Her gaze immediately went to Trap as if he were a magnet. There was no pretending he wasn’t there. He dominated the room. He was just… big. Tall, very wide shoulders, a thick chest, all muscle. He looked intimidating, and he was. Yet, he was the only human being on the face of the earth that had showed her any kindness. He had looked at her and saw a human, not a monster.

Cayenne pushed a shaky hand against the wall, her knees threatening to give out. She’d lived her entire life in a very small cell. They’d allowed her a toilet, a bed, books and a computer. And their fear. For as long as she could remember she felt their fear. She could look into a person and see inside of them – their goodness or their cruelty. Every man who came near her during her childhood had that streak of evil in them, whether too much greed, the desire for power, or their need to hurt others. If they were afraid of her – what did that say about her?

Time seemed to stand still. It tunneled, the walls of her mind curving until there was only Trap there. The way he’d been when he’d come into her cell. She had been moved to the basement cell for termination. They would kill her and cremate her before taking her ashes out to sea. She’d been created in vitro and held in a laboratory all her life. No one would ever know she existed. Or care. Until Trap.

He was a miracle. So gorgeous. A beautiful man. One moment she’d been alone without hope and the next, there he was. He’d appeared as if he’d come right through the wall. He’d slid down to the floor just outside of her cell – the cell with triple locks that were impossible to open. He’d sat there a moment, and then he’d opened his eyes. The impact had been physical, like a wicked punch to her stomach.

His eyes were a vibrant blue. He looked terrifying. All that muscle, those wide shoulders, the strength of him, even his piercing gaze that seemed to go straight to her heart. She hadn’t moved. She couldn’t. Her heart pounded, and she’d waited, because when she didn’t feel the cruelty in him, she’d been so stunned she couldn’t think properly. He looked scary and felt dangerous, yet deep inside, she knew he wasn’t a cruel man.

He felt like all kinds of other things, things that confused her. They still confused her. Trap Dawkins was the reason she hadn’t fled the area the moment she was free of her prison. He’d let her loose on the world. He’d opened the impossible locks and allowed her freedom. She had no idea what to do with freedom. She had knowledge of the world, but no experience.

She had no money, no food, no shelter. She had no idea how to interact with normal people. She didn’t know what normal actually was. She could kill. She’d been trained to kill, and she was good at it, but she had no idea how to fit in with people or interact with them. Even when eventually, driven by need, she carefully chose her targets to rob, choosing men who were violent and cruel, she couldn’t enter a store and purchase the items she needed because she didn’t know how. Just the thought of that terrified her.

The clothes she wore were stolen. She felt terrible about that. There were very few women her size in the area, at least that she’d seen. The clothes had belonged to a young teenage girl. The family didn’t have much, and that made it worse. She’d gone back a few weeks later and left money, but she didn’t know what the clothes were worth so she had no idea if she’d given them a fair exchange. Instead, just to be sure, she left money twice. She had two pairs of jeans and two camisoles. No sweater. No jacket. The shoes were too big and she’d stuffed paper in them to keep from hurting her feet when she walked.

Sometimes she stole food as well. She always left money when she did, but she didn’t like to steal and knew she couldn’t do it that often. So she went without several days a week. Now, the scent of Delmar’s burgers made her feel weaker than ever.

She took a deep breath and inhaled Trap. She’d been like a moth drawn to the inevitable flame, unable to stay away from him. She’d stayed close, going back to the old building where she’d been held prisoner, making a lair for herself down in the basement. He’d bought the building and workers had torn it apart, completely renovating it. She’d been forced to stay in the vents and outside until they would leave at night. She’d hated that, but still, she couldn’t leave him. And she had nowhere to go.

Something was between them, she just didn’t know what. Whatever it was, there was no escaping it. The thread between them was impossible to snap. She found herself sneaking past the guards at the Fontenot home in the middle of the night just so she could be in the same room with him. She had to be with him. She knew it was the same for him, but she’d remained deliberately elusive, terrified of what he would want from her.

She had the illusion, the fantasy of him as long as there was no real interaction. The moment, a week earlier, she’d entered the Huracan Club, her chosen hunting ground, she’d scented him. He was actively searching for her. She knew that the moment she became aware of his presence at the club. He wasn’t a man to frequent clubs. She was the reason he’d come. She’d stayed away until hunger drove her out of her safety zone and straight into the line of fire.

He hadn’t come alone either. He’d brought several of his friends. All were combat trained. She recognized the danger in them. Two of the three Fortunes brothers, Malichai and Mordichai. Their brother Ezekiel was most likely at home protecting Wyatt’s children. But Malichai and Mordichai presented enough of a threat.

She spotted Draden Freeman. He often ran mornings and evenings. He was a question mark to her. She’d studied all of them and wished she still had access to the laboratory’s computer, but when Trap had the building renovated, all computers had been removed and new ones installed. She’d tried them all, but the passcodes, so far, had been impossible to break.

Wyatt Fontenot was there, looking right at home, casual even, when there was nothing casual about him. He was a good man. She could tell that the moment she was anywhere near him, and she liked that he seemed to be protective of Trap.

The fifth man accompanying Trap to the bar was one of those ghosts she rarely saw, so she made certain, even though he stayed in the shadows, that she studied him. She didn’t have the best eyesight, probably a by-product of the spider DNA Whitney or Braden, whichever, gave her in a test tube. Still, she had skulked around the Fontenot home enough to know that he had arrived a month earlier and was part of their team.