She pressed her lips together and gave in. “Water.”
“The entire point of freedom is to do whatever the hell you want. You don’t like beer, Cayenne, then you don’t drink it.”
“I’m fitting in,” she hissed.
She didn’t sound nearly as annoyed as she wanted. He was looking into her eyes and there was just the smallest hint of fear, as if he could take her hard-won confidence and destroy it. And she did appear confident, breezing into the room and flirting outrageously, aware the men were leering at her.
Because her poise was an act.
The knowledge clicked into place.
“When did they start caging you?” he asked gently, needing to know more. He was fumbling around in the dark when it came to him. If he was going to convince her she belonged to him and needed to trust him, he had to know as much about her as possible. “You’ve had combat training. You’re fast and smart. You know what you’re doing. When did they decide you were too flawed to live?” He couldn’t keep the edge from his voice or the opaque shimmer from the air.
Long dark lashes drifted down, veiling the expression in her eyes for a brief moment. Hiding from him. Sexy, but still hiding from him. She swallowed, and he watched the motion at her throat. Even that was sexy. His cock jerked hard, straining against his jeans. He nearly dropped his hand into his lap to try to give himself a little relief. Up so close and after kissing her, with the taste of her still in his mouth and her elusive scent in his lungs, blood pounded through his veins, rushing to collect in his groin.
He had a powerful sex drive and was not in the least modest, but he had to go slow with Cayenne. Careful. She was skittish. He had no idea what she did or didn’t know. She appeared confident. She was beautiful and sexy, but up close, he got the feeling that she wasn’t nearly as experienced or self-assured as she portrayed.
Her tongue touched her lips, drawing attention to that perfect bow. She had red lips naturally, no makeup at all. With every breath she drew, her breasts rose and fell. He remained silent, willing her to tell him. He didn’t push, giving her the time needed to make up her mind. Her gaze searched his for a long moment while he heard the clock tick and his heart beat. He was an observant man. The minutest detail didn’t escape him, and he noted the fingers twisting in her lap beneath the table where she thought he couldn’t see. There was a slight trembling to her lips and shadows in the green of her eyes. She didn’t know it, but when she was afraid, her eyes changed. The brilliant green became multifaceted. Just like now.
Cayenne took a deep breath and pushed back the dark mass of hair spilling around her face. Instantly Trap reached over and tucked strands behind her ear. His touch was light, but she felt it all the way to her toes. He was so
large.
A giant of a man and far too gorgeous to resist.
She loved everything about him. His rugged face, all man, the darker shadow along his jaw, blond like that thick mess of longish hair. His eyes, so blue they took her breath. The confidence. The aura of danger surrounding him as if he could explode into violence in a heartbeat. Yet under all that, he had something much deeper she couldn’t resist. That man who had done her that first kindness.
She had been so terrified, and she hadn’t been nice. At all. That hadn’t mattered to him. She’d threatened to kill him and still, he’d given her freedom. When she was close to him like this she felt vulnerable and exposed. Raw. If she gave him what he wanted, she would be completely stripped bare.
He remained silent, and she knew she would give him exactly what he wanted. That compulsion was there. So strong. There was no resisting no matter how terrified she was. She took a breath, again dropped her hands into her lap where he couldn’t see them and closed her fists until her knuckles were white.
“I was a test-tube baby. I think they were terrified of me almost from the moment I was born. I’ve never really been out of a cell. Most of my schooling was done with me in a cell and teachers outside a thick sheet of glass. Or computer screens, simulators and books. When they did remove me from my cell, they darted me first to transport me. My combat experience was usually in the form of fighting for my life.”
She did her best to sound matter-of-fact, not at all like telling him about how much her life hurt. It did hurt, and that was unexpected. She hated telling him the truth because she didn’t want him looking at her as if she was less than human. He never had, yet knowing her handlers were terrified of her had to make him think exactly what she did – if they were monsters, what was she? She might be beautiful on the outside, and she was very practical about her looks, she could see that she had an impact on people, even when she was in her cell, but inside she was murderous, and she didn’t trust herself.
When she was frightened – and Trap scared the crap out of her – she was at her most lethal. She shouldn’t be anywhere near him, but she couldn’t stop herself. He knew it. She saw the knowledge in his eyes. and that scared her even more. He had power over her. She didn’t like that
at all.
Still, even knowing it, she had gone to the Fontenot home and stayed in his bedroom while he slept. She moved through the building he’d renovated and familiarized herself with it, knowing she was going to stay in the same place because she
had
to be close to him.
It didn’t make sense that she wanted to be there with him when he was the very person who had disturbed her home – essentially taken it from her. He wouldn’t see it that way, but she knew she had no rights. She wasn’t even a person. She had no birth certificate or identity outside her cell. She knew that, because growing up, she’d been taunted with that fact often.
“Baby.”
Trap’s voice was soft. Gentle. She shook her head, afraid something inside her was breaking at the sound of his voice. She couldn’t take it. Not when she’d revealed so much of herself in that brief summary of her life. She kept her gaze fixed on the table, on the origami crane folded so perfectly and set in the center of the table.
“Cayenne,” he said again. “Look at me, baby.”
She didn’t want to, because if she did and he saw her the way others did, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. There was no refusing him. She didn’t know why she couldn’t when her entire life had been devoted to refusing orders. Reluctantly she lifted her gaze to his.
Those beautiful blue eyes stared back at her – caught and held her gaze, refusing to allow her to look away. He didn’t look the least bit as if he wanted to “squash her like the bug she was,” a familiar taunt she’d come to despise. Instead, she could see a blue flame burning beneath the glacier-cold of his eyes. As if he was enraged on her behalf.
“What do you mean, you had to fight for your life?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him that either. She’d
killed
men. She remembered the feel of their bullets striking with such force her body flew backward. The pain spread through her like wildfire. That feeling was still so vivid it woke her at night. She clenched her fist and pressed it between her breasts where the majority of the time the bullets struck.
“I would wake up inside a maze and have to work my way out. There were no advantages for me, no vents, no place I could fit myself into to hide. Men hunted me. Men like you.” Her gaze swept the room, and her chin indicated the other GhostWalkers. “Like them.” Her eyes came back to his because he had that much power over her. She couldn’t help herself. It was a compulsion to do the things he wanted and she had to fight hard to keep herself from letting him have everything.
He leaned closer. So close she breathed him into her lungs on her next inhale. It felt too intimate, but still, she couldn’t pull away.
“Are you telling me those fuckers pitted you against an entire
team
of Whitney’s supersoldiers?”
“They were enhanced, if that’s what you mean. And each time I came out the victor, they would enhance others using the knowledge they’d acquired of their weaknesses in the battle.”
Trap shook his head. “A team? As in how many?”
“Each time there were five.”
There was silence. She swore the walls of the room contracted and the ceiling creaked. Around them, the air grew dense and difficult to breathe in. The temperature definitely dropped a couple of degrees. She knew because she didn’t have a sweater or jacket and her arms and body chilled.
“
Each
time,” he snarled. “How many times did they do that shit to you?”
“Trap,” she protested. “It’s in the past. It isn’t like this just happened to me. Why are you getting upset?” She glanced around the table, and put a hand to her mouth and nose. “The air gets very thick when you’re upset. I can not only visibly see and smell your rage, but I can feel it too. Yet you look as cool as ice.”
“I’m not as cool as ice, baby, so answer the fucking question.” He leaned so close he nearly touched her lips with his. “How many times did they do that shit to you? How many teams were you pitted against?”
Cayenne pressed her fist tight into the valley between her breasts without noticing that she did it, but Trap noticed. He scowled. “Fucking answer me.”
“Seven times. Okay? If you have to know, I wiped out seven teams of men.”
She pulled back in her chair and lifted her gaze to his. She didn’t have a clue that she looked agonized, not defiant. He wanted to hold her. To pull her into his arms and shelter her there.
Her lashes fluttered. She took a breath, steeling herself. He saw that too. “Trap, I could smell their fear. In that maze, all of them were afraid of me.”
Trap swore he could feel Cayenne’s fingers trailing over his skin with just the sound of her voice. She was very petite, but perfectly proportioned with an hourglass figure. Her size and shape made him aware of being a man, physically stronger, supposedly giving him an advantage. They had forced her to fight men larger and stronger than she was, yet somehow, she’d come out victorious. That should tell him something, but all it did was make him want to strangle Whitney with his bare hands and wish Braden were still alive so he could kill him all over again.
She leaned close to him. “You should be afraid of me too.”
“Why would that be?”
“I don’t like anything that threatens me.”
“I haven’t threatened you.”
“You’re the biggest threat of all, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. I react badly to threats of any kind.”
“You didn’t act so badass when fucking Pascal Comeaux put his hand on your ass.” He leaned very close to her, stared straight into her eyes so she could see the flame that burned icy hot under all the blue. “The ass, by the way, that is
mine
. No one else puts their fucking hand on your body.”
She didn’t flinch away from him.
“And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been coming into my room at night.” He took a shot in the dark. If she was really coming into his room and he wasn’t insane, that meant she got through their security and quieted the hunting dogs Nonny kept in a kennel and running yard. If Cayenne could get into the house, someone else could.
She didn’t deny it. Instead she shrugged. “I had to let Comeaux make his move. Just to make certain I wasn’t making a mistake.”
“Why’d you come into my room?” he persisted.
She looked shaken – confused, a frown moving over her face. “I-I don’t know. I couldn’t help myself. The first time, I just wanted to make sure you were all right and then…” She trailed off.
He nodded, knowing exactly why she’d risked coming to Wyatt’s compound when an entire team of GhostWalkers was staying there. She hadn’t raised a single alarm. He didn’t ask her yet how she got in, but he didn’t want her to do it again. Sooner or later someone would spot her. They were the type of men who shot first and asked questions later. Eventually he would have to know to protect the household, but asking now would only spook her, so he backed off.
“Wyatt has his three daughters there, Cayenne. No one is taking chances that someone might try to harm the girls. It isn’t safe for you there. Not until everyone gets to know you. I bought the building where they were holding you and I’m renovating it. I started with the laboratory.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I knew you bought the property and brought all those workmen there so they could tramp through it, making it look…”
“Like a home? Yeah, baby, that’s me. Why? Are you staying there?” He flashed a small smirk at her. “I knew you were there. You give yourself away with all those spiderwebs.” Now they were sparring, doing the dance he knew would come eventually when she tried to push him away.
She pressed her lips together and turned her face away from him. “Stay away from there, Trap.”
“I’m moving in tomorrow. You want to see me, you come there.”
“I’m not playing around,” she hissed at him again. “You take too many chances. You act like you don’t care whether you live or die.”
“Been alone most of my life, baby. It gets fucking lonely. Got a couple of men on my trail who want to kill anything that matters to me, so I don’t let anything matter.” His eyes bored into hers. “Until you. You matter, Cayenne, whether it makes sense or not, so if you want to kill me for giving a damn about you, make your try.”
She sat back in the chair and ducked her head. Clouds of dark hair fell around her face, hiding her expression from his sight. Moodily his gaze drifted over her. Possessively. He
felt
possessive. He felt rage at what had been done to her simmering just below the surface. He was a man of discipline and control and yet he was close to losing both.
Wyatt, will you get a bottle of cold water for her?
You goin’ to cut me up I come near your woman?
Wyatt was already at the bar talking to Delmar and keeping a wary eye on the Comeaux brothers.
Why the hell would you think that?
Because you’ve surrounded the table with shadows and that shimmer shit no one can breathe. I don’ want to choke to death and leave Pepper with our three girls to raise all alone. She might not take kindly to that.