Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(16)

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 f*ckers 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 f*cking 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.”