The Institute: Daddy Issues (4 page)

“Rather sick, you mean,” I said. “No. I’m not do­ing that age.”

“All right…” He sighed. “Well, I
do
have one more op­tion for you, De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker. Here.”

The last out­fit he pulled out looked like a school uni­form with a white blouse and a short—a
very
short—red and black plaid skirt.

“At this age,” Stevens said. “You’re a re­bel­li­ous tween or teen­ager. Ac­tu­ally…” He looked thought­ful. “This
might
be the best age for you to play. Sas­sing and brat­ting would be al­most ex­pec­ted—it would fit your, ah, per­son­al­ity nicely.”

“If you’re try­ing to say I’m a bitch be­cause I speak my mind, save it,” I said shortly. “I know ex­actly what most of the guys at the PD think of me and I don’t give a good God­damn.”

“No, I was just say­ing—”

“Whatever.” I waved his half­hearted protests aside. “Look, don’t you have any­thing between Daddy’s Little Prin­cess and Slutty School­girl?”

“I’m afraid not,” Stevens said apo­lo­get­ic­ally. “Did you have an­other age in mind to re­gress to? If so, I can try to find—”

“This one.” Salt poin­ted to the plaid skirt and white blouse combo. “This one will fit you the best, Andi.”

Some­how I knew he wasn’t just talk­ing about the size.

“All right, fine,” I said, grabbing it from Stevens’ hands. “I’ll wear it.”

“Try it on first,” the pro­fessor said. “You need to get used to wear­ing it and prac­tice the man­ner­isms that go with it.”

“Ser­i­ously? Okay, fine.” I sighed.

“Use my bed­room,” Salt said. “You know where it is.”

“Sure.” I had only been in there once or twice—as I said, things are strictly non-sexual between me and my part­ner—but I knew my way. I lay the kinky school girl getup on Salt’s neatly made up bed and star­ted shrug­ging out of my own clothes.

I soon found that the out­fit was even worse than I’d an­ti­cip­ated. The short plaid skirt barely covered my panties and the white blouse was prac­tic­ally see-through. Thank good­ness I had on my best white lace bra! If I hadn’t been wear­ing one, I would have flashed every­one in the semi-trans­par­ent blouse. White knee socks came with the out­fit and I could ima­gine that a pair of Mary Janes would com­plete it.

When I had it all on, I stood in front of Salt’s wooden bur­eau and stared at my­self in the at­tached mir­ror. Was I
really
go­ing out in this? I’ve never been the kind to in­dulge in sexy clothes. I only have B-cup breasts and the rest of me is just so small and plain it seems like a waste.

But in this out­fit I looked…dif­fer­ent. My long, brown hair fell around my shoulders in soft waves and my eyes looked wide and brown and Bambi-like. I was sen­sual…tempt­ing. I looked like a wo­man who might put on this out­fit for the spe­cific pur­pose of se­du­cing her man. Only who would I se­duce?

I was still stand­ing there, star­ing, when I heard a soft rap­ping at the door.

“Andi? Are you all right?” Salt asked.

“Fine,” I called quickly. “Just…com­ing out right now.”

“I’ll give you time,” he said and I heard him leav­ing.

I went to the door and stood there with my hand on the knob. I was re­luct­ant to let the two men see me in the ri­dicu­lous get up but I re­minded my­self that soon a lot of strangers would be see­ing me in it. Stevens was right—I needed to get used to it.

I stepped out of the bed­room door and went to stand in front of Salt, who was sit­ting in an arm­chair in the liv­ing room.

“Well…” I held out my arms and twirled around. “What do you think…Papa?”

Salt gave me an ap­prais­ing look from those ice blue eyes of his and frowned.

“You were right, Andi. Is too ‘slutty.’”

“
Thank
you,” I said and turned to Stevens. “See? I told you!”

“Ac­tu­ally…” He cleared his throat. “It’s not slutty enough—not for the In­sti­tute.”

“What?” I de­man­ded. “But you said Age Play
wasn’t
sexual!”

“I said it doesn’t
have
to be sexual,” he poin­ted out. “Not that it never
gets
sexual—it of­ten does. And if you’re go­ing to re­gress to this age, you have to ex­pect it to go there, at least a little.”

“I will not,” I said, cross­ing my arms over my chest. “Just be­ing dressed like this is plenty sexual enough. The skirt barely cov­ers my ass and you can see my bra through this damn blouse!”

“About that…” Stevens cleared his throat apo­lo­get­ic­ally. “You’ll prob­ably want to take that off if you’re go­ing to fit in with the other Littles. The bra, I mean.”

“No!” Salt was glar­ing at him now. “No, Andi is not go­ing to bare her breasts for every­one to see. There are
lim­its.”

“Not at the In­sti­tute,” Stevens said bluntly. “Do you want your mis­sion to fail be­fore you get three feet past the front doors?”

“No,” I said. “But I don’t see why it’s ne­ces­sary.”

“You’re teas­ing your Mas­ter—your Daddy,” Stevens ex­plained. “The more skin you show, the bet­ter. Like a spoiled teen­ager try­ing to get out of the house wear­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate cloth­ing and make-up. That kind of thing. Be­sides…” He looked at Salt. “You can al­ways let the other Dad­dies there know that your Baby­girl is strictly off lim­its. Tell them she plays only with you—they can look but don’t touch.”

“But I do not
want
other men look­ing at my part­ner.” Salt’s pale blue gaze traveled up and down my body, mak­ing my cheeks feel hot.

“Yes, you do,” Stevens said grimly. “You want to catch the at­ten­tion of the man who’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and selling Please. The best way to do that is to have the sex­i­est Baby­girl there.”

“Well then we’ve failed be­fore we star­ted,” I said flatly. “Be­cause sexy is one thing I am
not.”

“Is not true, Andi,” Salt said quietly and I thought his deep voice was a little hoarse. “Not true at all.”

“Umm…” Once more, I didn’t know what to say. “I’m glad you like the out­fit,” I said at last, lamely.

“No, no!” Stevens ex­claimed, shak­ing his head. “Your Daddy just gave you a com­pli­ment, my dear! He’s show­ing in­terest in you—giv­ing you at­ten­tion you des­per­ately crave. You want
more
of that—so flirt with him! Play it up!”

“Flirt?” I looked at him blankly. I’d spent most of my pro­fes­sional life be­ing as
non—
flirty as pos­sible. People don’t take you ser­i­ously if you’re too flirty and girly—es­pe­cially at the PD. I teased around with Salt on oc­ca­sion but only when we were alone.

“Just try it,” Stevens urged. “This is your Daddy we’re talk­ing about—you love him and you want to please him more than any­thing else in the world.”

“Geeze,” I muttered. “Okay, here goes.” I cocked my head to one side and looked up at Salt coquet­tishly from un­der my lashes. “I’m glad you like my out­fit, Papa. I wore it just for you,” I said in a high, breathy voice.

Stevens nod­ded. “Yes, that’s bet­ter. Now De­tect­ive Salt, you re­spond.”

“You look beau­ti­ful, my little
mishka,”
Salt rumbled softly. “So beau­ti­ful it makes your Papa ache to look at you.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat. I knew we were just play­ing roles but
still…

“Very good.” Stevens nod­ded again. “He’s giv­ing you clear sig­nals, De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker. So go over and sit in your Daddy’s lap.”

“What?” I hes­it­ated un­eas­ily. “I thought that kind of thing was if I was play­ing a younger age.”

“That
kind of thing, as you put it, is uni­ver­sal. No mat­ter what age you’re play­ing, a Baby­girl
al­ways
wants to sit in her Daddy’s lap.”

“Okay, well…” I was still hes­it­at­ing so Salt pat­ted his knees.

“Come on, Andi. You know I do not bite.”

“Fine.” I walked across to Salt and perched gingerly on one of his knees. “There. Sat­is­fied?”

“No.” Stevens frowned. “Listen, De­tect­ives, I don’t think either one of you is quite grasp­ing the concept here.” He looked at me. “This man is your pro­tector—your guard­ian…your dis­cip­lin­arian…your
everything
. He will kill or die to pro­tect you and you
ad­ore
him for that.”

“I do?” I asked.

Salt nod­ded. “Makes sense. I
would
kill or die to pro­tect Andi.”

“You would?” I turned my head to look at Salt more fully. He met my eyes without hes­it­a­tion.

“You know I would, Andi,” he said softly. “On this there can be no ques­tion.”

“Well, you’re already do­ing a good job of act­ing pro­tect­ive, De­tect­ive Salt,” Stevens said. “But
you,
De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker, need to ramp up your game.”

“Okay,” I said, try­ing to hold on to my tem­per. “Tell me how since you’re the kink ex­pert.”

“You can start by snug­gling into your Daddy’s lap like a real Baby­girl would,” Stevens said, frown­ing. “You want to get a close as pos­sible be­cause in his arms is where you find com­fort, love, pro­tec­tion from the big, bad out­side world. In his arms is where you feel
safe.”

I looked back at Salt who shrugged and opened his arms to me—a si­lent in­vit­a­tion.

I scooted back on his lap un­til my back was touch­ing his chest but I couldn’t quite al­low my­self to re­lax. It felt strange, be­ing held this way. In fact, the last time I could re­mem­ber sit­ting on someone’s lap was be­fore my own father took off when I was around nine.

“You’re still too stiff,” Stevens ob­jec­ted. “Re­lax.”

“I
can’t,”
I said. “This is just so weird. I’m a grown wo­man—I shouldn’t be sit­ting on any­one’s lap.”

“Andi…come,” Salt said in my ear. And then I felt his long, mus­cu­lar arms en­fold­ing me, draw­ing me closer so that the side of my body was pressed to his broad chest and my face was against the strong column of his throat.

“Salt!” I pro­tested but I made no move to stop him.

“Just be still, Andi,” he mur­mured in that deep, com­mand­ing voice of his. “Just breathe.”

I wanted to squirm or protest but there was a note of au­thor­ity in his tone that I didn’t dare to dis­obey. With a sigh, I closed my eyes and tried to let my­self re­lax.

After a mo­ment, I found that I didn’t have to pre­tend any more. It was
nice
sit­ting in Salt’s lap. He was big and warm and com­fort­ing and his af­ter­shave smelled like the ocean. Not a trop­ical ocean though—some­thing cold and rugged like the Baltic sea… I real­ized my thoughts didn’t really make sense but then I de­cided I didn’t care. I liked the feel­ing of be­ing so close to my part­ner, of be­ing held and pro­tec­ted by him.

Shouldn’t like it so much,
whispered a little voice in my head.
You know you can’t trust this feel­ing—you can’t trust any man to really pro­tect you. You have to look after your­self, Andi!

I knew it was true and yet for a little while, at least, I wanted to pre­tend it wasn’t. Wanted to pre­tend that Salt’s arms really were the safe haven they seemed to be and re­lax against him, feel­ing the mo­tion of his breath­ing, and tak­ing in the warm scent of his skin.

“That’s good. Very good,” Stevens’ voice was hushed, as though he was afraid to break the spell that had some­how fallen over me. “Now, De­tect­ive Salt, touch your Baby­girl.”

“Touch her in what way?” Salt asked flatly. I could al­most see the frown on his face.

“Firmly…pos­sess­ively…pro­tect­ively. Touch her in such a way that any other Daddy who hap­pens by will know she is yours without a shadow of a doubt.”

“Very well,” Salt rumbled.

I tensed again for a minute in his arms, not cer­tain what to ex­pect. But then I felt Salt’s hand on my hair, strok­ing gently but firmly, caress­ing me in the most sooth­ing way ima­gin­able. At the same time his other hand came to rest on my thigh. He cradled me against him, hold­ing me close in a gentle but un­break­able grip. Not that I wanted to break it.

“Mmm…” I sighed con­ten­tedly and snuggled closer to him. Maybe this as­sign­ment wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

Salt seemed to think so too.

“This is good, Andi…my little
mishka,”
he mur­mured. “I like hold­ing you like this.”

“I like it too,” I con­fessed in a low voice. I snuggled even closer, shift­ing my bot­tom on his lap. Sud­denly I felt some­thing hot and hard pok­ing my hip. Was this turn­ing Salt on? Giv­ing him a hard-on?

For a mo­ment, I froze. It should have freaked me out and it
did
…a little. But not quite as much as it should have. I felt sort of com­pli­men­ted ac­tu­ally. Still, we couldn’t just ig­nore it.

“Um…Salt?” I mur­mured, shift­ing again.

“Sorry.” He shrugged. “Can­not help it. You are too beau­ti­ful and too close and so my body re­acts.”

“It cer­tainly does,” I muttered back. The lump was now un­der my ass and it seemed to be grow­ing every minute. God, what caliber weapon was he pack­ing in his trousers?