Daddy Issues

  “What are you do­ing?” He soun­ded ir­rit­ated.

  “There’s no booster in my seat so I can’t sit there,” I ex­plained, snug­gling back against his lap. “So I thought I’d sit with you, Papa. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I pressed my panty-clad bot­tom against his crotch, rub­bing sug­gest­ively and was pleased to feel some­thing hot and hard pok­ing me. So my part­ner wasn’t quite as im­mune to my charms as he wanted to pre­tend. Good.

  But Salt wouldn’t stand for my im­pudence for long.

  “That is enough, mishka,” he growled, al­most push­ing me out of his lap. “I am sure they will bring booster if we ask.” He looked at Berkley, one eye­brow raised.

  “Oh yes, cer­tainly!” The dir­ector looked mean­ing­fully at one of the ser­vants who rushed to get the booster seat for me. I sat on it with poor grace, sulk­ing with my arms crossed over my chest, for all the world like a spoiled teen­ager. The thing was—I was only halfway act­ing. I really was pissed at Salt for ig­nor­ing me when I was mak­ing my­self vul­ner­able by wear­ing this ri­dicu­lously re­veal­ing out­fit. It wasn’t hard to act like I was angry with him be­cause I was.

  My sulky at­ti­tude wasn’t missed by Dir­ector Berkley.

  “My, my, Mr. Saltanov,” he re­marked when the ser­vant sat a full break­fast plate down in front of me and I shoved it away without tak­ing a bite. “It seems to me that your Baby­girl is in dire need of some dis­cip­line. Maybe you should take her to task.”

  “Mishka is fine.” Salt was per­us­ing the morn­ing pa­per now, still poin­tedly not look­ing at me. “Be­sides, she is prob­ably still sore from pun­ish­ment she got last night. I am cer­tain she does not want any more.” On these last words, he turned his head and gave me a cold stare—a clear warn­ing that I had bet­ter get my act to­gether.

  His un­spoken mes­sage only pissed me off more.

  “Whatever,” I snapped. “I’m not hungry any­way.”

  I pushed back from the table and got up.

  “Mishka!” Salt glowered at me. “You have not been ex­cused from table. You have not eaten a bite of your break­fast.”

  “I said I’m not hungry.”

  Turn­ing, I flounced away from the table with no very clear idea of where I was go­ing. But I hadn’t got­ten more than a few steps out­side the din­ing room when Salt came after me and grabbed me by the arm.

  “What do you think you are do­ing, mishka?” he de­man­ded in a low voice. “Try­ing to cause a scene? Mak­ing trouble?”

  “I’m try­ing to do my job,” I hissed back. “But it’s hard when my part­ner is be­ing an as­shole.”

  “How am I do­ing this?” Salt de­man­ded. “By not giv­ing you what you want? By not no­ti­cing your body in these clothes?” His pale blue gaze raked over me and I felt more na­ked than I had the night be­fore when I’d dropped my towel for him.

  “It’s not easy be­ing dressed like this,” I poin­ted out in a low voice. “The least you could do is ac­know­ledge that.”

  “It is also not easy to see you dressed like this and keep my thoughts on the case,” Salt growled, frown­ing. “I told you this be­fore we came here. I asked you to dress in other cloth­ing—not this.”

  “The other cloth­ing was get­ting us nowhere,” I snapped. “No, scratch that—it was get­ting me into a men­tal and emo­tional mess. I couldn’t take it any­more—couldn’t take feel­ing like that. So I’m sorry if you don’t like the way I’m dressed but I tried it your way and it didn’t work.”

  Salt threw up his hands in ap­par­ent ex­as­per­a­tion.

  “Fine. Do as you please. I sup­pose I have no say in the mat­ter.”

  “No, you don’t.” I glared at him and then took a deep breath, try­ing to re­gain con­trol. Fight­ing wouldn’t get us any closer to solv­ing this case and get­ting home. “Any­way, I think we should split up,” I said, straight­en­ing my blouse. “This dis­agree­ment is a good ex­cuse and we can cover more ground sep­ar­ately than to­gether.”

  “And where do you wish to go?” he de­man­ded, plainly still pissed.

  I shrugged. “Any­where we haven’t been yet. We’re still look­ing for the lab where the Please is be­ing made and the hid­den video view­ing room, right? If we find that room, I bet we’ll find a whole ass-load of evid­ence.”

  “True.” Salt looked some­what mol­li­fied. “I will take cor­ridor where Dr. Lucy’s of­fice is loc­ated. Is too long to have only one door—some­thing may be hid­den there.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll look around the swim­ming pool and spa area. We can meet back at the din­ing room for lunch.”

  “Very well.” Salt nod­ded shortly and I could tell he was still mad at me. Well, fine—I wasn’t his num­ber one fan at the mo­ment either.

  Without an­other word, we par­ted ways.

  Little did I know that next time I saw my part­ner I was go­ing to be in some of the worst trouble of my life.

  Chapter Twelve

  I wandered around the pool and spa area for a little while, still fum­ing. Part of me wanted to go an apo­lo­gize and make up with Salt but part of me—the Little part—was still too angry to do any­thing of the sort. So I tried to con­cen­trate on my in­vest­ig­a­tion.

  The pool was huge and set un­der a series of arches that screamed “Greco-Ro­man wanna-be” al­most as loudly as the na­ked marble statues every­where. The spa had mas­sage tables with lots of dif­fer­ent oils and creams to choose from. There was also a bored-look­ing at­tend­ant on hand provid­ing spe­cial mas­sage tools like heated lo­tions and vi­brat­ors of all shapes and sizes. After es­tab­lish­ing that I didn’t want any­thing, how­ever, he went back to the game he was play­ing on his cell phone.

  I went on with my visual in­spec­tion, do­ing my best to play an in­no­cent Baby­girl, just ex­plor­ing. Be­sides the mas­sage tables, oil, and vi­brat­ors, I saw all kinds of pleas­ure equip­ment, in­clud­ing some­thing that looked like anal beads in the glass case at the front of the spa—at least I thought that was what they were. They were big and round and linked to­gether on a string. I shuttered to think of some­thing like that go­ing up in­side me but then, I didn’t want any­thing in that area, un­like most of the girls in this place.

  Nobody was swim­ming in the pool or get­ting mas­saged in the spa this time of day—all the Dad­dies and Baby­girls were prob­ably still at break­fast talk­ing about the scene I had caused. Or maybe caus­ing scenes of their own. Think­ing of that made me real­ize, I hadn’t seen Mandy at the din­ing table. I wondered if she was sleep­ing in.

  As if my thoughts had summoned her, I sud­denly saw the blonde girl com­ing from a small, re­cessed door at the far end of the swim­ming pool. I hadn’t even thought to look there yet, as­sum­ing it prob­ably just held pool equip­ment. But there was some­thing about the sneaky, al­most furt­ive way that she looked around as she slipped out of the small door that piqued my in­terest.

  I hid around the far end of the spa watch­ing as she left the swim­ming and spa area. Then, mak­ing sure that the at­tend­ant was still im­mersed in his game, I walked cas­u­ally to the other end of the swim­ming pool. I made sure no one was watch­ing and then slipped into the small door and closed it quietly after me.

  I found my­self in a small, dark room stuffed with pool equip­ment and smelling strongly of chlor­ine. I was just about to as­sume that there was noth­ing else to see when a small sliver of light caught my eye—there was an­other door at the end of the crowded room.

  There were stacks of tubing, floats, and in­ner tubes in the way. Be­ing care­ful not to knock any­thing over, I threaded my way through the piles of equip­ment un­til I got to the other door. The light was com­ing from un­der it—just a tiny sliver that I wouldn’t have no­ticed at all if the room hadn’t been so dim.

  I put my hand on the knob. Slowly and ever so care­f
ully, I turned it and pushed si­lently into the room.

  Or I would have been si­lent if it hadn’t been for the huge piece of sil­ver equip­ment hid­den in the shad­ows just be­side the door. I have no idea what it was—a pool va­cuum maybe? Any­way, it fell over onto the tiled floor with an almighty loud clat­ter.

  “Mandy, what the Hell?” an angry male voice ex­claimed. “You know Berkley says you’re not sup­posed to be in here! And I told you, I’ll let you know if I find any ‘juicy’ parts for you to watch later.”

  I had a con­fused im­age of a room filled with black and white mon­it­ors—it looked like one of those “eye in the sky” mon­it­or­ing rooms you see when you watch doc­u­ment­ar­ies about Ve­gas casi­nos. Sup­posedly they watch every­one in their ho­tels all the time and it looked like Berkley had de­cided to do the same thing. I got a glimpse of the din­ing room with every­one still sit­ting around the table on one screen, and a shot of the empty front entry­way on an­other. Oth­ers showed the pun­ish­ment wing and med­ical rooms and there were plenty which seemed to show the guest suites as well.

  A glimpse was all I got be­cause I was already try­ing to get away from the scene of the crime and the large, angry se­cur­ity guard who was watch­ing the mon­it­ors. Un­for­tu­nately, my feet got tangled in the hose at­tached to the equip­ment and I fell.

  “Mandy!” the guard ex­claimed in ir­rit­a­tion. He yanked me up by the arm be­fore I could get away from him. “I told you I— Hey…” He frowned as he got a closer look at me. “You’re not Mandy. So who the Hell are you?”

  I’m De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker and you’re un­der ar­rest if you don’t get your hands off me right now, I wanted to say. But of course I couldn’t. I also couldn’t kick him in the balls or use any of the hand-to-hand com­bat moves I knew to take him down.

  “I’m mishka.” I tried to make my voice small and frightened as I looked up at the guard with wide eyes. Damn, he was al­most as big as Salt.

  “You’re who?” he de­man­ded, shak­ing me. “This area is strictly off lim­its.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a friend of Mandy’s and we were play­ing hide and go seek but I couldn’t find her in the play room so I thought I would look in here. Is she around?”

  I tried to look as in­no­cent as I could but the guard clearly wasn’t buy­ing it.

  “No, she isn’t and you shouldn’t be either. This is a re­stric­ted area,” he growled.

  “I’m really sorry.” I made my eyes big and scared. “Please, can’t you just let me go? I prom­ise I won’t bother you again.”

  “Afraid not, girly. Sneak­ing a peak into the view­ing room is a pun­ish­ment of­fense.” His mud-brown eyes raked up and down my body, mak­ing me wish for a thick turtle-neck sweater to cover up with. He licked his lips. “Wish I could pun­ish you my­self, but I have strict or­ders from Dir­ector Berkley to bring any­one snoop­ing around straight to him.”

  “But I wasn’t snoop­ing,” I ob­jec­ted. “I told you, we were play­ing hide and go seek!”

  “Too bad—looks like the only thing you found is trouble.”

  And tak­ing a firmer grip on my arm, he hauled me out of the equip­ment room and through the pool and spa area.

  “Let me go!” I snarled at him furi­ously. “My part­ner—er—Daddy is go­ing to be ex­tremely angry if you don’t!”

  “Yeah, yeah, you all say that.” The guard soun­ded bored. “And then your Daddy shows up and de­cides you need a good can­ing or flog­ging or whatever.”

  I felt cold all over. “But I don’t want to be caned or flogged!”

  “Sure you don’t, girly,” he said sar­castic­ally, shoot­ing me a lech­er­ous look. “Which is why you were in a re­stric­ted area dressed up like that and look­ing to get caught. I know all your tricks—you want to be pun­ished. It makes you fuck­ing hot.” He gave me an­other ap­prais­ing glance. “Not that you’re not hot enough already. Damn, you have some sweet little tits.”

  “Why you—” I star­ted to protest some more but he whipped out a walkie-talkie and star­ted tak­ing into it.

  “Hey Ed, in­form Berkley I’ve got a snooper here. Go­ing to take her to his of­fice for pun­ish­ment as usual.”

  “Got it, Mi­chaels. I’ll let him know,” a voice on the other end said with a crackle of static.

  I was dragged along, help­less to do any­thing but com­ply. Ap­par­ently this wasn’t an un­usual scen­ario at all here at the In­sti­tute. Prob­ably it was an­other way Littles could get their Big’s at­ten­tion in or­der to be spanked—just like throw­ing a tan­trum at the table. Damn, what had I got­ten my­self into?

  Of course, Berkley’s of­fice was in the pun­ish­ment wing—where else would it be? I kept protest­ing as the guard dragged me up the stair­case but it did no good. I also kept a sharp eye out for my part­ner but Salt was nowhere to be seen. Part of me hoped he was us­ing this dis­trac­tion to get some ma­jor sleuth­ing done. After all, no one was watch­ing the mon­it­ors in the viewscreen right now so it would be the per­fect time to dis­cover the where­abouts of the secret Please lab—if there was one.

  An­other part of me, how­ever, was des­per­ately afraid and wish­ing my part­ner would come to my res­cue. There was only so much I could do to de­fend my­self without blow­ing my cover. Also, I didn’t like the feel­ing of be­ing dragged to Berkley’s of­fice like a naughty school girl get­ting sent to the prin­cipal.

  Salt was still nowhere in sight when the guard came to a thick wooden door with the words, Dir­ector Berkley, on a golden plaque af­fixed to it. It was at the very end of the pun­ish­ment wing and I wondered des­per­ately if Salt would be able to hear me way up here, even if I screamed. The guard rapped twice on the door be­fore push­ing it open.

  “Well, well, well…you seem de­term­ined to get your­self in trouble today, mishka.”

  Berkley was sit­ting be­hind a large wooden desk look­ing ex­tremely self-im­port­ant. There was a gleam in his eyes as he re­garded me, his long fin­gers steepled just un­der his chin.

  “Leave me alone,” I said, try­ing to get free of the guard’s pun­ish­ing grip. “I wasn’t do­ing any­thing wrong.”

  “Ex­cept snoop­ing around in a very re­stric­ted area. Do you deny that? Hmm?” Berkley raised one salt-and-pep­per eye­brow at me mean­ing­fully.

  “I wasn’t snoop­ing—I was just, uh, curi­ous,” I said, aware of how lame it soun­ded. “And I didn’t know it was a re­stric­ted area—how could I?”

  “Maybe the fact that it wasn’t marked as a pub­lic area?” Berkley said, frown­ing. “I warned you when you first came here that snoop­ing into re­stric­ted areas was a very ser­i­ous of­fense.”

  “But—”

  “Here at the In­sti­tute if you break the rules you have to take the con­sequences.” There was a gleam in Berkley’s eyes I really didn’t like. “In other words,” he said, lean­ing for­ward, “You have to be pun­ished.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, wish­ing my voice was a little stead­ier. “Nobody can pun­ish me ex­cept my Daddy!”

  “Not true, my little mishka. I am also en­titled to pun­ish any of the Baby­girls as I see fit at any time. It’s in the con­tract your Daddy signed and I’ve been want­ing to pun­ish you from the first minute you walked into the In­sti­tute.” Berkley had a very un­pleas­ant smile on his nar­row fea­tures as he rose from be­hind his desk. “Bring her to med­ical suite num­ber one, Mi­chaels,” he told the guard. “It’s time this Little learned her les­son.”

  The med­ical suite—the med­ical suite? my mind babbled as the guard dragged me out of Berkley’s of­fice and down the hall­way. Why not just got to the pun­ish­ment room if he’s go­ing to whip me? Why the med­ical suite?

  I found out sooner than I wanted to.

  The minute the guard got me into one of the sterile-look­ing rooms with the pad?
?ded exam table and stir­rups, Berkley told him to strap me down.

  “No!—No!” I fought with all my might as the two men forced me to lie on my back on the cold vinyl table. I kicked out and landed a glan­cing blow to the guard’s solar plexus.

  “Hey, she’s a fighter!” Mi­chaels grunted but didn’t loosen his grip on me.

  “Yes, hold her—” Berkley’s words were cut off when I man­aged to punch him in the jaw. Un­for­tu­nately, I was flat on my back so I had no lever­age. The blow, which might have knocked him out if I was up and able to put all my strength be­hind it, just pissed him off. “That will be enough of that, young lady,” he hissed, catch­ing my flail­ing arm and strap­ping it to my side. You have just earned your­self yet an­other pun­ish­ment.”

  “Let me go, you as­shole!” I shouted. “Get the fuck off of me!” My shouts echoed down the hall­way and the sterile white strip of pa­per crackled un­der me with my wild ef­forts. But it didn’t do any good—they were two large men and even with my hand-to-hand train­ing, I was just one small wo­man. Be­fore I knew it, they had my wrists tied tightly to the sides of the table and my legs strapped into the stir­rups—I felt like I was in po­s­i­tion to have the world’s worst gyno exam.

  “Let me go!” I shouted, writh­ing around on the table though it did no good. “Let me go now you son of a bitch!”

  “Such lan­guage!” Berkley glared at me. “I’ve been want­ing to pun­ish you for that from the very first. I think those filthy words de­serve a spank­ing.”

  I wondered what the hell he was talk­ing about. They had me strapped down on my back—how did he ex­pect to reach my ass to whip me? Then Berkley flipped up my skirt, ex­pos­ing the wispy white panties I wore. With one swift move, he tore them off me, ex­pos­ing my clean shaven pussy.

  “Oh!” I gasped, try­ing to close my legs but the damn stir­rups were spread too far and the most I could achieve was angling my knees to­ward each other.

  “Now…” Berkley gave me a most un­pleas­ant grin as he dropped my shred­ded panties on the ground. “The spank­ing can be­gin. Hmm…I think we’ll start with the crop.”