Page 71 of Dirty Hot Valentine
Why was she nervous all of a sudden? She’d been badgering me about going out, and now that I said yes, she didn’t want me to go. Maybe after the vandalism she was scared or doesn’t want whoever she was going out with to see me with her. Or see me at all. Who would blame her? I was a walking hazard now.
“You know what? I changed my mind. I feel really tired.” I started to my room.
“Cameron, don’t get mad at me. I have a feeling you’ll be happier here tonight.”
What did that even mean? I glanced at her over my shoulder, noticing the wiggly dance she did when she was excited and the smile she was trying to conceal.
“What are you hiding from me, Ash?”
She did an invisible zip over her mouth. “Sorry. You’ll know in a few minutes.” Then she bolted outside.
I stood there for a few seconds. What the hell just happened?
What are you up to, you crazy thing?I laughed to myself and sat on the couch, something lumpy under my butt. I grabbed it and saw it was Ashley’s purse. She forgot it while she literally ran to God-knew where.
She probably forgot to lock the door, too. I didn’t hear the keys, which were most likely in her purse.
I rose to my feet and ambled to check. Before my hand reached the knob, the door banged my forehead violently, knocking me down on the floor.
“What the fuck?” I gasped, startled. As I looked up, a huge man in a black ski mask towered over me.
His gloved hands grabbed me from my shirt and lifted me in the air. My eyes bulged in panic, my mind racing blank. I was too confused and stunned to understand what the hell was going on.
He pinned me to the wall with one hand around my neck and kicked the door shut. Then he slapped me.
Each blow of the back of his hand whipped my head so fast my vision was compromised. But the pain and the taste of blood in my mouth snapped me out of my shock.
I began to register little pieces of information about that goon. He was covered in black leather and denim from head to toe. His eyes were the only things I could see. Hazel. Oddly familiar.
I saw a hazy glimpse of a skull tattoo on the little area on his wrist exposed when his hand clenched into a punching fist. Could he be a Night Skull?
My jaws clicked at the first punch. It banged right through my head like a dinner gong. One more of these, and I’d pass out. Time to do something. Anything.
My limbs moved all at once, flailing in the air, hitting whatever part of him they reached. It distracted him for a second that his grip around my neck loosened, allowing me more air, and I gathered all my strength to shoot my knee up, swift and hard.
He grunted as it made contact with his balls and let me fall off his grasp. “Bitch!”
That voice. That grunt. I knew it.
Oh my God.
That was Rush.
I crawled away from him as fast as I could, my mind too clouded to figure out why Dusty’s VP would beat me up. Didn’t Dusty send him for my protection? Was Rush trying to kidnap me this afternoon all along?
It doesn’t matter now!Adrenaline and self-preservation screamed at me. I clutched at the doorknob with both hands, lifting myself up to escape. Trying to overpower a man like Rush in a fight was an act of madness.
His heavy hands fell on my shoulders and yanked me across the room. My back crushed against the cold surface of the coffee table. The sharp edges poked me before I heard the glass shatter and stab me like a million pins at once.
I screamed. Then I did it again much louder, crying for help, realizing it was an option I was too shocked to utilize from the start.
“Shut the fuck up.” He swooped down on me. More blows rained on my face. My eyes swelled, almost closing. Then he got something out of his pocket and shoved it in my mouth. “You’re making this way too hard than it should be.”
The rubber taste and the stretch of my jaws and cheeks as he tied something behind my head confirmed that was a ball gag in my mouth. My screams came out muffled as I pounded his chest with my fists, my knee aiming for another shot at his nuts.
He tried to pin me down as he straddled my hips, but I swiftly pushed myself backwards and put all my force to roll over on my stomach. I wanted to get up and make a run for the door, but his fingers tangled in my hair, pulling it hard.
“Where the fuck you think you’re going?” he growled, his grip tight in my hair, shaking my whole body with his yanks. “You’re mine now, bitch.”
