Daddy Issues

  Salt froze and I wondered if he was feel­ing the same thing—that same in­cred­ibly in­tense high. Then he kissed me again and I kissed him back—hun­grily, raven­ously—it was as though an ap­pet­ite I’d kept in check for years was fi­nally com­ing for­ward, de­mand­ing to be fed.

  His mouth was salty with my tears—hot and wet and per­fect. I wound my arms around his neck and pressed my­self against him, my heart pound­ing. He crushed me to him and kissed me un­til I couldn’t breathe—not that I wanted to. I just wanted to go on kiss­ing him forever.

  It was ma­gical…amaz­ing…

  Wrong.

  What are you do­ing? shouted the voice of san­ity, fi­nally mak­ing it­self heard in­side my head. He’s your part­ner—the only good re­la­tion­ship you have in your whole shitty life. And if you’re not care­ful, you’re go­ing to ruin everything!

  I pulled away ab­ruptly, break­ing the kiss.

  “Wait,” I said. “Stop!”

  The hun­ger in Salt’s pale blue eyes mirrored my own. But to his credit, when I said ‘stop’, he stopped.

  “Andi,” he said hoarsely. “I…” But then he just shook his head and we sat there star­ing at each other.

  “Well…” Dr. Love gave a soft laugh which made me tear my eyes from my part­ner’s in­tense gaze. “I sup­pose that an­swers my next ques­tion—I was go­ing to ask if the two of you are truly sexu­ally at­trac­ted to each other.”

  “I…we…don’t usu­ally act like that,” I pro­tested, wish­ing my voice didn’t sound so breathy.

  “Not in this con­text at least. Now…” She tapped her stylus. “I have been told that the two of you have been ab­stain­ing from sexual activ­ity in your play—at least up un­til now. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” I said, truth­fully enough.

  “But I think you would like to be sexual.”

  “Well, um…” I shif­ted on Salt’s lap un­com­fort­ably and felt that hard, hot lump I knew was his cock press­ing against my ass.

  “Yes,” Salt said at the same time I said,

  “I guess so.” I wasn’t sure if that was true or not but it came out of my mouth be­fore I could stop it.

  “Very good.” She nod­ded. “And tell me, mishka, what would that look like? What would it feel like to be sexual with your part­ner…with your Papa?”

  “Um…you want me to de­scribe it?” I was get­ting more and more un­com­fort­able.

  She nod­ded. “In the con­text of your play, yes.”

  “So you mean I would get…get into Little-space and let him touch me?” I asked flatly. The idea still bothered me a lot, even though she had made it crys­tal clear that what we were do­ing was just role play­ing.

  “Ex­actly.” She nod­ded again.

  “What if I can’t?” I asked, try­ing des­per­ately to get back to the case and away from the for­bid­den ter­rit­ory Salt and I were stum­bling around in like a deadly mine field. “Are you go­ing to help me? Can you pre­scribe some­thing that will make me be a bet­ter, more, uh, sexual Little?”

  “Nat­ur­ally not. We don’t pre­scribe phar­ma­ceut­ic­als here.” She frowned. “I don’t think you need such help, any­way. What I will give you is an as­sign­ment. To­night, when the two of you are alone in your suite, I want you to do your best to go into Little-space and let your part­ner—your Papa—touch you.”

  “But—”

  “Now, you don’t have to be in the head­space of the age you’re play­ing now,” she said quickly be­fore I could get my protest out. “In fact, I think it would be bet­ter if you weren’t. But you can ima­gine your­self as older, if you like. A girl in the first flush of wo­man­hood, just dis­cov­er­ing her body.”

  “But…how will that be for Sa—I mean, for my Papa?” I asked lamely, cast­ing a glance at him and shift­ing awk­wardly on his lap. My heart was pound­ing and my face felt hot—I couldn’t re­mem­ber ever feel­ing so un­com­fort­able. But some­how it didn’t oc­cur to me to simply leave and go back to my own chair.

  “I think it will be good,” Dr. Lucy said simply. “Those that have a crav­ing for Age Play in the Big as­pect of­ten find the nur­tur­ing role a very ful­filling one. It al­lows them to en­gulf their Little with everything deep and power­ful within them. When that play be­comes sexual—as it of­ten does—and the Big guides his Little and shows her ways to en­joy her body, the en­ergy between them…the com­plex­ity of sen­sa­tions and emo­tions, well, it can be ex­tremely in­tense.”

  “It, uh, sounds in­tense,” I said.

  “But what about you, Mr. Saltanov?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing at Salt. “I can’t pre­sume to speak for you in this. How do you feel about this as­sign­ment? Do you want to touch mishka sexu­ally?”

  “Yes,” he said in a low voice.

  I looked back at him, won­der­ing if he was just say­ing this be­cause he thought the doc­tor wanted to hear it.

  “And how would you like to touch her? What do you want to do?” Dr. Lucy in­quired, lean­ing for­ward with her el­bows on her knees.

  Wow, I really wished she wouldn’t be so dir­ect! I had never heard of a ther­ap­ist be­ing so head-on, so un­flinch­ingly hon­est. Maybe this was just her tech­nique or maybe, as she had said at the be­gin­ning, she just felt like we had a lot of ground to cover and little time to cover it in.

  “I want…” Salt cleared his throat. “Mostly I want to hold her. To touch her every­where. To bring her pleas­ure.”

  “You…you do?” I couldn’t help ask­ing.

  Hold­ing my eyes with his own, he nod­ded. I felt like my heart was beat­ing triple time but I couldn’t look away. Oh God, the idea of ly­ing com­pletely na­ked in his arms and let­ting him run those big, warm hands all over me…The im­age formed in my brain and some­how I couldn’t get rid of it.

  “And?” Dr. Lucy promp­ted. “What else? Do you wish to pen­et­rate her…en­vel­ope her? Make love to her?”

  “I want to taste her,” Salt said softly, still look­ing at me. “I wish to spread her thighs and taste her soft, sweet pussy un­til I feel her com­ing against my tongue.”

  I felt a strange quiv­er­ing in my stom­ach. Yes­ter­day the thought of let­ting any man give me “spe­cial kisses” between my thighs had made me feel in­tensely un­com­fort­able. But that was be­fore I’d bared my emo­tions to Salt and found noth­ing but un­der­stand­ing and ac­cept­ance. Be­fore I’d cried in his arms and tasted his mouth when he kissed me so des­per­ately I could tell he was starving for me—starving the same way I was for him.

  Wait—what was I think­ing? I dragged my eyes from his and looked down at my hands.

  “Well…I think we know where both of you stand. And it’s a good deal closer to­gether than you thought.” There was a fi­nal­ity in Dr. Lucy’s voice that made me think we were fi­nally wrap­ping things up.

  “I guess our time is up,” I said, fi­nally hop­ping off Salt’s lap with a mixed feel­ing of re­lief and re­gret.

  “For now. If you have fur­ther prob­lems, please be sure to come back. How long will you be at the In­sti­tute?” she asked.

  “For as long as we have to be,” I muttered.

  “To cul­tiv­ate our new roles,” Salt fin­ished for me, smoothly. “We wish for best pos­sible re­la­tion­ship and do not in­tend to leave un­til we feel com­pletely com­fort­able to­gether as Papa and mishka.”

  “That’s an ad­mir­able goal, Mr. Saltanov.” We were all stand­ing now and she held out a hand to Salt. He took it and they shook. I no­ticed she did not of­fer me the same cour­tesy.

  Dr. Lucy seemed to know what I was think­ing.

  “You’re won­der­ing why I didn’t of­fer to shake your hand too, right?” she asked me.

  “It would have been po­lite,” I said a bit stiffly.

  “But I wouldn’t have offered to shake the hand of a bio­lo­gical little girl who was here
with her Daddy,” she poin­ted out. “Your trip into Little-space be­gins now, mishka. I want you to do the best you can to really get into it be­fore you go back to your suite to­night. In fact, right after lunch, I want you to go to the play­room and have a play-date with some of the other Littles. Maybe that will help you.”

  “Wow, two as­sign­ments in one ses­sion,” I re­marked. “I bet you’d be pop­u­lar as a teacher—prob­ably as­sign a whole pile of home­work.”

  She smiled. “Now there’s a younger thought. Dwell on that. And hold your Papa’s hand—he’s here to keep you safe, you know.”

  Re­luct­antly, I held out a hand to Salt who took it and en­twined our fin­gers.

  I didn’t really mind this part—I liked the feel­ing of his big hand en­vel­op­ing mine. But if she thought we were ac­tu­ally go­ing to do the other piece of “home­work” she had as­signed us, she was crazy. There was no way I was let­ting him touch me in­tim­ately—es­pe­cially not while I was in Little-space—as if I could even get into that mind set!

  Of course, we couldn’t let Dr. Lucy know that. Hope­fully this would be our first and last ses­sion with her and we could go on to solve this case without get­ting fur­ther en­tangled in the mess of con­fus­ing emo­tions which threatened to con­sume us.

  But as I held Salt’s hand trust­ingly and let him lead me from the room, I thought of the pas­sion­ate kiss we’d shared and wondered if it was already too late. If we had already done ir­re­par­able harm to the part­ner­ship which was the most im­port­ant thing in my life.

  Chapter Seven

  The play­room was a large space filled with all kinds of toys and play equip­ment. In one corner was a low, round table stacked with col­or­ing books and cray­ons where sev­eral Baby­girls were col­or­ing. In an­other were some easels, paint pots and brushes. One of the Littles, who ap­peared to be a girl in her twen­ties, was paint­ing a house with a stick fig­ure fam­ily out front. There was a play castle com­plete with prin­cess and dragon cos­tumes, a set of mon­key bars with a mat un­der­neath it, in case someone fell, I guessed, and a lib­rary corner with a shelf full of brightly colored pic­ture books.

  I saw one of the Dad­dies who had been at din­ner the night be­fore sit­ting in an over­sized rock­ing chair and read­ing a book to his Baby­girl who was cuddled up on his lap. She had long, white-blonde hair and ap­peared to be in her late thirties. She was snuggled close to his chest as they per­used the pages to­gether and there didn’t ap­pear to be any­thing sexual go­ing on—just a sweet, in­no­cent scene of com­fort and love.

  Part of me wanted to think how sick it was—her dress­ing up like a little girl and sit­ting on a grown man’s lap. But then I re­membered what Dr. Lucy had said—that so many Littles were try­ing to find things they’d missed out on when they were younger. I re­membered how com­for­ted and se­cure I’d felt when Salt read the Rus­sian fairy tale to me the night be­fore. It had felt nice…safe to be so close to him be­ing treated like I was little and spe­cial and cher­ished. It was just the way my own father used to make me feel when I was younger but with Salt there was some­thing more—an ex­tra com­pon­ent that hadn’t been there when I was truly a bio­lo­gical little girl.

  Ex­tra com­pon­ent my ass, whispered a little voice in my head. You mean the fact that you just sat on your part­ner’s lap and made out with him like a horny teen­ager? And wanted to do more—would have done more if you hadn’t man­aged to stop your­self?

  Neither Salt nor I had men­tioned the in­tense kiss after the ther­apy ses­sion. I had a feel­ing he would have liked to broach the sub­ject but didn’t know how to bring it up. As for me, I just wanted to for­get it. We were get­ting in deep here—way over our heads.

  Look­ing at my tall part­ner in his im­macu­late suit, I re­flec­ted that the In­sti­tute was chan­ging us and we hadn’t even been here two days yet. We had to snap out of it or our part­ner­ship was go­ing to be ruined. It was bad luck in the ex­treme that our par­tic­u­lar is­sues played into the place—that Salt happened to have strong pro­tect­ive and pos­sess­ive in­stincts to­wards me and I still had a broken little girl in­side that had never got­ten over the loss of her father. But is­sues or not, we had to at least try to work on the damn case!

  As I con­tin­ued to ana­lyze what had happened between me and Salt, I saw Mandy, Berkley’s Baby­girl, stand­ing over by the play castle set and look­ing through the cos­tumes.

  “Look,” I muttered to Salt. “It’s Mandy—Berkley’s brat. I’m go­ing to try and talk to her.”

  “All right. I will go sit on the bench with the oth­ers and see what I can find out.” He nod­ded to one side of the room where the Dad­dies who weren’t in­ter­act­ing with their Littles waited as they played.

  I star­ted to go but he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

  “Wait.” He pulled a clean white linen handker­chief from the pocket of his dark suit and used it to dab un­der my eyes.

  “What are you do­ing?” I asked im­pa­tiently.

  “I don’t want it to look like you have been cry­ing,” he ex­plained pa­tiently, still work­ing on my face. “That might be taken as a sign of weak­ness and this Mandy girl is mean.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I ex­claimed im­pa­tiently, push­ing the handker­chief away. I didn’t know whether to feel ex­as­per­ated or af­fec­tion­ate at his at­ten­tion.

  Salt raised his eye­brows. “Such lan­guage. Do you wish me to spank your bot­tom, mishka?”

  “Of course not,” I said, frown­ing.

  He shook a fin­ger in my face. “Then watch your mouth, young lady.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny.”

  “You think I am jok­ing.” Salt gave me a stern look. “I am not. We must start act­ing as the oth­ers here do. If you mis­be­have, I will pun­ish you.”

  My mouth went dry. “You…you wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, but I would, my little mishka.” He bent down and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Now go play with the oth­ers,” he said in a slightly louder voice. “Have fun but be sure you mind your man­ners.” Then he sent me off, with a pat on the bot­tom.

  Of course, I never would have put up with such treat­ment in our lives out­side the In­sti­tute but I found it strangely com­fort­ing now. It was good to know that Salt was here with me—that he had my back in this weird situ­ation. Though I still didn’t know how to feel about his threat to pun­ish me and know­ing that he ac­tu­ally meant it.

  I walked over to the fairy tale play­house where Mandy was try­ing on one of the prin­cess out­fits. A slutty prin­cess, I saw. It had a tight, lace up bod­ice that her full breasts were spill­ing out of and the skirt split all the way up, show­ing her pink panties. I looked around for Berkley, think­ing she must be show­ing off for him, but he was no place to be seen. Maybe she was just an ex­hib­i­tion­ist? At any rate, I was hop­ing she would be more pleas­ant without her Daddy around.

  “Hi,” I said awk­wardly when she had ig­nored me for al­most a whole minute. “Um…want to play?”

  “Not with a good little girl like you I don’t.” Her pretty face twis­ted into a de­ris­ive sneer.

  “What’s that sup­posed to mean?” I de­man­ded, be­gin­ning to get pissed.

  “Ex­actly what it sounds like.” She spared a mo­ment from ad­mir­ing her­self in the mir­ror and gave me an arch look. “You don’t even have a plug.”

  “So what?” I said, frown­ing.

  “So every­one knows how you freaked out when you saw Patty get her plug changed. I mean, it’s nor­mal to throw a tan­trum every now and then but you—you’re just weird.”

  “If not hav­ing a freak­ing plug up my ass makes me weird then yes, I’m weird,” I snapped. God, this place was crazy!

  “And my Daddy says that your Daddy hasn’t even had sex with you yet. You’re a vir­gin,” Mandy taunted, giv­ing me a nas
ty look. “I bet you’re fri­gid. Is that why you deny your Daddy his right­ful ac­cess to your body?” She looked me up and down and gave a de­ris­ive sniff. “Not that he’s miss­ing much.”

  “I am not fri­gid!” I ex­claimed, stung into re­tort­ing. “And just be­cause I don’t dress like a slut doesn’t mean I’m a vir­gin.”

  “Oh yeah?” She looked at me, her pale green eyes flash­ing like a cat’s. “Tell me the last time your Daddy fucked you then?”

  “I…” Sud­denly my mind was crowded with im­ages of Salt cov­er­ing me with his big body, spread­ing my legs, tak­ing me…

  “You can’t, can you? Be­cause he hasn’t.” Mandy gave a mean laugh. “Too bad you have so many is­sues you can’t even give your Daddy what he needs. I heard how you had to go to see Dr. Lucy today. What did you talk about?”

  “That’s private,” I said tightly.

  She shrugged. “Whatever. All I’m say­ing is that if you’re not care­ful your Daddy is go­ing to go look­ing for a new Baby­girl.” She cast a pred­at­ory look across the room at Salt who was talk­ing to the other Dad­dies. “And look­ing like that, I’m sure he won’t have any trouble find­ing one who’ll be happy to take his fat cock up their pussy and ass. So much bet­ter than be­ing with a scared little vir­gin like you.”

  Her words and the way she was look­ing at my part­ner caused a sud­den bolt of jeal­ousy to stab through me.

  “You stay away from Sal—from my Papa,” I said an­grily.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I be­long to my Daddy Berkley. I wouldn’t want any­one else.” She sniffed. “I’m just say­ing, if you don’t give it up for that hot Daddy of yours some­body else will. Just take it as ad­vice from one Little to an­other—I’ve seen it hap­pen be­fore. In fact, I re­placed the Baby­girl be­fore me be­cause she couldn’t give it up for Daddy Berkley just right. That’s how I got here.” She spread her hands tri­umphantly as though be­ing the Queen-bitch of the In­sti­tute was the best thing that could pos­sibly have happened to her. Well, maybe in her mind it was.