Masochism Tango | Alastor & Lucifer & Vox

chapter 14

Weeks had went by and Vox had conclusively discovered nothing.

He had packed up his things and left the palace in his car weeks ago without arousing any suspicion of you, and made a broadcast about a day after that entailing rather boring details about his personal interview with you — it was all for show, of course. He had to make it seem that an interview was really what he was after when it came to his visit, and, frankly, he didn't get a whole lot from the interview itself so when he made his broadcast, he kept it short and brief and only hoped to get it out of the way.

He had bigger fish to fry.

Meaning you.

Again, here he was, sitting in front of his c-shaped desk with papers and printed photographs all scattered across glowing electric-blue panels and switches, staring at them hard. The many screens in front of them displayed live feeds of the palace, of your room, of your office, of the dungeons... Yet nothing interesting had taken place whatsoever. Nobody new had came into the palace, just you and Lucifer and some servants all going through your daily lives with no concern at all.

Yet, he was still obsessed.

He was so incomprehensibly entangled with you and on bringing about your downfall, that as he carried out the daily tasks of running VoxTech and being the most coveted, powerful, and successful pioneer of modern-day media control he couldn't stop thinking about you. The interview was meant to be nothing more but a chance to infiltrate the palace and plant his cameras, but his mind kept mulling over his conversation with you and the way you spoke to him with such domineering assurance and confidence, the way your eyes befell him with a sultry, seductive gaze, the way your pink tresses fell loosely out of your messy low bun, the manner in which you would tuck them behind your ear quickly when you thought nobody was looking...

He liked you.

He hated to say it, but he found your presence to be most certainly interesting. He found himself enthralled by your mannerisms, by your confidence and sureness of yourself and your position as the Duchess of Hell, found himself plagued with curiosity at your ability to carry out your duty as Lucifer's right-hand woman with ease. He was almost envious of the way you handled things, the way you handled him. It was revolting and utterly disgusting to him that he found himself adored by the way you dodged his probing questions without saying something that would risk dimming the public's view of you.

It reminded him of himself, that ability to work with people so well, to analyze a social climate with utmost adeptness and react to it flawlessly, without risking harming one's own image. Vox had to do that often. Many would try to tear him down, to start their own broadcasts and try to take over the media by storm, to shun him and challenge him, but Vox knew how to smoothly settle his competitors grasps for dominion over him. So he liked that he had met somebody that also had the ability to do that so well.

He wanted to know more about you. So, in the past few weeks, he had completely avoided Valentino and Velvette and once the days duties were done, he always found himself back in this same room searching for a way to ruin you.

Because if he ruined you, he could rid himself of this sudden, unexpected, unprecedented infatuation.

But despite his efforts, here he was, wasting his time by watching your in your own bedroom, enlarging the screen so that he could see you completely and clearly.

You were curled up on the bed reading a novel, wearing nothing but a silk spaghetti-strap top and your underwear, your legs long and smooth and shaven, your hair pulled back into a claw clip with strands escaping its grasp. Vox momentarily zoomed in on the book, narrowing his eyes — "The Completed Recorded History of Surgical Procedures and their Evolution." Interesting...