Things had now been set in motion: the plane ticket had been bought, and they would see each other in two weeks, but she didn't want to spend those two weeks just waiting. Time was precious, and she wanted to fit as much productive time in those two weeks as she could.
To any outside observer, it might have seemed that she was eagerly anticipating the end of the two weeks of waiting, that she was trying to get him as excited as possible for the time when they would be together. But although he certainly didn't know it at the time, she was actually planning a much longer project, playing a long game in which things would continue happening well after the trip was over. She had been observing this man for years before finally deciding to take steps to turn him into her property, and after waiting for so long, she was willing to take the time to do things carefully and methodically. Although they only spoke in terms of their pending meetup, everything she said to him was said with a mind toward a longer-term future.
The human brain is a flexible thing, but it adapts itself to changes relatively slowly. Events which transpire only in a moment are usually witnessed and then quickly forgotten. Now that she had his attention, she needed to be able to retain it, and that meant keeping him long-term in a mental state in which his thoughts were where she wanted them to be. At least once per conversation, often several times in one conversation, she would plant the seed of a thought, just the tiniest, most subtle seed, something he probably wouldn't even notice because his conscious thoughts would be overwhelmed with much louder thoughts, but the seeds, once planted, would nestle into the crevices of his brain and grow, such that he would begin to have thoughts which he hadn't had before. A woman's greatest pride often comes from being able to convince a man that her idea was his idea, that whatever she wanted was actually what he wanted, because then his natural ego will cause him to follow this idea through, all the while thinking that it was his own idea. Sam was an ideal guy for such a project, because he lacked a self-identity, meaning he was a blank canvas for her to design her own identity on. Once this work began, he would begin to forget himself and become an extension of her own plan for him.
The night after he'd booked the plane ticket, she insisted on doing another video call so that she could watch him and his reactions. Text had been a good starting point, but it was too easy for him to hide his reactions in text, too difficult to really observe his most immediate and visceral reactions without seeing his facial expressions and body language and hearing his tone of voice. When they started the call, she kept her camera off at first, but was pleased to see him gazing into the camera with rapt attention. She almost laughed at his eagerness; he looked like a schoolboy who had been promised a treat if he paid extra-careful attention in class. He had the body of a man, but he still carried a certain boyish youthfulness that appealed to her and made him seem even more vulnerable.
"Did you have a good day?" she asked casually, sounding as though it had been like every other day in her life.
"Sort of," he said. "It was a little stressful, but not bad."
"Why was it stressful? Did you have a bad day at work?"
"No, work was fine, it was pretty much as usual. But I guess I just had problems concentrating."
"Why's that? Maybe you need to drink more coffee."
"No, it wasn't anything like that," he said, then began to breathe a bit deeper out of embarrassment. "I just had, well, you know, problems..."
"Oh dear, problems with what, dear Sam?" she asked sweetly, as though she had no idea what could be wrong.
"Well, you know, I kept thinking of you a lot," he said shyly. As he spoke, he looked down-her camera was still off, so there wasn't anything to see on the screen anyway-and his embarrassed, downcast gaze was wonderful. She wanted him to get used to looking down. It was a posture of humility and submission. As long as she could maintain him in that position, not only physically but especially mentally, then his mental state would be where she wanted it to be.
"I like that," she said happily. "I like it when you think about me a lot. Why would that ever be a problem?"
"Well, that in itself wasn't a problem, but I mean, I really wanted to have some kind of sexual release, but I promised you that I wouldn't, so..."
"Did you keep your promise?"
"Yes, I did."
"I'm so glad you did!" she exclaimed, and it was true. It meant that any rational thoughts he might have been able to have during the day would have been effaced by his sexual urges. Had he been able to think clearly, he might have started having second thoughts. Guys like him who think too much always do! It was much better to keep him in a state of constant sexual tension so that he would be unable to torture himself with questions that could lead him down the wrong track. As long as he had no orgasm, he would only be able to have sexual thoughts about her, and as this state persisted over a long period of time, he would lose the ability to have other kinds of thoughts that could interfere with what she wanted for him. "As a reward for your obedience, I will allow you to see me." She turned on her camera, and the transformation in his expression was exactly what she had hoped to see: he had the face of a man seeing something he had wanted to see for a long time.
For a while, perhaps a fairly long while, they just looked at each other. He was staring at her so intently that he seemed mesmerized, so to carry on with this theme, she moved her face directly in front of the camera, opened her eyes wide into a stare that was perhaps more silly than intense, and said "Look into my eyes!" She was trying not to laugh; something about it all seemed very funny, but at the same time she took it seriously. Perhaps she wanted to be able to get him to laugh so that he would feel more at ease with her and not feel like he was the subject of an interrogation. In any case, he said nothing, but remained watching the screen, fixated. Because the webcam on a computer is at the edge of the screen, a person looking directly at their conversation partner will not be looking at the camera, so it was difficult for her to tell if he was actually obeying her wish to look into her eyes, but his eyes did seem to be fixated on one spot, so that was a good sign, at least.
They were not sure how long they had been frozen in this state, in this act of staring at each other with the sense that they weren't really staring at each other because they were looking at their screens and not at their cameras. Presently, however, they both became aware that it had become awkward rather than romantic. One difference between them was that he tended to get mentally stuck, in the sense that when a conversation stopped, he would be at a loss for something to say to keep the conversation going, and he also tended to become so focused on small details that he stopped whatever he was doing or saying. She was the opposite, always full of new things to do or talk about, which meant that it fell to her, by default, to decide what they would do or talk about much of the time, but this suited her since she was naturally bossy, the kind of person who didn't mind telling people what to do as long as they actually obeyed.
"I had the day off today," she announced, reasoning that talking about each other's day was a normal couples thing that could always be used to start a conversation when they saw each other.
"Oh, that's nice. What did you do with your day off?" he asked.
"I did some tidying up. I did the laundry and vacuuming, washed the windows, that kind of thing. I went to a new restaurant for lunch."
"That doesn't really sound like a day off," he said with a faint smile. "I mean, you spent your day off doing housework."
"What can I say, I like to live in a tidy house. And I get a certain sense of accomplishment from it. Which isn't to say that I would mind if someone else did it for me." And she said this last sentence with a faint sense of pointedness that made him feel like she was suggesting something.
"Don't look at me, I don't even tidy up my own house," he said.
"That's okay, you can clean mine instead," she said with a smile.
Here he was stumped for an answer. There was something bizarre and yet simultaneously exciting about her suggestion. She found that she liked the act of stumping him, of saying things that left him at a loss for an answer, because it made it easy for her to control the flow of conversation. She could get him talking or make him stop when she wanted.
Finally, unable to think of anything better to say, he asked: "Why would I clean yours when I don't even clean mine?"
"Because I'd like you to, and I think you want to, anyway."
"What makes you think I want to?"
"Just the look on your face when I suggested it."
"Why, what kind of look did I have on my face?"
"A look that showed a clear desire."
"Maybe it was a desire for you, not for doing housekeeping chores."
