“Trap.”

Her voice was as still as her body. He actually felt her withdrawing from him, pulling her body into the fetal position, moving a slight inch from him, but he felt the loss. She couldn’t separate herself any farther because he held her to him.

“Don’t,” he cautioned. “I mean it, Cayenne. Don’t pull away from me. You know that’s the only solution.”

“We can’t have a child so Whitney will leave me alone.”

“Baby, think about this logically. He’ll keep coming at us. We might fight off fifty teams, but eventually, they’ll penetrate our defenses and possibly get you. Or me. Or one of the members of my team. More than anything else, Whitney is looking for the next generation. He wants to see if the enhancements he gave us will be stronger in our children.”

“My child won’t ever be an experiment.” There was outrage in her voice. Temper. Her body had gone stiff. He knew she would have scooted off the bed if she could have. “Not to save my life, or yours or anybody else’s.”

“Our child will never be used as an experiment, Cayenne. I can give you my word on that.”

“I won’t have a baby to save my life. That’s no reason to bring a child into the world.”

“Baby.” He whispered the endearment softly. A reprimand. Very gently he forced her to turn over. “Look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“You’re looking at my chin. I mean look into my eyes. Listen to me. You know me better than that.”

He waited until she reluctantly lifted her gaze to his. There was fear there. Stark fear, pushing toward terror. His heart contracted. She was unafraid to face hit squads sent after her, or his two murderous uncles, but the thought of having a child filled her with anxiety.

He kept his voice soft. “You know me. You know what I am inside. I gave you the truth about myself and my childhood. Our child would be conceived in love. Love, Cayenne. I want a family. Children. I know that scares you, but we’re both smart. We can figure it out. We’ve both got good instincts. We have Wyatt and the boys and Nonny and Pepper to help us out if we decide we hit a stumbling block and don’t know how to handle something.”

Her gaze drifted over his face. She held her breath and didn’t seem to notice. He did. He noticed everything about her. Every. Single. Thing.

“Breathe, baby.”

She pressed her hand to her stomach and shook her head. “You should have talked to me about this. I’m just trying to get used to the idea of you and me.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“This is a huge thing, Trap. You can’t make decisions like this for both of us.”

“I know,” he agreed.

She narrowed her eyes. “Stop saying that. It doesn’t mean anything. I do know you, and that is your arrogant, bossy, macho bullshit.”

“It’s not arrogance, Cayenne. Or macho. Or bullshit. I calculate everything. I can’t help that about myself. My brain works on a problem and I find solutions. We need a solution to keep hit squads from coming at us every minute of the day for the rest of our lives. I need to keep you safe. I need that. You don’t have to agree with me on this. You don’t. It’s my need, not yours. You’re willing to take the risk, I’m not.”

“Do you hear yourself?” She was outraged. She sat up, drawing her knees to her and holding on to her legs as tight as possible.

He sat up much more slowly, sliding back until he hit the headboard. He was relaxed. Watchful. Alert. But relaxed. He wasn’t wrong. He’d gone through every single possible solution, and there was no other. Whether or not she stayed with him, Whitney would keep sending his supersoldiers after her. Eventually there would be a mistake on her part – on their part – and she’d be dead. That was unacceptable to him.

He wanted a child with her. He wanted more than one. He wanted several. They had a big home. A huge one. They had an entire team to help protect children. It was the only solution, and it was logical whether she wanted to admit it or not.

He reached for her and pulled her gently between his legs. She didn’t unfold, or soften, but remained stiff, curled into herself. She seemed smaller than ever, a gift she had that helped her to disappear. She wasn’t going to get that chance.

“I know having children scares you…”

“Trap, you scare me. This scares me. Us. A relationship. A commitment. You at least know what a family is supposed to be. You’ve lived in the world. You may have had a bastard for a father, but you had a mother and sisters and a brother. You had an aunt and Wyatt and Nonny. I had a tiny cell, my silks for privacy. I had techs darting me through bars so I couldn’t hurt them.”

She lifted her hands to show him her palms. “I had pins pushed through my hands, shoulders and ankles to hold me in place. I have scars on my ribs and feet as well as my palms. They studied me, took my blood, milked my venom. Tried to extract the silks. I’ve been shot, knifed and pitted against numerous supersoldiers all in the name of science. I don’t know how to be what you want me to be, but I was willing to try…”

“Don’t say was, Cayenne. We’ve hit a fucking bump, not the end. I know how you lived. Do you think I don’t know? I am a scientist. I know exactly what those fuckwads did to you, baby. I’m going to erase it all. I am.” He reached around her and caught her wrists, pulling her hands back to him, palms up so he could brush kisses into them. “We have time to get you pregnant and that gives us time to prepare for an actual baby. Time to get to be us. To learn the things we don’t know.”

She shook her head. “You’re asking too much.”

“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’ll never ask too much of you. You’ve been guarding Wyatt’s girls. You came back and entered a fight with supersoldiers in order to keep them from being taken. You want children, Cayenne, same as me. You want a family. With me.”

“Someday. This is going too fast. Way too fast.”

“Four fucking months, baby, is not too fast. Not when I’ve had shit for years and you’ve had it all your life. Those days are over. We’re going to look ahead, build us a family, and we’re going to have the fucking ever after.”

He pulled her onto his lap, his arms surrounding her. “I hear that you’re scared. But I don’t hear you saying you don’t want my child growing in you. It doesn’t matter when we have a child. Now or ten years from now, you’re going to want that baby the moment you find out you’re pregnant. You know you will.”