Daddy Issues Read online

  “Your world?” I said blankly.

  “Yes. Our world…” She spread out her hands as though to in­dic­ate the en­tire In­sti­tute. “Is a place to be safe, sane, happy, and able to let down the walls we have built around ourselves over the years. In this place, the Bigs or Dad­dies can en­joy the gift that is the per­fect, in­no­cent, in­cred­ibly power­ful and un­con­di­tional love of their Little or Baby­girl. And their Littles are able to leave all adult roles be­hind—to resign the bur­den of every­day life—mort­gages, jobs, fin­an­cial wor­ries—and just feel safe and pro­tec­ted and loved by their Bigs.”

  “That’s a nice speech, Doc­tor,” I said blandly. “You al­most sound like a bro­chure for this place.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t be­lieve that kink—and in par­tic­u­lar Age Play—is a very power­ful tool in heal­ing psy­cho­lo­gical wounds,” she said quietly. “Do you think you might have some wounds that need heal­ing, mishka?”

  I took a deep breath. From the corner of my eye, I could see Salt look­ing at me, no doubt won­der­ing what I would say next. I had to stop let­ting Dr. Lucy mess with my head or I was go­ing to ruin our en­tire case.

  “Not really,” I said at last, try­ing to sound calm and ra­tional “Hon­estly, I think I over­re­acted yes­ter­day. I was just over­tired from the long plane ride—not to men­tion ex­tremely jet­lagged. I’m feel­ing much bet­ter and more, uh, centered today after a good night’s sleep.” There, nice and neat. She couldn’t poke holes in that, I was sure.

  Dr. Lucy nod­ded. “Well, that’s a very adult thing to say.”

  “That’s be­cause I am an adult,” I said flatly, nettled into re­act­ing again. “You can dress me up like a little girl all you want but I’m still an adult—I’m still my own per­son.”

  Once again, I real­ized I prob­ably shouldn’t have spoken so freely. It made me sound like I didn’t want to be here and Berkley had already threatened to kick us out once for that at­ti­tude. But I was get­ting sick and tired of play­ing ‘daddy’s little girl’. So sick and tired that I guess it just came out, even when it wasn’t sup­posed to.

  “I see.” Dr. Lucy nod­ded calmly. “So this very strong feel­ing of be­ing an adult makes me won­der…why do you think you’re hav­ing trouble get­ting into Little-space?”

  “Little-space?” I star­ted to ask what she was talk­ing about but then I re­membered Pro­fessor Stevens say­ing some­thing about it. “You mean the mind­set where I can make my­self act like a little girl?” I asked.

  “No, I’m talk­ing about the mind­set where you can let your­self be a little girl. Where you can let your­self be vul­ner­able and trust your Daddy to take care of you.”

  “I don’t need any­one to ‘take care’ of me,” I said stub­bornly, lift­ing my chin. “I can take care of my­self.”

  “Again, spoken like a true adult. All right, why don’t you tell me what age you are? I don’t mean your bio­lo­gical age,” she con­tin­ued when I star­ted to open my mouth. “What age are you sup­posed to be play­ing?”

  “Well…” I looked down at the candy-pink roses on my dress and the little gold san­dals on my feet. “I guess…nine or ten,” I said at last. “Prob­ably nine.”

  “Mm-hmm. And what happened to you when nine was your bio­lo­gical age?” she asked. “Any­thing trau­matic? For­give me for cut­ting to the chase but I feel like we have a lot of ground to cover here and not much time to do it.”

  “What happened?” My heart star­ted pound­ing. “Noth­ing happened. I mean, not that I can re­mem­ber…”

  “Is not nine the age you told me you were when your father left?” Salt asked in a low voice.

  “You—” I looked at my part­ner, feel­ing be­trayed. How dare he give me up to the en­emy like that?

  He shrugged and there was an apo­lo­getic look in his eyes.

  “For­give me, mishka—I had to say it.”

  “And is this true?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing back at me. “Your father aban­doned you when you were nine years old?”

  “Aban­doned? God, there’s a dra­matic word. Even bet­ter than ‘trau­mat­ized,’” I said an­grily. “But yeah, sure—why not? He aban­doned me and I never saw him again.” I poin­ted a fin­ger at Salt. “But at least he never beat me.”

  I wanted to call the words back as soon as they left my mouth but it was too late—the dam­age was done and I could see the hurt in my part­ner’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry—” I began but he shook his head.

  “No, is all right. I de­served.”

  “No you didn’t,” I said miser­ably. “I was just feel­ing…I don’t know.”

  “De­fens­ive, maybe,” Dr. Lucy sug­ges­ted. “Angry be­cause you felt be­trayed.”

  “Well, yeah—a little, I guess.” I shrugged.

  She looked at Salt. “So this is true, Mr. Saltanov? Your father was phys­ic­ally ab­us­ive?”

  “Yes,” Salt said shortly.

  “Well, we seem to have a very in­ter­est­ing dy­namic go­ing on here.” Dr. Lucy tapped her stylus against her tab­let for a mo­ment, clearly deep in thought. She looked at me again. “Why are you here? Is it only to please your Daddy?”

  “Don’t call him that,” I said ir­rit­ably. “That’s what I called my real father be­fore the son-of-a-bitch aban­doned me.”

  “Mishka and I have agreed that she will call me ‘Papa’ in­stead,” Salt told her.

  “I see.” She made an­other note and looked up at me. “So we come back to this again…the idea of sexu­al­iz­ing your play or call­ing your…part­ner for want of a bet­ter word—Daddy—makes you feel dis­gust?”

  “Well, yes if I’m play­ing this age.” I nod­ded down at the pretty lace and rose­bud dress again. “That’s just…dis­gust­ing. Who would want to do that?”

  “Many of our play­ers at the In­sti­tute choose to do so,” Dr. Lucy said blandly. “Of­ten they are ab­use sur­viv­ors. It can be help­ful and em­power­ing to re­gress to the bio­lo­gical age when the ab­use took place and re­play it, know­ing that you are in con­trol this time. Or, in the case of a Little, that you can give con­trol to a Big you can trust—someone who’s not go­ing to hurt you like you were hurt be­fore at that young, vul­ner­able age.” She leaned for­ward and looked at me in­tently. “Tell me if you can, mishka, be­fore your father left you, did he ini­ti­ate any kind of in­ap­pro­pri­ate sexual con­tact?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “No, noth­ing like that. He just aban­doned me. Isn’t that enough?”

  She stared at me for a long mo­ment and I got the feel­ing she was de­cid­ing if she be­lieved me or not. At last she nod­ded.

  “Well, if that’s the case, it’s one less is­sue to work through.”

  “It is the case,” I said firmly.

  “Very good.” She turned to Salt. “Mr. Saltanov, what do you feel you get out of play­ing like this? I think I heard you say­ing that you feel like it makes your part­ner more ap­proach­able in some way?”

  Salt sighed. “Mishka is…very prickly at times. For which I do not blame her—in her job it is im­port­ant to ap­pear tough—in­vul­ner­able. But some­times I can see that she is hurt­ing and I want…I wish…”

  “Say what you feel, Mr. Saltanov,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “There’s no judg­ment here.”

  Salt blew out a frus­trated breath.

  “I want to com­fort her—to hold her. Why is this so bad?”

  “I don’t know.” The doc­tor looked at me with one eye­brow raised. “Why is it so bad, mishka? Why do you not want your Papa to hold you?”

  “Be­cause it makes me weak, all right?” I spat at her. “And I don’t want to be weak. The last time I let my­self be that weak—” I stopped ab­ruptly.

  “You got hurt,” Dr. Lucy fin­ished for me, softly. “Tell me, miskha, do you feel like you can trust your Papa?”

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