Daddy Issues Read online

  “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.

  “You—” I looked at my part­ner, feel­ing be­trayed. How dare he give me up to the en­emy like that?

  He shrugged and there was an apo­lo­getic look in his eyes.

  “For­give me, mishka—I had to say it.”

  “And is this true?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing back at me. “Your father aban­doned you when you were nine years old?”

  “Aban­doned? God, there’s a dra­matic word. Even bet­ter than ‘trau­mat­ized,’” I said an­grily. “But yeah, sure—why not? He aban­doned me and I never saw him again.” I poin­ted a fin­ger at Salt. “But at least he never beat me.”

  I wanted to call the words back as soon as they left my mouth but it was too late—the dam­age was done and I could see the hurt in my part­ner’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry—” I began but he shook his head.

  “No, is all right. I de­served.”

  “No you didn’t,” I said miser­ably. “I was just feel­ing…I don’t know.”

  “De­fens­ive, maybe,” Dr. Lucy sug­ges­ted. “Angry be­cause you felt be­trayed.”

  “Well, yeah—a little, I guess.” I shrugged.

  She looked at Salt. “So this is true, Mr. Saltanov? Your father was phys­ic­ally ab­us­ive?”

  “Yes,” Salt said shortly.

  “Well, we seem to have a very in­ter­est­ing dy­namic go­ing on here.” Dr. Lucy tapped her stylus against her tab­let for a mo­ment, clearly deep in thought. She looked at me again. “Why are you here? Is it only to please your Daddy?”

  “Don’t call him that,” I said ir­rit­ably. “That’s what I called my real father be­fore the son-of-a-bitch aban­doned me.”

  “Mishka and I have agreed that she will call me ‘Papa’ in­stead,” Salt told her.

  “I see.” She made an­other note and looked up at me. “So we come back to this again…the idea of sexu­al­iz­ing your play or call­ing your…part­ner for want of a bet­ter word—Daddy—makes you feel dis­gust?”

  “Well, yes if I’m play­ing this age.” I nod­ded down at the pretty lace and rose­bud dress again. “That’s just…dis­gust­ing. Who would want to do that?”

  “Many of our play­ers at the In­sti­tute choose to do so,” Dr. Lucy said blandly. “Of­ten they are ab­use sur­viv­ors. It can be help­ful and em­power­ing to re­gress to the bio­lo­gical age when the ab­use took place and re­play it, know­ing that you are in con­trol this time. Or, in the case of a Little, that you can give con­trol to a Big you can trust—someone who’s not go­ing to hurt you like you were hurt be­fore at that young, vul­ner­able age.” She leaned for­ward and looked at me in­tently. “Tell me if you can, mishka, be­fore your father left you, did he ini­ti­ate any kind of in­ap­pro­pri­ate sexual con­tact?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “No, noth­ing like that. He just aban­doned me. Isn’t that enough?”

  She stared at me for a long mo­ment and I got the feel­ing she was de­cid­ing if she be­lieved me or not. At last she nod­ded.

  “Well, if that’s the case, it’s one less is­sue to work through.”

  “It is the case,” I said firmly.

  “Very good.” She turned to Salt. “Mr. Saltanov, what do you feel you get out of play­ing like this? I think I heard you say­ing that you feel like it makes your part­ner more ap­proach­able in some way?”

  Salt sighed. “Mishka is…very prickly at times. For which I do not blame her—in her job it is im­port­ant to ap­pear tough—in­vul­ner­able. But some­times I can see that she is hurt­ing and I want…I wish…”

  “Say what you feel, Mr. Saltanov,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “There’s no judg­ment here.”

  Salt blew out a frus­trated breath.

  “I want to com­fort her—to hold her. Why is this so bad?”

  “I don’t know.” The doc­tor looked at me with one eye­brow raised. “Why is it so bad, mishka? Why do you not want your Papa to hold you?”

  “Be­cause it makes me weak, all right?” I spat at her. “And I don’t want to be weak. The last time I let my­self be that weak—” I stopped ab­ruptly.

  “You got hurt,” Dr. Lucy fin­ished for me, softly. “Tell me, miskha, do you feel like you can trust your Papa?”

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nbsp; “I…” I looked at Salt—really looked at him. Here was a man who had come into the PD and taken me on as a part­ner with no com­plaints. And this was after the Cap­tain had pre­vi­ously tried to pair me with two other of­ficers—neither of which could stand me. I knew be­cause he’d told me so frankly. At the time I had told my­self I didn’t care—if they couldn’t deal with me, fuck ‘em. I worked bet­ter on my own any­way. I had a phe­nom­enal suc­cess rate on my cases which was prob­ably the only reason the Cap­tain had con­tin­ued to put up with me.

  Then Salt had come into my life and quietly filled in the cracks. He be­came not just a part­ner but a pro­tector and a friend. Someone I could trust to watch my back on the streets and also hang out with on days off. Someone who was will­ing to help me out when I needed some­thing done around the house, too, which was nice. And with the ex­cep­tion of telling the doc­tor about my past trauma just now, he had never once be­trayed my trust or con­fid­ence.

  “Yes,” I said at last. “I trust him. I trust him to get my back in a tough situ­ation—to save my ass if things go badly.”

  “But do you trust him with your heart?” Dr. Lucy was still look­ing at me in­tently. “Do you trust him enough to let him love you and not hurt or aban­don you?”

  “Hey,” I said un­eas­ily. “I thought this place was just about play­ing per­ver­ted sex games. Nobody said any­thing about hearts and flowers and ro­mance.”

  “I’m not talk­ing about hearts and flowers and ro­mance,” Dr. Lucy said quietly. “Trust­ing someone enough to re­gress to an age where you were deeply hurt isn’t ro­mantic in the least. It’s fright­en­ing and con­fus­ing and it may be deeply trau­matic. So if you’re here just for cas­ual play, you should prob­ably find some­place else to go.”

  “We do not wish to be any­where but here,” Salt said quickly. “Mishka and I wish to work through our dif­fi­culties. This is why we are talk­ing to you.”

  “All right. And is that how you feel as well?” She looked at me.

  “Of course,” I said, prob­ably a little too quickly. But I felt like I had to agree with Salt—oth­er­wise we were go­ing to get kicked out and the whole case would go down the drain.

  “Very well.” She nod­ded again and looked at Salt. “Let’s talk about you for a while Mr. Saltanov. What drew you to Age Play? What made you want to be a Big?”

  He sighed. “I do not know. I guess…my wish to pro­tect those that are help­less?”

  “And what gave you this need?” she probed.

  He sighed again. “This is…dif­fi­cult to say.”

  “It’s all right,” she mur­mured. “As I said, there’s no judg­ment here.”

  “Very well.” Salt looked at her. “My father—he liked his vodka. Some­times he would come home, drunk and angry, look­ing for someone to hit.” He shrugged. “It was either watch my mother get beaten or take the beat­ing my­self. And I loved my mother—very much.”

  I sucked in a breath and clenched my fists. Was this true? Was this what Salt had re­fused to tell me the night be­fore? Some­how I was pretty sure it was.

  “You must have loved her to take beat­ings for her,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “Did you have any sib­lings? Did they ex­per­i­ence this treat­ment too?”

  “I had three younger sis­ters,” Salt said. “My mother would send them to bed as soon as we heard my father at the door. She tried to send me too but when I got old enough to know what was hap­pen­ing…” He shook his head. “I re­fused to go.”

  “Oh, Salt…” I whispered, look­ing at him. “So…it wasn’t just once?” When I’d seen the marks on his back, I had hoped it was a sin­gu­lar oc­cur­rence or at least that it hadn’t happened more than a couple of times.

  He looked back at me. “Once a week at least. Un­til I got old enough to stop him. Now you know. This is what I did not wish to tell you but now you know, Andi.”

  If Dr. Lucy no­ticed his slip in us­ing my real name, she didn’t men­tion it. She was simply quiet while we looked at each other.

  I didn’t know what to say. I had the sud­den urge to go to Salt and hug him, even though we really weren’t the hug­ging kind of part­ners. I star­ted to do it any­way but then I felt weird and stayed where I was.

  “I wish I could have been there,” I said thickly. “I wish I could have shot the bas­tard right through the place where his cold, dead heart should have been.”

  Salt smiled mirth­lessly and there was a chilly gleam in his pale eyes.

  “This I took care of my­self when I was old enough. Not with a gun, though. With these.” He held out his big hands, the hands that had touched me so gently last night.

  I shivered a little. I had seen Salt use deadly force be­fore, twice dur­ing our part­ner­ship. It al­ways bothered me a little how cold he was when he killed—how it didn’t seem to faze him a bit. Now I wondered if this was the reason why. If he’d really killed his own father, what other killing could or would bother him ever again? Everything after patri­cide is just kind of an­ti­cli­mactic.

  “Mishka, how do you feel about what your Papa just told you?” Dr. Lucy asked quietly. “Are you frightened at all?”

  “Of course not,” I said, still look­ing at Salt. “He would never hurt me. Never.”

  “Then you do trust him. And I want you to no­tice some­thing else—some­thing that just happened. When he told you about his past trauma, your re­ac­tion was very pro­tect­ive—you wanted to shield him from harm and make him feel bet­ter.”

  “Of course I did,” I said, look­ing at her. “What kind of per­son would I be if I didn’t feel that way?”

  “But my point is—why is it all right for you to feel that way to­wards your Papa but not for him to feel that way to­wards you?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I said, frown­ing.

  “Be­cause it would make you weak?” she sug­ges­ted. “Vul­ner­able? These are your words I’m us­ing here, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably. How much had she heard while Salt and I were sit­ting out­side her of­fice ar­guing?

  “Think of what you’re miss­ing,” Dr. Lucy ar­gued softly. “After your father left you, I’m sure you missed him—missed sit­ting in his lap, feel­ing his af­fec­tion. This is what your Papa is of­fer­ing you now—all the things you missed as a child. The love, the nur­tur­ing, the un­con­di­tional af­fec­tion and the feel­ing that all of his at­ten­tion is centered just on you, his pre­cious little girl…” She spread her hands. “I’m cer­tain that your mother did the best she could to fill in the gaps but—”

  “Not really,” I said bluntly. “My mom was a barely func­tion­ing al­co­holic. She was usu­ally way too deep into her wine bottle to bother with things like shop­ping for gro­cer­ies or wash­ing clothes. Let alone in­cid­ent­als like cud­dling or story time.”

  “So cud­dling and story time—that kind of af­fec­tion was what you got from your bio­lo­gical father?” she asked.

  I nod­ded, try­ing not to think about it. Try­ing not to re­mem­ber how hor­ribly lonely I’d been after Daddy left the pic­ture for good. He was the one who al­ways helped with my home­work, who made sure I had clean clothes to wear, and who cuddled me in his lap while he read me stor­ies at bed­time. After he left, there was a huge hole in my life that my mom hadn’t even tried to fill. Just think­ing about it made the hole open up again—a hole so deep and dark I felt like it might swal­low me forever.

  “I don’t…don’t want to talk about this any­more.” My voice soun­ded strangled, even in my own ears.

  Dr. Lucy ig­nored my plea.

  “Maybe you’re res­ist­ing what your Papa of­fers be­cause you’re afraid,” she sug­ges­ted.

  “Afraid of what?” I tried to scoff, but again my voice came out sound­ing strange and broken.

  “Of be­ing hurt again. It’s scary to be Daddy’s little girl be­cause when Daddy
leaves you, your whole life caves in,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “It’s the worst be­trayal you could en­dure. That’s how it feels when you’re a child, any­way. As adults, we get used to people we care about mov­ing in and out of our lives. But as a child…” She shook her head. “The sud­den loss of a par­ent… well, it might as well be the end of the world. That’s what it feels like.”

  “It feels like death,” I whispered, put­ting my hand to my chest. “Like dy­ing a little more every day he doesn’t come back. And won­der­ing…won­der­ing what I did that made him go away.”

  Then I shook my head. What was I talk­ing about? I was let­ting her get into my head again—I had to stop.

  “But it’s over now,” I con­tin­ued, straight­en­ing up and wip­ing at my cheeks which were wet for some reason. “And I’m over it. So…”

  “Look at your part­ner—your Papa, mishka,” Dr. Lucy mur­mured. “He wants so badly to com­fort you—he wants to pro­tect you from the pain you’re ex­press­ing, just the way you wanted to pro­tect him.”

  I looked at Salt. He was lean­ing to­wards me, his big hands clenched into fists on his knees. There was a look in his blue eyes I couldn’t read. A yearn­ing maybe…a long­ing so deep it made me ache just to see it.

  “Andi…mishka,” he said in a low voice. And then stood up and strode across the room to me in two steps. Lift­ing me, he car­ried me back to the love seat and settled back down with me in his lap.

  “No, stop it! Put me down!” I meant for the words to come out in a shout but some­how they were barely a whis­per.

  “No,” Salt growled softly. And then he was kiss­ing my cheeks again, as he had the night be­fore—hold­ing me close and kiss­ing away the tears that I couldn’t seem to help shed­ding.

  “Salt,” I whispered. “God…” And then some­how his lips found the corner of my mouth in­stead of my cheek. The next time he kissed me, I moved so that his lips met mine.

  A sweet, sharp, elec­trical tingle went through me—the feel­ing of be­ing plugged into some im­mense source of power I had never even sus­pec­ted of ex­ist­ing.