"Mmm. Nice." Her voice was drowsy. Sexy. Filled with love. He felt the brush of her mouth over his heart.
He drifted off that way, surrounded by her body and her love.
Trap woke to the sound of Cayenne's voice. Come here to me, my love. I want to show you what silks can do. Her voice whispered over his skin. Filled his mind with infinite possibilities and fantasies.
He sat up alone in the bed. Looking around, his tuxedo was hung up and the room was immaculate. He smelled her fragrance drifting from the master bathroom and immediately went to find her. She wasn't there so he took care of business, took a very fast shower and wandered out into the great room totally naked, following the soft sound of music playing.
Darkness had fallen and the night shades had come down, locking the world out. Through the cleverly designed shades he could see the swamp, but anyone outside couldn't see in, even if they had lights on. Cayenne hadn't turned on any lights, but the flames of many candles danced from a large semicircle on the floor. From the ceiling hung two long drapes of intricate silks. Music filled the room, but so soft and sensuous he felt the stirring on his body before he even looked up and saw her.
Cayenne was stark naked, her long hair flowing around her like a cape. One foot was wrapped in the silk, one hand as well. She began to move, a sexy, sensual undulation, her body swaying with the music, always moving but going from one position to the next almost in slow motion.
The silks wrapped her up, let her fall, her foot wrapped in one silk while the other was in the second one so she did the splits and then moved into a sexy pose with the silk between her legs while the other wrapped one foot so her leg was stretched behind her. She moved from that position to one upside down, her body arched, stretched, hair falling in a long black waterfall.
He found himself mesmerized. One hand fisted his cock while he watched her, unable to look away from what he had to call art, yet was the most sinfully sensual thing he'd ever seen.
She did the splits upside down, and he stared in wonder at the red hourglass in the black patch of curls at the junction of her legs. When she turned and he stared up into her opening flower, dewy wet, like the plants in early morning, he found himself fisting his cock harder.
"Lower yourself down here," he ordered, his voice almost hoarse.
She complied, but she did it slowly, sensuously, like a spider might, nearly crawling to him on the silken streamers, upside down, her hands finding his shoulders and then sliding down his chest, her arms wrapped around his belly, breasts pressed tight against his waist, mouth engulfing his cock while her feet remained wrapped in silk.
This is imagination with silks, my love.
He threw back his head and had to agree with her earlier assessment. He had a great imagination when it came to inventing things, but she definitely had him beat when it came to silks.
He wrapped his arms around her, taking her weight so that she released him, inverted, and he carried her to the wall. "Wrap your legs around me, baby."
She did, spreading her legs, and he found her slick and hot and welcoming. He took her against the wall and then again on the floor with the flames of the candles dancing all around them. She'd prepared a picnic, and they ate together on the thick rug near the fireplace, laughing together and just touching occasionally.
"You think we've given them enough time to realize we're here?" Cayenne asked. "I looked at the screens earlier, and they weren't here yet, but about half an hour ago, the alarm silks were tripped."
"They had to see the Rover," he said, leaning over to brush her mouth with his.
She stretched and stood up. "Let's get this over. All this sex is making me sleepy, and really, honey, they're more trouble than they're worth. I could take care of them for you if you wanted me to."
He shook his head. "I have a very deep-seated fear of losing you, remember? Just the thought of you close to those two sets my teeth on edge. I don't like you being involved at all, Cayenne."
She sent him a quelling look. "Seriously, Trap? Are we going to argue over this? I'm involved. If these men think they can take away your life again, honey, they are sadly mistaken. If you think I'm going to stand by while they try, then you are sadly mistaken. I'm going out there first. You go up to the roof and cover me."
He pinned her with glacier-cold eyes. "You are getting very bossy, woman."
She loved that he called her woman. She was a woman. His. But he had to understand, he was her man and she had his back. The danger didn't matter.
"Honey, you're every bit as important to me as I am to you. I'm not going to sit on a shelf while you go out and face Whitney's supersoldiers or one of Violet's hit squads. And I'm certainly not going to let you face those despicable uncles of yours."
She leaned over and brushed his mouth with hers. He sat on the floor, the remnants of their picnic all around him. "Do you have any idea how much I love you? Whatever you feel for me, I feel for you. This is a partnership, Trap. You and me. Together. That's how it has to be."
He leaned into her, burying his face against that red hourglass, one arm slung around her hips, locking her to him. He held her for a long time. She let him. She gave him the time he needed to come to the right decision--her decision--because this wasn't going any other way.
Trap was arrogant, rude and bossy. She was okay with that. But he had to know when she put her foot down, she meant what she said. This was a line he wasn't going to cross.
"All right, baby," he agreed softly, lifting his head to look up at her. "But you don't get one fucking scratch on you. Not one. You do, and you're going to pay."
She smiled at him, her fingers tunneling into his thick mass of blond hair. "I can live with that. Get dressed and let's do this." His little declaration was intriguing. It might just be worth it to get a scratch on her.
Hiding a smile, she hurried. She knew letting her go out to face his uncles was difficult for him, but for her, his worry was absolutely absurd. She would never let him face them alone, no matter what he said or decreed. She dressed in her vintage blue jeans, the soft ones that clung to her body but allowed her to move easily and fast in them.
She donned a turtleneck shirt, one of the few she had from her stay in the cell. She'd made it herself, spinning the silk for several years, weaving it together and then sewing it. It fit tightly on her, and came up her throat and down past her waist. Extra armor. She was already spinning the silk to weave a similar shirt for Trap, hoping to have it ready by his next birthday. It was months away and she had plenty of time to work during the times without him around to get enough silk to weave into such a large piece of material.
She slid on soft shoes, ones that allowed traction in the marshier areas of the swamp. She was light and could skim the ground or use the trees and her silk to move fast. The uncles weren't going to be so lucky. Cayenne braided her hair and smiled at her reflection on their mirror.
Trap had dressed beside her, and he caught her small smile. "What?"
"I like the idea of hunting tonight. I know exactly where I'm going to lead them."
"You stay where I can cover you, Cayenne," he cautioned. "And don't get cocky. They may be civilians, but they're dangerous. They are sociopaths, and they'll kill you just for fun."
She tilted her head to one side, her gaze meeting his in the mirror. She could see her eyes had gone multifaceted, a signal that the spider in her was rising. "Hunting them is going to be fun. Does that make me a sociopath?"
"That makes you my woman." Trap suddenly reached out and dragged her into his arms. "Giving you this isn't easy, Cayenne. I don't like it. My stomach is in fucking knots."
She was relaxed. She wasn't in the least afraid, but she rarely was when she went into combat. She had confidence in herself. She wanted Trap to have that same confidence in her but she knew that had to come with time. Maybe it never fully would sink in that she was as lethal as he was in a battle, but as long as he treated her as his equal, she could deal with his fears.
He swallowed hard. "All right, baby. Do your thing. No venom if you can help it. If the bodies are discovered, we don't want anything that might trace their deaths back to us. Accidents happen in the marsh and that's what we want it to look like, although I'd like to put a bullet in their fucking brains and maybe set them on fire like they did my family. Peel their skin off a little at a time like they did my aunt."
She pressed closer to him, feeling the rage buried beneath the ice start to erupt. "This will be worse. They'll die slow, Trap. Knowing it was coming. Seeing it come." She kissed him again, and this time he took over, just like she knew he would. He needed her in that moment, needed her steady, calm confidence. Needed to know she was there, with him, not appalled at the extent of his rage or his need for equal justice.
Cayenne held him for a few more minutes, waiting until the ice was back in his veins, and then she stepped away, turning, squaring her shoulders and sauntering out of their bedroom, past the silks hanging from the ceiling in the great room, to their front door. She flipped on the light switch to illuminate the room so that when she pulled open the outer door she was framed there, the light behind her.
She faced the swamp, looking to the south, where Nonny's pharmaceutical plants had been cultivated. A good acre of them. All different kinds. Just to the edge of the acre the marsh crept in, fueled by the water continually battering and eroding the land mass. In that marsh were places the ground was so thin even she couldn't tread lightly without falling through. Cypress trees threw out knobby knees in an effort for survival, one of the few trees that could thrive in standing water.
She turned her head back to face inside the house to start their charade. "I can't sleep, honey. I'm going to take a look at the night-flowering plant Nonny asked me to check on before we left. I won't be long. You stay in bed."
She waited a heartbeat or two as if listening to his answer, and then she stepped onto the raised porch and closed the door. As soon as she turned back, she let her senses expand. Paid attention to all the feelers and alarm triggers she had strung around their home. In the last month she'd managed to add long and short lines. She had every inch of the yard surrounding the house inside the fence line rigged with feelers. Outside the fence and in the trees and brush, she had more.
It wasn't difficult to locate the hiding place of the uncles. They hadn't let something like a few spiderwebs deter them from hiding at the western corner of the fence. From where they were, she knew they could see her perfectly. She hurried down the stairs as if she didn't have a care in the world and headed toward the marsh, skirting around the plants Nonny had spent so many years transplanting into one large area for the people in the swamp. When they needed medicine and had no money, they went to Nonny to have her mix one of her concoctions.
Cayenne didn't use a flashlight. She didn't need one. She knew exactly where she was going and where to step. She came up to the darker grove of cypress trees, the ones she'd mentally marked just in case she needed a disposal site. Beneath two of them was particularly thin ground. She knew, because weeks earlier, when she'd examined it, she'd nearly fallen through. There was still a divot in the ground where her foot had sunk into water.
She sauntered as if she were entirely at ease or didn't suspect she wasn't alone. She even hummed. Still, over her humming, she heard them. Twigs snapped. Leaves crackled. Twice, someone stumbled and muffled a curse. Sound carried at night, especially in the stillness of the swamp.
An alligator bellowed somewhere close by. A barred owl sounded an eerie two-toned hoot, the last note drawn out like a Cajun accent. She crouched down abruptly in the higher grasses, looking as if she was inspecting a plant. She turned slightly to watch the two men split up and come at her from either side. Both held an object in their hands. Not guns, but Tasers. She suspected that was how they'd managed to subdue Trap's aunt and take her from the house.
As the one to her left closed in on her, she stood up fluidly and lifted one hand toward the cypress branch sweeping over the marsh. As the man triggered the Taser, she flew upward, on the thicker anchored silk. Using momentum, she shot out more silk, wrapping him thoroughly and efficiently, so fast, his body spun as the thick, sticky silk wrapped him up like a spider's midnight snack. She kept climbing, out of reach of the second Taser and into the higher branches where the second man would have a difficult time shooting her, even if he had a real gun.
She anchored her lines, added several more for structural strength and yanked the body up off the ground so he swung in the air from the branch she'd carefully chosen. All the while she continued to spin the cocoon around him. Her spinet glands were located in her palms, something she was grateful for. She could produce various types of silk when needed. Each was from a different gland. She used her strongest silk for her anchor lines and her stickiest for wrapping her prey.
"Bobby!"
"Get me out of this, Richard," Bobby shouted hoarsely.
His brother rushed to help him, and the moment Richard was out in the open, Cayenne dropped a woven web around his neck like a noose, pulling him up short. She quickly began to bundle Trap's uncle up. He tore at the silk, but the strands stuck to him like glue. She was fast. She'd been practicing from the time she was a toddler, and she took particular delight in speed. She wrapped him in thick, sticky silk until only his head showed above the cocoon and he was suspended from a second tree, facing his brother.
Cayenne lowered herself from her anchor thread and stood on the outer edges of the marsh. "I guess you came looking for me. Did you have something you wanted to say?" She studied their faces. "You both clearly drink a lot. You lived well on Trap's ransom money. I guess you had to pay someone a lot of money for new identities."
Richard spat at her. "You bitch. Get us down."
She ignored his command, wondering if he believed anyone would be stupid enough to obey him when he'd come to kill them.
"Trap's on his way. He was covering you the entire time with his rifle. One wrong move and he'd have splattered you all over the swamp, and we'd roll you into a gator hole, but you were easy. Too easy." Contempt edged her tone. "You got lazy on that money, thinking you could do the same thing you did the last time."
Again it was Richard. "You can smirk all you like, but we've done it dozens of times, collecting ransoms from rich fucks like Trap," he boasted. "All brains, no brawn, that's my weak nephew. Scared shitless and willing to pay anything to get his whore back." He fought the restraint of the silk, wiggling, cursing and swinging his weight in an effort to dislodge himself from the tree. The more he fought, the tighter the loops bound him until he was nearly completely enshrouded.
"I'm going to tear out your heart, bitch," Bobby screamed, bucking wildly. The branch creaked ominously. "What the hell are you anyway?"
She smiled up at him. "In some circles I'm known as the black widow."
The two men gasped and rocked hard, bundled in their cocoons.
Trap came up behind her, his eyes as cold as ice as he surveyed her handiwork. He loomed over her, close. The heat of his body warmed her cool skin. She leaned back into him as his arms came around her.
"They like to kidnap people, honey," she said softly. "Apparently your aunt wasn't their only victim. They were easy though. Really easy. Made noise, weren't in the least bit stealthy. Wyatt's girls could have taken them." She raised her eyes to the wriggling bodies. "The girls are toddlers, and they would have killed you both." There was contempt in her voice and no mercy. She had none for them.
Trap was silent, staring at the two men who had helped to change the course of his life. He didn't say a word to them because he had nothing to say. His uncles cursed and demanded, but as time stretched out and he continued to remain silent, their fear began to mount to terror--so much so
that it was tangible.
"Drop the first one, baby," he said, after watching the two men wear themselves out with struggling against their bonds. "Just looking at them makes me sick."
She didn't hesitate, but yanked Bobby's anchor line. He fell hard, feet first, to the ground, broke through the thin crust, the force of his fall taking him all the way to his chest. Mud covered the silk and splashed up, thick and nasty, smearing his face. Water leached to the surface, and his eyes widened with terror.
"Trap. Get me out of this." Bobby didn't have the use of his hands. Entirely helpless, the water and mud sucked at his body, slowly pulling him deeper. "Trap. Come on, get me out."
Richard had stopped moving, staring at his brother with horrified eyes as more water seeped to the surface and Bobby slipped deeper until his shoulders were mostly in the mud and the water splashed up his neck and into his mouth.
"Richard," he called. "Do something."
"Richard has a little problem of his own," Cayenne said. "I don't think he's going to be thinking too much about helping you, Bobby."
She cut the anchor on Richard's silk casing, and he dropped like a stone, much as his brother had. He went into the thick, greedy mud up to his waist. Water leaked all around and took him down at a much more rapid speed than his brother. The two men stared at each other in utter horror. Helpless. Like their victims. They were unable to do anything at all--the water kept rising, and the mud continued to suck them deeper.
Trap watched without changing expression as first their chins went under and then their mouths. Noses went next. Eyes disappeared. Eventually even the top of their heads vanished beneath the surface. An alligator bellowed again, and another one answered. The barred owl gave its low, mournful hoot.
"Funny to think, after all this time, they're really gone out of my life and with no real fuss. Just gone. Done." Trap tightened his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "I expected to feel something."
"Like what?"
"Remorse. Triumph. I don't know. That what we were doing was wrong, but I was going to do it anyway." He nuzzled his chin through the silk of her hair. "I don't feel it was wrong. I feel good. Like I can breathe easy for the first time in years."
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