Daddy Issues Read online

  I’d had a mo­ment to calm down and now I was thor­oughly ashamed of my little break down. Hon­estly, I couldn’t ima­gine what had come over me. Why had I freaked out that way? I’d seen things in Vice that would make a whore blush. Why had the live ac­tion butt plug show been my un­do­ing?

  I couldn’t an­swer any of those ques­tions and I couldn’t ad­mit to Salt that I was really up­set either. I didn’t want him to think of me as weak or crazy or too stu­pidly emo­tional and fe­male to do my job.

  So I lied.

  “I’m per­fectly fine,” I said calmly. “That was all just an act. Pretty good, huh?”

  “An act?” He frowned at me, his eyes dark. “Andi, don’t lie to me. I feel you trem­bling. And there are still tears in your eyes.”

  “There are?” I reached up and brushed at my right eye hes­it­antly. My fin­gers came away wet. “Wow, I’m an even bet­ter act­ress than I thought.” I tried to laugh but it came out sound­ing forced and choked.

  “Andi…” Salt took me by the shoulders and looked at me in­tently. “You need to tell me now if this is too much for you. I feel strongly that we need to be here but we can leave and let the Cap­tain find someone else.”

  Part of me—a big part—wanted to jump at his of­fer of an easy out. We were so close to the front door—only three feet away from it! But then I thought bet­ter of it. I’d like to say I re­membered the girl on the video beg­ging for sex in that shame­ful way be­cause she was hopped up on Please. I have to be hon­est though, what I was really think­ing about was my pro­fes­sional repu­ta­tion.

  Be­ing a wo­man and the smal­lest wo­man at that, in the PD, wasn’t easy. I had gone out of my way to cul­tiv­ate a tough outer de­meanor—a hard shell that said “don’t fuck with me” in no un­cer­tain terms. I didn’t let any­one crack that shell—didn’t let any­one all the way be­hind my shields. Not even Salt.

  So I gave him a smile that only felt a little forced.

  “Salt, really—I’m fine. I just thought that I wasn’t be­ing con­vin­cing enough as a Little in the be­gin­ning there so I ad­ded a little drama to the equa­tion. You can bet that Berkley be­lieves our cover now, right?”

  “I sup­pose so.” Salt still looked troubled but just then a huge gong rang some­where in the back of the build­ing.

  “Din­ner is served,” I heard the but­ler call­ing in a dig­ni­fied voice and then the gonging sound came again.

  “Uh-oh—we’d bet­ter get go­ing,” I told Salt. “We’re go­ing to be late!”

  “True. I sup­pose we should go.” Tak­ing my arm through his again, he led me through the entry­way and to­wards the din­ing room. As we left, I had one last glimpse in the or­nate mir­ror. A girl with bows in her hair and tear tracks run­ning down her cheeks looked back at me.

  I looked away quickly and con­cen­trated on keep­ing up with Salt’s long strides. Everything was go­ing to be fine. It had to be. I would make it be, I prom­ised my­self. I wasn’t go­ing to foul up this case and ruin my repu­ta­tion just be­cause I had got­ten a little freaked out.

  I was still giv­ing my­self a pep-talk when we entered a large din­ing area that looked like some­thing you’d see in a movie about Brit­ish roy­alty. There was only one long table run­ning down the length of the room with a crys­tal chan­delier hanging above it. A fine, white linen table­cloth covered the long sur­face and it was laid with real china and sil­ver and crys­tal gob­lets. There were also ex­pens­ive lace nap­kins that looked like they would be com­pletely use­less for do­ing any­thing but dab­bing del­ic­ately at the corners of your mouth.

  Or­nately carved wooden chairs were placed along the length of the long table and Dir­ector Berkley was sit­ting in the ex­act middle, presid­ing over the en­tire room like some kind of me­di­eval lord. To the right of him sat the red-haired girl, Patty, and her Daddy who we had seen up­stairs in the med­ical suite. All traces of tears were wiped away now and she looked com­pletely happy and con­tent, lean­ing against her Daddy’s arm and whis­per­ing some­thing into his ear.

  To Berkley’s left side was an empty chair and after that, sev­eral more couples on either side of the table. The mon­strous piece of fur­niture looked like it would seat around forty people but I only coun­ted thir­teen at the mo­ment. I wondered who was miss­ing and where we were sup­posed to sit.

  Dir­ector Berkley answered my ques­tion by beck­on­ing us over.

  “Come, come, Mr. Saltanov,” he said to Salt. “Come sit across from me. Is your Baby­girl feel­ing bet­ter?”

  “Much bet­ter, thank you,” Salt said shortly. He pulled out a chair for me but when I sat down in it, I found that I could barely reach the table. In ad­di­tion to be­ing ri­dicu­lously long, it was also ri­dicu­lously tall. It was just right for Salt be­cause he was so tall him­self that nor­mal tables al­ways fell some­where around his lap. But for short little me, it was above my chest. I would have to reach up like a kid at the grow-ups table to get any­thing.

  Salt saw the prob­lem at once.

  “What is wrong with this table? Is there some­place else for my mishka to sit?” he asked, frown­ing at Berkley.

  “Cer­tainly, Mr. Saltanov.” Berkley smiled. “She can sit in your lap. Or, fail­ing that, she can have a booster seat. Which do you prefer? Some of the Dad­dies like to eat in peace while oth­ers find that hav­ing their Baby­girl squirm­ing on their lap all through din­ner builds the ah…an­ti­cip­a­tion of what is to come.”

  “Mishka can have booster chair,” Salt said at once.

  Berkley made a mo­tion to one of the livered ser­vants who were stand­ing around the peri­meter of the room.

  “I see. So you don’t in­tend to play with your Baby­girl after din­ner?”

  “If you mean that in a sexual way then no, I do not in­tend to do that,” Salt growled.

  “A pity.” Berkley sniffed. “I was go­ing to in­vite the two of you to the Dad­dies’ Lounge for brandy and ci­gars and other things after din­ner but if your re­la­tion­ship isn’t sexual, you might not prefer to be there.”

  I bit my lip. Great, we’d just lost a chance to be in a more cas­ual set­ting with every­one at the In­sti­tute. It would have been a great place to get to know the other couples bet­ter and see if any one of them seemed like the types to sell Please. On the other hand, I was grate­ful that Salt was tak­ing a hard line and de­clar­ing our re­la­tion­ship not sexual—at least I thought I was.

  “The Lounge sounds like great fun but we will not be able to go,” Salt said.

  “Tell me,” Berkley said, as a ser­vant brought an over­sized pad­ded foot­stool look­ing thing that fit in my chair for me to sit on. “Is your mishka a com­plete vir­gin? Or have you already claimed her mouth and her pussy and you’re sav­ing her ass for last?”

  I nearly choked on a sip of too-sweet pink punch that filled my gob­let. Salt seemed to feel like the ques­tion was too much as well be­cause his face darkened.

  “This is a very private mat­ter—is not your busi­ness, Dir­ector,” he growled.

  “I beg your par­don, my dear Mr. Saltanov but it is my busi­ness,” Berkley re­turned. “How else am I to know how to com­pose your sched­ule? I take my du­ties as dir­ector and owner of the In­sti­tute very ser­i­ously. I need to know ex­actly where you and your Baby­girl stand, in or­der to avoid any more, ah, prob­lems like the one we had earlier.”

  “I see.” Salt scowled. “Very well, I will tell you this. Is mishka vir­gin? No, but she is vir­gin to me. We have only been to­gether three months and she is still frightened and un­sure of her­self. So I am tak­ing things slowly—very slowly. I do not wish to vi­ol­ate her body or her trust.”

  “Of course. I see.” Berkley nod­ded ser­i­ously. “Well, hope­fully you can take your re­la­tion­ship to the next level while you’re here as you said you wished to earlier when you asked for some­thing to he