The Institute, Daddy Issues(55)

Yes, but maybe you do get off on hav­ing all of your Daddy’s at­ten­tion centered just on you, whispered an in­si­di­ous little voice in my brain. Maybe you like know­ing that he loves you enough to dis­cip­line you…and that he’s so strong you can’t get away from him and his love even when you try. You can’t run away—he won’t let you go and he will stay with you forever…

I pushed the con­fus­ing thoughts away and tried to con­cen­trate on what was go­ing on.

“Now,” Salt was ask­ing me sternly. “Do you wish to apo­lo­gize to Dir­ector Berkley?”

“No,” I said, scowl­ing.

“Mishka…” Salt looked at me warn­ingly.

“Fine.” I stared at Berkley. “I’m sorry I called you an as­shole.”

He sucked in his breath. “Very well but please re­mem­ber that in the fu­ture such lan­guage is not ap­pro­pri­ate or ac­cept­able here at the In­sti­tute.”

“Fine,” I muttered again and sat gingerly back on my booster seat. The cool leather felt good against my heated bot­tom but it was dif­fi­cult to sit down when my sting­ing ass was still singing Ave Maria.

“Now then, maybe we can re­sume our din­ner,” Berkley said primly. He glanced at Mandy who was star­ing at me with a look of re­sent­ment on her face. “Prin­cess, eat your peas.”

“No!” she pushed the plate away ab­ruptly. “I don’t like peas!”

“Mandy…” Berkley frowned but his little “prin­cess” was already in full tan­trum mode.

“I don’t like them!” she shrieked. “I hate them and I hate, you, Daddy!”

Clearly, she was angling for a pun­ish­ment. Maybe she felt like I had stolen her thun­der by be­ing spanked first and now she wanted to be the cen­ter of at­ten­tion. Which she cer­tainly was. Nobody was look­ing at me now—all eyes were on the little blonde who was wear­ing an out­fit that was even skim­pier than the one she’d had on the night be­fore, if pos­sible. I could see the round pink arcs of her are­olas peek­ing out from un­der the brief top she had on and her skirt was, as al­ways, in­de­cently short.

Berkley looked ex­as­per­ated.

“Mandy, I am not in the mood for this right now,” he said sternly. “Just fin­ish your sup­per, there’s a good girl.”

“I don’t want to be a good girl.” Mandy scooped up a hand­ful of peas and threw them across the table. A few landed on my plate.

“Eww!” I ex­claimed, de­cid­ing to go with it. “I don’t want your nasty peas on my plate! Get them off!” Scoop­ing up my own hand­ful, I threw them back at her, try­ing to get some in her golden hair.

“You bitch!” Mandy shouted while Salt grabbed my arm to keep me from throw­ing more. “I’ll get you for that!”

“You will do no such thing.” Berkley looked ex­as­per­ated. Maybe he was get­ting tired of this game? Or maybe he just wasn’t in the mood for his­tri­on­ics every night. “You’re go­ing dir­ectly un­der the table,” he told his Baby­girl. And grabbing her by the back of her neck, he forced her down un­der the table­cloth.

“You will go as well!” Salt told me, which was ex­actly what I had been plan­ning.

I pouted at him. “I don’t wanna go un­der there!” I said in my best little girl voice. “It’s not my fault, Papa—she star­ted it!”

“Well I am fin­ish­ing it,” Salt de­clared. “Now get un­der the table, mishka—you are in dis­grace.”

I al­lowed him to push me un­der the table­cloth as Berkley had pushed Mandy. The white linen came down and I found my­self in an­other world. It was dim and quiet—the sounds of the din­ner go­ing on above us con­sid­er­ably muted. I blinked, try­ing to get my eyes used to the dark space.

Mandy was already crouch­ing between the dir­ector’s knees. I saw with little sur­prise that she was kneel­ing on a soft red cush­ion. Clearly it was kept there just for this pur­pose—so she could get com­fort­able while she blew him.

“Hey,” I said, won­der­ing if my little dis­play had worked. It had bet­ter have helped at least some—oth­er­wise the pain­ful and con­fus­ing spank­ing I’d just en­dured at my part­ner’s hands was all for noth­ing.