The Institute: Daddy Issues (13 page)

“Ooo, Daddy…” She fluttered her wet eye­lashes at him flir­ta­tiously. “And will you spread some on my other parts too and will you rub it in
really
good? “ She sat up and ran one fin­ger­nail down his tie. “You
know
how much I love it when you pet my little kitty, Daddy.”

He frowned sternly. “I don’t know, kit­ten. You’ve been a very naughty girl—I don’t know if you de­serve to have your kitty pet­ted.”

“But
please?”
she begged shame­lessly. “You know how fast I can come after you spank me.
Please,
Daddy?”

“Well…we’ll see,” he said, smil­ing in­dul­gently as though she was ask­ing for an ice cream cone in­stead of his fin­gers between her legs. “For now, just come up to the room and we can de­cide there.”

“Well,” I muttered as they fi­nally left. “I guess that an­swers our ques­tion about whether she was get­ting any pleas­ure from be­ing spanked or not.”

“What kind of pleas­ure, do you think?” Salt asked thought­fully as we left the play­room and headed back to our suite to get ready for din­ner. “The pleas­ure of a mas­ochist, do you think? She wants to be hurt sexu­ally?”

“That might be part of it,” I said doubt­fully. “But it could also be the pleas­ure of sub­mis­sion—the idea that he can do any­thing he wants and she can’t stop him.”

“The pleas­ure of sub­mis­sion, eh? I have never heard you speak of such a thing be­fore.” Salt was look­ing at me spec­u­lat­ively again. I made my­self look away.

“Well, did you learn any­thing from the other Dad­dies?” I asked, des­per­ate to change the sub­ject.

Salt used the old fash­ioned key that opened the door to our suite and ushered me in­side.

“A lot and then again, not nearly enough,” he said, frown­ing. “What about you? Was talk with Berkley’s brat pro­duct­ive?”

I sighed and went to sit on the couch. There was no fire in the grate but I could see the maid must have been in be­cause there were fresh logs laid all ready to go.

“She seems to know some­thing but she won’t tell me,” I said, reach­ing down to un­buckle my new san­dals. They were more com­fort­able than the aw­ful pat­ent leather shoes I’d worn the night be­fore but the straps still rubbed me. I couldn’t wait to get them off.

“Why not?” Salt asked, sit­ting down be­side me. “Here, al­low me.”

He brushed my hands away and pulled my feet into his lap. This time I didn’t even try to fight it. His hands seemed like they would be too big to handle the little shoes but he man­aged the dainty straps with ease and then began rub­bing one of my feet.

“Ahhh…” I melted back against the arm of the couch with a happy groan. “God, Salt, if I’d known you were so good at this I would have been beg­ging for foot mas­sages every spare minute of our en­tire part­ner­ship.”

“No you wouldn’t,” he said quietly. “Be­fore we came here, to this place, you would not have been com­fort­able to let me touch you so…in­tim­ately. You were un­com­fort­able with mas­sage last night at first. Only now you be­gin to get used to it.”

“I…guess so.” I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably on the couch. “But I mean, it’s just a foot mas­sage. How in­tim­ate can that be?”

“Feet are very del­ic­ate…can be very sens­it­ive.” He trailed one long fin­ger up the tender arch of my foot.

“Salt!” I gasped, jump­ing a little. “That’s tick­lish!”

“My point,” he said, giv­ing me a little smile. “I have wished to give you foot mas­sage be­fore this but how could I? You would never have agreed.”

“Well, I’m agree­ing now,” I said, passing over his state­ment that he’d wanted to do this for me be­fore. I moaned ap­pre­ci­at­ively as he star­ted knead­ing the arch of my other foot. “As long as you’re not try­ing to tell me you have a foot fet­ish.” I lif­ted my head from the arm of the couch for a mo­ment and raised an eye­brow at him. “You’re not, are you?”

Salt snorted laughter. “In a place like this you think such a thing is worst prob­lem?”

“Well, no,” I con­ceded. “You’ve got a point. But still…”

“I do not have foot fet­ish,” my part­ner as­sured me. “Al­though I will ad­mit to lik­ing your little feet. They are…how do you say? Cute.” He lif­ted the foot he was mas­sa­ging and pressed a soft kiss to the in­side of my arch. “Ad­or­able.”

“Salt…” My breath was com­ing faster for some reason and my heart was pound­ing. Which was ri­dicu­lous—he was just be­ing play­ful and he’d only kissed my foot. It wasn’t like he’d lif­ted my skirt to give me “spe­cial kisses” or any­thing like that.

Just the thought of that brought all kinds of men­tal im­ages with it and I found that my pulse was sud­denly ra­cing. God, what was
wrong
with me? I had to stop ima­gin­ing that—stop pic­tur­ing my part­ner split­ting my thighs with his broad shoulders to go down on me. I didn’t want him to do that to me, did I? Of course not. But still, the im­ages wouldn’t leave my brain…

“So you said that Berkley’s brat had in­form­a­tion but she would not share?” Salt asked, break­ing into my erotic and for­bid­den thoughts. “Why would she not talk to you?”

“She called me a ‘scared little vir­gin’, among other things, I think be­cause of what you told Berkley about how we weren’t, uh, sexual to­gether.” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot as I spoke.

“Hmmm…” Salt frowned. “I am sorry about that but I was afraid if we pre­ten­ded to be ex­per­i­enced in this kind of thing we would be re­quired to do things…things we were not ready to do.”

“We may have to do
some­thing
any­way
,”
I said, frown­ing. “We’re get­ting nowhere on this case so far.”

“We
did
do some­thing,” he poin­ted out. “In the of­fice of Dr. Lucy.”

I shif­ted again, think­ing of the scorch­ingly hot kiss we’d shared. If I wasn’t care­ful we were go­ing to get into dan­ger­ous ter­rit­ory here.

“Well…but all that was just for show. I mean, we were giv­ing Dr. Lucy what she wanted, right?”

“What she wanted…or what
we
wanted?” His pale blue eyes seemed to burn into me.

“What
she
wanted,” I said firmly, lift­ing my chin. “I mean, come on Salt, you know I wouldn’t act that way un­less I had a reason, right?”

“You mean you would not bare your soul to me and weep for the pain of your past, as you did?” he asked softly. “Or wrap your arms around my neck and kiss me un­til neither of us could breathe?”

“Well, I mean…” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot­ter and hot­ter. God, I was go­ing to ex­plode soon if he didn’t back off!

Salt seemed to know it.

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Tell me what ex­actly did you have in mind for us to do,
mishka?
And when are we to do it?”

“At din­ner to­night,” I said, feel­ing im­mensely re­lieved to be back to the case and off the messy sub­ject of our emo­tions. “We have to prove I’m not a goody-two-shoes’.”

“A…what?” Salt looked con­fused. “For­give me, a few Amer­ican idioms still es­cape me.”

“A goody-two-shoes is someone who al­ways fol­lows the rules…who never gets pun­ished. Mandy told me to come back and talk to her when I wasn’t such a ‘bor­ing goody-tw
o
-
shoes’.”

“And how will you prove you are not this ‘goody-sweet-shoes?’” Salt asked.

“Goody—
two-shoes,” I cor­rec­ted him. “And I think the best way is…” I took a deep breath. God, I couldn’t be­lieve I was about to say this. “I think the best way is for you to spank me.”

Salt frowned. “I thought that you did not wish for me to spank you.”

“I don’t want you to spank me for
real,”
I said hast­ily. “We’ll put on a show, just like Patty and her Daddy did in the play­room. I’ll throw a hissy fit at the din­ner table, then you spank me right where every­one can see. That’ll show Mandy that I’m
not
such a good girl and maybe she’ll open up to me.”

“I do not know…” Salt still looked doubt­ful. “Are you cer­tain you wish to do this? I know that I threatened to dis­cip­line you but I am…re­luct­ant to strike you. To strike any wo­man, but es­pe­cially
you,
Andi.”

“Is that be­cause of your father?” I asked softly. “Be­cause of…what you saw him do? To your mom, I mean?”

I knew from work­ing at the PD that ab­used chil­dren of­ten went one of two ways—either they might be­come ab­users them­selves or they would go in the com­plete op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion and re­fuse to lay a hand on any­one.

Salt had no prob­lem do­ing our job but it oc­curred to me now that though he could get plenty rough with male sus­pects, I had never seen him treat a fe­male with any­thing but gentle firm­ness, even if she was angry or ab­us­ive to­wards him. It was one of the things I liked about him—that in­nate gen­tle­man­li­ness. Now I un­der­stood the root of it.

“I sup­pose this is why,” Salt said a bit stiffly.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Is not
easy
to talk about,” he ac­know­ledged. “But all the same, I am glad you know, Andi.”

“I guess…I’m glad too,” I said hes­it­antly. “It does ex­plain some things. Al­though it raises a lot of ques­tions too.”

“Such as?” He lif­ted one eye­brow quiz­zically. “Ask. I will not be angry.”

“Did you
really
kill your own father?” I asked in a low voice. “I mean, I can ab­so­lutely un­der­stand why if you did but I just never… never knew.”

“Of course you did not know,” he said simply. “I have never told any­one here.”

“How…why…” I shook my head. “Never mind. For­get I asked.”

“He was go­ing after my sis­ters,” Salt said and his deep voice was a growl. “I was six­teen. Beat­ing me was no fun for him any­more—I just stood there and took it.”

“Salt…” I whispered, but I couldn’t reach him. He had stopped mas­sa­ging my feet and there was a far away look in his eyes, as though he were re­liv­ing the old hor­ror all over again.

“He had already driven my old­est sis­ter from home—Havela, only two years younger than me.” Salt’s big hands were clenched into fists now. “I could not stop this—I could not save her. But then he went after the other two—Tatyana and Liliya. They were so young—only twelve and el­even.”

“How did it hap­pen?” I asked softly.

“We were at top of stairs. Very steep. My sis­ters’ door was there and they were hid­ing in­side their room—I could hear them cry­ing. They feared my father—we all did.” Salt’s ac­cent had got­ten even deeper—I thought it was a won­der he was still talk­ing in Eng­lish at all in­stead of slip­ping back into Rus­sian.

“Were you between him and the door?” I asked.

He nod­ded. “
Da
—I was. He told me to get out of the way or he would kill me. He was scream­ing that my little sis­ters were noth­ing but
shlukha
—whores. He said he would beat the whor­ing out of them. My mother was cry­ing and beg­ging.” He paused for a mo­ment and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I knew if he got past me, into my sis­ters’ room, he would beat them…and most likely rape them as well.”

I sucked in a breath. “Oh, no!”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “This was real reason that Havela ran away. I had gone to find her that af­ter­noon—she was hid­ing in a house where the girls were for sale. She told me…” He took a deep breath. “Told me that she might as well get paid for it. That it was bet­ter to give to strangers than to have her own father take. She would not come back with me.” He shook his head. “I did not blame her. I did not pro­tect her as I should—but I could not let him hurt Tatyana and Liliya this way as well.”

“Oh, Salt…” I shook my head. “What happened? Did you, uh, push him down the stairs?”

“I beat him.” He looked at me un­flinch­ingly. “My father was big man—as big as I am now. At six­teen at last I was get­ting my growth—fi­nally big enough to fight him.” He shrugged. “And so…I did. He was still big­ger than me but he was drunk—very drunk. I was quicker than he was. But once…” He took a deep breath. “Once I star­ted beat­ing…I could not stop. Even after my mother tried to pull me off, I could not stop.”

“You were angry,” I said quietly. “You had a right to be.”

“I lost con­trol. But I was not sorry.” He shook his head. “Any­way, after he was dead—
then
we push him down the stairs to make look like ac­ci­dent. My sis­ters helped. They were cry­ing—my mother too. But I could not.”

“You were prob­ably in shock,” I said.

“Is pos­sible.” Salt closed his eyes and pressed his thumb and in­dex fin­ger over his eye­lids as though he was try­ing to ban­ish the bad memor­ies. “For­give me,” he said thickly. “I have not thought of this for a long time. Is not some­thing I like to re­mem­ber.”

“Of course not.” Earlier, when we’d been in Dr. Lucy’s of­fice, I’d had the im­pulse to hug him but I had stopped my­self. This time I couldn’t. I sat up on my knees and reached for him, wrap­ping my arms around his neck.

For a mo­ment Salt just sat there, then he hugged me back, crush­ing me to him and press­ing his face into my neck.