Seducing the President's Son Ch. 01

Hey guys! This story has a bit of a slow build, but I promise there's plenty of sex and romance as the story goes on. And later chapters are LOADED with it. Enjoy!

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COLIN

Let me start out by saying that I never intended for any of this to happen. I didn't know what Dominus' true plans were. If only I had...

I can't go back and change the past, Zach. All I can do is tell you the truth and hope that you'll be able to forgive me.

You have to understand—Ecclesium is not a cult.

We were doing amazing things, we really were. Our mission was to change the world one step at a time. We were going to help people clear away the wreckage of their past, to free themselves of their own internal limitations so that their future could be whatever they wanted it to be.

At least, that's what I used to believe.

My life before I joined Ecclesium looks like a dream when I look back on it. I grew up in Kansas City with a pretty privileged lifestyle, if I'm being honest. My parents were loving and supportive, don't get me wrong, but I never had to work for anything or suffer through any real trauma.

When I was young I thought this meant that I was lucky, that I wouldn't be bogged down by the same things that other people had. But Dominus helped me see the truth. He taught me that I was drifting through life, that I had taken my hands off the driver's wheel and was simply going wherever the wind blew me.

I moved out to LA when I was 18 because I had it in my head that I wanted to make it as an actor. I thought that movie star good looks and a set of abs would be enough to help me make it out here. After all, my black hair, thick eyebrows, and sharp jaw had always gotten me cast as the romantic lead in all of the plays in high school. I figured taking on Hollywood would be a breeze.

I quickly realized that I wasn't prepared for the amount of hard work being an actor actually called for. Guys like me were a dime a dozen out here. You couldn't throw a stone without hitting another Joe six-pack looking to make it big. I needed a strong work ethic to succeed, but I was too unwilling to put in the time and effort to grind and achieve the things I wanted.

So, I began to stagnate. I took on a job first as a waiter, then a barista, then a personal trainer. I told myself that I was working these jobs to support me until I made it as an actor, but the truth is that I only went to a handful of auditions in my first five years of living in LA.

That was, until I joined Ecclesium. I first learned about them when a personal training client of mine invited me to one of their introductory workshops.

"What the hell is Ecclesium?" I asked. "It sounds like some kind of church group or something."

"Trust me," she said. "They will change your life."

For better or for worse, she was right.

My first session started off relatively unimpressively. I sat in the back of a stifling room in a building off of Pico Blvd, sweating through my shirt. I remember thinking that the man at the front of the room was wearing a button-down shirt two sizes too big for him and wondering what I was supposed to get out of this guy.

Then he showed us a video explaining something called an R&R: Revisit and Reframe.

The goal of an R&R was to take something in your past and reexamine it, something that you felt was holding you back from achieving your dreams. By revisiting it with the help of one of Ecclesium's senior delegates, you could relinquish the hold that this event had on your psyche and actually move beyond it.

I'll be honest, it sounded like bullshit to me at first. Sure, it was nice in theory, the idea that all of our cages were mental. But I was skeptical at the idea that your life could change forever in the span of an hour.

Then I watched as the man worked with a woman from the audience. Her husband had just left her for another woman and she was practically falling apart onstage as she revealed to the audience what he had done.

I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable as I watched her crying onstage, detailing all of the private and humiliating aspects of her marriage for us all to see. I didn't understand why she was okay being put on the spot like this. Shouldn't they be doing this somewhere more private?

But I watched as he talked her through the events, through the subconscious limitations she had placed on herself as a result of her husband's infidelity.

She was unlovable. She was damaged. She would never be able to find happiness.

He went through her limitations with her one by one, rejecting and reframing each of them into active assertions. She was settling for men who would hurt her because that was what she thought she deserved. Her inability to allow herself to hope was holding her back from believing she could find someone who truly loved her.

I watched her become visibly lighter throughout the course of her R&R. He wasn't holding back, unafraid to push back against her and challenge her. By the time the man had finished, it was like a different woman was sitting on the stage in front of me.

I was hooked.

I walked right up to the delegate after the session and asked him how I could get involved. He stared back at me with such intensity that I felt just as on the spot as that woman had been just minutes ago.

"What is it you want from us?" he asked.

I was taken aback. "I... I don't know," I stammered.

"Surely you must want something."

"I want to be an actor," I said, a little bit more confidently.

He nodded. "Many of our members are highly successful actors. Each of them credited Ecclesium with turning the tide in their careers. But it's not something that's going to happen overnight. Are you willing to put in the work?"

I nodded vigorously. "I'll do whatever it takes."

He told me to sign up for one of their extended courses. Although it cost $1000 (which was more than twice as much as I had to my name), I was willing to pay it in order to be involved. I truly believed that Ecclesium could help me find success as an actor.

So, I charged it to my credit card and began my journey into Ecclesium. My first session proved a resounding success—my senior delegate quickly helped me see that my upbringing had inspired in me a fear of discomfort and hard work. By avoiding any form of discomfort, I was robbing myself of the ability to grow and to get ahead.

Once I was able to reframe this in my mind, it was like a flip had been switched in me. I was no longer drifting through life. I grabbed the wheel and took charge, driven by a new sense of motivation and purpose. Within weeks I was going to auditions left and right, showing up to open calls, throwing myself at any casting agent who would see me.

Soon the roles came pouring in. It started with small stuff: a role as an extra on a Disney channel show, a walk-on role in Days of Our Lives. But then I began booking actual roles. A speaking role on an episode of The Walking Dead, a recurring role on This Is Us. My big break, of course, came when I landed one of the lead roles of the newest Netflix show Chasing Emory.

People finally knew my name. I would walk down Crescent Heights and people would stop me and say, "Are you Colin Baker?" It was surreal.

I was no longer Colin, the lazy bum from Kansas City.

I was Colin Baker, heartthrob.

I took the money I earned from my newfound success and poured it back tenfold into Ecclesium. I signed up for course after course, hoping to earn my way up to the role of senior delegate. You see, Ecclesium gave me so much more than just success as an actor. It gave me a purpose, a sense of community. It's one thing to see the changes happening in your own life. It's another to walk through them with someone else, to see them transform in front of you as they cast off this weight that they didn't even realize was there.

I quickly rose up through the ranks, aided no doubt by my overnight fame. Ecclesium liked to reward the rich and famous, that's for sure. I brought in recruit after recruit, spreading Ecclesium's message to everyone I could possibly reach. I was only 23 years old when I joined Ecclesium. By the time I was 25, I had already gotten the position of senior delegate, faster than anyone else in the organization.

I had also caught the attention of Dominus himself.

Dominus was a quirky fellow. With his long hair tied back in a man bun and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, he looked more like a hipster than a 40-year-old multi-millionaire. But Dominus was also incredibly enigmatic. He had a way of seeing through all of your bullshit, of instantly engaging you in a way that made you feel seen.

The first time I met him, he was visiting the LA chapter to oversee the opening of our new Venice location. I was in charge of running it, having been awarded the position in what felt like the ultimate honor. He made a point of reaching out to me after the opening ceremony and we spent the entire night walking along the beach in Santa Monica.

I found myself instantly drawn to him. The way he spoke... it was like in one second, he was able to distill all of these complicated concepts into one succinct phrase. All of the emotions that I'd felt my entire life but could never express, he was able to enunciate with such clarity. He could read me like a book, and I instantly deferred to his better judgment.

We kept in constant contact through the next few years. Although the headquarters of Ecclesium were in DC, Dominus was bicoastal, frequently flying on his private jet back and forth the two cities to attend Ecclesium conferences and touch base with the senior delegates. I became one of his most trusted allies, keeping him apprised of the goings on of the LA chapter and identifying potential Hollywood recruits.

Just after my 28th birthday, Chasing Emory was cancelled. We had just completed our fourth season and my career was seriously beginning to take off. I was being offered the lead in a blockbuster movie that would have made me over $1 million, but my work for Ecclesium made me reluctant to commit to something that would take me out of LA to film.

My manager told me that I was crazy, that I was giving up what could be a major career move all for some self-help group.

But I didn't care.

Like I said, I believed we were doing incredible things. I thought it was my higher calling. And I had become Dominus's de facto right-hand man. He trusted me with everything, letting me take the reigns of the entire LA chapter and make it my own.

Well, his own, really. I was nothing but a puppet of Dominus at this point, although I didn't realize it. I talked like him, walked like him, and thought like him.

So when he told me about you, about what I would have to do to bring you into the fold, I did what I had always done: I did what I was told.

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When I got the call that Dominus wanted to see me in his office, I feared the worst. We had just had a negative piece written about us in the Atlantic, something that quoted a former disgruntled member named Stacy Chapman who had left the year before. The article claimed that we were a cult that masqueraded as a self-help group while robbing its members of their money and their ability to think for themselves.

I thought it was full of shit. After all the good we had done, it was unbelievable to me that people would want to attack us and slander our mission.

But Dominus had always explained that not everyone would understand the work we did, that we would be fighting against misperceptions in the media for as long as we lived in a world that allowed this kind of character assasination to go unchecked.

The real source of my shame, of course, was that I was the one who had brought Stacy into Ecclesium in the first place. I had seriously misjudged her, thinking that she would be a valuable and compassionate recruit who would be able to help us bring more women into Ecclesium.

How wrong I turned out to be.

So when I walked into his office, my head bowed in anticipation, I was fully expecting to get reamed out. To my surprise, I found him in bright spirits.

"Colin, come in, you spiritual gangster," he said excitedly.

He beckoned me to have a seat in front of him.

Carl, his bodyguard, stared ahead with an expression that I couldn't read. The man had always intimidated me, even though allegedly he was there to protect Dominus. After all, a great man like Dominus surely had enemies, no? But Carl always seemed to treat me like I was a threat, despite my trusted status.

I took a seat and stared at Dominus quizzically.

"I have a task for you," he said.

That was how he always phrased it. I have a task for you. Usually it was something small, like taking a new member out to dinner or running a private R&R with a celebrity recruit. It didn't matter what the task was—my answer was always yes.

"You know Zach Nelson, yes?"

"The president's son?" I asked.

Everyone knew who you were. We'd never had a president with an openly gay kid before, and you had certainly made headlines for your outspoken opinions and sense of style. I had to admit, I admired how vocal you were about the things you believed in. You didn't seem to care about what anyone else might think or what the headlines might say. You were just you.

Dominus nodded. "We want to bring him in. We think he'd be a good recruit to help get our message out there to a wider audience."

I nodded slowly. "Okay... but why Zach Nelson? I mean, isn't he just like, an artist or something? Why not a congressperson or someone a little more in the action?"

Dominus' eyes shone. "Think about it. He's got the ear of the most powerful man in the world. With him singing the praises of Ecclesium, we could get government funding. Enough to bring our mission throughout the entire world. You could be running R&Rs in Argentina, Tokyo, at the fucking G5 summit."

I smiled. Dominus' enthusiasm was infectious—all of his moods were.

He tapped a pen against the desk, scrutinizing me from behind his glasses. "It also just so happens that he's a fan of yours."

I raised an eyebrow. "Of mine?"

"Well, your character in Chasing Emory. He was interviewed for some gay magazine or other, and when they asked him who his celebrity crush was, he said-"

"Jason Middleton."

I rolled my eyes. Of course. The name had followed me throughout the last four years, ever since I first got cast in the role. As you well know, Jason was a jock with a heart of gold, the studly football player who was just as comfortable on the field as he was chasing down criminals with his friends, a regular ragtag group of teen detectives.

The truth was, Jason and I were about as different as night and day. He was head over heels in love with his high school sweetheart, Cheryl, whereas the only serious girlfriend that I had ever had was Caroline.

Caroline and I had met at Ecclesium in LA, where we first started dating about a year into my training. The senior delegates were against it in a big way, telling me I was moving backward, that she was too new to be able to support me, and that I needed to focus on my training.

I couldn't see it at the time, but they did everything they could to try to break us up. They would schedule me for hours and hours of training sessions anytime I wasn't filming, which meant that I had no time to see Caroline. By the time I got asked to head up the Venice location, Caroline and I had grown so far apart that we decided to call it quits.

Jason and I were also different in that I didn't know the first thing about sports, although to be fair I did spend my fair amount of time in the gym. But as much as I might look the role of the jock with my 6'2" height and my muscular frame, I was much more of an introvert. I was passionate about things like film and television, which is why I had been so intent on pursuing a career as an actor. I loved to tell stories, to inhabit the roles of characters and come up with rich, detailed internal lives for them.

Maybe that's why it was so easy for me to play the part that Dominus wanted me to play for you.

"We figured you would be the perfect person to bring him in," said Dominus.

"How do you want me to go about it?" I asked. "Do you wanna arrange a meet and greet with him or something?"

"Not quite, man. We were thinking it might be easier if you... eased him into the idea of us. We don't want to put him off, make him think we're selling R&R. That's not our brand, you know that. The best way to win him over is to gain his trust before you even bring up Ecclesium."

I stared at him in confusion. "Gain his trust? You make it sound like I'm doing espionage or something," I laughed.

Dominus folded his hands and looked at me over his glasses. "Dude, trust me. I've been bringing in recruits for years. I know when someone is ready to join the spiritual path and when someone needs a little push. Trust me, this is the way."

He handed me a file. I opened it to find an airline ticket and a pamphlet for an art show.

"We want you to come to DC for a while. We have an apartment for you that's rented out for the next few months. There's no telling how long this could take, you should know that up front. But we do know he's planning on attending the Capital art fair this upcoming weekend, which is why we got you a ticket."

I opened the pamphlet to find a ticket with my name on it.

Dominus leaned back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head. "Now, he'll be sure to be surrounded by Secret Service, but this shouldn't be a problem for you. One look at you and something tells me he's going to head straight for you."

"I don't know," I said, setting the file on the desk. "I don't like the idea of lying to him. I mean, didn't you say that he had a crush on me?"

"Exactly!" exclaimed Dominus. "It's the perfect in for you."

"But I'm not gay."

"It doesn't matter. Just get to know him, talk up the character, tell him what the show is like, give him a little behind-the-scenes info. Then, once you've warmed him up a bit, we can start introducing him to what we're all about."

"I'm not sure," I said. "This is a lot to take in."

Dominus frowned. "I gotta say, Colin, I'm surprised. I'd think after what happened with Stacy Chapman you'd be looking for a way to mitigate some of the damage you did to Ecclesium." He raised his hands. "I'm just saying, you have an opportunity here. It's up to you whether or not you want to take it."

I stared at Dominus. This was much bigger than any of the previous tasks he'd had for me, and something about what he was asking me to do felt wrong to me. Playing a role as an actor was one thing, but this felt duplicitous.

Unfortunately, I was more than used to overriding my gut intuition by this point. Ecclesium had taught us that these reservations were just self-imposed limitations we had to work through, and I trusted Dominus completely.

"All right," I said. "When do I leave?

____________________

I arrived at the art gallery with my stomach in knots. I chastised myself for my nerves—what was wrong with me? I had frequented my fair share of red carpet events in Hollywood, exquisite galas and fancy dinners that would make this art fair seem tame in comparison.

But even when I knew my every move was being watched and photographed on the red carpet, with stylists picking apart my outfit and fangirls sharing pictures of me on Instagram, something about being the center of attention in that context suited me. It felt almost natural.

This, on the other hand, made my skin crawl. Not a soul was even looking my way, but I found myself feeling as though I were completely naked. Why was I so nervous? All I had to do was make contact with you, chat you up, secure another meeting. Simple.