The Institute, Daddy Issues(50)

“Salt…” My breath was com­ing faster for some reason and my heart was pound­ing. Which was ri­dicu­lous—he was just be­ing play­ful and he’d only kissed my foot. It wasn’t like he’d lif­ted my skirt to give me “spe­cial kisses” or any­thing like that.

Just the thought of that brought all kinds of men­tal im­ages with it and I found that my pulse was sud­denly ra­cing. God, what was wrong with me? I had to stop ima­gin­ing that—stop pic­tur­ing my part­ner split­ting my thighs with his broad shoulders to go down on me. I didn’t want him to do that to me, did I? Of course not. But still, the im­ages wouldn’t leave my brain…

“So you said that Berkley’s brat had in­form­a­tion but she would not share?” Salt asked, break­ing into my erotic and for­bid­den thoughts. “Why would she not talk to you?”

“She called me a ‘scared little vir­gin’, among other things, I think be­cause of what you told Berkley about how we weren’t, uh, sexual to­gether.” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot as I spoke.

“Hmmm…” Salt frowned. “I am sorry about that but I was afraid if we pre­ten­ded to be ex­per­i­enced in this kind of thing we would be re­quired to do things…things we were not ready to do.”

“We may have to do some­thing any­way,” I said, frown­ing. “We’re get­ting nowhere on this case so far.”

“We did do some­thing,” he poin­ted out. “In the of­fice of Dr. Lucy.”

I shif­ted again, think­ing of the scorch­ingly hot kiss we’d shared. If I wasn’t care­ful we were go­ing to get into dan­ger­ous ter­rit­ory here.

“Well…but all that was just for show. I mean, we were giv­ing Dr. Lucy what she wanted, right?”

“What she wanted…or what we wanted?” His pale blue eyes seemed to burn into me.

“What she wanted,” I said firmly, lift­ing my chin. “I mean, come on Salt, you know I wouldn’t act that way un­less I had a reason, right?”

“You mean you would not bare your soul to me and weep for the pain of your past, as you did?” he asked softly. “Or wrap your arms around my neck and kiss me un­til neither of us could breathe?”

“Well, I mean…” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot­ter and hot­ter. God, I was go­ing to ex­plode soon if he didn’t back off!

Salt seemed to know it.

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Tell me what ex­actly did you have in mind for us to do, mishka? And when are we to do it?”

“At din­ner to­night,” I said, feel­ing im­mensely re­lieved to be back to the case and off the messy sub­ject of our emo­tions. “We have to prove I’m not a goody-two-shoes’.”

“A…what?” Salt looked con­fused. “For­give me, a few Amer­ican idioms still es­cape me.”

“A goody-two-shoes is someone who al­ways fol­lows the rules…who never gets pun­ished. Mandy told me to come back and talk to her when I wasn’t such a ‘bor­ing goody-two-shoes’.”

“And how will you prove you are not this ‘goody-sweet-shoes?’” Salt asked.

“Goody—two-shoes,” I cor­rec­ted him. “And I think the best way is…” I took a deep breath. God, I couldn’t be­lieve I was about to say this. “I think the best way is for you to spank me.”

Salt frowned. “I thought that you did not wish for me to spank you.”

“I don’t want you to spank me for real,” I said hast­ily. “We’ll put on a show, just like Patty and her Daddy did in the play­room. I’ll throw a hissy fit at the din­ner table, then you spank me right where every­one can see. That’ll show Mandy that I’m not such a good girl and maybe she’ll open up to me.”

“I do not know…” Salt still looked doubt­ful. “Are you cer­tain you wish to do this? I know that I threatened to dis­cip­line you but I am…re­luct­ant to strike you. To strike any wo­man, but es­pe­cially you, Andi.”

“Is that be­cause of your father?” I asked softly. “Be­cause of…what you saw him do? To your mom, I mean?”

I knew from work­ing at the PD that ab­used chil­dren of­ten went one of two ways—either they might be­come ab­users them­selves or they would go in the com­plete op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion and re­fuse to lay a hand on any­one.