They put you through seduction training? Did you take off your clothes in front of men so you learned how to strip slow and show off your body? Is that what you do, Cayenne? You seduce them before you kill them?
Pepper, Wyatt’s wife had been trained to seduce a man and then assassinate him with one venomous bite. She hadn’t cooperated, and she’d landed in the swamp, in the very building he resided in, when there was a crematory set up to get rid of the bodies scheduled for termination.
The idea of Cayenne being taught to use her looks, her voice, her body to please a man, to entice him so she could bite him, paralyze him or kill him, sickened him.
Sickened
him. He shoved the carton of milk back in the refrigerator and slammed the door shut. She would have been taught by male instructors how to please a man, the best way to seduce him. She’d pressed her body close to his. Kissed him. She was a dynamite kisser. Fourth of July. Fireworks exploding. A taking-a-man-to-heaven kind of kisser. He could still taste her in his mouth. He still had the scent of her in his lungs. He knew neither would ever go away. He pushed away the conversation they’d had about her training. About her being in a cell. She was beautiful. Sexy. Deadly.
Why would you ask me that?
There was hurt in her voice. One small note. He almost missed it.
You kissed me, Cayenne. You kissed me, and I lost a part of myself to you.
He had lost much more than he thought when he kissed her. He’d never felt so exposed before in his life. Need moved through him. Hunger. There was no way to stop it, and the idea of being out of control when he controlled his entire world hit him hard.
I thought you were as into me as I was into you, but then you bit me. Paralyzed me. Left me out in the swamp as alligator bait. All along, while you were kissing me and I was lost in you, you were planning to paralyze me and leave me there in the mud.
Okay, maybe she hadn’t done that. She’d asked him and he’d told her Wyatt was close. But he wasn’t anything special to her. She watched over the Comeaux brothers as well. Maybe before he’d arrived she’d been pressing her body up against one of them. He could hear himself ranting like a jealous idiot, but that pressure inside his chest wouldn’t let him stop.
You know I didn’t do that,
she protested, the hurt increasing in her voice.
I was into you. I lost a part of myself there as well.
That small stream of orange-red lava continued to slip through the ice.
I’ll just bet you did, right before you paralyzed me. You’re talking about sleeping nude and sitting downstairs right within my reach without a stitch on, putting that image in my head. Seriously? That’s not seduction?
No!
She sounded adamant. And maybe close to tears. The hurt was definitely there.
You asked me questions. I have no reason to be deceptive. I just answered you. Was that wrong? Should I have lied? What difference does it make if I wear clothes to bed or sleep without them? Or lounge around in my own space without them? How is that seduction?
He nearly groaned. How was it not? Her voice rang with truth, but along with that honesty was the soft velvet note that brushed a man’s skin and wrapped around his cock like a tight fist. Squeezing. Stroking. Caressing. His cock responded to that. It was impossible to maintain control.
You flirted with Pascal and Blaise. It was no wonder they thought they were going to score the way you were carrying on.
There was another long silence. He felt her frown just as if he was standing in front of her. He knew she had a habit of licking her full bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. He’d seen her do it in the bar when she was sitting there at his table. The only real sign of nerves other than when her fingers twisted together beneath the table. He knew she was doing that right at that moment.
Heat rushed through his veins and blood pooled low and wicked. His erection was painful. Huge. Worse than when he was a fucking teenager. It was impossible to walk around with an enormous hard-on. Cold showers weren’t going to take it away. He needed Cayenne. Really needed her.
I don’t flirt. I wouldn’t even know how to flirt. I haven’t been around all that many people.
What the hell was that in the bar?
The edge to his voice was now in his mind. He couldn’t take a step so he didn’t try. He opened the front of his jeans to give himself a little relief. The material couldn’t stretch that much. His hand circled his cock, fist closing tight. Why the fuck couldn’t he stop being such a bastard? Why were images of her with other men wreaking havoc with his brain?
I think I’m angrier at you over that, putting yourself on display to those two morons, than you betraying me by leading me on with that kiss and then paralyzing me.
He wasn’t angry with her for biting him. He actually understood that. She’d been terrified. A part of her was not only protecting herself, but she thought she was protecting him. She could have killed all three men, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t have left them lying there for any wild animal to find. She had stayed to watch over them. Every time he thought about her sandwiched between the Comeaux brothers there at the bar with the sound of her laughter floating back to him, now
that
made him angry.
I had to find a way to survive in a world I was totally unfamiliar with. I needed money for food. I needed clothes. I followed various women and observed them and then I acted the way they acted. They appeared friendly. Most were married. When they talked to their friends they laughed. I laughed at the things they said even though, to me, it wasn’t funny. I tested them to see what kind of men they were. But I wasn’t flirting.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She was crying. Again.
He’d
made her cry. He’d wanted to hurt her because sitting in that damn bar watching her with those two losers, two of the worst men in the swamp, had hurt him. He acknowledged that now. He had to. He had to come to terms that she gotten under his skin.
You fucking know you belong to me, Cayenne, so tell me why we’re doing this dance. I don’t want you going to a bar and standing close to other men, showing them your body. Letting them touch you.
I didn’t let them touch me,
she objected.
I didn’t see his hand on your ass
–
the beautiful ass that, by the way, belongs to me? I didn’t see that? Is that what you’re telling me?
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I’ll just bet you don’t. My cock is as hard as a rock. But then you know that, don’t you? You make it that way. You sit there naked and tease me with your voice, knowing you shouldn’t have allowed that man to touch you like that, not ever. The only man who touches you is me. The only man who kisses that mouth is me. And I’m the only man who is going to be inside of you. So stop fucking around. You need money, I left a cache in the kitchen for you along with plenty of food. Make a list of what you need and I’ll bring it home. Figure this out soon, lady, or you’re going to find I don’t have patience for this dance and I’m going to be coming after you.
I don’t understand half of what you’re saying to me.
You understand me. You’re in my head. You know what I want. You know what we’re going to be doing together. I spell it out every time you’re in my mind. I want you in my bed. I want you as my partner, including in the lab, because after that peanut comment I know damn well you’ll be an asset there. You fucking gave yourself to me four nights ago, and I’ll be damned if you take yourself away.
You didn’t come.
Her voice broke.
He knew he was being a bastard, but he still couldn’t get that image of her sandwiched between Pascal and Blaise out of his mind. He couldn’t push aside the black jealousy, because if he did, he’d have to face the reason. The real reason he was angry with her. He set his jaw stubbornly. He’d held her. Comforted her. She’d
given
herself to him and there was no going back, he wasn’t allowing that.
I want your mouth on my cock and I want to be buried balls-deep inside of you. I want to tie you up and take my time, making you scream with pleasure. I like playing, baby, and I want to spend the rest of my life knowing you’ll let me do that. That you’ll enjoy it. Not just enjoy it, but crave it. I want you thinking about me day and night, waiting for my touch. For my cock. For anything I want to do to you.
There was another long silence. He thought he’d lost her. He made it back to the master bedroom, every step painful. He was making his erection worse with every image rising in his mind. He wanted her to know what kind of man he was, what he would demand of her in the bedroom. The kind of complete surrender he would expect. The kind of partner she would be for him.
Cayenne drew her knees up, making herself very small in the chair she nestled in. Trap was angry with her, when he should have been apologizing, or at least comforting her. Instead, he acted as though she was a seductress and had betrayed him in some way. That wasn’t logical and it didn’t make sense. She’d had four months to study him. He was never out of control. He was often rude to people – even his teammates – but he wasn’t out of control.
She pushed aside the things he’d said to her and tried to move deeper into his mind. He hid things from himself. Not things. Emotions. He was jealous, but he used jealousy to cover something else, something much deeper. She was under his skin, there was no doubt about it. His mind was consumed with thoughts of her. Images, most erotic, but many of just holding her. It had meant a lot to him, comforting her the way he had. That she’d come to him.
Trap wasn’t used to feeling vulnerable. She was. He always was in control. She’d been powerless in her cell, at the mercy of others. He wasn’t equipped to feel the force of their combined pull. All along, because he knew about families and relationships, because he’d lived in the world and she hadn’t, she thought he had the upper hand. She realized he didn’t. He cared for her.
Really
cared for her. She mattered to him. He seemed to be experiencing that for the first time, and it didn’t sit well with him.
She rubbed her chin along the top of her knees trying to figure out what to do. Trap was a difficult, complicated man. Granted, she didn’t know about relationships, but she could feel how much he wanted her. Not just wanted, although there was a part of him that wished that what he felt for her was just physical, but it wasn’t. She knew that. She was in his mind and she caught glimpses of his vulnerability. He felt exposed. Raw.
Afraid.
Of what she wasn’t certain, but to protect himself, he allowed jealousy to rule.
The tip of her tongue moistened her bottom lip. For the first time in her life, she knew she could make a decision that was hers alone. Trap couldn’t force her to do anything. It was her choice to stay with him or to go. It was her choice to figure out what bothered him so much that a man as strong as he was couldn’t face it, or to walk away from him.
The thing was, she wanted him to belong to her. If that meant it would take some work on her part to understand him, she was going to do it. She didn’t sense cruelty in him the way she had in others. He was a man of strength, but he didn’t hurt others on purpose. He actually was quite kind in his heart, and that made him vulnerable. He hid that kindness, didn’t want anyone to see it, but she did.
Trap Dawkins was going to be her choice. She was going to learn how to have a relationship from him. She was going to learn how best to please him. And she was going to learn how to handle things when he lost his mind and struck out using one emotion to cover another. Because that was
her
choice. She found herself smiling, feeling empowered. Determined. Her man was going to teach her things about sex, but again, on her terms. He needed to learn who she was, just as she had to figure him out.
Trap stripped and headed for the shower. The cool water did nothing to cool his body or the images running around in his head. He took care of his cock, but it didn’t seem to help. In the end he lay in his bed – the bed that was finally big enough to accommodate his size – and stared up at the ceiling. He had a fan, but he didn’t use it. The room was cool enough, his body temperature was just too high because the molten lava still moved slow and hot through his veins.
He’d never wanted a woman the way he did Cayenne. The need was sharp and terrible. His cock refused to soften. His body refused to relax. He couldn’t get the images of her wrapping her lips around him and taking him in her mouth out of his head.
He fisted his shaft with his hand, made small circles, pumped, but he did so almost absently. The hand job in the shower hadn’t worked, so he knew he was in for a long night and he was damned tired. He’d been up for days. He let his lashes drift down and almost immediately smelled her unique fragrance. He stayed still, forcing himself to breath evenly. She was in the room with him. Right there. Close. Close enough to draw the scent of her deep.
He kept his hand moving. Slow. Lazy. A slide. A jerk. Knowing she was watching him. Needing her to watch. Excitement moved through him, a wave of heat. Very slowly he opened his eyes, and there she was. His breath caught in his throat. She was above him, clinging to the ceiling with her hands and toes, body spread out, naked. Her ass was beautiful. The slope of her back, the curve of her hips and the small, tucked-in waist gleamed. Her hair spilled in a dark cloud around her shoulders and cascaded in waves like a dark waterfall flowing from the ceiling. Her green eyes were on his fist. His cock. Watching. Fascinated. Hungry.
Before he could move, silken threads shot out and wrapped his upper body into a snug cocoon. Tying him. Preventing his arms from moving. He tested the silken strands, knowing that spiderwebs woven like this could be stronger than Kevlar. There was no breaking those threads. He lay there, seemingly helpless. At her mercy.