22. Jaxson
22
Jaxson
O nce again, I’ve been too hasty in my efforts with Lauressa.
Converting someone like Lauressa is a delicate balance between overt and covert force. In the past few weeks, I’ve been a bit too overt in my efforts. It wasn’t my intention. But all my plans go out the window as soon as they meet Lauressa.
I hadn’t expected her to try to take control of our encounter on Halloween. I hadn’t expected her to give me the most incredible orgasm I’ve ever had from her enthusiastic blow job. I hadn’t expected to lose all control at the skill and talent with which she used her mouth. It was that loss of control that made me press her down and fuck her with the hilt of that dagger.
I look at my scarred hand and smile fondly at the memory. The memory of Lauressa moaning and screaming in pleasure and terror alternatively. The pain as the dagger sliced through the thick gloves I was wearing and into the skin of my hand. The way she squirted come onto my hand to rinse away the blood when she came.
Just thinking about it is making me hard for her again.
That said, as much as I enjoyed it, I was still too hasty. Still too overt with my force and asserting my control and dominance over her. But yet again, I became completely bereft of years of training for discipline and control when she decided to turn my game against me.
I didn’t expect her to react that way. I expected police reports. I expected her to maybe try the legal system. None of it would have worked, of course. But that’s what I expected her to try.
I go back to that first time. When I threatened her little podcast, I didn’t expect it to work forever. I expected her to call my bluff eventually and try to report me to some authority. So there must be something else motivating her to not do anything outside of trying to take control when she finds cracks in my armor. I want to know exactly what that is.
I look on the monitors where I’ve been watching Lauressa lay around her apartment tiredly since this morning, only moving from her spot on the couch to get food or use the bathroom. I hate seeing her like this. I hate that I’m at fault for making her feel like this. But it’s a necessary evil until she comes around to my way of thinking.
Nala meowing next to me is all the warning I get before she jumps into my lap demanding attention. As I give her the pets she wants, I contemplate giving her back to Lauressa to make her more pliable to me. Maybe even—
My phone vibrates against the table. I recognize the number before I even read the ID. My father. Of course. I’m tempted to ignore the call but know doing that will only cause me issues.
“Dad,” I answer.
I’ve never known whether my father’s amused or annoyed by the fact that I refuse to call him “Oracle” like the rest of my siblings tend to do. Either way, he’s never said anything about it, which is the excuse I give when my other siblings try to reprimand me for my supposed disrespect.
“Son,” he says.
“I heard you got back from your tour. How was it?” I ask, though I don’t really care to hear about it. Anything worth hearing I learned from Abner, one of my men strategically placed on his security, or Jessie. There wasn’t anything worth hearing to speak of.
I tune out his inane ramblings on how the Supreme Force guided him on what to say, answering with the same or similar mechanical responses that I always have over the years. If I just let him talk long enough, eventually he’ll be satisfied and leave me alone. However, today’s conversation takes a different turn.
“My secretary told me that you’ve been in Georgia for the last month and a half.”
It’s a question phrased as a statement.
“The Supreme Force called me here, and I don’t know why. I figured it would benefit the Sovereignty to get to know the people with the hopes of building an altar. This region is tragically lacking our influence.”
It’s a believable lie on its face but also an obvious one. While I’ve been heavily involved in the Sovereignty’s own community outreach efforts, I’ve never had any interest in expansion. Not under my father’s regime, anyway. But the obviousness of such a lie is also exactly why my father will likely buy it. Why would I go to establish a new altar in a new region except if the Supreme Force had called me to do it ?
My father is silent. This is either the moment he calls me back to Chicago for whatever stupid reason and I have to fight him, or he lets me be to do my own thing.
His answer is a mixture of both.
“I need you back in Chicago Monday. Just for the week. That shouldn’t interrupt your calling,” my father adds with a huff on the end.
Translation, go back to Chicago for the week or he’ll say he went into a meditation and had a vision that I need to be back permanently. Because what the Supreme Force tells the Oracle triumphs all.
I hold in a sigh. I really can’t wait until he’s dead.
“Am I allowed to ask what for?”
“We have a guest who used to be hostile toward us in the past and wants to make amends. I’d like you to be part of the team that receives him.”
That is to say, he wants me to do some digging, throw around some threats, some blackmail, and maybe a little violence if needed. My father can’t openly condone it. The idea is plausible deniability if any of this is able to be traced back to me. But every organization needs someone to be the monster in the closet. He’s smart enough to trust me with the task while also not trusting me. He doesn’t trust anyone. Not fully.
“I can make some time,” I say. Not that there’s a choice in the matter.
“Good. I’ll see you then, Son,” my father says and hangs up the phone .
I sigh and text my assistant to make the arrangements for me to fly back to Chicago tomorrow evening. The more cooperative I am, the less likely my father will be to prolong my stay. With the text sent, I look back at the monitors. Lauressa is still sitting where she was before I took my father’s call.
With the knowledge that I’ll have to spend all of the coming week in Chicago where it’ll be much harder to monitor Lauressa, I decide that anything that will make her more pliable to me can’t be subtle.
The point of invading all her life and space is so that she’s so consumed by me that she doesn’t have time to stop and think outside of her fear and adrenaline. Outside of her fight or flight response. A week without me here reminding her that I’m with her every second is a week for her to have time to think logically and in the long run. It’s a week for her to come up with a plan to keep me away from her or to get away from me. It wouldn’t work. But it might set me back. And I’ve set myself back enough with my overzealousness in dealing with her.
So I grab my coat and head over to Lauressa’s apartment.
I do her the courtesy of knocking on her door rather than just opening it with the key I procured.
Lauressa takes her time coming to open the door but does open it eventually. She immediately frowns upon seeing me.
“You’re not my Uber Eats delivery,” she says dryly.
I don’t deign to address that and say, “Get dressed. I’m taking you out.”
“Out where? ”
“I made a reservation for dinner in Atlanta since you haven’t had anything proper to eat all day.”
Lauressa huffs and rolls her eyes before saying, “No thanks. My plans for the day involve a New Girl marathon.”
She tries to close the door in my face, but I catch it with my hand before she can even get halfway.
“Either you come with me, or I come in your apartment, tie you down to the couch naked, and fuck you with the remote for the duration of your marathon,” I warn.
Lauressa looks like she wants to dare me to try, and for once I hope she doesn’t because I’m actually bluffing. I don’t want to do that to her. I will if she insists on being stubborn and it comes down to it, but I don’t want to today. It will only prove that I’m willing to go to any means to have her, which she already knows, and won’t help further my goal for this juncture of compelling her to me.
Thankfully, she only sighs and says, “I have conditions.”
“Name them.”
“I choose where we go.”
“Done.”
“You don’t touch me.”
I smirk. It doesn’t matter if she allows me to touch her. If I wanted to I would, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing she could do to stop me. But I’ve already proven that too. Doing so again isn’t going to teach her anything today. Besides, it’ll be an exercise in self-control and discipline, seeing as I lose it so often when I’m around her.
“Not without your permission.”
She scoffs. “As if I would ever want to. ”
“Let’s you and I make a wager then.”
“I’m pretty sure the Sovereignty doesn’t allow gambling and games of chance either,” she states bluntly.
I ignore her and say, “I bet you by the end of the day you’ll be begging me to touch you.”
She scoffs. “Not likely. But in the impossible event that I do, what do you get?”
“You have to let me call you every day this week. And you have to pick up. And you have to stay on the line and talk to me so I can hear your voice for at least ten minutes or until I end the call. Whichever comes first.”
“Don’t you have cameras installed in my apartment? Can’t you hear me talk whenever you want?”
“People who live on their own don’t usually do much talking out loud. Even if you did, I want you to talk to me.”
“And when I don’t ask you by the end of the day to touch me, I want you to leave me alone for the entire week. No texting. No calling. No showing up to my apartment. No sending your men to drag me to your estate. I want a full week without you being there for my every move.”
I smirk. It was exactly what I wanted her to ask for. I can’t do any of that anyway since I’ll be in Chicago for the week.
Then she adds, “And I want my cat back, you fucking madman.”
“You’re lucky we’re making this wager. Or else, I’d dirty up that mouth again before we leave. ”
To my delight, Lauressa doesn’t flinch but does look away, her cheeks growing rosier than they already are with a blush. Then I say, “Fine. I’ll give you back your cat.”
If I weren’t so confident that by the end of the day she’ll be begging me to touch her in some way, I wouldn’t have agreed to that. I’ve gotten rather attached to Nala. As soon as I’m Oracle, I’m going to fake a vision ending that dumb rule that dictates no owning animals except for farming purposes, and I’m going to allow Sovereigns to keep them in their homes.
“Let me get dressed,” she snaps.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“I need to shower.”
“You showered this morning. Fifteen minutes or I come in and dress you myself as I see fit.”
Lauressa slams the door in my face, and I decide to allow it. She comes out exactly fifteen minutes later and not a second sooner.
When we’re in the car, I ask, “Where are we going?”
“To see a movie. At the movie theater,” she says. “Then later a bar around here that has mimosas, a live band, and trivia. I’m in the mood to get drunk.”
“A movie,” I state.
“You’ve never been to one. Have you?” she asks.
“It’s forbidden in the Sovereignty,” I say as I pull up the address in the GPS. There’s only one movie theater in this stupid town, so it’s not hard to find.
“For someone who thinks it’s all bullshit, you’re certainly a stickler for the rules in your cult. ”
“You don’t get to the position of power and leniency I have with my father by flagrantly disregarding the rules. You certainly don’t become a candidate to become the next Oracle. No going to the movies. No amusement parks. No drinking. No drugs. Small prices to pay for my goal in the long run. I see no purpose in those things anyway.”
“Socializing? Meeting new people? Having fun?” Lauressa asks me incredulously.
“The one thing I can say about the Sovereignty is that it gave me all the socialization that I needed.”
“But what about the socialization you wanted?”
“The socialization I wanted was the socialization required to help me become the Oracle.”
“But you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it.” Lauressa gives me a pointed look, and I’ll give her that. It’s true. For the most part, I do hate the socialization required to endear people to me. “Even if I do, it’s required of me for my goals.”
“You know you are parroting the exact doctrine you say is bullshit right now.”
“You hate your job,” I point out.
“I need to do it to survive. It’s not the same at all.”
I’ll give her that one. So I say, “You hate editing your podcasts but you have the bigger goal of getting information out to expose and dismantle cults you think are harmful.”
That gives Lauressa pause. Not much. But some. “All cults are harmful. And it’s not the same at all. ”
“It is. The only difference is the difference in our goals. Now if it did nothing to get me closer to my goal and what I wanted, then your point would have merit.”
“Well, since there’s no one to police your every move here, just like I gave you your first Halloween, I’m going to give you your first movie theater experience, and then we’ll head to the bar and get you your first alcoholic drink,” she adds.
“We’re not going anywhere if you don’t include a proper meal in there,” I state. “You haven’t had one in days.”
“Never mind the fact that you know that because you put cameras in my fucking apartment, fine. There’s a spot near the bar I’m taking you to.”
I missed nothing from never going to a movie theater. It wasn’t any more or less distinguishable from watching it in my home theater. The only thing different was the salty, buttery popcorn that Lauressa insisted on when I told her I never had it. Also the way too sweet large slushy that she insisted on because the sweet would cancel out the salt.
“Exactly. The popcorn and slushy is part of the experience,” Lauressa says while we wait to be seated at the restaurant she chose.
She appears more upbeat than she has been the last few days, reinforcing that this was a good idea even if I don’t see the point in her wanting me to experience things I never have.
“I’ll be sure to add a popcorn machine and a slushy maker to the home theater in our future home just for you then,” I say, unenthusiastically but seriously. If that’s what Lauressa wants, that’s what she’ll get.
Lauressa scoffs at the sentiment, still not accepting the inevitability of her life with me in the Sovereignty. But rather than verbally confirm that, she says, “Well, at least now you can say you did it.”
“I suppose that means I’ll have to come up with something else to put on my bucket list then,” I say as we’re finally led to our table. I’m not used to waiting for things like this. I’m used to places where I can pay for instant access and service. However, this place is first come, first serve.
“I’m sure I can help you figure it out. Mine was extensive.”
“Was extensive?”
“Well… it wasn’t really a bucket list. It was a list of things I decided I wanted to do as soon as I left my church.”
“What was on it? What did you complete?” I ask, genuinely curious. This is something I would have never known by spying on her, and the more I know about her, the more I can manipulate her to my side.
“Everything I couldn’t do while in church,” she says with a roll of her eyes as she picks up her menu.
“And what was that?”
“A lot of self-destructive things. Well. Self-destructive because I knew nothing about self-control and doing things in moderation because I had no choice in not doing them. So too many drugs. Too much alcohol. A lot of dating and fornicating,” she admits.
“I have to admit, if the Sovereignty had a rule against dating, I might have broken that one.” Knowing what her next question is going to be, I add, “There used to be a strict courtship standard. But no one was following it anyway so my father petitioned to the Supreme Force and low and behold, it told us to get with the times.”
“But still no fornicating?” she asks with a smirk.
“That’s the rule.”
“So are you telling me, Mr. Devine, that you’re a virgin?”
“That’s not true, and you’re smart enough to be well aware of that fact.”
“I thought you said you didn’t flagrantly disregard the rules.”
“I’m a man. It’s in my nature not to be able to control my biological urges. Fornication is the lesser evil than marrying a woman not directed to me by the Supreme Force,” I state, once again reciting verbatim what I’ve been told.
“But let me guess, not for women,” she says dryly.
“Of course, not. Their wombs are precious. The workshop of the Supreme Force. The only thing He has a consistent, active will in. They can only engage once they’ve found a man to marry. Once they do, the Supreme Force sanctions the union through a social contract humans made up to keep track of assets, so they won’t risk giving birth to something of the anti-force,” I manage to say with a straight face.
Lauressa returns my expression with a blank look of her own. We burst into laughter at the same time.
“Oh my fucking god,” she wheezes, and I decide to let her vulgar language go without chiding for once. “Whatever one of your Oracles made this shit up would have made a killing as a sci-fi author. ”
“I would agree with you except L. Ron Hubbard did try that, and when it failed, found selling it as a religion was more profitable. So perhaps not,” I say, gaining my composure and trying not to feel self-conscious. I haven’t laughed like that since I was a child. What is it with Lauressa and being able to make me lose all good sense and self-discipline?
“Do I need to come back?” our waitress asks timidly, letting us know she’s there.
“Oh. No! We’re ready,” Lauressa says.
“Oh, good,” the blonde waitress says. “I didn’t want to interrupt. Your little moment was so cute. Date night?”
“Our first, actually,” I say before Lauressa can say otherwise.
“Going well then, I see. You two have hardly taken your eyes off each other since you arrived.”
“We’ve been talking for almost two months now,” I add.
“That doesn’t always mean anything. I’ve seen a lot of first dates after talking for a while that are disasters from start to finish,” the woman says. “Appetizer on me for being a breath of fresh air.”
The waitress takes our drink, appetizer, and entrée order at the same time. She returns in short order with the drinks and assures us our food will be out in not too long.
Lauressa quietly opens her straw, puts it in her root beer, and sips on her drink, but I can tell there’s something she wants to say. Something she wants to ask. I decide to allow her to mull on it and sip on my water instead while continuing to watch her.
It’s not until the appetizers are brought out that she finally speaks again .
“Why me?” she asks.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Snow White.”
“There’s no way you were wanting for women, and even if you were, you’ve proven with me that you’ll take what you want regardless. So why me?”
“Just to be clear, I take what I want from you because you’re already mine. You just don’t know it yet,” I state.
“I’ll save the argument of ownership of a woman’s body for later. Why not another woman in the Sovereignty? Someone you wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble with. Surely you’re not the only one who’s there and doesn’t believe in the bullshit.”
“What makes you so sure? Why else would someone stay if they thought the doctrine was lies?” I ask as though I don’t know a plethora of reasons people stay.
Lauressa shrugs. “For the same reason I sometimes fantasize about going back to Loving Eden. The doctrine is stupid, but the people aren’t that bad. I mean… they are to a degree. They believe in things that harm people. But a lot of them believe it because they genuinely and sincerely think it’s helpful. Good people just misled and misguided. Taken advantage of. Disenfranchised and wanting to make a difference the easiest way they know how. For some who were born and raised, it’s their whole lives and they don’t know how to start over.”
Lauressa sighs and then continues, “I don’t know. It’s complicated. Either way, the community was nice. Knowing that if something went wrong or I needed help, there was someone to turn to even if they didn’t personally know you. ”
All this time, I’d mistaken Lauressa as a natural loner. As someone who preferred to be left alone rather than being around a bunch of people. Someone good at socializing and making friends when needed. Someone good at managing other people and exploiting their talents for her goals. I’d mistaken her as being like me. But I was wrong.
She’s lonely.
If I hadn’t made that stupid deal with her, this would be the part where I get into her personal space. Caress her face. Take advantage of her moment of weakness, kiss her, and have her wallowing in self-loathing for days. If it were only a few stupid phone calls at risk, I might take the chance. But I don’t want to give her back the cat. If she wants to see her cat, she can come visit her.
But even more important than the cat is that this is an important step to proving that no matter how much I’ve forced my presence in her life, forced my touch on her body, part of her has wanted it all along. She just didn’t know it. By the end of tonight, she will.
“Sounds like you know from experience,” I reply.
There’s a risk she puts her guard back up at the realization that she’s inadvertently revealed something so personal. But I also risk coming across as too callous by not extending some sense of sympathy toward her.
Lauressa gives a wistful smile.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” she admits and then stuffs an artichoke and spinach dipped chip in her mouth.