­ten­tion.

Salt raised his eye­brows. “Such lan­guage. Do you wish me to spank your bot­tom, mishka?”

“Of course not,” I said, frown­ing.

He shook a fin­ger in my face. “Then watch your mouth, young lady.”

“Ha-ha, very funny.”

“You think I am jok­ing.” Salt gave me a stern look. “I am not. We must start act­ing as the oth­ers here do. If you mis­be­have, I will pun­ish you.”

My mouth went dry. “You…you wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, but I would, my little mishka.” He bent down and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Now go play with the oth­ers,” he said in a slightly louder voice. “Have fun but be sure you mind your man­ners.” Then he sent me off, with a pat on the bot­tom.

Of course, I never would have put up with such treat­ment in our lives out­side the In­sti­tute but I found it strangely com­fort­ing now. It was good to know that Salt was here with me—that he had my back in this weird situ­ation. Though I still didn’t know how to feel about his threat to pun­ish me and know­ing that he ac­tu­ally meant it.