Chapter 14 Ethan
ETHAN
She runs.
For half a heartbeat, I just stand there and watch her go.
Barbara’s small in real life, but in the sim—bare feet slapping against the rendered lumber yard floor, hair flying, wearing nothing but that soft bra and those ridiculous panties—she looks like a shot of pure adrenaline made just for my heart.
Neon-blue trace lights track her movements in my HUD, mapping every step to her real body.
God, she’s perfect.
I exhale slowly through my nose, forcing myself not to bolt after her immediately. Give her distance. Let the panic build. Let the atmosphere do some of the work.
The system hums at my back, projectors syncing, haptics calibrating. On my console, her vitals are a set of clean little spikes—heart rate elevated, breathing fast, adrenaline climbing.
I did that. I’m going to do a lot more.
“Sim, load profile: Lumberyard_03_w/o_hostiles,” I say, voice distorted through the mask.
The lumber yard around us deepens—shadows stretching, temperature dropping two degrees, the sound field tightening. Every creak, every scrape, every distant thunder roll is tuned to hit the fear centers of the human brain.
I built this place for Killian, though sometimes Damien joined, or Caleb when he was in town. For combat. For training. And now I’m repurposing it for something much more important.
“Overlay: target avatar baseline, no distortion,” I add.
Her avatar stays true to her. No monsters, no glitch filters.
Just Barbara as she is—lush curves, smooth skin, hair spilling over her shoulders.
I’ll be able to see where she’s looking thanks to the cameras built into her headset, like it’s not even there.
The only other change is a faint glowing ring at her throat that tells the system where not to let me hit if this were a combat drill—no accidental damage to anything vital.
“Safety perimeter set,” the system pings in my ear.
Good. All the walls and columns are mapped. The sim will warn me if I barrel too hard toward a real-world obstacle. I can chase her at full speed without worrying I’ll slam her into concrete.
I turn to the gear shelf and grab what I need.
Small. Black. Silicone. A narrow anal toy, not too intimidating, but enough to make my girl squeal once I’ve got her caught and pliant. I roll it between gloved fingers, picturing how she’s going to look with this snug between her cheeks, my hand on her lower back, telling her to relax and take it.
Later. First, the chase.
I slip it into my pocket, feeling its small weight when I move.
“All good, little bee?” I call out, voice rolling through the space thanks to the directional speakers.
There’s a pause. Her avatar slows, half-turns, chest heaving. “Stay away, asshole!” she yells back, making me laugh. Always has to be defiant.
“You better run,” I say softly. “You’ve got thirty seconds left.”
I wait exactly five before I break into a sprint.
The world rushes around me in shades of blue and gray—towering stacks of phantom lumber, puddles reflecting the stormy sky the sim is painting overhead. Rain isn’t falling yet, but the sound of it is building in the distance, a low hiss that makes everything else sound sharper.
Her footprints glow on my HUD, a ghost-pale trail that fades after three seconds. She’s quick, surprisingly agile as she weaves between stacks, her breathing ragged in my ear feed.
She has no idea how loud she is in here. How easy she is to track.
“Wrong way, firecracker,” I murmur.
I toggle her audio feed to directional and trigger a metallic clang somewhere off to her right. She startles, veering left—straight toward the cluster of crates I’d tagged as a funnel.
She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s steering herself into my hands.
My muscles burn as I push harder, my shoes thudding in the simulated gravel, actual soles gripping the soft training floor. There’s a thrill in my blood I haven’t felt in years, not since I ran down a high-value target through the back alleys of Kabul with my favorite drone squad.
Back then, it was about justice. Orders. Missions.
This? This is about Barbara. About giving her the fantasy she was brave enough to admit to—being hunted, being taken, being claimed by someone who’ll worship every breath she gives.
She skids around a corner, almost slipping, and catches herself on the side of a ‘stack’ with one hand. The system buzzes the tactile panel under her fingers so it feels like rough, damp wood instead of a blank wall.
I could close the distance right here. Two, three seconds, and I’d be on her.
But where’s the fun in that?
I thumb a control on my wristband, and the sim thickens the fog ahead of her—visual, not physical. To her, it looks like a bank of cold, rolling mist swallowing the path. To me, through the mask’s filters, it’s translucent. I can see her clearly as she hesitates, then plunges in.
Brave girl.
“Careful,” I let my distorted voice float down from above and behind, echoing off the stacks. “You don’t know what’s in there.”
She yelps and bolts faster.
“Jerk!” she shouts into the darkness.
I huff out a laugh. She really is going to try to sass me all the way to the ground.
Lightning flashes across the simulated sky, and thunder cracks a second later, deep and bone-shaking. The haptic floor vibrates under our feet, subtle but effective.
Her avatar flinches, shoulders jumping. She veers again, this time toward the old mill building I’ve rendered near the back edge of the sim. Worn brick, broken windows, yawning loading bay doors. I don’t have to steer her anymore. She’s picking the perfect arena for me.
I slow my pace as she ducks into the shadow of the open bay. Let her think she’s lost me for a second. Let her think she’s clever.
Inside the bay, the lighting drops another notch. Bare overhead bulbs flicker, some burnt out, some swinging faintly like something just passed beneath them. The sim pumps in the smell of oil and old sawdust, the faint metallic tang of rust.
Barbara edges between stacks of rendered pallets, her breathing loud in the enclosed space. She presses her back to one of the wooden columns, peering around it.
She doesn’t see me. Not yet.
I stop just inside the bay entrance, my back pressed to the wall. I dial the mask’s output down and switch hers to whisper prox—she’ll only hear me when I’m close.
“You lost, little bee?” I murmur under my breath, not sending it to the system. It’s just for me.
She’s hugging herself now, goosebumps rising on her arms—the temperature in here is a couple of degrees colder, and the system’s feeding a light draft along the floor, hitting her bare legs.
“You wanted gritty atmosphere,” I say loud enough to transmit this time. “You getting it yet?”
She jumps, spinning toward the sound.
“Ethan?” She turns in a circle, eyes wide, hair sticking to her damp cheeks. “This is messed up.”
“This is what you asked for,” I answer. The distortion adds a purr to the words that makes even me feel like a villain. “You said you wanted to be chased. To be caught.”
Her throat works as she swallows. She’s looking everywhere but the right place, her gaze sliding right past the darker pocket of shadow where I’m standing.
My girl’s smart. Her brain just isn’t used to processing this much sensory input at once. That’s fine. That’s what I’m here for—to overwhelm her until the only thing she can focus on is me.
I move along the wall, silent. Years of training are baked into muscle memory. The sim matches the visuals, so it looks like I’m weaving between stacks, slipping behind a column, vanishing, reappearing closer.
Barbara creeps forward, bare feet making the softest sound on the floor. Her avatar’s shiver is mapped straight from her biometric feed. She’s not terrified—her heart rate isn’t that high—but she’s keyed up. On edge.
Exactly where I want her.
She slips through a narrow gap between two pallet stacks and finds herself in a dead-end pocket, three walls of virtual lumber rising around her. One way in. One way out.
Perfect.
She realizes it half a second too late.
“Shit,” she breathes, backing up until her shoulders hit wood.
I step into the mouth of the gap.
Her head jerks up and her eyes lock on me—on the mask, the simulated black clothes, the neon lines pulsing faintly along my sleeves and chest. For a second, she doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.
Then she steps left. The sim prevents it—no holes, no secret exit. She steps right. Same thing.
She’s trapped.
Heat surges low in my body, primal and possessive.
Mine.
I built this space, designed this trap, lured her right here. All she has to do now is take the last two steps into my arms.
She lifts her chin, bravado kicking in. “You cheated,” she accuses. “You herded me.”
Her voice shakes just enough to betray her.
“Absolutely,” I say. I prowl into the gap, slow and deliberate, eating up the distance between us one step at a time. “You think I’d leave this to chance?”
She doesn’t move, but her fingers curl into fists at her sides. “What now?” she demands. “You drag me back to your villain lair?”
“Oh, baby, this is my villain lair,” I remind her. “And you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
I can see every tiny micro-expression thanks to the cameras in her goggles—the way her eyes keep darting to my hands, the slight wobble in her knees, the way her chest rises faster than it should.
“Last chance, firecracker,” I say quietly as I close the final few steps. “You want out, you say it now. We go home. No questions, no jokes. I’ll tuck you into bed and make you pancakes tomorrow.”
She swallows again, her throat bobbing. For a moment, I think she might say it. Call it off.
Then her eyes flash. There’s the Barbara I know and love.
“We’re staying,” she whispers.
Yes. My control snaps like a cut wire, and I surge forward.
She bolts left on instinct, but there’s nowhere to go. I catch her around the waist, turning my body so I take the brunt of the momentum as we slam into the pallet wall. The haptics cushion the impact, but it still knocks the breath out of her in a little gasp.
She bucks in my arms, furious and frantic, and God, I love her for it. I hook one leg behind hers, shift my weight, and we go down together in a controlled tumble, the sim translating it into a rough drag over dirt and splinters.
Her back hits the ground—the padded training floor under the illusion of hard-packed earth. I roll with her, using my body to pin her hips, one hand catching both her wrists and pressing them over her head.
She’s breathing hard, her avatar’s eyes wide and blazing up at the mask.
Caught.
Finally.
I lower my head until the cool surface of the mask almost touches her heated cheek. When I speak, my voice is a dark growl through the modulator.
“Run’s over, little bee,” I murmur. “Now I get to do what I’ve been thinking about since Thanksgiving.”
Her fingers flex under my grip, her legs twitch beneath my weight, and her lips part on a shaky exhale.
Mine.
All mine.