Page 23 of Broken Obsession

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 likethat.

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.