Page 9 of Outbreak (Revolution X #1)
CHAPTER 8
Rue
T his motherfucker is playing with me. I can’t see him, but I feel him watching me in the dark, lying in wait, biding his time for me to let my guard down.
Not today, asshole.
Shaking off the feeling of his eyes on me, I decide to make a run for it. My feet hit the pavement, but before I can even gain any speed, arms band around my stomach, pulling me back into the darkness of the woods.
“You don’t listen for shit, you know that?” He grits out in my ear. “I told you not to run.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you to kidnap me, fuck face!” Irritation makes my tone sarcastically snappy, but fuck him. “I’m sorry… Did I make it too inconvenient for you?”
“That mouth is going to get you into trouble, brat. Do I need to stuff it for you?” His threat does things to me it has no business doing.
I don’t know if he meant it to be dirty, but given my history with assholes who can’t keep their hands to themselves, I’d say he meant it exactly how I think he did. However, unlike the previously mentioned assholes, his threat makes me clench my thighs. There’s just something about this man that my body responds to in all the wrong ways. He might as well be slapping me in the face with all his red flags, but all my body sees is neon green.
Choosing to ignore my body, because that bitch is psycho , I kick my short legs back, trying to connect with some part of him—preferably his balls—but I’ll take what I can get.
“Ah-ah-ah, none of that,” he mocks, twisting me with embarrassing ease and swinging me over his shoulder.
“Hey! I’m not a rag-doll you can just throw around!” I’m aware I sound like a petulant child, but who does this fucker think he is? Only he ignores me, which infuriates me more. “Hey, asshole! Put me down.”
A sharp sting explodes on my ass as he smacks me. “Do I need to drug you again, or do you think you can behave back to the truck?”
He’s giving me a choice? How fucking considerate. But as much as I want to tell him what I really think, I can’t defend myself if I’m unconscious. So I choke down my pride and sarcasm like a bitter pill and relent. Kinda. “Fine. I’ll behave. But put me the fuck down.”
To my surprise, my boots hit the ground with a gentle thud, and I stumble on the uneven roots coming out of the ground. His hands are steady around my waist.
Big hands. I wonder what else is big on him?
No! Stop it! Bad Rue!
Before I can finish mentally scolding my inner slut, my back hits a big tree trunk, and he has his previously mentioned big hand wrapped around my throat.
“This is how this is going to go. You’re going to walk, nice and easy, back to the truck. If you make a scene at all, I’ll be forced to deal with witnesses. I don’t want to have to do that, but I don’t mind either. That’s up to you. So what’s it going to be?” His fingers slightly flex on my throat, and I get the feeling he’s holding back from doing what he really wants to do.
“You killed that man back there, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t a man. Now… walk.” He brushes off my question, confusing me more. I just can’t get a solid read on this man. What the fuck does he want with me? For some reason, my survival instincts are telling me to shut my mouth and pay attention, so that’s what I do.
I walk beside him out of the woods and through the parking lot. When we reach the truck, my eyes dart to a car that’s now parked at the pump across from us. A young man, maybe 20 years old, is pumping his gas. He bobs his head to music I can’t hear coming from his headphones as he scrolls on his phone. He is oblivious to us and the world around him as the stranger walks me to the passenger side. When my view of him finally disappears behind the cab of the truck, I look at my masked ‘friend’. His head is cocked to the side, and if I could see his expression, I imagine it isn’t very amused.
“What!?” I ask innocently. I’m so full of shit it might as well be coming out of my ears, but… again, fuck him.
“Get in the truck, Rue,” he growls at me, low and menacing, and it does something it shouldn’t to my lady bits.
Wait… He knows my name.
He must see the realization on my face because he doesn’t wait for me to comply with his command before he opens the door and picks me up like a toddler, sitting me on the seat and buckling me in. Then he leans over me, opening the center console and pulling out a pair of handcuffs.
“W-wait! What are you doing?” I stutter, jerking my hands away from him. He just steps up on the side rail and grabs them anyway, snapping one of the links around my right wrist.
“You lie about as good as you listen. I’m just taking some extra precautions to keep you where I need you,” he says, as though he’s done with this conversation and my antics. Good. Because I’ve had enough, too.
“Oh, I’m sorry—did you not do your research on me before you decided to kidnap me!? If you wanted a docile little bitch, you should have taken someone else. Or better yet, get a fucking dog. Then you can train them to be obedient and follow you around like you seem so interested in. You picked the wrong fucking one, asshole. Clearly, you don’t know me at all.”
By the time I’m done, I’m seething, and he’s just staring at me. I still can’t see his eyes, but by the way he tilts his head to the side, I can feel the smirk beneath his stupid, sexy mask! Then my rage dials to a hundred when the motherfucker chuckles at me.
Fucking. Chuckles.
“I know everything about you, Rue Monroe.”
With that, he locks the other link to the dash handle I was tied to before, steps back down to the pavement, and slams the door shut.