Page 101 of Broken Obsession

“Thought you could bring people back from the dead,” Eden drawled sarcastically, following Ares across the gravel driveway to the entrance to the cabin. Someone must have cleared the way for them since the yard was covered in three feet of snow, meaning Ares really had planned this trip a while ago.

Ares hummed in agreement and pressed his thumb to the keypad of the house. “As long as you don’t hit your head too hard, I most likely could. But being brought back hurts. I don’t want that kind of suffering for you.”

A spiral staircase greeted them as soon as they stepped into the entrance. Aside from that, there was a wooden bench to the left beneath wall hooks for jackets, and two closed doors behind the stairs. Warmth already radiated from above, so Eden didn’t argue when the Black Hart started removing his shoes and coat.

Upstairs, a fire roared in a cozy living area, with a plush couch and a faux fur black rug stretched between them. To the right was a kitchen, and Ares moved there first, grabbing a couple of water bottles from the fridge.

“Don’t,” Ares ordered when Eden found a light switch on the wall by the stairs and reached for it.

He paused. “Why?”

“You won’t need it anyway, not for what I have planned.”

Eden shivered at the dark promise, anticipation causing him to shift awkwardly on his feet as he tried to hide how turned on it made him.

As if on cue, Ares’ multi-slate chimed. “The ambulance transporting Sedos slipped on black ice and rammed into a tree. The driver and paramedic onboard were able to escape, but it caught fire and exploded with Sedos trapped inside.”

And just like that, Sedos was dead. All it’d taken was a single message from the man standing across from Eden, and a life had ended in under an hour.

“I upheld my part of the deal,” Ares reminded, twisting off the top of one of the bottles and holding it out for him. Because he was still in the kitchen, doing so forced Eden to come to him. “Now it’s your turn. That’s how the game works, remember?”

Snatching the bottle, he drained half of it and then glared. “Did I say anything?”

“Not this time,” he said. “But you’ve been avoiding me all week.”

“Avoiding your brutal cock, you mean. Just tell it like it is. There’s no need to dance around the truth when it’s just us.” There was totally a need for it, mostly Eden’s pride, but that was the same reason he made the flippant remark.

No one had ever managed to get under his skin like this. Ares could turn him petulant and childish at a mere glance, a single word. Up until this point, Eden had prided himself on his calm façade. It’d done him well during all those fan meets and at the gaming conventions he sometimes had to attend.

“How is work?” Either Ares read his mind, or he was planning something. Something that required easing Eden into a false sense of relaxation.

“Fine.”

“The new studio is to your liking?”

“Yeah.”

“And the tech?”

Eden had spent the past three days acquainting himself with the office Ares had put together for Astral RealmsInnovations. It was located down the street from campus, in literal walking distance. Since he’d been so focused on everything less, the work as Ransom had piled up, and Eden had dedicated long hours to his original job.

Clearly, Ares had taken his late returns to Castle Black as Eden’s attempts to avoid him. He wasn’t entirely wrong…Even if that wasn’t the main reason for it, he’d taken space from the Black Hart on purpose in order to deal with his own tumultuous emotions.

He didn’t want to form an attachment, had gone into this thinking he’d get to experience revenge and good cock. Nothing else had mattered. He hadn’t considered the consequences because he simply hadn’t cared about them. Eden hadn’t exactly given up on life after his family’s deaths, but he’d been coasting at best, desperately grasping at straws in a poor attempt to keep himself afloat.

Wanting Ares as anything more than a means to an end wasn’t on his Bingo card and, frankly, Eden was mad about it.

Mad because he still couldn’t tell if the Black Hart was messing with him or not. This could be a long game, and Eden could merely be another victim in a string of them. People like Ares got bored, took things to the extreme. It wouldn’t be unheard of for someone like him to use people as game pieces.

Hell, the goal could even be to gain Eden’s affection and then ruthlessly discard him after the fact. There was no way of knowing.

He either had to trust Ares or not.

He’d trusted Inzer, once upon a time. Look how well that had turned out.

“Did you really have to put the studio so close to campus?” Eden asked.

“I like to keep you close,” Ares replied shamelessly.