Daddy Issues Read online

  “Hey!” I frowned at my part­ner but he just gave me his best blank look as if to say, You know it’s true. After a minute, I dropped my eyes.

  “I see,” the pro­fessor said. “Well, on to your second ques­tion, then. Little-space is the head­space or mind set an Age Player gets into when they re­gress. It’s al­most an altered state of con­scious­ness when they go into it deeply enough.”

  “So—like some kind of drug?” I asked, frown­ing.

  He nod­ded. “It can be, in a way. It changes your per­cep­tion and your judg­ment. For Littles, or the play­ers who be­come ‘younger,’ it’s of­ten a more open, simple place for them to be in. Again, many find it sooth­ing to be­come a child again and not have to think about adult prob­lems.”

  “This sounds like a load of bull­shit to me,” I said, frown­ing. “But what about the other ones—the ones who play the adults? What do they get out of it, if it’s not sexual?”

  “The ‘Bigs’ or ‘Dad­dies’ as they are some­times called, get the sat­is­fac­tion of teach­ing, caring for, and com­fort­ing their ‘younger’ part­ner.” Pro­fessor Stevens smiled. “Over­all, Age Play re­la­tion­ships are very warm and ful­filling for all parties in­volved.”

  “Ooookay,” I said, not both­er­ing to try and hide my skep­ti­cism. “So the In­sti­tute is full of people who like to do this? This Age Play?”

  “Ex­actly. And make no mis­take about it, De­tect­ive, Age Play is a form of BDSM.” Stevens raised a fin­ger. “In fact, it closely mir­rors the mas­ter/slave re­la­tion­ship of more tra­di­tional prac­tices. But there are subtle dif­fer­ences in the Daddy/Baby­girl re­la­tion­ship…”

  “Okay, be­fore we get into all that…” I looked at Cap­tain Dou­glass again. “You ser­i­ously want us to do this? You want me to dress up like a little girl and Salt will be my Daddy? Be­cause I’m as­sum­ing it couldn’t go the other way around.”

  “No,” Pro­fessor Stevens said, an­swer­ing for him. “No, there are other scenes where a male ‘Little girl’ or ‘Baby­girl’ would be wel­comed but not at the In­sti­tute. They are very tra­di­tional there.”

  “You sound like you know the place,” I said, rais­ing an eye­brow at him.

  Stevens cleared his throat, a bit un­com­fort­ably I thought.

  “I am act­ive in the Tampa scene. I have been to one of their very rare open houses but it was some time ago.”

  “Okay, whatever,” I said, turn­ing back to the Cap­tain. “The point is, you want Salt and me to go in un­der­cover to what is prob­ably the weird­est, kinki­est place I’ve ever heard of. Why us?”

  He frowned. “You’ve done sting op­er­a­tions be­fore, Sug­ar­baker. Weren’t you un­der­cover as a pro once?”

  “Yeah, but at least I was still act­ing as an adult, even if I was pre­tend­ing to be a pros­ti­tute,” I poin­ted out.

  Salt looked sur­prised. “You went un­der­cover as a pros­ti­tute?”

  “It was be­fore your time—when I was in Vice for a while,” I as­sured him. “Don’t worry—nobody touched me.”

  He frowned pro­tect­ively. “They had bet­ter not.”

  “And speak­ing of Vice,” I said to the Cap­tain. “Why aren’t they in on this? It’s def­in­itely more their wheel­house than ours. Why not pick two of them to do this crazy thing?”

  “Be­cause none of the other de­tect­ives in your po­lice de­part­ment fit the very ex­act­ing cri­teria set by the In­sti­tute,” Pro­fessor Stevens said quietly. “I told you, they are very tra­di­tional—they only ad­mit male Bigs and fe­male Littles. And they prefer it when the Little in ques­tion is ex­tremely petite—it makes her seem more child­like.”

  “Ugh…” I shivered. “So Salt and I are get­ting this honor be­cause I’m height chal­lenged? Gotta tell you Cap­tain, that hardly seems fair.”

  “Sug­ar­baker…” He sighed and looked at me dir­ectly. “Have you seen what Please does to its users? Do you know how it got its name?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, I heard about that viral video.”

  “But have you watched it? Look…” The Cap­tain turned his large, flat com­puter mon­itor around and nod­ded at the pro­fessor. “Could you hit the lights? These over­head fluor­es­cents make it hard to see.”

  The of­fice was plunged into semi-gloom and then the Cap­tain punched a but­ton. The mon­itor flickered to life, show­ing a blonde girl who looked to be in her early to mid twen­ties. She was down on the floor, on her hands and knees, crawl­ing to­wards a man wear­ing a dark gray suit and ex­pens­ive look­ing shoes. I didn’t know what his face looked like be­cause the shot didn’t go that high.

  “See that?” the Cap­tain asked. “We be­lieve that man is the ori­ginal cre­ator of Please. If we could catch him, we could shut down a hell of a lot of pro­duc­tion.”

  “Who is he?” Salt asked but the Cap­tain shook his head.

  “Nobody knows. As you can see, they’re very care­ful not to show his face. But even if they did, I don’t think most people would be look­ing at it. She’s the in­ter­est­ing one.”

  He nod­ded at the girl on the screen who was look­ing more and more dis­tressed.

  “Please, Daddy,” she moaned, rub­bing against the man’s legs. “Please, I feel so empty in­side—it hurts—it hurts. Please fill me up with your big, hard cock!”

  I glanced at Salt to see how he was tak­ing this. I didn’t know if he watched Amer­ican porn or, in­deed, if Rus­sian porn was any dif­fer­ent. His face was im­pass­ive, how­ever—it’s im­possible to read him some­times.

  “Daddy, please!” The girl in the video flipped up her skirt, show­ing pink and white Hello Kitty panties. Her blonde hair was done in two curly pig­tails and she was wear­ing lacy white ankle socks and Mary Jane saddle shoes. I wondered un­eas­ily if her out­fit was an Age Play thing. Was I go­ing to have to dress like this and beg Salt to…

  But I pushed the thought away. Pro­fessor Stevens had said that it didn’t have to be sexual. So it wouldn’t be—and that was that. Not that I didn’t find Salt at­tract­ive—I’d have to be blind not to. But sleep­ing with your part­ner was bad news—a one way ticket to com­plic­a­tions and messy emo­tions. I pre­ferred to keep my work life and my sex life sep­ar­ate.

  Right, your nonex­ist­ent sex life, whispered a little voice in my head. I hadn’t really dated any­one ser­i­ously since Salt and I had been partnered up. I didn’t really know why that was—prob­ably it was in­tim­id­at­ing for pro­spect­ive dates to meet my part­ner, which they some­how, al­ways in­vari­ably did. Pos­sibly Salt was giv­ing them a ‘don’t hurt my part­ner’ speech or maybe they were just scared of him.

  For whatever reason, no guy I tried ever las­ted more than a couple of dates. And for the past few years, I had sort of stopped try­ing. Maybe I was get­ting too com­fort­able just be­ing on my own, or maybe I felt like I already had all the male com­pan­ion­ship I needed. After all, I spent some­thing like sev­enty-five per­cent of my time with Salt…

  “Daddy…Daddy, I’m go­ing to die if you don’t fuck me!” the blonde girl in the video brayed. I had sort of tuned it out for a minute but now I real­ized she was pulling down the Hello Kitty panties to show her bare ass. She star­ted rub­bing her­self between her legs frantic­ally, cry­ing and pant­ing and moan­ing. Her pu­pils were dilated so wide I couldn’t even tell what color her eyes were and her breath­ing was ragged.

  For the first time, the man on the screen spoke.

  “Fuck or die, Baby­girl,” he said, his voice com­ing out in a lust­ful growl. I still couldn’t see his face, clearly he was tak­ing pains to keep his iden­tity secret. “You told me you’d rather die than let me fuck you be­fore. Is that still how you feel?”

  “No, Daddy, no—I swear!” the blonde girl sobbed. “I’ll be your good little girl! So good—just give it to me, please.”

  Fi