2. Jaxson
2
Jaxson
I considered a myriad of different scenarios that could play out as a result of bringing Lauressa home to meet my father. I was prepared for him not to approve of her, let alone approve of a marriage match. I anticipated having to argue with him to let me have her. Arguments he’d eventually have no choice but to acquiesce to—because denying one of his only sons the right to marry who he wanted when he hadn’t shown interest before wouldn’t be a good look for the Sovereignty. I was prepared for him to make us wait until after she took her rites. I was even prepared for him to demand a marriage right away, seeing as it doesn’t take a genius to look at us and figure out that something was there.
What I never expected was that he’d want to take Lauressa for himself.
I should have expected it. I just didn’t fathom that he’d be interested in her.
Not to insult Lauressa, of course. She’s so unique, so alluring, so perfect in a way that a run-of-the-mill man could never properly appreciate. Often overlooked because she doesn’t express her femininity or womanhood in a traditional or acceptable way .
My father is one of those run-of-the-mill men.
As far as a man like my father is concerned, a woman like Lauressa is too loud, too opinionated, too stubborn, too individualistic to ever be a woman he’d be interested in. Just the piercings in her ears and nose, along with the purple streak in her hair, should have been enough for him to have no interest. Hell, I thought he’d cite these as reasons why a woman like her was beneath me when I pleaded my case to take her hand in marriage.
Unfortunately, I’ve underestimated my father.
He may be run-of-the-mill, but he is also the man who ass-kissed and manipulated his way to becoming Oracle above anyone else. Anyone who covets that seat or manages to obtain it is far from the paradigm of goodness and honesty.
And he certainly isn’t above taking another man’s woman, wife, girlfriend, or otherwise as a show of power, disguised as an order from the Supreme Force and a test of sacrifice and loyalty for someone claiming to be his follower.
This is a man who has been playing this game longer than I’ve been alive, longer than I’ve desired to become Oracle. And I let myself forget that.
Dinner is both a blur and one of the longest I’ve ever had with my father. I spent most of it suppressing my apoplectic rage and keeping a subtle eye on Lauressa, ready to give her subtle cues or interject at any moment should she stumble.
When dinner was over and my father was done rambling for the night, I could have run from the table and the house. I only just barely managed to restrain myself. Not that it would have been out of the norm. I’m known for leaving dinners and events as early as is considered respectable—and sometimes even before then, if I can get away with it. But I was forced to slow down my retreat with Lauressa there, especially after my father’s declaration.
Thankfully, he didn’t want to keep her.
Not tonight, at least.
“Jaxson,” Lauressa says loudly, in stark contrast to the soft, demure voice she used at my father’s house earlier. More like her normal self.
“What?” I snap.
“I called your name a dozen times,” she says with a frown, concern etched into her features. “Are you okay?”
No.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are. You… I’ve never seen you this way before…” Lauressa says.
“And what way is that?” I ask, looking out the window and away from her.
She doesn’t immediately answer, but I can feel those piercing, almost black eyes on me as she considers her words.
“Unnerved,” she finally answers. “Out of control.”
I huff a mirthless laugh before saying, “Yes, well. My father does tend to have that effect on people.”
“What are we going to do?”
I don’t answer her and continue to look out the window, for the first time regretting the fact that I deliberately purchased a place in the nicest neighborhood I could find, as far away from my father as possible while still having a Chicago address. It means that I have to spend another forty-five minutes in close quarters with Lauressa, unable to avoid her questions until morning.
“Jaxson,” Lauressa says again when I go too long without answering.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snap. “Can you go back to acting like the sweet, demure little girl you were pretending to be at my father’s house who doesn’t speak out of turn?”
“You know that was as much of an act as your facade of being devoted to your father and his teachings,” she points out dryly.
If it were any night but tonight, I’d be amused. But tonight isn’t just any night. I don’t know that any night after tonight will be just any night again. Not after what my father just pulled. It’s going to be a long car ride, and I need something to distract myself. But Lauressa doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone.
“Maybe you should think about acting that way more often,” I respond.
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“I recall you telling me to my face on multiple occasions that you thought I was an asshole, a controlling madman, sick, cruel, and many other things.”
“Yes. But not mean.”
“It’s not hard to extrapolate mean from those things.”
“Maybe. But you’re not mean. Not like this.”
“And how would you know? How did you know that I didn’t just invade your life and take everything from you so I could be as mean as I wanted to you, with no one in your corner to stop me?” I ask .
“Because, unfortunately, I know you,” she snaps.
I laugh. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. Soon, my father will take you off my hands.”
“You’re not… you’re not going to let that happen, right?”
“There is no let. The Oracle does as he pleases. I may skirt the rules. I may argue with him. But I can’t flagrantly disregard this decree.”
“Maybe you can tell him you had some sort of vision. Like the one you had when you got out of your arrangement with Shelly,” she suggests.
“The difference is that he didn’t want Shelly. He wants you.”
“Well then, tell him about us?”
I laugh and say, “Lauressa.”
“You said people would figure it out anyway.”
“Lauressa.”
“I’m sure if you—”
“Lauressa,” I say, raising my voice enough that it forces her to be quiet and listen. “My father already knows about us.”
Lauressa’s head rears back in surprise. “He knows? You told him? How…?”
“My father’s a delusional man, but he’s not so woefully blind to reality. He knew as soon as I told him I was bringing you home to meet him,” I say.
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I did. I told you what everyone in that room would assume. That included him.”
“Then if he knew that, why would he—”
“He wants you because he’s taking you from me.”
“What?”
The anger I’ve been suppressing all night comes out in my tone as I say, “When we talked earlier…”
I trail off, thinking about my father, walking next to him in his garden as he looked at me and told me that he was taking Lauressa from me. Telling me with that stupid, patronizing, pseudo-all-knowing look that he knew that claiming Lauressa as his would cause me great pain and would be a great sacrifice. But the Supreme Force sometimes tested the hearts of those who served it by getting in the way of what they desired.
That’s what my father said, anyway.
What went unsaid was that if I still wanted to be in the running as his heir, I wouldn’t interfere. I wouldn’t do anything drastic. Nothing that could justify him standing at the front of an altar before the entire Sovereignty to condemn me. A single word from the Oracle against me could ruin years of goodwill that I’ve built to position myself as a contender to be the next Oracle. He’s done it to others for much less, let alone challenging him for a woman he plans to claim as his next conduit.
Just thinking about what he said makes me want to erupt, and trying to control it keeps me from getting all the words out to explain everything Lauressa.
So I simply say, “He said it was a necessary sacrifice for me to make.”
“Well, you’ve been planning to take his place all these years. So take his place. ”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I don’t see why. You had no problem murdering my family and the Deacon Board. You maimed, tortured, and murdered men just for looking at me. What’s one more? Especially the man you hate and plan to usurp anyway.”
“He’s the Oracle,” I repeat.
“He’s just a man.”
“He’s not just a man,” I finally snap, having lost all patience with her. “To you, he is. But to the Sovereignty, to the people who follow him, he’s more than a man. He’s the Oracle, the only one who can channel the will of an otherwise uncaring god. And he declared in front of his entire inner circle that you’re his. Which means he might as well have told the entire Sovereignty. I would be surprised if Lilah hadn’t already texted her friends-only group chat the news and your name before dinner even started.”
Lauressa stares at me again, the glow of the highway lights illuminating the furrow of her brow and the pull of her frown as she tries to piece together why any of that matters. Then her face loosens as something dawns on her.
“Oh,” she says. Then, in a tone like she can’t believe she was so na?ve, she says again, “ Oh . I get it. If you want to become Oracle, you need the authority of the previous Oracle. And if you do anything drastic, he’ll ruin you in front of the Sovereignty. Even if you kill him and become Oracle, you have to respect the authority of the previous one. And now that a bunch of people know he intends to have me for himself, I’d be off-limits to anyone as far as the Sovereignty is concerned. Like some dead prophet’s wife. Even to the new Oracle. ”
I stare at her blankly, masking my surprise that she figured that all out on her own.
“You put that together rather quickly for someone who hasn’t even been part of the Sovereignty officially for a day.”
She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t just call myself Dr. Cult and an expert for shits and giggles. I was part of a cult. I went to school for behavioral psychology and did my final project to graduate on cults with a concentration on religious cults and the behavior tactics they use to control and brainwash their members. Sovereignty politics isn’t anything new or exciting.”
For a moment, I forget that my father just turned my world upside down. For a moment, I’m tempted to smile because this is the reason, among many others, that Lauressa will be the perfect Queen Priestess to my Oracle. She looks at the Sovereignty like I do. She understands people the way I understand them.
But then Lauressa says, “So that’s it? You’re just going to give up on me? On us?”
“Lauressa.”
“You want your power, your Sovereignty, and you’re not going to let anything get in the way of having it, including me?”
Three months ago, the answer would have been yes. If I’d brought her home three months ago, taken her to meet my father first before our game even began—when all I’d asked her for was an interview—that would have been exactly what I’d have done.
But I’m in too deep now. I’m too attached. In a way I haven’t been attached to anyone since my sister died twenty years ago. No. Not the way I was with my sister. With Lauressa, it’s so much more.
There’s a way out of this. There’s a way to have Lauressa without ruining everything I’ve worked for. I just need some time to think. I need to go home, punch something. I need to calm down and let it come to me.
“I didn’t say that,” I finally respond.
For all that Lauressa is good at picking people apart and reading between the lines, she reads the exact opposite of what I mean from my statement.
“Fuck,” she snaps, letting down the partition. Then she demands of the driver, “Stop the car.”
“Ignore her.”
“Stop the car,” Lauressa demands again. “Stop the car, or so help me, I will open this door and jump out.”
“We’re going almost eighty miles an hour on the interstate, Lauressa,” I say.
“Either stop the car or I jump out.”
“Lauressa," I say tightly. "You’ll be run over.”
“Better than spending another fucking minute with you!”
“Lauressa,” I say as she struggles with her seatbelt.
I reach over to stop her, but her resistance makes it difficult. If we were anywhere else, it would be easy to subdue her. But I’m locked in my own seatbelt and can’t risk undoing it, lest Lauressa unbuckle herself and throw herself out onto the highway while we’re moving at eighty miles an hour. Even if I could, the space is too confined to maneuver fast enough.
She manages to undo her seatbelt, and the only thing stopping her from opening the door is me grabbing her arm and yanking her to me, but she makes that harder than it already is by clawing at my face with her free hand.
“Stop the damn car already!” I yell at the driver.
He pulls over to the side of the highway.
No sooner than the car is stopped do I let Lauressa go. She flings herself out and begins walking up the side of the highway.
I get out to follow her.
“Lauressa.”
“Fuck you,” she yells, raising her middle finger above her head without looking back at me.
“Now you’re just being juvenile,” I reply with an exasperated sigh.
Lauressa stops, turns on her heel, and stomps back toward me.
She shoves me in the chest as she yells, “Juvenile! Juvenile! Fucking bastard. You took everything from me. I don’t have a life to go back to. I have nothing. I have no one. And you’re going to sit here and tell me that just because Daddy said no, you’re gonna roll over, belly up, and be okay with it for your fucking cult. Fuck you!” she says with a final shove.
“Lauressa,” I say as she turns to keep walking.
She turns back around and shoves me again. “And you know what? You act like you’re so fucking above everyone else? Like you’re so much better because you don’t believe a goddamn word that comes out of your father’s mouth. Because you know he’s delusional. But you’re just like them. Just as scared as they are that if you step out of line, you’ll be smited, or damned to hell, or turned into a pillar of salt, or whatever the fuck. You just know there isn’t some mystical force that will punish you for offending its precious messenger. And that’s worse. Because your god is just a man, and because he has something you want, you won’t fight him.”
Of all the things Lauressa could have said, she chose the one thing to set me off.
I snatch her to me by the arm, cup her face tightly under her chin, and growl, “I am nothing like them. I am not some scared fucking sheep bowing down to some wolf, hoping it won’t eat me. You hear me?”
She laughs and says, “You wish, don’t you?”
I press my lips forcefully against hers in response. She immediately tries to push me away. I don’t relent. Neither does she. She opens her mouth and bites my lip.
“Harder,” I say, pulling away slightly. “Make me bleed, Snow White.”
She does so, biting so hard that a concerning amount of blood gushes from my lips, into both our mouths, and down my chin. I grind against her, rock hard already. If it weren’t the middle of winter and her being a warm-blooded southerner, I’d strip her naked right here on the side of the highway and fuck her so that she knows she’s still mine. No matter what my father says.
A quick fuck against the car with our clothes on is going to have to do.
I drag her back to the car. Push her against the side of the back passenger door. Grip her hair near the scalp and slam her cheek against the cold metal door.
As I lift her coat and jacket up to her waist, she tries to push her body back, hands pressed against the side of the car as she tries to resist me. But all she succeeds in doing is grinding her ass against my cock.
“No,” she says. “You don’t get to have this. You don’t get to have one more quick fuck of me like I’m some playground toy for you to pass on to your bully.”
I ignore her struggle and proceed to undo my clothes once her coat and dress are out of the way.
“Jaxson,” she snaps firmly, as if she’s talking to a toddler. “I said no.”
“Your objection is duly noted,” I say, pulling at her hair and slamming her cheek against the side of the car again.
“Jax... son,” she whimpers as I shove my cock into her. “Jaxson. Jaxson. I said—”
“You said no,” I acknowledge with a thrust. And another. And then another, all the while she squirms under me.
Her saying no and my pressing on is our game. Lauressa rebels against me. She fights me every step of the way. She denies that I am everything she’s ever wanted and needed, even if she hasn’t accepted its inevitability. She is my reluctant prophet. Told her destiny and her mission and then proceeding to run from it. Like Jonah.
And I am her God. I know her better than she knows herself. And like an angry God who has lost patience with his reluctant prophet, I will always be here to remind her of her place. Like her God, I will upend her life and make everyone around her suffer, forcing them to cast her overboard and be swallowed by the whale until she submits to my will and my plan for her .
No matter who I have to kill. No matter who I have to manipulate. No matter how many times I have to hold her down and force her, even as she resists me. Because at the end of the day, that’s what she wants. To be dominated. To be put in her place. To be forced to submit.
“Go on,” I say, continuing to thrust into her. “Keep pleading with me. Keep telling me to stop.”
“Jaxson,” she whimpers, searching for purpose on the cold windows and finding none.
“Tell me to stop. Fight me.”
But instead of fighting me, instead of telling me to stop, she suddenly stills.
And laughs.
She laughs and says, “Why? Because I made you feel like a little boy? Because I reminded you that you’re not the one in control? That you made both of us slaves at the whim of a master we both hate?”
As always, Lauressa manages to surprise me. Manages to change the rules of our game. Manages to somehow find a way to make me submit to her even as I dominate her.
“I’m no one’s slave,” I say with a punctuated thrust into her.
“I think you and I have a different definition of ‘slave,’” she growls.
Her accusation should be emasculating. Humiliating. It should deflate my cock like a popped bubble. Instead, it only makes me more determined to prove her wrong. More determined to remind her of the man she’s dealing with. Because clearly, sitting through one dinner with my father has managed to brainwash her into forgetting who I am to her.
I pick up the pace of my thrusting, chasing my pleasure, and it’s all I can do not to be completely overwhelmed by her, to swallow the groans and moans that want to bubble up from my throat. But I keep it all down as I wrench her head back and put her ear to my lips.
“The only one here who is a slave is you. My disciple. I am your God. Your supreme one. The only Supreme Force you’re ever allowed to believe in. And I’m a jealous God who will slay anyone who dares vie for your attention.”
She laughs again. “Except said God’s father.”
I slam her cheek against the car again, thrusting hard into her, nearly coming from the way her walls grip me as she just almost comes but not quite. I take a few steadying breaths, sweat falling down my brow as I try to keep myself under control.
“Who’s your God?” I demand.
“No one,” she snaps.
I thrust into her at just the wrong angle. She quivers beneath me.
“Who’s your God?”
“No—” Thrust. “Jaxson! Please,” she says, squirming under me.
“I thought you wanted me to stop."
“No!”
“No?” I say, pulling out of her until just the tip is left inside her.
“No! Yes!” she whines.
“Who. Is. Your. God?”
“You!” she exclaims .
I thrust back inside her. She mewls, and I grit my teeth with the effort of holding my orgasm at bay.
“Say it again.”
“You!”
“I’m what?” I growl.
“You’re my God. You’re my God! Please!”
I thrust into her, angling for just the right spot until she falls apart in my arms like putty as her orgasm overtakes her. I don’t even have to put in any effort for my own; her cunt does all the work, aided by her orgasm, milking my release from me. Pleasure explodes in my body, nipping and biting at all my nerves like the biting chill of a Chicago winter until I’m pleasantly numb and warm all at once.
“Such a good girl,” I say, rubbing my face in her hair.
She huffs and replies, “Don’t count on it.”
I chuckle at her stubbornness as I right myself and redo my clothes and let her dress and coat fall back around her knees. Then I force her back into the car, this time flicking the child lock in case she gets any more ideas.