Daddy Issues

  Chapter One

  “You want us to go where and do what?” I stared at my Cap­tain in dis­be­lief.

  He gave a long suf­fer­ing sigh and ran a hand through his thin­ning hair.

  “It’s called “the In­sti­tute,” Sug­ar­baker. It’s sup­posed to be a re­sort for wealthy busi­ness­men and their mis­tresses but we have reason to be­lieve there’s more go­ing on there—a lot more.”

  “I know what it is—every­body in Vice has heard of it,” I said, cross­ing my arms. “I just don’t un­der­stand why you want Salt and me to go there.”

  “This In­sti­tute is a place of per­ver­sion—yes?” Viktor Saltanov, my part­ner for the last three years, frowned down at me.

  He was able to look down be­cause, even though he was sit­ting in the chair we were shar­ing and I was sit­ting much higher on the arm of it, he was still con­sid­er­ably taller. It was a dis­par­ity I was used to. I’m pretty small—5’1 in my socks. My part­ner, on the other hand, is—put­ting it mildly—huge. Salt is 6’6 with a weight­lifter’s physique. They didn’t call him the Rus­sian bull around the de­part­ment for noth­ing. Now he raised one eye­brow at me, his ice blue eyes filled with ques­tions.

  I snorted. “Per­ver­ted is put­ting it mildly if even half of what I’ve heard is true.”

  “It may be,” Cap­tain Douglas said. “But we’re pretty sure it’s where this new sup­ply of Please is com­ing from.”

  “Please?” Salt frowned again.

  “You know…” I el­bowed him in one mus­cu­lar shoulder. “That new de­signer drug that’s sud­denly all over the place—‘Please, Daddy.’ Please for short.”

  ‘Please Daddy’ also known as ‘Touch me, Daddy,’ in some circles was that rarest of drugs—an aph­ro­dis­iac that ac­tu­ally worked. It was sup­posed to give the user un­quench­able sexual ap­pet­ites. Un­for­tu­nately, it also had some nasty side ef­fects—put­ting it bluntly, the user of­ten felt they had to have sex or die after con­sum­ing it. And in some cases, they ac­tu­ally did die. Please had some weird side ef­fects that weren’t com­pletely un­der­stood yet—which didn’t stop any­one from tak­ing it.

  The in­ev­it­able beg­ging for sex after tak­ing the drug had helped name it. There were videos on the in­ter­net of girls who were ab­so­lutely shame­less after hav­ing a single hit—one es­pe­cially had gone viral. I hadn’t seen it my­self but sup­posedly it was a blonde girl in her twen­ties beg­ging to get fucked after tak­ing a hit of Please.

  “Daddy, please! Oh God, please, Daddy,” she kept say­ing over and over to the man in the video with her. From what I had heard, the man wasn’t really her father but the name has stuck. “Please Daddy” was the hot­test new drug around—and the most deadly.

  Know­ing that Please was spread­ing all over the place was enough to make you sick—it made me sick, any­way. And as a de­tect­ive first class, I would be more than happy to go shut down the sup­ply from its source in any way I could.

  Well…al­most any way.

  “Ex­plain it again,” I said to Cap­tain Douglas. “What do you want us to do at the In­sti­tute?”

  He sighed again, look­ing har­assed and I knew he must be think­ing what a dif­fi­cult bitch I was—not that I cared.

  I have a repu­ta­tion as a ball-breaker around the de­part­ment. But that’s pretty much in­ev­it­able when you’re a fe­male de­tect­ive who’s de­term­ined not to let her lack of a penis stand in the way of pro­fes­sional ad­vance­ment. I don’t back down from any­one and the Cap­tain knows it. I really think that’s why he paired me with Salt to start with—to take me down a peg.

  Born and bred in Mother Rus­sia, Viktor Saltanov is pretty much as macho as they come. But not how we West­ern­ers think of the concept—it’s more of an in­grained per­son­al­ity trait with Rus­sian men. They are just simply more there—more male if you will. At least, that was how Salt seemed to me.

  Right from the start, I thought my new part­ner was go­ing to be trouble. He was al­ways do­ing things like open­ing doors, pulling out chairs, help­ing me into my coat, giv­ing me a hand in and out of cars…all those little things that West­ern men used to do but mostly don’t any­more. At least none of the ones I had ever gone out with did them.

  I don’t know why that kind of thing stopped—maybe be­cause so­ci­ety has shif­ted or maybe be­cause fem­in­ists like me have trained it out of men. But for whatever reason, Salt hadn’t got­ten the memo that treat­ing a wo­man like a pre­cious creature un­able to do things for her­self wasn’t done any­more.

  At the be­gin­ning of our part­ner­ship, I fumed si­lently for about a week of this overly de­fer­en­tial and—to my mind—sex­ist treat­ment. But things fi­nally came to a head when we stopped for lunch at my fa­vor­ite res­taur­ant and my part­ner ordered for me—telling the wait­ress ex­actly what to bring me and ex­actly how to make it—be­fore I could even open my mouth or look at the menu.

  “Just what do you think you’re do­ing?” I de­man­ded, after he gave the wait­ress our or­der and she left to go whis­per with her friend.

  I was sure they were talk­ing about Salt. With his black hair, pale blue eyes, and his im­mense size, he was well worth look­ing at. He also has an air of quiet au­thor­ity that acts like cat­nip on a cer­tain type of wo­man—a kind of grav­ity that al­most never lifts. I think it’s be­cause he smiles very rarely, which is not be­cause he’s un­happy as I ini­tially thought—it’s just not done where he comes from. He once told me there is a Rus­sian pro­verb—‘a man who smiles con­stantly is one step from be­ing a fool.’ And you can call Salt what you want but he’s no fool—he ac­tu­ally has a brain in that big, mus­cu­lar body. You ought to see him play chess—I’ve never beaten him, not once, and I was on the chess team briefly in high school.

  But back to the dis­astrous lunch.

  “Why did you or­der for me?” I asked him, well and truly pissed.

  He shrugged, look­ing mildly sur­prised.

  “Is what you al­ways or­der.”

  “Yes, but what if I wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent?”

  “Then you should have told me. I would or­der it for you,” he replied calmly.

  “You don’t get it,” I sputtered, get­ting an­grier than ever. “I like to or­der for my­self! And I like get­ting my own door and pulling out my own chair and put­ting on my own coat…all this weird ‘I’m such a gen­tle­man’ bull­shit you’ve got go­ing on is wasted on me! I’m your part­ner—not some date you’re try­ing to im­press so you can get laid. So stop it.”

  Salt had looked more than mildly sur­prised at my out­burst.

  “But as you have poin­ted out, you are my part­ner,” he said reas­on­ably. “So I must take care of you.”

  “Would you hold open the door for an­other guy? Would you or­der his lunch for him?” I de­man­ded.

  “Of course not.” Salt gave a rare laugh, as though it was a ri­dicu­lous idea. “But you are fe­male, Andi. So I take care of you.”

  “Why…you…you chau­vin­istic…miso­gyn­istic…as­shole!”

  Salt’s face darkened.

  “I may still have too much Rus­sian ac­cent but my Eng­lish com­pre­hen­sion is quite good. I know the mean­ing of these words, Andi—I am not these things.”

  “How are you not?” I de­man­ded. “You just ad­mit­ted that you treat me dif­fer­ently be­cause I’m fe­male. That’s the very defin­i­tion of a chau­vin­ist.”

  “You don’t un­der­stand…” He leaned for­ward and put a hand on mine though I don’t know how he dared touch me when I was so ob­vi­ously pissed off. “Yes, I treat you dif­fer­ently,�
�� he said in a soft, low voice. “You are fe­male. And wo­men are to be cher­ished…pro­tec­ted. Not be­cause they are weak or stu­pid—be­cause they are pre­cious. You are a wo­man and my part­ner, Andi—this makes you doubly pre­cious to me. There­fore, I take care of you. Yes? It is the Rus­sian way.”

  I was still pretty angry but the look in his ice blue eyes was so sin­cere it ac­tu­ally made me re­con­sider. Still… “the Rus­sian way?” Was he ser­i­ous with that bull­shit?

  Ap­par­ently, he was. That night, after swal­low­ing both the sand­wich he had ordered me (and in­sisted on pay­ing for) and my pride, I did what I should have in the first place—I did my re­search.

  I’m ashamed to ad­mit I had to get most of my in­form­a­tion off dat­ing sites. Not that I had any in­terest in my part­ner that way but still—those were the places where they had the most in­form­a­tion about Rus­sian men and the way they in­ter­act with their wo­men.

  I learned that your typ­ical Rus­sian man was gen­er­ous, help­ful, cour­teous and ex­tremely pro­tect­ive of his chosen wo­man. Ac­cord­ing to the sites I read, they also tend to get ser­i­ous quickly about a wo­man they con­sider to be theirs. Now that I was Salt’s part­ner, he ap­par­ently con­sidered it his job to pro­tect me and shield me from harm. Not a bad qual­ity in a part­ner, if I could get over my fem­in­ist prick­li­ness and ad­just to be­ing treated like more than one of the guys for once.

  It took some ef­fort on my part and con­stantly re­mind­ing my­self that the way Salt was act­ing to­ward me was cul­tural, not in any way sex­ist or de­mean­ing. But fi­nally we fell into a routine. Salt still opened doors for me, helped me in and out of my coat and in­sisted on buy­ing my lunch when we ate out to­gether. (In Rus­sia, the man al­ways pays—it’s an in­sult to ask to split the bill.) And in re­turn, I had him over to my place for a home cooked meal at least twice a week—I know I don’t seem very do­mestic but I’m ac­tu­ally a pretty good cook. I even learned to make borscht for him which is more com­plic­ated than you might think.

  The only place I really had to draw the line was when Salt wanted to de­fend my honor. I don’t know what the Rus­sian po­lice force is like, but I don’t think they get the concept of po­lice bru­tal­ity. In the be­gin­ning, any perp we brought in who mouthed off to me was likely to be pick­ing his teeth up off the floor the next minute. I fi­nally made Salt un­der­stand he was go­ing to get us both sus­pen­ded if he didn’t stop, so now he con­ten­ted him­self with simply threat­en­ing any­one who dis­respec­ted me. It was a dis­tinct im­prove­ment, es­pe­cially from the Cap­tain’s point of view.

  And speak­ing of Cap­tain Douglas, I hoped he was fi­nally go­ing to ex­plain why he needed Salt and me to go to the in­fam­ous In­sti­tute.

  “We need you to go un­der­cover,” he was say­ing. “Get in good with the other…ah par­ti­cipants at the re­sort, and see if you can identify the source of the Please. This new batch is the most dan­ger­ous yet so if we can catch the man­u­fac­turer and dry up the sup­ply, we can save a lot of lives.”

  “Go un­der­cover in what ca­pa­city?” I asked, frown­ing. “I mean, what ex­actly do they do there, any­way?”

  “I thought you knew all about it, Sug­ar­baker.” Cap­tain Douglas fol­ded his arms over his nar­row chest.

  “I know it’s some kind of kinky re­sort,” I said. “Is it a BDSM thing? Are Salt and I go­ing to have to dress up in leather and use whips and chains on each other?”

  Salt’s face darkened. “I will not whip Andi. She is too del­ic­ate for such treat­ment.”

  In the be­gin­ning of our part­ner­ship, that kind of state­ment would have pissed me off. Now I knew it was just Salt pro­tect­ing me. Still, I nudged his mus­cu­lar shoulder and made a face at him.

  “Who said you would be do­ing the whip­ping, huh? You think I can’t be the one wield­ing the paddle? I’m plenty dom­in­ant enough to be a dom­in­atrix.”

  Salt gave me a coolly ap­prais­ing stare. After a mo­ment, it got hard to hold his ice-blue gaze but I re­fused to drop my eyes and lose the little star­ing con­test we found ourselves in.

  “No,” he said at last. “You are dom­in­ant to many men but not to me, Andi. This I will not al­low.”

  Cap­tain Douglas cleared his throat which broke my con­cen­tra­tion. I looked back at our su­per­ior, los­ing the star­ing con­test.

  “A-hem. Un­for­tu­nately, though the In­sti­tute does prac­tice a form of BDSM, it’s not the kind you tra­di­tion­ally think of when you’re talk­ing about the kink com­munity.”

  “Well, what is it then?” I de­man­ded. “If it’s not whips and chains, I mean.”

  He sat back in his chair and frowned at both of us.

  “Have either one of you ever heard of ‘Age Play’?”

  “What’s that?” I asked blankly. Tampa has a pretty large kink com­munity but since Salt and I are Hom­icide and their prob­lems usu­ally fall un­der Vice, we don’t have much to do with them. Con­sequently, most of my kink edu­ca­tion con­sisted of what I could glean from watch­ing the 50 Shades of Gray movie which I’d thought was pretty stu­pid, to be hon­est.

  Al­though there was that one scene where the guy puts the girl over his knee and spanks her…but I pushed the thought away. That kind of thing never did any­thing for me—I had no idea why that par­tic­u­lar scene lingered in my mind when the rest of the in­sipid movie was thank­fully for­got­ten.

  “Age Play is where one part­ner acts much younger than they ac­tu­ally are and the other part­ner as­sumes an older role.”

  “Huh?” I said and Salt said,

  “I do not un­der­stand.”

  Cap­tain Douglas sighed. “Look, it’s not my area of ex­pert­ise either. But ba­sic­ally one of you will have to dress up as a little girl and the other one is the Daddy.”

  “What?” I de­man­ded. “Cap­tain, you can’t be ser­i­ous! That’s sick.”

  “I’m afraid I am ser­i­ous, Sug­ar­baker,” he said, frown­ing. “Look—it’s not what you think. It’s not about in­cest or pe­do­philia—it’s…ah, hell…” He sighed. “I’m mak­ing a mess of this. Let me get someone in here who can ex­plain it bet­ter than I can.” He picked up his phone and spoke into it while I sat fum­ing. I knew ex­actly who was go­ing to be the little girl and who was go­ing to be the Daddy. It wasn’t like Salt would look good in a sailor dress and knee socks!

  There was a subtle rap at the Cap­tain’s door and then a middle aged man with thin­ning gray hair and spec­tacles poked his head in.

  “Hi, ex­cuse me. I’m Pro­fessor Stevens and I was told to come back?”

  “Come on in, Pro­fessor.” The Cap­tain made a wel­com­ing ges­ture and I thought I saw re­lief on his face. He was passing the buck—bring­ing in the ex­pert so he could sit on the side­lines and not have to take the fall for whatever hareb­rained scheme had been cooked up for me and my part­ner. I crossed my arms and tapped my fin­gers im­pa­tiently as the man came to sit in a chair be­side the Cap­tain, across from Salt and me.

  “Hello.” He smiled at both of us but he didn’t seem en­cour­aged by our re­sponse. I was scowl­ing at him and Salt was giv­ing him that pat­en­ted blank Rus­sian stare that most people find so un­nerv­ing.

  “Dr. Stevens holds a PhD in Psy­cho­logy with an em­phasis in Al­tern­ate Sexu­al­ity,” the cap­tain said, mak­ing the in­tro­duc­tions. “He’ll be con­sult­ing with us on this case. And Dr. Stevens, this is De­tect­ive Salt and De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker.”

  Pro­fessor Stevens looked sur­prised. “Are those your names? Really? ‘Salt’ and ‘Sugar?’”

  “Ant­oinette Josephine Sugarbaker, De­tect­ive First Class,” I said, em­phas­iz­ing the last part of my name. With a mouth­ful like that, is it any won­der I go by Andi? My mom read way too many ro­mance nov­els when she was preg­nant wit
h me.

  “And I am Viktor Pet­ro­vich Saltanov, also de­tect­ive,” Salt growled. “If you are here to ex­plain our as­sign­ment, please get on with it.”

  “Uh—okay.” The pro­fessor cleared his throat.

  “Ex­plain to them about Age Play,” the Cap­tain said en­cour­agingly. “Go on—just like you did for me, if you would, please Pro­fessor.”

  “Of course.” The little man straightened his tie and as­sumed a lec­tur­ing air. I could al­most see him stand­ing in front of an aud­it­or­ium full of bored stu­dents with a pointer in one hand and a sheaf of notes in the other. “Age Play,” he began, “Par­tic­u­larly Age Play in­volving a per­son as­sum­ing the role of a younger child is of­ten widely mis­un­der­stood. Con­trary to what some people be­lieve, Age Play­ers are not pe­do­philes.”

  “How can they not be?” I ob­jec­ted, break­ing into his lec­ture. “I mean, one of them is pre­tend­ing to be a kid and the other one is hav­ing sex with that one. It’s dis­gust­ing.”

  “Age Play is not al­ways sexual,” the Pro­fessor answered smoothly. “Age Play­ers as­sume the roles of chil­dren be­cause they find com­fort in it. When they go into Little-space, they get to ex­press their most deeply bur­ied feel­ings from child­hood and re­lin­quish re­spons­ib­il­it­ies and in­deed, con­trol of their en­tire life to an­other per­son.”

  “Num­ber one,” I said, “What is ‘Little-space’? And num­ber two, why would any­one want to give con­trol of their en­tire life to someone else?”

  Pro­fessor Stevens laughed po­litely. “Surely you’re jok­ing my dear. Just ima­gine not hav­ing to worry about pay­ing the bills, do­ing the laun­dry, cook­ing the meals—ima­gine someone else do­ing all that for you. Just like when you were a child—wouldn’t that be worth the loss of con­trol?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said bluntly. “My mom was an al­co­holic so I pretty much did all those things for my­self when I was a kid.”

  “Andi is a very con­trolled per­son,” Salt put in, sur­pris­ing me. “She is not anxious to al­low any­one to help her—even when she needs the help.”