The Institute, Daddy Issues(49)

He frowned sternly. “I don’t know, kit­ten. You’ve been a very naughty girl—I don’t know if you de­serve to have your kitty pet­ted.”

“But please?” she begged shame­lessly. “You know how fast I can come after you spank me. Please, Daddy?”

“Well…we’ll see,” he said, smil­ing in­dul­gently as though she was ask­ing for an ice cream cone in­stead of his fin­gers between her legs. “For now, just come up to the room and we can de­cide there.”

“Well,” I muttered as they fi­nally left. “I guess that an­swers our ques­tion about whether she was get­ting any pleas­ure from be­ing spanked or not.”

“What kind of pleas­ure, do you think?” Salt asked thought­fully as we left the play­room and headed back to our suite to get ready for din­ner. “The pleas­ure of a mas­ochist, do you think? She wants to be hurt sexu­ally?”

“That might be part of it,” I said doubt­fully. “But it could also be the pleas­ure of sub­mis­sion—the idea that he can do any­thing he wants and she can’t stop him.”

“The pleas­ure of sub­mis­sion, eh? I have never heard you speak of such a thing be­fore.” Salt was look­ing at me spec­u­lat­ively again. I made my­self look away.

“Well, did you learn any­thing from the other Dad­dies?” I asked, des­per­ate to change the sub­ject.

Salt used the old fash­ioned key that opened the door to our suite and ushered me in­side.

“A lot and then again, not nearly enough,” he said, frown­ing. “What about you? Was talk with Berkley’s brat pro­duct­ive?”

I sighed and went to sit on the couch. There was no fire in the grate but I could see the maid must have been in be­cause there were fresh logs laid all ready to go.

“She seems to know some­thing but she won’t tell me,” I said, reach­ing down to un­buckle my new san­dals. They were more com­fort­able than the aw­ful pat­ent leather shoes I’d worn the night be­fore but the straps still rubbed me. I couldn’t wait to get them off.

“Why not?” Salt asked, sit­ting down be­side me. “Here, al­low me.”

He brushed my hands away and pulled my feet into his lap. This time I didn’t even try to fight it. His hands seemed like they would be too big to handle the little shoes but he man­aged the dainty straps with ease and then began rub­bing one of my feet.

“Ahhh…” I melted back against the arm of the couch with a happy groan. “God, Salt, if I’d known you were so good at this I would have been beg­ging for foot mas­sages every spare minute of our en­tire part­ner­ship.”

“No you wouldn’t,” he said quietly. “Be­fore we came here, to this place, you would not have been com­fort­able to let me touch you so…in­tim­ately. You were un­com­fort­able with mas­sage last night at first. Only now you be­gin to get used to it.”

“I…guess so.” I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably on the couch. “But I mean, it’s just a foot mas­sage. How in­tim­ate can that be?”

“Feet are very del­ic­ate…can be very sens­it­ive.” He trailed one long fin­ger up the tender arch of my foot.

“Salt!” I gasped, jump­ing a little. “That’s tick­lish!”

“My point,” he said, giv­ing me a little smile. “I have wished to give you foot mas­sage be­fore this but how could I? You would never have agreed.”

“Well, I’m agree­ing now,” I said, passing over his state­ment that he’d wanted to do this for me be­fore. I moaned ap­pre­ci­at­ively as he star­ted knead­ing the arch of my other foot. “As long as you’re not try­ing to tell me you have a foot fet­ish.” I lif­ted my head from the arm of the couch for a mo­ment and raised an eye­brow at him. “You’re not, are you?”

Salt snorted laughter. “In a place like this you think such a thing is worst prob­lem?”

“Well, no,” I con­ceded. “You’ve got a point. But still…”

“I do not have foot fet­ish,” my part­ner as­sured me. “Al­though I will ad­mit to lik­ing your little feet. They are…how do you say? Cute.” He lif­ted the foot he was mas­sa­ging and pressed a soft kiss to the in­side of my arch. “Ad­or­able.”