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.