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.”

  “All right.” He pulled out a blue checked party-type dress, again with lots of ruffles and lace. It looked like some­thing an eight or nine year old girl might wear to a fancy party.

  “Nope,” I said at once. “Still too young. God, this is gross.”

  “Con­sider it be­fore you turn it down,” Stevens urged. “At this age, you get to be Daddy’s little prin­cess. You’ll sit on his lap a lot and be taken out to the zoo and the park and any Dis­ney movies that might be play­ing. Your Daddy will cut up your meat for you at din­ner and check un­der the bed for mon­sters be­fore tuck­ing you in. It’s rather nice, ac­tu­ally.”

  “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.

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