Page 15 of No, You Hang Up

He clicks his tongue in approval as he shoves me. Then with one arm, he whirls me around, forcing my calves to hit my bed before he helps me all the way down.

“Yeah, little bunny, I’ve got a little extra going on up there.” He dodges my next kick and falls down onto the bed on his knees.

Immediately, I jerk away from him to create space between us. I scoot backward, looking and feeling like a crab, until my back hits the wall over my pillows. My eyes dart toward the still open door of my room, which just sits there and mocks me.

“Seems like this is a bit of an overreaction,” I snap at him, my heart racing. I swear it’s looking for a way out just as much as my brain is, and my chest feels tight around my organs. My fingers curl in the blankets, and I vow to start sleeping with a knife under my pillow if I survive this.

God, I had better survive this…even though the odds aren’t looking so great. But I shove those thoughts away the moment he reaches out, gripping my ankle in one gloved hand.

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, jerking me down the bed. It’s so easy for him, like I’m a doll instead of a fully grown adult, and I can’t stop the yelp of surprise as I’m manhandled closer to him. “But if I recall, you called me. You wanted me to answer.”

“Mads called you,” I breathe. I’m unsure why I say it, and I give a moment for an internal cringe at throwing my friend under the bus. Though, judging by this, she’s not the one in danger from him. Not considering the way he spoke to her on the phone, or the way he’s holding me, with his attention fixated on me from behind the mask.

“Your friend,” he agrees. “And how’d she get my number, Kai?” I shudder when he says my name, though surprises me with how he’s actually respecting what I said aboutKaira. “I’m not exactly in the phonebook.”

I can’t help rolling my eyes and I find I’m surprisingly calm for someone who’s about to get murdered. I jerk away from him again, my free foot moving to attempt to slam my heel into his shoulder. But he just dodges it, and his other hand slides over my thigh before heyanks.

In a dizzying second, he has my knee over his shoulder and my other foot is braced to his chest, with my knee bent enough to protest. One of his thighs is shoved between both of mine at a weird angle, and all I can really seem to do is squirm and reach for him.

“Fuck you,” I snarl, voice snappy and nervous. I know he’s going to reach for his knife.He’s going to grab the knife and plunge it into my chest. He’ll rip and tear and?—

“Uh, yeah,” the man scoffs, the mask tilting toward my face. “That would be the plan, little bunny.”

“…What?” I swear I’m hearing wrong. Maybe my brain is making things up and causing hallucinations to keep me from recognizing what he’s actually saying.

Maybe he’s telling me how he’ll carve me up and feed me to the local hog population.

“What?” He tilts his mask first one way, then the other, as he leans over me until I feel like he’s trying to bend me in two. His thigh presses harder between mine, causing my breath to catch in my throat. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why would I go to all the trouble of coming here and making sure you can’t call for help if I’m just going to kill you?”

He sounds…affronted.

“Why would I—” Before he can continue his villainous monologue I lunge upward, my spine screaming to remind me I’m not one of those comic book women who clearly have no internal organs with the way their backs bend. My hands come up and I try to shove him back, hoping maybe I can pry one of his hands off my leg for leverage.

Instead, somehow, my hand clips his mask. My fingers twist, finding his hood, and I shove it back, which causes his chin to tilt up as well.

The mask falls backward and lands with a barely audible sound on my mattress just as a low groan leaves him.

I can’t see his face from where I am. It’s too much of an angle with him still staring at my ceiling. All I can see is sun-kissed tan skin and a sharp jawline. His hair is dark, almost black, and my first glance of him reminds me just hownormalthe monster with the knife can be.

“To be clear…” The man grabs my wrists in his hands and leans forward to slam them down over my head. He positions himself over me, with both of my legs now on the bed and my knees clenched around his thigh.

I won’t tremble.

I’ve already lost the battle by staring at him, but I won’ttremble.

The man grins, his mouth full and bearing a small scar nicking the line of his top lip. His hair is just as dark as I’d thought, with only a few highlights of brown bleached by the sun. It’s pushed back like he’s constantly running his hand through it, and his warm brown eyes dance with amusement. “To be clear,” he says again. “I was going to take it off, little bunny. We just weren’t there yet. You’re skipping steps, and if you don’t play by my rules, I’m going to have to start punishing you for not playing the game properly.”

“Fuck you,” I breathe, without a lot of conviction in my words. It’s a reflex, though his eyes darken and his full lips quirk into a meaner smirk.

“Like I said, Kai.” He shoves his knee more tightly against me, causing me to yelp in indignant surprise. “That’s been the plan all along. You just need to stop trying to rush things.”

My back arches as I jerk away from him, and I can’t stop taking in the details of his stupidly gorgeous face while he pins me to the bed. “Don’t move your fucking leg, asshole,” I hiss, feeling him grind his thigh between mine. But he does anyway, his grin harsh, and I gasp as I’m forced to arch away from him. “I said?—”

“Huxley,” he interrupts, and for a moment I have no idea what he’s said. “And yeah, Kai, I heard you. But if you’re going to call me anything, you can use my name.”

“That’s a stupid name,” I huff after a moment, twisting my hands in his grip. “Who the fuck names their kidHuxley?”

“Probably the same kind of parents that name a kidKaira,” he’s quick to respond. “And like you, I’ve got a nickname. You can call me Huxley, or”—he splays the fingers of his free hand against my stomach and curls them against my skin—“you can call me Hux. I’m not uptight enough to care which you’d rather use, lovely girl.”

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