The Institute: Daddy Issues (16 page)

Thank­fully, my part­ner seemed to know that.

“Thank you but no,” he said to Berkley. “I have other pun­ish­ments in mind for little
mishka
this night.”

The dir­ector shrugged.

“Suit your­self. But the plug can­not be put off forever.”

Salt didn’t an­swer. He was too busy glar­ing at me as he dragged me away from the table.

“Ouch!” I cried, and I wasn’t act­ing. His big fin­gers bit deep into my flesh and his grip was ac­tu­ally pain­ful.

Salt ig­nored my cries and kept mov­ing.

“Come,” he growled and yanked me to­ward the din­ing room door. He pulled me through the long cent­ral hall of the In­sti­tute and to­wards the entry­way with its twin stair­cases. But in­stead of drag­ging me up to the pun­ish­ment wing, he took me up the right hand steps, to the guest suites.

I ex­pec­ted him to drop the act once we got into our suite and he slammed the door shut be­hind us. But though he fi­nally let go of my arm, when he turned to look at me, his face was furi­ous.

“What in the
hell
was that?” he de­man­ded, but he was so up­set his ac­cent was in over­drive. It came out more as “Vhat in ze
hale
vus zat?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I shot back at him.

“What?” He ran both hands through his hair. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“I’m
talk­ing
about that spank­ing!” I ex­claimed. “You ac­ted like you didn’t want to hit me at all and then you beat me like a red­headed step child!”

“I had to make look real!” he pro­tested.

“It was real all right,” I shot back. And now my ass is
really
sore!”

“And so to get back at me, you de­cided to em­bar­rass me at table? To do things…you know you should not be do­ing?” he de­man­ded.

“Mandy dared me to,” I said. “I
had
to…to uh, do what I did, in or­der to get her trust.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And she
might
have told me everything if you hadn’t dragged me up here in­stead of let­ting me fin­ish.”

“Let­ting
you
fin­ish?”
Salt star­ted pa­cing.
“I
was the one who was about to fin­ish—don’t you un­der­stand that, Andi? I was about to
come
in your sweet
mouth.
Is that what you wanted?” He roun­ded on me. “Was it?”

I lif­ted my chin. “If that was what it took to earn Mandy’s trust and break this case then, well…yes.”

“You…I can­not be­lieve you.” He sat ab­ruptly on the sofa and scrubbed one hand over his face. “What about
after
case is through? What about—” He broke off ab­ruptly, shak­ing his head.

Sud­denly I felt ashamed. Not of my ac­tions—I had been do­ing what I thought was ne­ces­sary. But of how I had up­set my part­ner—the most im­port­ant per­son in my life. And I had to ad­mit, if our po­s­i­tions had been re­versed and he had gone down on me in pub­lic with no warn­ing, I would prob­ably feel in­cred­ibly pissed off and be­trayed too.

“Look, Salt…I’m sorry,” I said awk­wardly, sit­ting down be­side him. “She was dar­ing me to do it and say­ing she would tell me about the ‘spe­cial secret medi­cine’ if I did. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to ex­plain what was go­ing on. I guess…” I looked down at my hands. “I guess you prob­ably feel really taken ad­vant­age of right now.”

“No…not that ex­actly,” he said heav­ily.

“Yes, of course you do,” I pro­tested. “I know if our po­s­i­tions were re­versed and you had done, uh, that to me, I would feel really up­set and con­fused. You prob­ably feel like I
mo­les­ted
you or some­thing.” I bit my lip.

“Mo­les­ted?” He barked a short, un­happy laugh. “Is that how you think I am feel­ing right now?”

“I don’t
know…”
I shook my head. “Look, I have to be hon­est…” I sighed. “Mandy was dar­ing me but I was also really mad about the spank­ing. I guess…I was try­ing to get some re­venge, mak­ing you be the power­less one for once.”

Salt swore softly and reached for my hand. To my sur­prise, he in­ter­twined our fin­gers and squeezed gently. “Andi,” he said softly. “Look at me.”

Re­luct­antly, I raised my head to look at his face. His eyes were troubled.

“Is not that I feel you took ad­vant­age of me. The feel of your soft hands and sweet mouth on me was a great pleas­ure,” he rumbled softly.

“It was?” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot.

“Of course.” He brushed his knuckles gently over my heated cheek. “And one I never ex­pec­ted to feel. So that is not what both­ers me.”

“What then?” I whispered.

Salt looked troubled. “I just…do not wish to do any­thing while we are here that will jeop­ard­ize re­la­tion­ship we have back home,” he said. “You are im­port­ant to me, Andi. More im­port­ant than any case we are as­signed. You un­der­stand?”

I nod­ded. “I feel the same way about you,” I ad­mit­ted. “I’ve been wor­ried too…wor­ried that we might hurt our part­ner­ship with everything we have to…have to do here.”

“Is my greatest fear as well,” Salt said soberly. “I do not wish to lose you, Andi.”

“You won’t,” I said. “In fact…let’s make a prom­ise to each other right now.” I grabbed his other hand and looked in­tently into his eyes. “Let’s swear that no mat­ter what we have to do to break this case, we won’t let it af­fect our re­la­tion­ship or our part­ner­ship. After all, we’re only do­ing what is ne­ces­sary.”

Salt nod­ded. “Agreed. But…” He hes­it­ated.

“Yes?” I promp­ted. “Go on, Salt—what?”

“If we are in same situ­ation we were in to­night. When…when you were un­der table,” he said. “Do you…should we make some kind of sig­nal so that I can warn you if I am about to…” He cleared his throat. “A sig­nal so you can know when to stop?”

“No,” I said. “No, that’s not ne­ces­sary. If you…if you come, you come. That’s all right.” I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot again but I lif­ted my chin, de­term­ined not to back down.

Salt raised an eye­brow at me.

“Even if is in your mouth? Or…else­where?”

“Do what you have to do,” I said firmly. “I’ll do the same. And it won’t af­fect our part­ner­ship, I prom­ise.”

“All right. Is deal.” He squeezed my hands gently and let go. Then he sighed and leaned back. “Deal I am afraid we will have to keep sooner rather than later.”

“What do you mean?” I felt a flut­ter in my stom­ach.

“I am speak­ing of what Berke­ley said to us be­fore I spanked you. About how you must be bathed by your Daddy?”

“And shaved,” I whispered. This time my cheeks felt so hot I was cer­tain he would no­tice the blush creep­ing into my face.

“That too.” Salt nod­ded.

“Well, maybe they won’t count to­night since we put on such a big show at din­ner,” I said. “I mean maybe he’ll think you for­got all about it be­cause you were pun­ish­ing me and—”

A sharp rap­ping against the wooden door of the suite cut off my words. Both of us jumped and I put a hand to my pound­ing heart.

“I’ll get it,” I said but Salt shook his head.

“No. Al­low me.” He went cau­tiously to the door and opened it a crack. “Yes?”

“With Dir­ector Berkley’s com­pli­ments,” said a voice in the hall.

Salt opened the door wider and reached for some­thing. He closed the door firmly and locked it be­fore com­ing back to the couch. I saw that he had some kind of bas­ket in his big hand.

“What’s this?” I asked as he set it down on the cush­ion be­side me. The con­tents were nes­ted in brightly colored tis­sue pa­per so it was hard to see what ex­actly the bas­ket con­tained. I reached into it and my fin­gers found some­thing cool and smooth and cyl­indrical—some kind of can. I pulled it out and looked at it un­cer­tainly. “Peach foam­ing gel,’ I read aloud. “For the smoothest, clean­est shave of all your most in­tim­ate areas.”

Salt reached into the bas­ket as well and pulled out a dainty pink razor. He held it out to me.

“I do not think he has for­got­ten, Andi,” he said in a low voice.

“That bas­tard.” I snatched the razor from Salt’s big hand and stud­ied it. “He’s prob­ably watch­ing right now.”

“He prob­ably is,” my part­ner agreed. He looked at me. “So what do we do?”

“We…” I star­ted to say we should tell Berkley to go fuck him­self but of course, that wouldn’t help the case. In fact, there was only one thing we
could
do. I lif­ted my chin and looked Salt in the eye. “We do it,” I said evenly. “We put on a show.”

“You are sure about this?” Salt asked as I stood there in the bath­room in front of the huge marble tub, filled with bubbles.

As a mat­ter of fact, I wasn’t. Do­ing ex­actly what Berkley ex­pec­ted us to do had seemed like a good idea at first. But now that I was about to let Salt see me na­ked—not only see me but
touch
me and
shave
me, I felt sud­denly anxious.

“Andi…” He touched me gently on the shoulder and I jumped.

“What? What—I’m fine,” I said quickly, wish­ing my words wouldn’t come out so nervous and choppy.

Salt looked un­happy. “If you do not wish to do this…if you want to change your mind…”

“No—no of course not,” I said. “I mean…what choice do we have?” I took a deep breath. “I’m just…a little on edge. That’s all.”

“Of course.” He stroked my shoulder again. “But Andi…I want you to know, I will be care­ful…will be gentle.”

I nod­ded. “Sure. I know that.”

“I am not sure you do. Not after what happened at din­ner time.” He got a look of re­morse in his eyes. “Please be­lieve me—I did not real­ize I was spank­ing you so hard. I was…also on edge. Will you for­give me?”

“Of course, Salt.” I gave him a tent­at­ive smile. “There’s noth­ing to for­give. And I’m not afraid of you hurt­ing me or any­thing like that. I’m just, you know,
shy.”

“For me to see your body, do you mean?” He raised an eye­brow at me.

“Well…yeah.” I shrugged un­eas­ily. “I mean, I know we’re not do­ing this for real to be, you know,
sexual
. But I still care about your opin­ion. I mean…what if you don’t like what you see?”

“Is not pos­sible,” Salt said softly. “I know I will like.”

I put a hand on my hip. “How can you be so sure?”

“Be­cause I know you, Andi—
you
are what I like,” he said pa­tiently. “And be­sides, I have seen you in swim­suit, you know.”

“A mod­est
one piece
swim­suit,” I poin­ted out.

My suit doesn’t show much skin be­cause I only swim for ex­er­cise in the morn­ings at the YMCA. When I put it on, I’m not do­ing it to get male at­ten­tion—I’m there to swim my laps and re­lieve some stress be­fore I have to go to work. That’s all I care about.

In fact, I couldn’t re­mem­ber the last time I’d dressed up to please a man or cared what any man thought of how I looked either clothed or na­ked…be­sides Salt, that was. I couldn’t help feel­ing if he didn’t like me na­ked it would really,
really
hurt.

“I just don’t know what you’re go­ing to think,” I said at last.

Salt frowned at me. “Do you want me to give hon­est opin­ion?”

I bit my lip.
Did
I want that?

Yes—do it. Like rip­ping off a band­age,
whispered a little voice in my head.

It seemed like a good idea. If I was go­ing to have to be na­ked and let­ting Salt give me a bath every night we were here, it would be much bet­ter to know what he thought and not al­ways be wor­ry­ing about it.

“Well, all right,” I said. “Yes, I do. Tell me. Not just as a friend or a part­ner—as a man.”

He nod­ded. “I can do this. Drop the towel.”

It was one of the hard­est things I’ve ever done but I forced my­self to lose the death grip I had on the pink terry­c­loth towel I had clutched around me and let it drop to the marble tile floor. Then I held out my arms and lif­ted my chin, let­ting my part­ner look at me—really
look
at me for the first time.

Salt sucked in a breath and his eyes roved over me hun­grily.

“Andi…” he breathed softly.

“Well?” I said tightly. “Go on. Don’t keep me in sus­pense.”

“You are beau­ti­ful.” His eyes left my body and found my face. “Truly, I would not say so if I did not mean it.”

“But my breasts are too small,” I pro­tested.

“Per­fect for your size,” he as­sured me. “Per­fect to fit in a hand…or a mouth.”

I could feel my cheeks get­ting hot.

“My thighs and hips are too big,” I poin­ted out.

“Your curves are lovely,” Salt said softly. “So of­ten the clothes you wear at work hide them. But the dip of your waist…the way it curves out to your hips…” As he spoke, his big hands de­scribed an hour­glass in the air between us. “Beau­ti­ful,” he breathed again.

“My legs aren’t long enough,” I chal­lenged.

He smiled. “If your legs were long like gir­affe how could you be my little
mishka?
I love the dif­fer­ence between us—the way you are so little and per­fect.”

“All right,” I said. I didn’t know how I felt about the ‘little and per­fect’ re­mark but I de­cided to let it slide. “But you have to ad­mit,” I said, turn­ing to the side. “That my ass is way too—”

“Red.”
There was a slightly hor­ri­fied look on Salt’s face. “Andi, for­give me. You said I spanked too hard but I never thought…” He reached out to cup my bare ass gently. I jumped at his touch but some­how man­aged not to pull away from his big, warm hand.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It…it hardly hurts at all any­more.”

“It looks pain­ful.” Salt looked really up­set now. “I am usu­ally so care­ful with you—so aware of how del­ic­ate you are. I never thought—”

“Hey!” I frowned at him. “I am
not
del­ic­ate. And just be­cause I’m small doesn’t mean I can’t take a little rough treat­ment from time to time. I’m not made of crys­tal. I won’t break.”

“I am still sorry,” he said softly. “I re­gret this more than I can say.”

“Well you can make it up to me later,” I said as I climbed into the tub. The wa­ter was warm and I hissed a little as it hit my still red bot­tom. “Ouch!”

“See—you are
hurt,”
Salt said. He looked really up­set with him­self.

“It’s just the hot wa­ter against my ass,” I said. “Look, Mandy said there’s sup­posed to be some kind of cool­ing gel you can use that’s es­pe­cially for after spank­ings. Find it so I can put some on after the bath.”

“I will look while you soak in the tub,” Salt prom­ised. He turned to go, then stopped. “But wait—I be­lieve I am not sup­posed to leave you un­at­ten­ded. In fact…” He cleared his throat. “I think I am sup­posed to be scrub­bing you.”

“I think you
are.”
I bit my lip. “Um…do they have a sponge or a loo­fah or any­thing around here?”

Salt searched the bath­room but all he could come up with was a thin white wash­cloth.

“There is just this,” he said, apo­lo­get­ic­ally.

“Well, damn.” I eyed the wash­cloth as he dipped it in the wa­ter and poured a drizzle of peach scen­ted body-wash on it. It seemed like
everything
in the bath­room was peach.

“Here, give me your hand.” Salt took my hand in his and began wash­ing my arm in long, sooth­ing strokes. “I can do just this—only wash your arms and legs and back,” he offered.

“Right,” I said dryly. “Berkley is prob­ably watch­ing us right now. He’s go­ing to know we’re not who we say we are if we play it safe. No…” I took a deep breath. “Wash me all over, Salt. If…” I felt sud­denly shy. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course I do not mind,” he said, his voice com­ing out low and rough as he fin­ished one arm and moved on to the other. “It will be my very great pleas­ure, Andi.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You are more than wel­come,” Salt as­sured me. He did my back next and then looked at me. “Is time to wash the front of you now,
mishka,”
he mur­mured. “Un­less you want me to wash down be­low first?”

“No.” I bit my lip. “Bet­ter to, uh, work up to down be­low—if you know what I mean.”

Salt gave me a little half smile.

“
Da—
I know what you mean. Come then, lean back against side of tub.”

He had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white linen shirt in or­der to bathe me. Now he knelt be­side the tub so that we were al­most on the same level and beckoned to me.

I saw what he wanted and scooted un­til my back touched the chilly side of the marble tub. Salt was right be­hind me with the wash­cloth, ready to wash my breasts. He put his hands on my shoulders first and just sat there for a mo­ment. I found the firm pres­sure helped the but­ter­flies flut­ter­ing around in my stom­ach settle down. With a little sigh, I felt some of the ten­sion leave my body.

“That’s right,
mishka,”
he mur­mured in my ear. “Now is time to be­gin. Just re­lax and let me wash you.”

I didn’t know how I felt about him call­ing me by my Baby­girl name while we were do­ing this but some­how it seemed to fit. Not be­cause we were about to do some­thing sexual—or some­thing that
seemed
sexual for the hid­den cam­era, ex­actly—but more be­cause he was tak­ing care of me.

As Andi, I was a strong, take-charge, in­de­pend­ent wo­man—a dec­or­ated, tough-as-nails de­tect­ive who re­fused to back down from any­one. But as
mishka
I felt I could let my­self go a little…could al­low my hard edges to soften as I al­lowed Salt care for me in the way he so des­per­ately seemed to want to. As
mishka
I could be rocked and held and com­for­ted. As
mishka
I could be more open. More…what was the word I was look­ing for?

More loved,
whispered a little voice in my head. But I pushed it away. That was silly—I couldn’t love Salt and he couldn’t love me. We were part­ners and that was all we were. All we could ever be. Right?

Right,
I told my­self as he squeezed more peach body wash on the cloth and pre­pared to scrub my bare breasts.

But the minute the wet terry­c­loth made con­tact with my sens­it­ive nipples, I winced and jerked away.

Salt was in­stantly alert.

“Prob­lems?” he in­quired anxiously. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not
you
ex­actly.” I frowned at the wash­cloth. “It’s that damn cloth—it’s really rough.”

“Oh?” Salt frowned and rubbed the terry­c­loth between thumb and fin­gers. “Feels all right to me.”

“Be­cause you’re just touch­ing it with your hand,” I poin­ted out. “Look, I can’t help it, Salt. I’ve al­ways had very…very sens­it­ive nipples.” I felt my cheeks get­ting hot but went on any­way. “It’s a prob­lem some­times when I’m try­ing to find bras. And in the shower, I never use a sponge or scrub­bie on them.”

“Then what do you use?” he asked and I could hear the frown in his deep voice even though I wasn’t look­ing at him dir­ectly.

“Well,” I said awk­wardly. “Just my hands, mostly.”

“Do you wish for this?” Salt mur­mured. “For me to put down cloth and just use my hands?”

I bit my lip, ima­gin­ing how that would be—hav­ing my part­ner’s big, warm hands all over my bare breasts. I had never ad­mit­ted it to Salt and had tried to for­get it my­self, but I’d ac­tu­ally had sev­eral erotic dreams about my part­ner that went along those lines.

You shouldn’t,
whispered a voice in my head.
It’s cross­ing the line.
But wasn’t that a line I had already crossed when I took Mandy’s dare to suck my part­ner un­der the table at din­ner? How much worse could it be to let him wash my breasts? And after all, we
had
to do this for the case—we had to make it look real, I ar­gued to my­self.

“Andi…
mishka?”
Salt asked in my ear and I real­ized I was tak­ing too long to an­swer.

“Yes,” I whispered, nod­ding my head. “Yes, Salt, just…just do it.”

“As you wish,” he said simply, hanging the cloth over the side of the tub. He drizzled a few drops of the peach body-wash onto his fin­gers and rubbed them to­gether un­til they were slip­pery. Then, gently, he cupped my breasts in his big hands.

I sucked in a breath as I felt him stroke up­ward, lightly brush­ing over the outer curves of my breasts. Even that barely-there caress had my body hum­ming and I found I wanted more.

Hardly aware of what I was do­ing, I pressed my breasts for­ward, more fully into his hands. I was hop­ing that Salt would un­der­stand what I wanted.

To his credit he seemed to get it. Long fin­gers traced del­ic­ately around the wide pink bands of my are­olas, al­most but not quite touch­ing my nipples. He was either try­ing to be very care­ful or he was teas­ing me on pur­pose.

“Salt!” I pro­tested breath­lessly as his fin­gers slowly circled me. “It’s okay—I told you I won’t break! You can…can touch me—I mean wash me—harder than that.”

“Like this, do you mean?” He stroked firmly over my aching nipples, mak­ing me moan.

“Yes,” I gasped. “Just…just like that. Only more.”

“As you wish,
mishka.”
He took my tight, pink peaks between his thumbs and fore­fingers and tugged gently but firmly.