Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(35)
Everyone was afraid of her. She couldn’t remember a time that anyone came near her without elevated heart rates and weapons close. Even when she’d been a child. She had often watched every member of the Fontenot household – even the scariest of them – cuddling the triplets. Holding them close, just as Trap was holding her.
Her body lay curled over his chest. Her front to his front. She straddled him, her legs on either side of him, pressed tight to his ribs. She took up his entire chest, her face in his neck, breathing him in, pulling him straight into her lungs. Her heart pounded harder than ever and blood roared in her ears, but she didn’t move, because the storm kept building and she knew it was going to be terrible.
She held herself very still. Fight or flee? She didn’t know what to do. He was warm and his hand was soothing in her hair. He was comforting, like Nonny’s room, only better. His arms went around her, holding her close, not demanding anything from her. Not speaking, but he began to hum softly. Like Nonny’s music box, only better. He had a beautiful pitch to his voice. She’d never really heard anything that beautiful in person before and she knew it was only for her.
Cayenne loved his speaking tone, but found his music voice even better. She closed her eyes because she couldn’t help herself. She was completely vulnerable to him in that moment and she knew it. She just didn’t care. All the fight was out of her. She just needed. Trap. She needed Trap. She was giving herself to him and she knew it, and she was acutely aware that he knew it as well. She allowed the last bit of feral spider in her to move aside enough to let the soft notes Trap hummed to penetrate until she stopped shivering.
The storm broke, wild and uninhibited, yet quietly, sobs welling up uncontrollably, terrible, from her heart. From her soul. Her fingers curled into his shoulders and she pressed her face tighter against his neck while the storm took her.
Her eyes leaked tears and she wasn’t certain why, only that she felt safe enough in his arms, there in the dark, to shed them. She had years of tears stored up, so she was very happy when the humming turned to words and he sang softly to her, stroking soothing caresses through her hair and down her back. She could spend a lifetime right there, letting the tears flow, listening to his voice and feeling the warmth of his body against hers while his hands moved through her hair and massaged the nape of her neck.
Trap held Cayenne as close to him as humanly possible and just let her cry. He’d never held a weeping woman in his life, but from the moment he’d touched his mind to hers, outside in the hallway, when he’d heard the first hesitant Trap, he’d known she needed him with the same intensity as he needed her. Maybe it was for different reasons, but he wasn’t alone in this and that was all he needed to know.
This wasn’t just about the explosive chemistry between them. Right in that moment, the only thing in his mind was to hold and comfort her. To find ways to show her what life with him was going to be. He wanted to give her everything he could possibly give her. She deserved that. She’d never had anything and she would never expect anything from him.
He knew what greed was. He had far too much money pouring into his accounts every minute of every day. He’d worked for it, but still, thanks to the magazines making him one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, the write-ups on him, the disclosure that he was a billionaire several times over, women threw themselves at him.
Trap was often rude. Beyond rude. He’d developed that as a form of protection and now it was ingrained in him. He was demanding in bed because he knew he could be, and then he kicked the women out, refusing to allow any woman to sleep in the same bed with him. He never took them home with him. Never. None of the women had any idea who he was, or even cared to know. They knew about his bank account and that was enough for them.
Cayenne had no idea about bank accounts and whether or not he had money. She could care less. She was alone. Afraid. Different. A throwaway. He’d been thrown away by his father and uncles. He had trust issues and recognized that Cayenne had those same issues deeply ingrained in her.
He hated that she was weeping as if her heart had broken, but he was grateful she’d come to him. That she’d given him that. She had handed him something precious. He knew he was a bull in a china shop when it came to relationships, but he read books and he observed carefully. No detail got past him. And he had instincts. He had always relied on his instincts.
Cayenne was vulnerable to him – and only him. She would never show this side of herself to any of the other men no matter how much she was hurt. He had that from her. That raw honesty. That soft spot. The truth that was her heart, and he would protect it with everything in him.
“All right, baby,” he crooned. “You’re going to make yourself sick. If Nonny wakes up and hears you crying, she’ll be in here like a shot. She’ll box my ears and take you under her wing. I like holding you when you need it, so I don’t want that to happen.”
She continued to weep but much more silently.
He smiled at the ceiling and tunneled his fingers in the thick mass of hair. Silky soft just like her skin. A man would get lost in that hair. “I’ll admit asking for that might be a little selfish. I want to be the man you turn to when things get all out of whack for you. I want you to feel safe with me and not anyone else.”