by Dante Steel
“So you could’ve talked me out of it? Fat chance of that!”
Gary shook his head. “So we could’ve talked period. You don’t realize how long I’ve been in here, in the game, listening to Haru’s empty promises night after night. Trust me. He isn’t close to getting me out, not even with what you did. I guarantee it. Honestly, I’m shocked he was able to get you into the game.”
“See? Maybe he’ll shock you again.”
“I would love for that to happen, but I wouldn’t count on it.” He tilted his head. “How exactly did he get you into the game anyhow?”
“How doesn’t matter,” she said, wincing and dropping her gaze to the floor. “I’m here. That’s what counts. Aren’t you happy to not be alone?”
He hugged her tight. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said, rubbing her back.
Fuck. His balls were beginning to ache from how hard he was. That her still-naked body was pressed against him was only making this all the more torturous.
“Even if we would’ve talked, you couldn’t make the decision for me. I had to. My body. My choice.”
“You just believed him, believed everything Haru told you? Just like that?” Gary asked incredulously.
“Well, yeah. It made a lot of sense, especially considering what Nicoletta let slip once.”
“She told you?” Gary swallowed hard. Of the three, he had confided only in Nicoletta. Her reaction—complete and utter disbelief—had been the biggest reason why he hadn’t told the other two. Although he guessed he couldn’t fault Nicoletta for not believing him. It was insane to think that a person could be trapped within a video game.
And now a supervillain was and Elena too.
“The point is, between the two of them, I believe it. I mean, you’re always here, playing. Your avatar just seemed more genuine than the others.”
“How so?”
She smirked. “Not as perfect.”
“Are you teasing me?” he demanded.
She burst out laughing. “It’s the truth.”
He snorted. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You have to shave,” she said touching a nick on his chin.
Gary captured her hand. “Yes.”
“And the way you play, it’s not a game to you. It’s life or death. When I realized you were in the game, I had to come. No doubt about it. There’s no way I would allow you to be in the game by yourself.”
“Technically not by myself. All of the players—”
“You and that psycho.” She shuddered. “I had to come. Can’t you accept that?”
“I don’t have a choice but to accept it,” he said sourly.
“That’s about right.” She released his hand and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I’ll never forgive you if anything happens to you.”
“You won’t have to because nothing will.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
“Life isn’t a guarantee here in the game or in the real world,” she pointed out. “At least in here, we have superpowers.”
“Yeah, but there are so many more enemies here.”
“Shh. We don’t need to worry about enemies if we never get out of bed.” Her red hair fell over her shoulder as she leaned forward and bit her lip. She pushed him down onto the bed.
Gary let out a groan as she rubbed herself against him. “Elena…”
“Yeah?” she asked, hesitating, his tip right at the point of her entrance.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why come to me when you did?”
She pulled back, sitting on her heels, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“You came to me at night. You came to me, and we…” He trailed off, thinking about all of the sexual exercise they had partaken in.
“Gary, I thought…” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I thought I made it clear how I felt about you.”
He shook his head. Out of the three, he least understood where he stood with Elena. Nicoletta? He and her avatar had had sex several times. Olivia had point blank said she was fine with him and the others and the whole bit. Nicoletta didn’t seem ready to share him, and, fuck, when she found out about him and Elena, she was gonna be pissed.
But Elena, Gary hadn’t been sure what she thought of him or the others as far as sex went. He had been attracted to her from the start because even before most of her body had turned to powerful metal, she had already a strong, fierce woman. She was powerful in more ways than one.
He knew she at least appreciated him because he didn’t treat women as items or objects. He didn’t degrade them, and yet, he wanted three of them for himself. He loved three of them. He didn’t want to have to settle for only one.
Bottom line, he was selfish as hell.
Elena pulled away even more and sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t open up to a lot of people,” she said. “Telling you about my hand…”
It had been huge for her. It had been a bonding moment for her. It had almost served as her way of flirting with him. While Olivia’s was obvious and over the top at times, Elena’s was more personal.
He moved to sit beside her and guided her to put her head on his shoulder. “I know now how you feel,” he murmured.
She glanced up at him. “You do.” Her lips pressed against the hollow of his neck.
A spark went straight down to his cock, which jumped.
Elena laughed. “Oh, yeah? Did someone like that?” she teased.
“Very much,” he whispered.
She kissed him there and then on his bicep and elbow and hand, and then she took his cock into her mouth. Gary knew he should talk to her about the others, to see how she felt about him needing her but them too, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t worry about anything except that—
“If you don’t stop now, I’m gonna come in your mouth.”
And she didn’t stop.
So he came.
Elena swallowed.
Gary fell back onto the bed, spent but in the most delicious of ways.
Chapter Two
Gary and Elena didn’t do much at all that first day. If Nicoletta and Olivia entered the game, they didn’t find them. Instead, all Gary and Elena did was explore each other’s bodies and sleep. They didn’t even bother to eat much, a fact their bodies did not appreciate considering how many calories they were burning. All they did was make love in a whole host of ways and in all kinds of positions, some Gary didn’t even know the name of.
But one thing they definitely didn’t do was talk.
Gary was a lot of things, and in this instance, he was a coward. He had hunted dragons. He had fought against powerful supervillains. He had even faced the killer, the other human in the game. Smaug was his supervillain name, Samuel August his real-life name. He had killed in the real world, and he devastated players in Superheroes Online. Some had even quit the game because of him. Superhero groups had tried to bring him down only to fail again and again. When Smaug would kill them, they would lose ten levels at a time. Gary knew that if Smaug were to kill him, Gary would be dead dead.
And so would Elena if she were the one to fall.
Gary hated to even consider that, but he couldn’t ignore that fact even if he was able to push aside the need to talk to Elena about the other women he loved.
She curled up beside him and yawned. “Gary,” she murmured.
“Yes, Elena?” His stomach tightened with fear and worry. What if she wanted to talk now? He didn’t think he could handle that conversation. Not yet. Better to put it off until tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next. Maybe next week or the week after.
“I’m tired.”
“We can sleep,” he promised her.
“Sleep sleep?”
He chuckled and kissed her temple. “Yes, sleep sleep.”
She settled against him, her head on his chest. “Goodnight,” she whispered.
“Goodnight
.” He yawned and closed his eyes.
The door to their room opened. Gary muttered a curse, but Elena was already sitting up and then out of the bed, naked and glorious with her half silver body, fists raised, ready for a fight.
“Relax, Elena,” Gary said as he threw her the blanket so she could cover up. She caught it and immediately covered her body. “You’ll soon learn Haru has the craziest skill. He can and always will show up at the worst possible time.”
Elena glowered at the Japanese man. “How are you here? Why are you here?”
“He’s not actually here,” Gary explained. “Just an avatar.”
“I realize that,” she snapped. “You should be busy, Haru, working on getting us out of here.”
“We are trying. We’ve been trying.”
“And? How are your primary tests going?” Elena asked, crossing her arms and tapping a metal foot impatiently.
“The initial test results have returned, and they are… I’m afraid that they are not promising,” Haru said. “We have other tests to run, do not worry. We will get you out of here, both of you, as soon as we can.”
“You’ve been saying that and saying that,” Gary grumbled. He took a step forward and reached out toward the man. “You haven’t been able to help me at all!”
“Now, Gary, that isn’t true,” Haru snipped. The Japanese man wiggled his nose. “We corrected the glitch so that you could have a power. Remember the Runed Ruby?”
“Yeah, that accursed piece of stone that caused us to fight against Smaug and that gave him a pet dragon!” Gary exploded.
“Gary,” Elena said, yanking on his arm.
But Gary was too incensed with anger to listen. “You haven’t been able to bring me out of the game, not even close. You know you’re not nearly ready, and what do you do? You brought someone else into the game! Why were you even trying to figure out how to bring someone into the game at all? Your sole focus should have been on getting me out! Hell, you should want to get Smaug out of the game as badly as you want me out if not more so! He needs to be thrown in jail for what he’s done. No. He needs to be executed!”
Gary paused to take a breath. He hadn’t thought much about the death penalty before. Most likely, if you would’ve asked him before he’d ever heard of Superheroes Online, he would’ve said that he was against the death penalty. Now, though, when he had faced so many life or death scenarios, when he saw how careless and calloused men could be against each other, when he considered that Smaug had fled to a video game in order to avoid facing the consequences of murdering his mother and then his tormenting and terrorizing the other players, how could Gary think anything else but that Smaug should die?
Maybe in the game. Maybe by Gary’s hand.
No. What the fuck was he thinking? This game was twisting him, subverting him, turning him violent. Even wanting the three women, loving them all, that at its very base was selfish more than anything else.
Elena was glowering at Haru. “Well?” she asked impatiently. “Gary has a point. Are you just going to stand there or are you going to answer his questions?”
Gary fleetingly wondered if Haru was listening to someone else, if someone else was pulling his strings and feeding him information to give Gary and Elena. It wasn’t a thought that Gary appreciated, and it made his anger boil over again, like a volcano that continued to erupt.
“Why did you bring Elena here?” Gary demanded. “Why have you been keeping such a close eye on me and my friends? Why can’t you just get your work done and only update me when you have something positive to say? Or is that because there never is any positive progress made, so you wouldn’t ever have anything to say? Is that it?”
“Why not bring me?” Elena snapped, turning on Gary. “Oh, yes, he could’ve considered Nicoletta and then rejected that notion as out of hand. Get it? Hand?”
Gary winced. “That was uncalled for,” he said.
“Was it? Seriously, Gary, do you remember what happened during that last battle? She felt as if she were on fire. Real fire. She’s clearly afraid of fire. Was she burned as a girl?”
Elena paused and whirled on Haru. Gary swallowed hard. Elena was right. Nicoletta was deathly afraid of fire, and one of her hands had been burned as a young girl.
“Nicoletta’s fear is fire,” Elena said slowly, “and that’s her ability, her superpower. Olivia’s main fear is heights, and she can fly. Why is the game forcing the players to face their biggest fear? How do you know so much about us?”
Haru held up his hands. “Ah, well, you are correct, Elena. We did consider the three of you girls as possible ones to enter the game, and we thought you the strongest and most mentally capable of withstanding the world of the game. As you mentioned, Olivia’s fear and her power and then Nicoletta and hers, they both are at a mismatch, shall we say. So, you were—”
“How did you know the fears?” Elena demanded.
“Don’t worry,” Gary said. “He’ll blame it on the quiz or say it’s a coincidence. You can’t ever get anything out of this guy. I swear, he’s practicing already.”
“Practicing for what?”
“For a lawyer,” Gary spat out. “Ever since I threatened him with a lawsuit, he’s been like this. He’s robotic. He doesn’t give a shit about us or how much we know about the workings behind the curtain. We’re just the puppets, and our strings are all coiled up, and he’s just gonna watch us struggle until we chock on the strings and die. Is that it, Haru? You and your buddy developer friends even bothering to try to get us out? Or not? Just watching us play like it’s some kind of sick reality TV show? How warped are you, buddy?”
“Allow me to assure you of several points,” Haru said calmly. “The first being that we do want you all to come out of the game as swiftly as possible. Not because of fear of being sued. No. Your safety is our number one concern.”
Gary snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
“Number two,” Haru continued, ignoring Gary, “we want you all out of the game but it must be safe. We cannot risk having you yanked out of the game only to be killed or not entirely come out or for your minds to be snapped. It is a delicate process, and we will figure out every point, every detail. It will happen.”
“Before we die of old age?” Elena asked bitterly.
Gary winced. She sounded so angry and upset now. Earlier, she had seemed almost happy to be here.
How quickly that changed. She’s going to grow to resent me. I just know it. She’ll hate me, and everything we just experienced will never happen again. It’s not that I’ll miss the sex, as amazing as it was. I’ll miss her. Things won’t ever be the same again, and I don’t want to handle that.
But he might have to. The choice might be made for him, and he fucking hated that.
“Third of all,” Haru said, “we might not be able to remove you two as of yet, well, actually allow me to rephrase. We cannot remove you from the game to the real world, but we have devolved a work around to keep you safe from the player known as Smaug.”
“Say his name,” Gary challenged. “Samuel August.”
“Fine. Yes. The man known as Samuel August—”
“No,” Gary said firmly, angrily. “Samuel August. The man who murdered his mother when he was just a teenager. The man who terrorized women before he even entered the game. The mad scientist, the genius who got himself into the game as a means to avoid going to jail. Him. How exactly are you going to keep us safe from him?”
“As I was trying to say, we have developed a work around to keep you both safe from him.”
“And it is?” Elena asked impatiently.
“If either of you or both of you would allow me to speak, I could have told you already.” Haru glowered at them each in turn before continuing, “We have developed a new issue of the game.”
“Issue?” Gary repeated, confused.
“Think of it as an expansion pack for the game,” Haru explained. “You will still be in Superheroes Online, but not here, not in this part of it
.”
“How can you get us from this part of the game to the expansion pack?” Elena asked.
“No, how can you get us from here to there but not back home?” Gary asked.
“From one part of a computer program to another is relatively simple,” Haru said. “To bring to the real world? That is another matter entirely.”
“But a feasible matter, right?” Elena asked.
“Precisely. Once we’ve run more tests, I am certain you both will be home again, and…” Haru glanced at Gary. “Samuel August as well.”
“I don’t know,” Gary muttered. “I don’t want to have to fight new supervillains. And no more dragons either. I’m kinda over that to be honest.”
“Precisely so.” Haru grinned. “The developers and I have assumed that, which is why the issue will be Vampire War.”
“Vampires?” Elena asked. “You mean fangs and blood and super strength?”
“And superspeed,” Haru said, nodding. “We think they will make for the perfect enemy for those with powers such as yourselves.”
Gary swallowed hard. “You’ll make this issue available to the public, won’t you?”
“Well…” Haru hedged. “Do not worry about that. We have not decided if we will or when. For now, it will only be the two of you.”
“And the vampires,” Gary said dryly.
“Of course, and the vampires.” Haru glared at him as if Gary was ignorant.
Gary gulped. Maybe vampires weren’t going to be the best thing to face after all.
Chapter Three
Elena shook her head as she began to pace, her steps more like stomps, and the ground shook each time her foot touched the floor.
“I hate vampires,” she declared.
“Vampires are not for everyone,” Haru agreed, “but we felt—”
“You should have asked us what we felt,” Elena hissed. “We’re the ones who are going to have to face the damn things, not you. We’re the ones risking our lives, not you!”
“You agreed—”
“You also said you would be able to get us out!” Elena shouted. “Instead, we’re going to be stuck playing another issue of your game, only this time, instead of supervillains, we’ll be fighting blood-sucking vampires. Do you want to be bitten by a vampire?”