With Every Breath (Slow Burn 4)

“It’s time you told me what’s going on, Eliza. I want the whole story. Everything.”

She whirled away from him, but not before he saw the panic blazing in her eyes. She put as much space between them as possible, but the room was small and his size overwhelmed it—and her.

He crossed his arms and folded them over his chest, leaning back against the locked door as if to further drive home the point that she couldn’t escape him. Not again. Not ever.

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip and it was all he could do not to go to her and thumb away her lip before she broke the skin.

“Eliza?” he prompted, her continued silence only spreading the apprehensiveness already clinging to him like a stubborn vine.

She shuddered violently and just as quickly shut down, shutting him out. She closed her eyes and turned her back, choosing instead to fix her gaze toward the blank wall she now faced.

“Eliza,” he said in warning. “My patience is at its fraying point. Don’t push me right now.”

She whirled back around, eyes wild, hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. Her snarl of rage sent a surge of desire rolling over him like a tidal wave. There she was. His Eliza. His relief was stark as he watched her fury ignite into flames.

“Where the hell do you get off telling me not to push you?” she seethed. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? I didn’t ask for you to be here. I didn’t ask for you to hunt me down and I damn sure didn’t ask for you to handcuff me to your fucking table, told to eat like an errant two-year-old who can’t get up from the dinner table until her plate is cleaned.”

He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”

She sent him a look that would likely shrivel his dick if it weren’t so damn hard for her already. Meek, beaten-down Eliza was not a good look on her. Ever. Fierce, pissed off, magnificent, enraged Eliza was a look guaranteed to make him come in his pants.

“Get out of my life, Sterling,” she hissed. “Stop interfering in shit that is not your business to interfere in! If I had wanted you in any way involved, I would have given you a heads-up. Since clearly I didn’t, and I just as clearly recall telling you a few nights ago to stay the fuck away from me, it should be very clear to you that I don’t want you here.”

“Never said I thought you wanted me here, Eliza. You may not want me here or involved, but you need me and that’s what pisses you off right now. Is that clear? Since clearly you seem to think using the word clearly enough will make it clear to me that you’ve got everything under control and that you aren’t in trouble and you can handle yourself. But after the chat I just had with Dane I’m not going anywhere. So start talking and quit fucking delaying the inevitable. Which, by the way, is me. Here. Involved. Not going away. Now, are we clear?”

He broke off when she went bone white, her eyes so large and wounded against her starkly pale face that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. She teetered precariously and he lunged for her, certain she was going to hit the floor in the next second.

But her outburst froze him in mid-action. Her words hit him with the force of a bomb, a shudder rolling over his body until his knees wobbled and he wondered if he wasn’t going to be the one who ended up on the floor.

“He killed them!” The words came out in a shriek that made him wince. “He murdered those women in the most horrific manner conceivable and I helped! I killed them! I helped kill them. I have so much blood on my hands that they’ll never be clean, Wade. Never!”

Wade hadn’t thought anything was left to shock him about the entire situation. Sweet mother of God. He was beyond flabbergasted. There was no way in hell Eliza had ever killed anyone in cold blood. Any kill she’d ever made would have been righteous.

But one had only to look at her to see that she believed herself to be every bit as guilty as the monster she took responsibility for.

An anguished moan ripped from Eliza’s throat and she slid to her knees. She buried her face in her hands as she bowed, forming the smallest, tightest ball possible, rocking back and forth. And then her sobs broke free. Her entire body heaved with the force of her gut-wrenching cries.

Wade had had enough. He reached down and pulled her up and into his arms, hugging her tightly to his body. Tilting her chin upward so he had access, he kissed away the seemingly never-ending trail of silvery tears. He nuzzled his lips at her temple and then rained kisses down her wet cheeks and finally to her lips.

She went utterly still in his arms, like a small, frightened animal in the grasp of a much larger predator, but she didn’t fight him. He kissed her lips again, feathery light, gently coaxing her mouth, lapping gently at the corners of her lips and then over the full double arch that drove him crazy every time he imagined that full, perfect bow around his lips.

“Breathe,” he whispered against her mouth, coaxing more air inward.

When she complied, her breath escaped on a sigh, giving him the opening he’d been waiting for. He took swift advantage and delved inside, nearly groaning at the sweetness of her mouth, the flutter of her tongue over his. So light and delicate, like the touch of a butterfly’s wings.

He deepened the kiss, needing it—her—more than he needed to do as he’d instructed her and breathe, and he kept deepening it until he’d tasted every single part of her mouth. She melted into him, as if her strength had been utterly sapped and he was her only barrier to the world, her only protection and he was the shelter she was seeking.

He’d never felt anything sweeter than her soft acquiescence.

Her hands trembled between their bodies as she slowly lifted them, sliding her fingers over his chest to curl into his shirt, forming tight fists as she held on.

“That’s right, Eliza. Don’t let go. I’ve got you. I won’t let you go. I swear it.”

As if something fiercely primitive deep inside her had been unleashed at his soft vow, she began to move urgently against him, hot, wild, like nothing his imagination could have possibly conjured, and he’d spent more than his fair share of time fantasizing about how magnificent she would be.

To his surprise and satisfaction, she took control of the kiss, pushing him back until he was once more pressed against the locked door. Her tongue, so hot and delicious, licked delicately over the contours of his mouth before meeting and dueling with the tip of his in a dance as old as time.

She kissed him with a ferocity and desperation he could not only feel but taste. He surrendered himself to her, allowing her this moment to revel in her control when her entire world had been upended.