The Institute: Daddy Issues (10 page)

Though I knew it was true, I still couldn’t move away. Still ar­guing with my­self over my new and dis­turb­ing feel­ings for my part­ner, I fi­nally drif­ted off into a dream­less sleep.

“So who is this Dr. Ne­w­house, do you think?” I muttered to Salt as we sat on the bench out­side her private of­fice. It was down the long hall­way I had no­ticed earlier and it was the only door I saw there—so much for find­ing a hid­den Please lab.

“Dr. Ne­w­house is em­in­ent psy­cho­lo­gist with many ac­col­ades to her name,” Salt answered promptly.

“I don’t care how freak­ing ‘em­in­ent’ she is, I just can’t be­lieve we have to be psy­cho­ana­lyzed
again,”
I grumbled.
I was still sting­ing from Pro­fessor Stevens’ opin­ion that send­ing me to the In­sti­tute was like throw­ing a lamb to the wolves. I didn’t need to hear the same thing from someone else. I looked up at my part­ner. “How do you know so much about her, any­way?”

He gave me an arch look.

“Easy. I looked her up while you were still sleep­ing.”

“Yeah, you did a
lot
of things while I was sleep­ing.” I looked down at the new little girl dress Salt had pro­cured for me at the cos­tume shop. He’d got­ten me new shoes as well—little girl san­dals with shiny gold straps that matched the dress and gave my toes plenty of room to breathe.

I hated the whole out­fit but I didn’t feel like I had much right to com­plain. Salt had let me sleep in and had even brought me up a break­fast tray along with the new clothes. It was very sweet of him but I wanted to tell him to stop cut­ting me slack. I was an adult, God­dam­nit, even if I
was
dressed like a nine year old—I could carry my own weight on this case.

“Are you up­set I did not wake you?” Salt raised an eye­brow at me. “Or be­cause you do not like out­fit I picked for you?” He him­self, of course, was dressed in an­other ex­pens­ive suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark blue tie that brought out his eyes. I found my­self ir­rit­ated all over again that he got to dress like an adult while I was re­leg­ated to stu­pid, child­ish dresses.

“Both.” I sighed. “Look, Salt, you know I ap­pre­ci­ate everything you did for me. This morn­ing and…and last night.” We still hadn’t dis­cussed my mini-break­down the night be­fore and I was hop­ing we never would. I pre­ferred to try and for­get about it. “But I’m just never go­ing to like dress­ing like this.” I stroked the silky fab­ric of the dress again—it was white lace em­broidered all over with in­no­cent pink rose­buds.
Ugh
.

“I am sorry you do not like,” Salt said. “It was the best I could find.”

“In this age range, maybe,” I said. “But what about older? Did they have any­thing like that?”

“You mean like ‘slutty school girl’ uni­form?” Salt’s face darkened. “I thought we de­cided this is not for you, Andi.”

“You mean
you
de­cided,” I said ac­cus­ingly. Salt had point-blank re­fused to let me put on the other out­fit I had brought with me. He’d said that it was im­port­ant that I keep play­ing the age I had star­ted at. And though I didn’t com­pletely agree, he was so adam­ant about it that I had re­luct­antly put on the new white dress and fol­lowed him to our ap­point­ment with Dr. Ne­w­house.

“Is bet­ter this way,” Salt said. “For many reas­ons.”

“For
your
reas­ons, maybe,” I said. “But I
hate
this, Salt! Play­ing this age is really mess­ing with my head. You saw what happened to me last night—I haven’t had a night­mare like that in
years.”

Salt sighed. “For­give me. It’s just…I
like
you this age. Not for sexual reas­ons,” he said hast­ily. “But be­cause you are softer…easier to reach some­how.”

“Weaker,” I said darkly. “More vul­ner­able. Is that what you want? For me to be vul­ner­able for you? To be a help­less little girl you can dom­in­ate and con­trol?”

“Of course not,” he said softly. “I want for you to be someone I can com­fort…someone to hold in my arms and cher­ish as I did last night, my little
mishka.
”

I stared at him, un­able to take in what he was say­ing. Salt had never ex­pressed any feel­ings like this to­wards me be­fore. One of the things I val­ued about my part­ner was that, des­pite my di­min­ut­ive size, he had never tried to pick me up or treat me like a doll as other big guys I had known some­times had.

There’s a cer­tain kind of man who finds a pocket-sized girl like me ir­res­ist­ible but I had al­ways strenu­ously avoided them. It’s hard enough to be re­spec­ted when you’re no big­ger than a large child, as Salt had put it the night be­fore. If you start
act­ing
like a child or let­ting people
treat
you like a child, you’re go­ing to get nowhere pro­fes­sion­ally.

And now here was my part­ner, ad­mit­ting that he
wanted
to treat me like that. That he wanted to pick me up and hold me, just as he had the night be­fore when I cried my eyes out against his broad chest.

Was that
really
so bad though?
whispered a little voice in my head.
It was kind of
nice
to be held in his arms and com­for­ted, don’t you think?

I pushed the idea away. That way lay weak­ness…vul­ner­ab­il­ity…and even­tu­ally aban­don­ment and pain. I knew that—knew it to my bones. Which meant I had to steer clear of this kind of feel­ing…the feel­ing that made me want to climb in Salt’s lap and cuddle up against him, trust­ing him to keep me safe and se­cure in­stead of stand­ing on my own two feet and act­ing like an adult.

“Andi?
Mishka?”
Salt looked at me with a hint of plead­ing in his pale blue eyes. “Please, do not mis­un­der­stand me. I am not try­ing to make you weak, you are one of the strongest people I know. I just—”

“Save it.” I put up a hand to stop him. “I don’t care why you said what you said—I can’t go there with you. I can’t even think about—”

“Well, well—it seems the ther­apy ses­sion has already star­ted out here without me.”

The new voice brought me up short. Salt and I had been lean­ing to­wards each other, talk­ing in­tently. Now we both jumped and looked up to see a blonde wo­man in an ex­pens­ive look­ing gray twill busi­ness suit. Her hair was pulled into a loose but pretty chignon at the back of her neck and her heels were sens­ibly low, though still styl­ish. She was hold­ing a tab­let in one hand.

“Hello,” she said, smil­ing at my part­ner and me. “I’m Doc­tor Lucy Ne­w­house but you can just call me Doc­tor Lucy. Please, come in.”

She stepped to one side and held out a hand, in­dic­at­ing that we should go into her of­fice. I have to con­fess that I dragged my feet—I
really
wasn’t look­ing for­ward to this at all.

Dr. Lucy seemed to sense that I wasn’t happy to be there. She shut her of­fice door and fol­lowed us into a room that held a love­seat, two arm chairs, and one straight backed wooden chair with a plump red cush­ion on it. Dr. Lucy took this last chair for her­self and then mo­tioned to us.

“Please, have a seat.”

Salt settled him­self on the love­seat and I took one of the arm­chairs. Then we looked at the doc­tor and waited.

“Hmm…” She was look­ing at some­thing on her tab­let—ap­par­ently read­ing through some notes. Fi­nally, she looked up at me. “So,
niska,
is it?”

“
Mishka,”
Salt cor­rec­ted her at once. “Is pet nick­name which means ‘little mouse.’”

“I see.” She made a note on her tab­let with a jeweled stylus. “All right then,
mishka.
So it seems you had a prob­lem when you wit­nessed a plug in­ser­tion yes­ter­day when you first came here.”

Plug in­ser­tion—ugh!
I shivered in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“If by ‘had a prob­lem’ you mean was hor­ri­fied and trau­mat­ized, then yes, I had a prob­lem,” I said blandly.

“Trau­mat­ized,” she mused. “Now there’s an in­ter­est­ing word choice. Tell me,
mishka,
what was it about what you wit­nessed that made you feel like that?”

“Well he…she…” I groped for words for a minute. There was so much, where did I even be­gin? “She was let­ting him—her mas­ter—”

“Her Daddy,” Dr. Lucy sup­plied.

I waved a hand dis­missively. “Yeah, right, whatever. She was let­ting him do things to her that were…that nobody should do to any­body else.”

“Shouldn’t they? Why not?”

I stared at her.

“Ser­i­ously?”

“Yes, ser­i­ously,” she said. “They are two con­sent­ing adults, after all. So I really want to know why it up­set you. Was it the loss of con­trol—or the sexual as­pect of the scene you wit­nessed?”

“I don’t know—pick one,” I said un­com­fort­ably.

She leaned for­ward. “Was it that you were pic­tur­ing your­self in Patty’s place, al­low­ing your own Daddy to pen­et­rate you the way she was be­ing pen­et­rated?”

“Ugh!” I ex­claimed in­vol­un­tar­ily. “How can you say that with a straight face? That’s dis­gust­ing! She was dressed up like a little girl!” I knew I wasn’t help­ing our case any but I couldn’t help my­self—her word­ing just pushed my but­tons.

“As are you,” Dr. Lucy poin­ted out. “But if you’re con­cerned or dis­turbed by that, let me as­sure you of some­thing. Though we at the In­sti­tute are cer­tainly not ig­nor­ant of those in­di­vidu­als that prefer to in­volve ac­tual chil­dren in a sexual way, they are
not wel­come here.
They have no place in our world.”

“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.