She felt sick. She bunched her fingers in Trap’s shirt with one hand and shoved her fingers into his back pocket with the other.
“You’re trembling, baby,” he said softly. “We’re not going into battle.”
“People are staring at us,” she pointed out.
“You’ll get used to it, Cayenne,” he said, his stride even. He didn’t look down at her, but he kept his arm tight around her, sheltering her with his body as much as possible.
“Why do we need your friends with us?” she asked.
“We’ve both got enemies,” he said tersely.
She flinched at his tone. Ducked her head. Clearly he didn’t want to talk. She hadn’t wanted to come, and now he seemed a completely different man, his face an expressionless mask and his answers to any questions abrupt to the point of rudeness.
She sighed. “We don’t have to do this, Trap. Really. I don’t mind the shoes.” She was wearing a pair of Wyatt’s sister-in-law’s jeans. She had to roll them up and they were a little snug through the hips and very loose around her waist. The top was pretty but again, tight across her breasts and too long for her. She didn’t care what she was wearing, but walking even the short distance from the car to the shop she observed other women and they certainly were put together a lot better than she was.
“We have to do this.” His eyes didn’t meet hers, but instead, scanned the buildings and the rooftops above them.
Cayenne realized that he had her body tucked close to his in order to hide her face from a man across from them who had a camera. He was shielding her.
Shielding
her. From a camera. She also knew he hadn’t brought Gino and Draden and any other members of the team to New Orleans because of a camera. That meant he was expecting trouble. She was not the type of woman to cower from danger. She might not like going out in public because she didn’t like making mistakes and she hadn’t had the time to study others around her to see what they did, but she refused to have Trap shoulder the danger.
She straightened her shoulders, composed her face and let go of the death grip she had on his shirt. If they needed Gino and Draden with them, it was probably for a reason. She inhaled sharply. She didn’t have the best vision, that was true, but she had a really good sense of smell. The air brought information to the tiny, microscopic hairs on her body, and her brain processed data quickly.
There were several people on the street in spite of the fact that it was closing in on four thirty. She realized that Trap had timed their shopping spree for the end of the shopping hours in order to make certain the sun would begin to go down by the time they finished. She recognized more than Draden’s and Gino’s scents. Malichai was close with his brother Mordichai, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Ezekiel was on a roof across from them, probably with a sniper rifle. Trap was definitely expecting trouble.
“Tell me,” she murmured. “And don’t bother with explaining that you’re the man and I’m the woman. I want to know what you think we’re going to run into.”
His eyes, glacier cold, shifted to her face. His arm tightened around her body, clamping her to his side, and one big hand cupped her face, pressing her head into him. He never missed a stride. Then his eyes were gone and he continued walking toward the row of shops.
You know better than to fuck up a team mission. You may have been trained as an assassin working alone, but Whitney would never neglect your training to that extent.
I had no idea you were running a mission,
Cayenne pointed out.
Because you didn’t mention it. I thought we were going to shop for shoes.
He kept his hand on the side of her head, pressing her face into his side.
You don’t face that camera. You know it’s there, don’t pretend you haven’t seen it.
You’re worried about a camera?
Among other things. Just keep walking and acting like we’re out on a date. We’re going shopping for shoes.
She was silent. His voice was brusque, almost to the point of rudeness. There was no emotion. No soft whisper of “baby,” no connection of any kind. Trap had shut down emotionally. She couldn’t decide between hurt and anger at him. Since hurt was an alien emotion and one she didn’t know what to do with, she settled for anger.
I may know better than to fuck up a team mission, but unless I’m told there is a mission, I can’t possibly know that’s what I’m doing by asking for information. And just so you know, I’m not hiding from cameras. If they get a picture of me, what’s the difference? Whitney knows where I am. You wouldn’t have brought an entire team in to prevent somebody from taking my picture. The termination order is still out on me. That’s why the team is in place, not for some man with a camera who is not military.
Nice to know you have a brain. Try looking up at me and smiling.
Cayenne resisted the urge to just stop right there in the middle of the sidewalk.
Try looking down at me and smiling. You keep this up and I’ll be sinking my teeth into your side and you’ll go down like a ton of bricks.
She was looking up at his face, and his lips twitched – the beginnings of a smile – but he got it under control and kept moving both of them until they were at the door of a shoe shop, Gino and Draden closing in behind them. Close. So close she could feel them almost against their backs. They didn’t brush up against her, but still, she didn’t like their close proximity. She felt trapped. Icy fingers slid down her spine and she felt the venom rising in reaction.
Trap opened the door to the boutique, took her through, and the instant they were inside, she felt the coiled tension in him ease.
Stay away from the windows. Keep to the interior of the shop.
At last. Trap wanted to let out his breath and all but pushed Cayenne into the store. This was supposed to be his surprise for her. Shopping. Teaching her the thing women seemed to love. He’d wanted to give her that gift. Instead, he was giving her fucking hell. He’d planned to take two bodyguards, Gino and Draden – not for him – but for Cayenne. He knew there was a possibility of an enemy waiting for them. He’d known there was a possibility of a photographer as well. It wasn’t as though the leeches didn’t ferret out his whereabouts every moment of the day. Still, he thought he could control the situation enough to give his woman a great experience.
Ezekiel had insisted he go into town ahead of them and do recon. He had been assisting Cayenne into the vehicle when word came that a full assassination team seemed to be waiting in town for her to show.
He hadn’t been prepared for the emotions choking him. Making it so he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t use his fucking brain. She’d done that to him. She’d shut down his ability to function when she was in danger. That black hole inside him, always at the edge of his vision, yawned wider, threatening to consume him. He was falling in before he knew it.
He’d known fear and anger when his father had shot Dru. He’d known fear when his aunt had been kidnapped and rage when she’d been thrown at his door like so much garbage. He hadn’t known terror. He’d had four months of thinking about her night and day and now Cayenne was so far under his skin there was no getting her out and no surviving if something happened to her.
He didn’t want her part of the team as the others insisted. He didn’t want to take her into town and set her up as the bait so they could destroy Whitney’s supersoldiers. He wanted to lock her away somewhere safe, a place where there was only the two of them.
That black hole inside of him was icy cold. It reached out to devour him. Swallow him whole. The roaring in his ears nearly drowned out the sounds around him. He was aware of Cayenne, acutely aware of her. Every movement. He knew he was making this trip a nightmare for her. All he had to do was talk to her. Explain. Say something. Anything.
He couldn’t, not without losing himself in that icy black void. He had not allowed himself to live or feel after he’d lost his aunt. He held himself away from everyone so that he couldn’t be destroyed, so that his father and his father’s family wouldn’t win. He felt nothing. He ate, he drank, he fucked and he worked, but he didn’t feel – not until he’d gone through a wall and he’d seen a woman caged and under a termination order.
He watched her struggle to survive for four months when both of them knew she could come to him. He’d waited for her, and then finally, because he was obsessed he went after her. She’d given him so much. Coming to him and wrapping him in silk, giving herself to him when she was so afraid. Trying to cook for him. Giving him that as well. He hadn’t known she was so deep. So entrenched. He hadn’t known a man could feel like this.
He held himself together with a thread. That thread was nowhere near as strong as her silk. He had walked her into a trap. If he told her the truth, he knew what she’d do. He knew it with a certainty that had his belly tied into tight knots and that hellhole of pure cold yawning so wide. Cayenne would ditch them all and try to go after the assassination squad herself. She’d pit herself against them without hesitation, and he couldn’t allow that.
Because of him, she was there in town, facing a termination squad. His team surrounded her, but if he made her a part of that, she’d be in even more danger. The photographer might get a picture of her before he was ready, before he had all of her protection in place and then she’d be in even more danger. Because of him. Just like his family.
If his father hadn’t hated him so much, maybe they’d all still be alive. If his uncles hadn’t hated him, maybe his aunt would be alive. If something happened to Cayenne, because of him, he knew there was no survival. Nothing left for him. He’d taken a chance without even knowing he was going to. He’d gotten in too deep before he’d ever realized he’d opened himself up for that.
He couldn’t give her up. If he was any kind of a man, he would, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have that kind of strength. He could only see this through, this day where everywhere he turned there was danger to Cayenne and he was so paralyzed with fear for her that he couldn’t do anything but hold himself together the only way he knew how – distancing himself from every emotion he had.
Cayenne let go of Trap the moment they entered the store, her gaze sweeping around the large room. Shelves of shoes and boots lined the walls. In the middle, dividing the room, were two rows of seats, the rows back to back. A man came out of the back and stopped dead, staring at her. He was significantly shorter than Trap and much more slender. He didn’t have those wide shoulders or that thick, muscular chest, but she recognized that some might consider him good-looking. His face was too soft for her to think that, as was his body.
For Cayenne, Trap was the ultimate male and no one else seemed to compare to him. She loved that he towered over her. That his hands were big and his arms and chest were amazing and thick with ropes of muscle. She loved his tapered body where his ribs narrowed into his waist and hips. She loved that he was such a big man but could move in absolute silence and disappear into the dark in the same way a much smaller man could. His hair was amazing, always a bit unruly, thick like a lion’s mane, and blond, in direct contrast to the clerk’s dark short hair. His hair – and his tag said his name was Alain Daughtry – was spiked with some kind of hair product that made it stand straight up. His choice of hairstyles didn’t inspire running one’s hands through it, or curling fingers into it when his mouth was…
Stop.
A low, burning fury in Trap’s mind shook her. She glanced up at his face. Totally expressionless. Eyes so cold they sent a chill through her, yet she could see a blue flame burning beneath the glacier there.
You do not ever picture another man’s mouth between your legs. That’s mine.
She burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. He sounded like he might throw her over his shoulder and march her right out of the store, as if Alain Daughtry, some clerk with the “ew” factor very much in evidence, could be a threat. She forgot about being angry or hurt and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. She was beginning to suspect that Trap’s bursts of jealousy hid something much deeper.
I was picturing your mouth between my legs and remembering how delicious it felt when I tunneled my fingers in your hair. I’m very fond of your hair.
He stared down at her for what seemed like forever. She couldn’t look away, and she had the odd sensation of drowning.
You’re seriously going to say something like that to me in the middle of a shoe shop with my boys not two feet away?
Another mistake. She sighed. She had no idea what she’d done wrong
again.
Apparently honesty isn’t what you’re looking for, Trap. Maybe you’d better tell me the rules, because I’m totally lost.
She brought her hand up to her hair in agitation, running her fingers through the red hourglass that rose and settled back into the thick black. Alain inhaled sharply, drawing her attention. His gaze was on her breasts. He actually licked his lips, and she could smell the testosterone flooding his body. The scent of musk rose, offending her.
She
detested
this trip. There was nothing remotely fun about shopping and if she never did it again, she would be quite happy.
“Can I help you?” Alain asked, hurrying over.
He moved close. Too close. Right into her personal space. She found it difficult to control the venom. She glanced up at Trap for guidance. He didn’t look at her, but he caught her arm and pulled her in close, away from the clerk.
“My girl needs shoes. She wears a size five. I’d like to take a look at those ruby boots, the lace-up ones with the heels, those two pairs of heels.” He indicated a black pair with red soles and a red pair with black soles. The red pair had a small black bow on the toe and straps that ran up the ankle, the black peeking around the red. “Also a pair of hiking boots and walking and running shoes. And” – Trap paused until he got the clerk’s full attention – “you can stop ogling my woman. You deal with me. You talk only to me, and you don’t touch her. I’ll try the shoes on her feet. You got that?”