Page 12 of The Fire Went Wild
He answers in what is possibly the most irritating manner I could imagine.
“Whom.”
“What?” I want to kill him. I want to wrap the chain around his throat and kill him.
“Not allowed by whom,” he says.
I burst into disbelieving, hysterical laughter. He’s dead serious. “Is that why you kidnapped me?” I asked. “Because you’re a fucking grammar Nazi?”
Irritation flashes across his face. “I told you why I kidnapped you,” he says. “I can’t let you go, and I can’t kill you, so you’re going to stay here until I decide what to do with you.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He glares at me.
“Not allowed bywhom?”I can hear the mocking tone in my voice, and part of me knows is this so, so stupid, that I’m taunting what is apparently a psychotic killer. Who the hell knows what he’s going to do to me?
Or maybe that’s making me stupidly brave. The fact that I have nothing to lose.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says flatly. “Now, please be quiet.” He turns to leave, then stops and says over his shoulder, “There’s a chamber pot under the bed if you need to use the bathroom.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I can’t stand it anymore. Adrenaline surges through me, and I launch myself at the bed, bouncing off the old creaking mattress and slamming toward him, only for my foot to be jerked backward by the chain. I topple forward, and the piece of shit steps up and catches me, sliding his arms under my arms before I can fall on my face.
“Careful,” he says mockingly. “You’re still chained up.”
I kick at him, trying to squarely slam my shin up against his balls. It doesn’t work; he catches my leg with his thighs, pinning me into place. As he leans over me, his silky black hair falls like a curtain and tickles my skin. His eyes bore down into mine, intense and heavy.
If this were literally any other situation, I’d feel like I was in the process of being seduced.
“There’s no point in trying any of that,” he says smoothly. “I’ll win.”
I try to wrench my leg away from where it’s clamped between his distressingly strong thigh muscles, but he just squeezesit harder and jerks my torso up close to him. His lips are dangerously close to mine. His eyes blaze.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say.
“I wasn’t going to do anything.”
I swear his voice sounds ragged, though. A little desperate.
He eases me down so I’m lying on my back, my leg still clamped between his thighs. Then he jumps away from me, light and nimble. I kick at him, but it’s pointless. He’s already several paces away.
“Are you going to be quiet?” he asks me.
“No.” I sit up, moving cautiously, never taking my eyes off him.
Jaxon frowns. “Why are you being so difficult?”
I laugh. He can’t be this clueless, can he? To answer, I shake my left leg so the chain rattles and scrapes against the floor.
Jaxon sighs. “You don’t have a choice.”
“Well, you do.”
His bright blue eyes narrow. “Actually,” he says, “I don’t.”
When he says this, his expression is dark and dangerous and cold, and fear squirms through me again, quieting my urge to talk back to him. I’m fucking lucky, actually, that he’s crazy and decided he can’t kill me. I’d be luckier if he decided to let me go, but still. I should work with what I have.
We glare at each other.