The Institute, Daddy Issues(89)

“Why do I—” I began and then stopped my­self. What good would it do to ask why all the Littles had to fin­ish their punch at din­ner? Might as well ask why we all had to wear plugs in our asses. It was just an­other ri­dicu­lous, ar­bit­rary rule that made no sense.

Since we wanted to get into the Lounge and this was ap­par­ently the only way, I picked up my glass and drank it down, try­ing not to shud­der as I swal­lowed the cloy­ingly sweet stuff. It was al­most like drink­ing a glass full of cough syrup—it seemed to coat my throat and I couldn’t get rid of the af­ter­taste even after Salt gave me his wa­ter gob­let and I drained it too.

“Very good.” Berkley nod­ded ap­prov­ingly and Mandy giggled.

I sat quietly and wished I hadn’t drunk the en­tire glass of wa­ter after the punch. I had barely touched my din­ner and my stom­ach felt too full of li­quid.

I leaned my head against Salt’s broad shoulder and closed my eyes a minute. Damn, but I felt strange. It wasn’t just my too-full stom­ach either. I was be­gin­ning to feel sort of light headed—maybe I should try to eat my din­ner after all.

But the thought of the now-cold chicken on my plate wasn’t at all ap­peal­ing. In­stead, I only wanted to be close to my Papa. With a sigh, I snuggled closer.

“Mishka, are you well?” he mur­mured, put­ting an arm around me.

“Fine,” I said dream­ily. “Just fine as long as you’re near me, Papa.”

He stroked my hair gently and all I wanted to do was rest against him. But soon din­ner was end­ing and Berkley was say­ing that it was time to re­tire to the Dad­dies’ Lounge for brandy and ci­gars and other things.

What those things were, I didn’t know but I wasn’t wor­ried. As long as I was with Salt, I would be okay. It oc­curred to me as we left the table that I seemed to have some­how drif­ted even fur­ther into Little-space—maybe fur­ther than I ever had be­fore. But it didn’t bother me. It was kind of nice just to re­lax and put all my trust in Salt, know­ing that my Papa would take care of me.

You’re sup­posed to be tak­ing care of your­self—you’re a trained de­tect­ive! A po­lice of­ficer, shouted a dis­tant little voice in my head. Salt can’t carry the whole case on his own—and he shouldn’t have to. This is your re­spons­ib­il­ity too so snap out of it and get your mind right!

I tried—tried to do what the voice ordered, but some­how I just couldn’t. It was as though I had fallen into a day­dream I couldn’t wake up from. But soon my dreamy state gave way to some­thing else.

It star­ted as a tingle at the tips of my breasts as we walked down the long hall­way to a door marked Private, and con­tin­ued to spread as Berkley, trailed closely by Mandy, ushered us into a large room.

The room was dec­or­ated like an old fash­ioned man’s study or lib­rary. Shelves of books lined the walls and deep, oxblood leather fur­niture was ar­ranged in front of a large fire­place.

The flick­er­ing flames danced and leapt in the grate and I stared at them, mes­mer­ized. They were so pretty but why did I feel so strange when I watched them? The tingling had spread from my nipples down to my pussy. I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably, spread­ing my legs to ease some of the pres­sure and ache I sud­denly felt down there. What was go­ing on with me?

“As you can see, you and mishka are our only guests here in the Dad­dies’ Lounge to­night,” Berkley said.

His words broke my con­cen­tra­tion on the fire and I looked around and saw that though the lounge area was very large, Salt and I were the only people there other than Mandy and Berkley. Where were all the other Dad­dies and Baby­girls? What was go­ing on?

“So I see,” Salt said war­ily. “There is reason for this?”

“Of course there is, Mr. Saltanov.” Berkley soun­ded ex­tremely smug.

“We brought you here to give you the medi­cine you keep ask­ing for,” Mandy chimed in and for once Berkley didn’t rep­rim­and her for talk­ing out of turn. She looked at me. “The kind that makes you ex­tra horny for your Daddy.”

“You have such medi­cine?” Salt asked and I could feel his ex­cite­ment. Fi­nally, we were get­ting to the heart of the mat­ter—we were go­ing to find the source of the Please that was com­ing out of this place!