With Every Breath (Slow Burn 4)

If only she’d known then that when it seemed too good to be true, too perfect, then it very likely was. The woman she was now would never be so coerced or manipulated. She’d call bullshit before a man like Thomas even opened his mouth.

She despised smooth, polished men as a result and avoided them above all else. It was why it had taken her considerable time—and effort—to let her guard down with Dane and allow herself to trust someone—a man—again. Because for all his brusque mannerisms and abrupt speech and nature, Dane screamed wealth, power and polish. And an air of confidence that was tangible to anyone around him.

Just like . . . Wade Sterling. Goddamn it, she had to stop allowing him into her thoughts! Her lip curled just thinking of the cretin and his blatant blackmail and then the stunt he’d pulled at her apartment. Pretending he gave a damn. For one infinitesimal moment she’d actually been convinced that he was concerned about her and that he was furious at her for not taking better care of herself.

She snorted. Never again was she falling for that crap. Some lessons were simply learned only to be forgotten. Others were branded so deep that they were etched on your soul, never to be dismissed and damn sure never to be repeated.

She didn’t doubt he was attracted to her or at least had a healthy dose of lust but maybe he got off on being turned down flat. Who the hell knew with a man like him. But sex and actual caring were not even in the same stratosphere.

Like Dane, Sterling exuded the same wealth, power and polish, only with a . . . rougher edge. She’d never been able to put her finger on it until right now, but she realized it wasn’t practiced polish. He simply didn’t give a fuck. He was just that confident, and so much arrogance made Eliza want to stab something. Preferably him. Dane was similar in attitude as far as not giving a fuck about what people thought about him, but he’d go to the wall for the few people he cared about. She had no idea what Sterling’s agenda was nor did she care to find out.

Both men were dangerous and anyone would be a fool to ever think otherwise. Her brow furrowed because in all honesty, they were, in fact, very similar.

So why the hell did she trust Dane with her life, love him like a brother and have his back, no questions asked—ever—and yet the mere sight of Sterling immediately got her hackles up?

In the beginning, she’d found irritating him a great source of amusement but then he’d started turning it back around on her and she couldn’t back off quickly enough. She’d questioned herself a thousand times. Had she unwittingly encouraged him? Did he think that hurling insults and taking him down a notch or two was her way of flirting? Did he think she was coming on to him? Worse, did he think she was interested because of his wealth and obvious connections?

The last thing she wanted was to become involved with a man. Especially a man like Wade. She’d been no match for Thomas and time and distance had given her a lot of perspective and it wasn’t that Thomas was that skilled. She’d just been lonely and starved for human contact. She’d wanted love. Were it not for Thomas’s psychic abilities, he would have been an epic failure at seducing her—or so she insisted, as a way to console herself. And if she was walking, drenched in the rain, admitting that she had been no match for Thomas, then what the hell did that say about her chances against Sterling?

He’d eat her alive and spit her out in pieces, with or without psychic abilities. He’d certainly called her out on a hell of a lot during his tantrum days earlier, so the man was intuitive and underestimating him would be the height of stupidity. But those weren’t things she hadn’t already known. She’d just made it a regular practice to never be in the same vicinity as him so she could exist in blissful ignorance. Wow, apparently some lessons weren’t learned.

She shook her head, pissed that even now, thousands of miles away, Sterling was fucking with her head every bit as much as Thomas had. Obviously men weren’t the problem. She was. She was a head case around them and clearly she must have a neon stamp on her forehead that flashed gullible in bold letters, because she always attracted the deviants and assholes, Sterling fitting the latter description. Or maybe the former too. How the hell would she know? It was already established her taste in men was deplorable.

As she neared the small, one-bedroom house where downtown faded to nothing but county roads, open fields and houses and trailers scattered haphazardly across the landscape, her stomach cramped and she automatically rubbed her hand over her chest in an effort to quell the panic and anxiety that screamed to be let loose and had become harder each day to keep restrained as she neared the beginning of the end.

She’d purposely turned off her cell phone for two reasons. One, she wasn’t stupid, and just because the Devereauxs or Dane didn’t announce that the cell phones provided by the company were equipped with sophisticated tracking devices, didn’t mean they weren’t, and if she used it, she may as well stand in the town square with a bullhorn and announce to the world she was here.

The second was that once Gracie received Eliza’s letter—if she hadn’t already—all bets were off and her phone would be blowing the hell up around the clock. Dane’s request to stay in touch with only him bought her the necessary few days to make her escape before Gracie got the letter. In the meantime, she was supposed to be getting herself back together.

She almost laughed, an incongruous feeling when her heart literally felt like it was splintering apart because she’d never been together. She was who she was out of necessity and because of that promise she’d made all those years ago. She lived with that reminder every single day. Not a night went by that she didn’t think about taking Thomas out for good, but she always stopped there, because what happened afterward was out of her control and all that mattered was that the world would be rid of one more monster.

She trudged up to the dilapidated cottage the owner had been only too happy to rent to Eliza by the week. At most, two weeks was all she needed because she was now only two days from Thomas’s release, and he’d come for her.

As she unlocked her door to quietly slip inside, a sound snapped her from the oppressive weight of her thoughts and she reacted sluggishly, acknowledging helplessly that she was useless like this. She possessed none of the skills and instincts she’d spent years honing to perfection. How could she expect to face Thomas and ruthlessly kill him in cold blood when she was a walking zombie?