Daddy Issues Read online

  I con­sidered it for a minute. “No, not quite as much, I don’t think.”

  “Very well then, you are my little mishka and I am your Papa. Will this do, do you think?”

  “I think so.” I sighed. “This is just so weird, Salt. I mean, we’ve had some strange cases be­fore but this…”

  “This is just an­other as­sign­ment,” he said calmly.

  “Easy for you to say. You get to wear a suit,” I poin­ted out. “I’m prob­ably go­ing to be wear­ing Hello Kitty panties and pig­tails.”

  He frowned. “It should not mat­ter what kind of panties you wear as no one will be see­ing them.”

  “You’re go­ing to be a strict Papa then?” I fluttered my eye­lashes at him jok­ingly. “You’re go­ing to pull down my Hello Kitty panties and spank me if I’m bad?”

  “If I have to,” Salt rumbled and I sud­denly real­ized he wasn’t jok­ing.

  “Hey.” I frowned at him. “I thought you told the Cap­tain you wouldn’t beat me be­cause I was too ‘del­ic­ate.’”

  “I would not beat you with a belt as I was beaten as a child, no of course not,” Salt said. “But a spank­ing by hand…”

  “Is not go­ing to hap­pen,” I said firmly. “And you never told me your dad beat you with a belt.”

  Salt looked sud­denly guarded. “It was not some­thing you needed to know. Some things are best for­got­ten.”

  Well, I cer­tainly knew how he felt. I would be happy to for­get my whole child­hood if it came to that.

  “I don’t know,” I began but just then Salt’s door­bell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said and went for the door.

  Pro­fessor Stevens was stand­ing just out­side the door­way with a drycleaner’s bag in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

  “Hi,” he said, smil­ing broadly. “I thought maybe we got off on the wrong foot earlier so I’d like to make amends and start fresh.” He handed me the bottle which looked like a pretty de­cent red.

  “Thanks.” I stepped aside to let him in. “And I’m sorry if I was what Salt calls ‘prickly’ earlier. I’m just not really thrilled about this as­sign­ment.”

  “I un­der­stand,” he said quickly, fol­low­ing me into the kit­chen. “It’s a lot to take in if you’re not already into kink.”

  “Well, I’m not,” I said bluntly. “I can’t speak for Salt, here, but I know for my­self, I’m about as vanilla as they come.”

  “Vanilla?” Salt asked, frown­ing.

  “Non-kinky,” I ex­plained. “Not into whips and chains and spank­ing—that kind of thing.”

  “Ah.” He nod­ded.

  Stevens frowned. “Well, you don’t have to worry about whips and chains at the In­sti­tute but paddles and hair­brushes is an­other story en­tirely. A big part of the Daddy/Baby­girl dy­namic is dis­cip­line.”

  “What? Are you ser­i­ous? Salt might have to…to spank me for real?” I felt a strange little quiver in my belly as I said it and I couldn’t look at my part­ner. “But that’s crazy.”

  “No, that’s part of the Big/Little re­la­tion­ship,” Stevens said mat­ter-of-factly. “The stern Daddy cor­rects his way­ward little girl and them com­forts her af­ter­wards. Look, why don’t we eat and then I can tell you a little more about it.”

  “Please…” Salt in­dic­ated a seat for him at the end of the rect­an­gu­lar table. He him­self took the other end and I sat at his right hand. It was how we al­ways sat when we ate to­gether. I liked be­ing able to have a good con­ver­sa­tion with my part­ner without shout­ing. Salt was already so tall I felt like I was talk­ing up to him half the time so it made sense to sit closer.

  I served out the soup and sand­wiches, play­ing the little wo­man, and Salt de­can­ted and poured out the wine Stevens had brought. We ate in si­lence for a few minutes un­til I couldn’t stand it any­more.

  “Okay, let’s stop beat­ing around the bush,” I said to Stevens. “Tell us what we can ex­pect.”

  “I’ll tell you what you can’t ex­pect,” he said grimly. “You can’t ex­pect to go into the In­sti­tute and shoot off your mouth to your Daddy without arous­ing sus­pi­cion. You can’t talk to him the way you were talk­ing to your Cap­tain dur­ing your brief­ing.”

  “Shoot off my mouth?” I put my soup spoon down and raised an eye­brow at him. “Did you really just say that to me?”

  Salt had also lowered his spoon and there was a mur­der­ous glint in his pale blue eyes.

  “You will re­spect my part­ner,” he said in a low growl. “Or there will be con­sequences.” It was about as much of a warn­ing as he ever gave.

  Stevens paled a little but held his ground.

  “I’m just telling you that a slave—a Baby­girl in this case—can’t talk so freely to her Mas­ter or Daddy without be­ing seen as a ‘brat.’ And un­less you’re look­ing for a pun­ish­ment, brat­ting will get you into big trouble.”

  “Brat­ting?” I shook my head. “What the hell is that?”

  “Speak­ing out too freely to your Daddy—sas­sing is the term they use at the In­sti­tute. Among other things,” Stevens said. “Be­ing sassy to your Daddy or other Bigs will earn you a repu­ta­tion you don’t want.”

  I put a hand on my hip. “In other words, don’t speak my opin­ion. Just shut up like a good little girl and do what Daddy tells me.”

  “Es­sen­tially, yes.” The pro­fessor nod­ded.

  “You have got to be kid­ding me,” I said, frown­ing. “This is ri­dicu­lous. How can any self-re­spect­ing wo­man even con­sider go­ing to this place?”

  “Be­lieve it or not, many of the Baby­girls you’re go­ing to meet are savvy busi­ness­wo­men. Some are even Doc­tors, law­yers, CEOs—and I’m sure all of them would identify as fem­in­ists,” Stevens told me. “They’re at the In­sti­tute be­cause it al­lows them to ex­plore a side of them­selves they’ve kept hid­den and locked away for years. It’s a place of safety for them—a place where they can re­gress to a sim­pler time when the weight of the world wasn’t on their shoulders.”

  “If you say so.” I shook my head again. “But I hon­estly can’t see it.” I pushed my plate away. “I’ve lost my ap­pet­ite. Could you please just show me the cos­tumes I’m go­ing to have to wear?” Might as well get all the bad stuff out of the way.

  “Of course.” Stevens pushed away his own half eaten sand­wich and nod­ded at me. “If you’d like to come into the other room?”

  I fol­lowed him back to the liv­ing room, where he’d left the dryclean­ing bag and Salt came as well, like a si­lent, omin­ous moun­tain at my back.

  “Now,” Stevens said, open­ing the bag. “I have sev­eral choices for you. And it all de­pends on what age you want to re­gress to.”

  “Ser­i­ously? I have to pick a cer­tain age?”

  “Makes sense,” Salt said, sur­pris­ing me. “Is ne­ces­sary to know the age to tell what man­ner­isms to use.”

  “I guess so,” I grumbled. “Well, show me what you’ve got and tell me what age it goes with.”

  “All right. Well, start­ing from the bot­tom…” Stevens pulled out a pink ruffled jump­suit that looked like some­thing a young girl would wear ex­cept it was in my size.

  “Eww!” I pro­tested. “Tell me again how this isn’t about pe­do­philia, Stevens? Be­cause how can it not be when you want me to wear some­thing like that?”

  “It has noth­ing to do with pe­do­philia be­cause the Age Play­ers are not in­ter­ested in chil­dren—only each other,” he ex­plained pa­tiently. “Re­gress­ing to this age al­lows the Baby­girl to be al­most com­pletely non­verbal. She’ll get naps, have bottles, and be rocked to sleep by her Daddy. Be­ing held in the strong, warm arms of a man who loves her and will never hurt her—there’s noth­ing sexual about that. It’s all about com­fort.”

  “Still,” I said. “I’m not wear­ing that. Op­tion num­ber two, please.”