“Your belly and thigh.”

She’d seen the scars. She knew them intimately. She’d even traced them with her tongue. He rubbed his face in her hair. “He kept slipping in Dru’s blood. Even after she died she saved me. He wasn’t dead, but he was gone. I made certain when I shot him that he wasn’t going to live.” He told her the stark truth. “Even then, barely nine, I knew anatomy. I knew where to place bullets to do the most damage and cause the most suffering. You need to know that about me, Cayenne. The worst. Because I’d fucking do it again if I had the chance.”

“So would I,” she admitted quietly.

Trap searched her green eyes until he saw the truth there and he believed her. He pressed his face against her hair, burrowed into it so the silk concealed his expression. She faced away from him, but he was confessing and he didn’t take chances. “His brothers threw gas on him and all around the room. They lit it on fire and got out. I crawled through the flames and lived.”

“The scars on your feet and ankles.”

She’d kissed them too. Her hands had been gentle, soothing. Amazing. She’d nearly torn out his heart when she’d done that.

“I went to live with my aunt. She wasn’t very old, but she took me in. It was just the two of us. I began making money because I invented shit and got the patents and then sold them. We lived well for a while. Apart from everyone else, but well. We changed our name and hid in a city. They – my uncles – found us. Kidnapped her. Tortured and raped her. Threw her on my doorstep after I paid the ransom. She was dead.”

Cayenne’s body jerked. Hard. She made a sound low in her throat.

“I hired the best detectives to look for them, but they’re in the wind. I did everything I could to hone myself into something that could take them down, but I’ve never been able to find them. They said, if I found a woman, they’d come after her and they’d take her away from me and do the same to her – that I couldn’t protect her.”

“That’s why you hid my face from the camera.”

“Yes.” He was honest. “Eventually, someone is going to get a shot of you, but I want to minimize that risk. I’ll surround you with bodyguards, baby, but they’ll eventually come at us. I waited to claim you, tried to talk myself out of it to protect you, but I’m too fucking weak to give you up.”

“Trap.” Her voice was gentle. “I want them to come after me. I’m not defenseless and there’s no way they could hurt me without getting close. They get close and they’re dead. We both know that. I have no problem making certain they can’t do that to another woman. I’m the kind of woman who would have put a bullet in your father, one that made him suffer for as long as possible. That’s who I am.”

Again, her voice rang with honesty. She meant every word. There was no fear. None whatsoever. Just determination.

“Cayenne.” He whispered her name, closing his eyes against the burn there. “You know what I’m telling you, right? What to expect when you’re with me.”

“Did you think I’d run, Trap?” she asked gently. “I might not know the first thing about relationships or cooking or having friends, but I know how to defend myself and I have no problems seeing beyond smiling faces. I could always tell the worst of my tormentors before they ever opened their mouths. I feel it like an oil surrounding them. The more vicious and cruel they are, the thicker the oil. Your uncles could walk up to me with halos on their heads and I’d know what they were.”

“I don’t like putting you in this position, Cayenne, but I can’t give you up.” He made the admission softly. “I want to put a ring on your finger and make it official. The moment I do that, the moment the world knows you’re mine, wherever they are, they’ll come out of the woodwork and make their try.”

“Good. We’ll be ready for them. And don’t forget, Trap, while you’re taking on all this guilt because of two men who have no idea who you are anymore or what you’re capable of, I’ve got a death sentence on my head. Whitney will keep sending teams after me, which means, you’ll be in harm’s way because of me.”

“I think I can get that particular order rescinded,” Trap said. His finger stroked the hourglass again. She wasn’t going to like the how of it, but he didn’t feel the least remorseful. He wanted those ties to him. She had her silken threads, he had human ones.

She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder. “What does that mean, Trap? Exactly what does that mean?”

He fucking loved that she was intelligent enough to be suspicious. She knew whatever plan he had, she wasn’t necessarily going to be down for, although he’d kept his tone strictly neutral.

“Whitney likes to pair his soldiers. He gives the pair the skills to be an effective unit in a combat situation.”

He spread his fingers wide again, covering her tummy, feeling the underside of her breasts with his fingertips. He stroked caresses along the twin curves. “I’ve never felt softer skin in my life, baby. I fucking love the way you feel.”

“Trap, don’t change the subject. I’m not going to be distracted.”

“Is that a challenge?” A teasing note crept into his voice.

He had learned fun from Wyatt. He’d been sober, incapable of laughter, when he’d first met Wyatt. Then the members of his team, no matter how aloof he held himself, gave him a bad time. He’d learned to handle that as well. Maybe all that had prepared him for a life with Cayenne. All he knew for certain was that he enjoyed teasing her. He let the pads of his fingers swirl up and over her breast to brush the tips, those beautiful rosy tips that were so very sensitive.

She shivered and her hand came over the top of his, clamping him to her, right over her breast so the hard little peak pushed into the center of his palm. “Behave yourself and tell me what your plan is to get my termination order rescinded.”

He liked her bossy. He liked her submissive. He liked every single thing about her. Especially that she could be lethal.

“I’m going to get you pregnant.”

She went very still at his confession.

He moved his hand back down to cover her soft little tummy, ignoring her body language, talking his way right through it. “He’s going to grow right here. Our child. He’ll be smart, and we’ll both give him all the love and happiness in the world. He’ll have everything neither of us ever had.”