Chapter 5
Ares hissed, and his dick swelled. He quickly readjusted so Eden wouldn’t feel it, shifting his weight to lighten his lower region, the move only giving the furious man beneath him a better grip.
But anger was good.
Better than the panic he’d been slipping under like the wave of a tsunami.
“You hear that?” Ares tried to calm his breathing.
“What? You whimpering like a bitch?” Eden growled.
Okay, he hadn’t whimpered, but that was fine. Whatever.
“Tell me what else you hear,” Ares made his tone commanding, but kept it low and coaxing, the way he knew most people liked.
Zar didn’t agree with him, but it was Ares’ experience that people were a lot more susceptible to honey than vinegar.
When you got a person to feel at ease and drop their guard around you…
everything from there was smooth sailing.
At least for a moment. Capturing and holding onto that moment, now that was the real tricky bit.
Trust was a funny, fickle little thing like that.
But he didn’t need Eden to trust him entirely, not just yet. He just needed him to recenter, and to do that, he would need to listen and take instructions.
A hovercar zipped by outside.
“That,” Ares said. “Did you hear that? Tell me about it.”
“Car.” Eden’s fingers loosened in his hair, but he didn’t release him. “Why aren’t you trying to make me let go?”
“I don’t need you to let go. I need you to do the opposite. Focus up, Starling. Give me one more sound. I know you can do it.”
Eden frowned at the nickname the Player in Vanity called Ransom, but he didn’t call Ares out on it. Was he okay with that one then? He seemed to take great offense at being referred to as Ransom, which was a real pity.
There went half of Ares’ fantasies.
“My heart,” Eden replied. “It’s pounding.”
“It’s slowing,” he corrected. “You’re getting there.”
“Getting where?”
“Back to being centered.”
“What?”
Ares tipped his head and stared down at him. “Have you never experienced a panic attack before?”
“Oh. Right.”
Guess he had. Maybe it’d just been a while and Eden hadn’t been able to recognize the signs.
Lucky.
“Should we keep going?” he asked, and when Eden’s lips pursed in silent question, added, “Two smells. What do you smell?”
“Blood,” he licked his lips, hesitant, and then gave in and said, “you.”
“What do I smell like?” Ares hadn’t been expecting that.
“Honestly? Like sex and sin.”
He had no idea what that meant, but it could be worse. Right?
“One thing you can taste.” It was the last one, and they could probably skip it, but Ares was a firm believer in following all of the steps just in case. Besides, his intentions tonight had never been to frighten the older man into an episode.
On the contrary, when he’d intercepted those messages to that loser Pan, Ares had assumed this was what Eden really wanted. Someone to sneak in and shake him up.
Someone to ruin and own him.
If anyone was going to be doing that, it would be Ares.
But instead, Eden had experienced a panic attack, and it was so unexpected that, frankly, Ares wasn’t entirely sure what he should do. He knew what Ryker would do, if this were his reality, but it wasn’t, and—
“Blood.” Eden’s expression calmed a second before he struck, head-butting Ares again.
This time, the pain exploded behind Ares’ eyes and he cursed, rearing back. He heard Eden scramble off the bed and shot after him, hand catching the material of the ratty bathrobe the voice actor was wearing.
Ares gave a single pull, catching the writhing man against his chest a second time. The needle was out of his pocket in a flash, the tip piercing through the delicate flesh of Eden’s thigh a breath later.
Eden sagged in his hold almost as soon as the plunger was pressed all the way down.
“Any gamer worth his salt knows,” Ares nuzzled the side of Eden’s face as he lifted him into his arms and carried him into the living room, “always have a backup plan.”
* * *
In an alternate reality, Illya would be standing here in his place.
Or maybe Nyoka.
Or Ellery.
Or Devyn—No. Not Devyn. Devyn had left.
But maybe in an alternate reality, he hadn’t and—
“Hush,” Ares demanded himself, checking the ropes binding his prize to the sturdiest chair he could find in this place.
This tiny, hovel of a place.
In another reality, maybe Eden lived in a mansion.
Or a hotel.
Or one of those traveling cars that Zar always talked about one day buying and disappearing in.
Oh no. He was fraying. The signs were all there.
The signs.
He couldn’t miss them.
Not like how Eden had missed his.
Then what would they do? If they were both spiraling? If they were both lost?
Ares plopped himself down on the floor right where he’d been standing and unclipped his multi-slate from his wrist. The theme song of Vanity that came on as the app loaded instantly soothed some of his nerves, clearing his head.
Giving him focus.
It was good he’d brought the sedative, good he’d had a backup plan, but Eden’s reaction was still puzzling him, and that loss of control was what threatened to send him careening into headspace best left unoccupied.
Ransom appeared on the screen—not the real Ransom, this world's Ransom, the digital one.
“Pixelations,” he reminded himself.
But…What if pixels were reality and this, this flesh and bone and blood, was the illusion?
“I knew you’d be back,” the Ransom on the screen said in his alluring voice, smiling coyly in the corner of the library, which was always where the game loaded and the players met with whichever character they’d left on the main screen before exiting out the last time.
“I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long? ”
“Sorry.” No. No, he wasn’t sorry, because Ransom wasn’t real. Ransom wasn’t—
Ares lifted his head.
The man in the chair, the one who looked almost identical to the pixilations on the screen clutched between both hands, was unconscious but very real. Tangible.
Five things he could see.
“Blond hair,” Ares said out loud, gaze roaming over Eden, taking stock. “Bruised cheek. Long neck. Pink nipples. A divot between muscles leading straight down to…” His cock jerked, and Ares clicked his tongue at himself.
That’s not why he was here.
He wasn’t here to force that type of reality on Eden. The type of reality Zar had lived through. The type that had broken him.
“Not here to destroy,” Ares reminded himself resolutely. No, he was here to build. Perhaps to take. Maybe to force. But not like that.
Ryker said it didn’t matter. That there was nothing wrong in the taking. That they were Black Harts, and that was what Black Harts did.
Nyoka said there wasn’t any fun in force. He claimed all the excitement stemmed from bending a person. Twisting them into the likeness you wanted.
That was sort of like reforming a reality, wasn’t it?
Manipulation.
Control.
But if the Ransom in his phone wasn’t real, and the Ransom in the chair wasn’t real either…then what?
“I’m real.” Ares forced himself to close his eyes even though all he wanted to do was look his fill of Eden.
“Five things I see.” He pictured his friends one by one.
“Illya. Ryker. Nyoka. Ellery. Camren.” He couldn’t list them all, but that was okay.
“Four things I can touch. My multi-slate. The floorboards. Glass. Plastic.”
His hand landed on the first aid kit he’d found in Eden’s bathroom, and that seemed to snap him out of it by reminding him what he was meant to be doing.
“Right now, I’m playing the part of the healer.” He shifted onto his knees and set his multi-slate to the side, pulling the box over and popping the top open.
Ares got to work, careful to keep his gaze from wandering to that tempting spot between Eden’s slightly parted thighs. He’d tied him to the chair around his middle, and had secured his ankles to the front legs, and of course had caught a few peeks while doing so, but…
“In another reality,” he gave voice to his tormenting thoughts as he dabbed one of the cuts on Eden’s palm with disinfectant, “maybe I play the role of the villain. Maybe I break in, and I take you on the floor, in the glass and blood splatter. Maybe you’re a virgin, and I break through your tight, unwilling hole, and I—”
“What are you doing?” Eden whispered, but it was obvious he hadn’t heard any of the words Ares had been muttering to himself. Slowly, his eyes blinked open, and he frowned when he found Ares kneeling before him. He tried to get up, hissing when he realized he was bound.
“Relax,” Ares instructed.
“What is this?” Eden did not listen, continuing his struggles so that Ares had to stop tending to the cuts and wait.
“I restrained because I knew you weren’t going to behave,” he said. “Would you like to rethink that, or will I have to knock you out again?”
“You drugged me!”
“Yes.”
“This is my house,” he hissed. “Just because you’ve taken over the company, doesn’t give you the right to show up here unannounced and sneak in!”
“Unannounced?” Ares forced Eden’s hand to open, splaying his fingers so he could dab antiseptic at the smaller cuts. “I told you I was coming. Don’t you remember?”
Eden’s brow furrowed, then it seemed to click. “You can’t be serious?”
“I said I’d see you later.”
“I thought that was a pleasantry!”
“So the idea of seeing me again was pleasing to you?” Ares smirked. “What about the other time then? When I told you I would be in touch?”
“You never—” Eden went quiet, and then his eyes widened, and he took a shaky breath. “You really are him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“Lucifer.”
There was that damn name again. Ares scowled. “I don’t know who that is, but it’s good you brought it up. Tell me.”
“The masked stranger from the boat house,” Eden rushed out. “You. Don’t deny it, I know it was you.”
He cocked his head. “My name isn’t Lucifer.”
Eden inhaled slowly as if trying to gather patience. “That’s not…You didn’t exactly tell me your name after you murdered Galen Stone. Whatever. What are you doing here, Mr. Major?”