Daddy Issues Read online

  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