The Institute, Daddy Issues(60)

“Is my greatest fear as well,” Salt said soberly. “I do not wish to lose you, Andi.”

“You won’t,” I said. “In fact…let’s make a prom­ise to each other right now.” I grabbed his other hand and looked in­tently into his eyes. “Let’s swear that no mat­ter what we have to do to break this case, we won’t let it af­fect our re­la­tion­ship or our part­ner­ship. After all, we’re only do­ing what is ne­ces­sary.”

Salt nod­ded. “Agreed. But…” He hes­it­ated.

“Yes?” I promp­ted. “Go on, Salt—what?”

“If we are in same situ­ation we were in to­night. When…when you were un­der table,” he said. “Do you…should we make some kind of sig­nal so that I can warn you if I am about to…” He cleared his throat. “A sig­nal so you can know when to stop?”

“No,” I said. “No, that’s not ne­ces­sary. If you…if you come, you come. That’s all right.” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot again but I lif­ted my chin, de­term­ined not to back down.

Salt raised an eye­brow at me.

“Even if is in your mouth? Or…else­where?”

“Do what you have to do,” I said firmly. “I’ll do the same. And it won’t af­fect our part­ner­ship, I prom­ise.”

“All right. Is deal.” He squeezed my hands gently and let go. Then he sighed and leaned back. “Deal I am afraid we will have to keep sooner rather than later.”

“What do you mean?” I felt a flut­ter in my stom­ach.

“I am speak­ing of what Berke­ley said to us be­fore I spanked you. About how you must be bathed by your Daddy?”

“And shaved,” I whispered. This time my cheeks felt so hot I was cer­tain he would no­tice the blush creep­ing into my face.

“That too.” Salt nod­ded.

“Well, maybe they won’t count to­night since we put on such a big show at din­ner,” I said. “I mean maybe he’ll think you for­got all about it be­cause you were pun­ish­ing me and—”

A sharp rap­ping against the wooden door of the suite cut off my words. Both of us jumped and I put a hand to my pound­ing heart.

“I’ll get it,” I said but Salt shook his head.

“No. Al­low me.” He went cau­tiously to the door and opened it a crack. “Yes?”

“With Dir­ector Berkley’s com­pli­ments,” said a voice in the hall.

Salt opened the door wider and reached for some­thing. He closed the door firmly and locked it be­fore com­ing back to the couch. I saw that he had some kind of bas­ket in his big hand.

“What’s this?” I asked as he set it down on the cush­ion be­side me. The con­tents were nes­ted in brightly colored tis­sue pa­per so it was hard to see what ex­actly the bas­ket con­tained. I reached into it and my fin­gers found some­thing cool and smooth and cyl­indrical—some kind of can. I pulled it out and looked at it un­cer­tainly. “Peach foam­ing gel,’ I read aloud. “For the smoothest, clean­est shave of all your most in­tim­ate areas.”

Salt reached into the bas­ket as well and pulled out a dainty pink razor. He held it out to me.

“I do not think he has for­got­ten, Andi,” he said in a low voice.

“That bas­tard.” I snatched the razor from Salt’s big hand and stud­ied it. “He’s prob­ably watch­ing right now.”

“He prob­ably is,” my part­ner agreed. He looked at me. “So what do we do?”

“We…” I star­ted to say we should tell Berkley to go fuck him­self but of course, that wouldn’t help the case. In fact, there was only one thing we could do. I lif­ted my chin and looked Salt in the eye. “We do it,” I said evenly. “We put on a show.”





Chapter Nine

“You are sure about this?” Salt asked as I stood there in the bath­room in front of the huge marble tub, filled with bubbles.

As a mat­ter of fact, I wasn’t. Do­ing ex­actly what Berkley ex­pec­ted us to do had seemed like a good idea at first. But now that I was about to let Salt see me na­ked—not only see me but touch me and shave me, I felt sud­denly anxious.

“Andi…” He touched me gently on the shoulder and I jumped.

“What? What—I’m fine,” I said quickly, wish­ing my words wouldn’t come out so nervous and choppy.