Spider Game (GhostWalkers, #12)(7)

He was a big man. Solid. All muscle without an ounce of fat. He’d been with his fair share of women. He knew he was attractive physically and he was highly intelligent. But most of all he was rich. Not just rich. He was in Forbes magazine as one of the richest men in the world, yet he was in the military. He was a prize catch, and women pursued him. He didn’t do the pursuing. He had never wanted to take a chance that his uncles would rape, torture and kill another person he loved.


His brain needed to work. He had no choice, not if he was going to remain sane. He couldn’t work as long as he was obsessed with Cayenne – and he was obsessed. His body needed relief, and soon. Right now his brain was occupied with fantasies of her and her body. Of the way she felt when she was up against him. Of the way she smelled, that faintly elusive and mysterious mixture of storms and fresh rain. Sometimes he woke up with her scent in his lungs and he wondered if she’d been in his room. He was fairly certain it wasn’t possible – he was staying with Wyatt and the rest of the team at Wyatt’s grandmother’s house and security was ultra-tight. Still, he wondered.


When he woke in the middle of the night, his heart beat too fast and his body was hard and tight and her scent was everywhere. Once he swore it was on the pillow next to him. He didn’t sleep much. Sometimes he went days without sleep when he was on the trail of something he was developing for his pharmaceutical company. When he did regularly go to bed, he slept no more than four or five hours and not all at once.


Often Trap got up to read or work out elusive problems. His scribbled formulas were on just about every scrap of paper in the room and a few had been written on the wall. Sometimes he was certain those papers weren’t in the same exact spot. He considered that he might be losing his mind. The last few weeks he’d been acting totally out of character, and that’s what convinced him he needed to find her. To put a stop to whatever was happening.


If Whitney manufactured their attraction to each other, he should be able to find a way to undo it. Come up with an antidote. Cayenne would stay safe that way. It was the only way he could ensure no one would ever get their hands on her again. He would have to give her up before the attraction grew to the point neither would be able to resist.


Wyatt sighed. “You’re going to move to that building before we have it ready, aren’t you, Trap?”


Trap nodded slowly. “I can take care of myself.”


“Yeah, under most circumstances, but if you’re wrong about her, this woman could kill you, Trap. I couldn’t harm Pepper. I doubt you could hurt Cayenne.”


Trap’s gaze turned glacier. “You’ve always been sensitive, Wyatt. You don’t like anyone pointing that out because you think that makes you feminine.” He spoke entirely dispassionately, no judgment or expression in his voice. “That’s what makes you such a good man. You care about people. You always have. I stopped when my own flesh and blood murdered my family. I couldn’t allow myself to feel. If I did, I wouldn’t survive. If this woman who is supposed to be my woman decides to kill me, she’s an enemy. She isn’t mine.”


“She’s scared, Trap.”


He nodded. “I know that. I know she’ll fight the attraction – and me. That isn’t the same as wanting to kill me.”


“When a wild animal is threatened – cornered – they often strike out. She’s never known freedom or kindness. She has no idea how to live in the world. She’s been locked up, experimented on, which means needles and God knows what else. She’s never had anyone give her compliments or romance her. She knows nothing but enemies.”


“I have a brain, Wyatt,” Trap said. For the first time impatience crept into his voice. “I’ve had a lot of time to think this through.”


“I don’ want you to do something you’ll regret – or worse, not do somethin’, which will get you killed.”


The ice blue flame in Trap’s eyes deepened. Nearly glowed. “She’s mine,” he said softly. This time there was a wealth of expression in his voice. Possession. An underlying anger. That strange shimmer slid into the room again, filling the space where air had been, completely at odds with his intention to reverse whatever Whitney had done to tie Cayenne to him.


“Doesn’ seem to me that you’re so willin’ to sacrifice your own happiness, or hers, to keep those uncles of yours in the shadows. Maybe you ought to consider courting her publicly. Get yourself in the tabloids, let the paparazzi take a gazillion photos of the two of you. That would bring them straight here. Right into a team of GhostWalkers waitin’ for them.” Wyatt flashed a cocky grin, knowing Trap was the most camera-shy man he’d ever encountered. “Whitney already knows where she is. It isn’t like he’d suddenly find her.”


Trap looked thoughtful as he took another pull on his beer. “That’s not a bad idea. She isn’t so easily compromised either. They try to tangle with her, she’ll kill them in a heartbeat. I’ve been trying to find them for years.”


“Maybe they’re dead.”


Trap shook his head. “Not a chance. They’re out there, living the good life. Once I find them, I’m going to kill them.”


Again his voice lacked expression. Still, that shimmer hung in the air. Trap took another drink and glanced toward the piano. If he played, it would get him through the last couple of hours before Thibodeaux shut the place down.