With Every Breath

by Maya Banks

  With a sigh, he gave Eliza’s hand a squeeze and guided it back into the cuff, once more securing her wrist to the table.

  “I have to make a call, baby,” he said softly, giving her a gentle look. “When I get back, we talk. Finish eating. I’ll have one of my men come in. There’s dessert too.”

  He caressed the cuffed hand, soothing and ensuring it wasn’t causing her any discomfort.

  “This won’t take long. Then you get me and my undivided attention.”

  Her startled look told him she hadn’t missed the inference in his statement. That she wasn’t getting his attention. She was getting him. And his undivided attention, which meant two separate things entirely.

  TWELVE

  “I thought I made it clear that I call you. You do not call me,” Wade said, his voice enough to lower the outside temperature by another twenty degrees and it was already cold as fuck and drizzling.

  He’d stepped out of the house, not wanting to chance Eliza overhearing what was likely to be a very unpleasant conversation with her precious team leader. Or partner. Whatever the fuck they were to one another.

  “Tell me you have Eliza,” Dane said curtly. “Don’t fuck with me, Wade. Tell me you have her.”

  Wade blinked at the chilling fear in the other man’s voice. The first time he’d called he’d sounded merely worried. What the hell had happened to upgrade the status to the terror in Dane’s tone? Dane sounded as though he was precariously close to losing his shit. Well, join the crowd and get in line because that made two of them.

  “Goddamn it, Sterling, there are things you don’t know,” Dane snarled. “Now is not the time to have a fucking pissing match. Now tell me if Eliza is with you.”

  “Yes. Currently she’s handcuffed to the table I just made her sit down at and eat the first meal she’s likely had in days, if not weeks.”

  “Thank God,” Dane whispered and Wade could practically see the man sagging in relief.

  “She’s safe. She’s covered. Now if that’s all you wanted?”

  “No the fuck it isn’t,” Dane exploded. “Fuck. Fuck! We’ve got a huge fucking problem.”

  Dane went silent as though valiantly trying to pull himself together and Wade frowned at the frenzied, out of control, completely uncharacteristic outburst from DSS’s front man. His frown turned to a vicious scowl because there was a hell of a lot he didn’t like about this impromptu telephone chat.

  Dane was clearly unhinged, worried out of his mind, but it was the last that put Wade on full alert. We’ve got a huge fucking problem. Cold, stark fear vibrated through every single nerve ending until he was battling the very thing Dane Elliot was.

  “Since you don’t seem inclined to share anything at the moment, perhaps you can start with the cryptic text you sent saying situation critical,” Wade snapped. “I need to know what I’m dealing with here because Eliza isn’t exactly being cooperative, so if you have intel, particularly information that keeps her alive, then you need to start fucking talking and do it fast. Eliza’s reserves are gone, have been gone for a long time, not that you or anyone else noticed,” he said in a voice full of derision. “She’s currently handcuffed to a table because it was the only way I could force her to eat. She’s a fucking mess, Dane. Imagine the worst-case scenario of Eliza falling apart and shattering into a million pieces and then multiply that by a hundred and then you’ll start getting close to her current state of mind. Now, I have to have a serious come-to-Jesus meeting with her so I know what the hell has her so fucking afraid when she’s never had the goddamn sense to be afraid of anything.”

  He heard Dane’s sudden, vicious intake of air and when he spoke, his words shook and he suddenly sounded a hundred years old.

  “She’s that scared?” Dane whispered. “You said she fell apart?”

  “You have no idea,” Wade said coldly. “Now start talking.”

  “Jesus, she’s on some kind of goddamn suicide mission,” Dane choked out.

  And then he outlined in harsh, broken sentences everything in Eliza’s letter. Only, Wade wouldn’t allow him to paraphrase any of Eliza’s words. This was too important. He couldn’t take in Dane’s biased account so he made Dane read the letter verbatim.

  He closed his eyes and swore viciously, sparing none of his anger, fear or torment. When he directed Dane once more, there was no deference in his voice. No acknowledgment that Dane and Eliza’s other coworkers had any right to be afraid, to intervene or that they were in any way in control of the situation. Wade was calling the shots.

  “You sit on every one of your men, Elliot,” Wade ground out. “You do not send off a bunch of half-cocked, pissed off operatives into this situation. Not when Eliza’s life is at stake.”

  “She’s ours,” Dane said viciously. “Do you honestly believe we’re going to sit here and do nothing?”

  “She’s mine,” Wade said in a fierce, pissed off tone. “You need to get that and you need to let it sink in. Right the fuck now.”

  “If anything happens to Lizzie, there will be no safe place for you to hide. I’ll devote the rest of my life to hunting you down and taking you apart with my bare hands.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to Eliza. Second, you’re welcome to try and good luck with that.” Wade paused a moment and then quietly added, “If something ever happens to her, it will be pointless for you to hunt me down because I’d take care of the matter myself.”

  After a long moment, and just as quietly, Dane responded, “So it’s like that.”

  “It’s exactly like that,” Wade said harshly.

  He shook off the simmering emotion to clear his head of unwanted images of something terrible happening to the woman he had handcuffed inside the house.

  “You sit on your men and you goddamn sit on yourself for at least twenty-four hours,” Wade said forcefully. “Give me time to get the story from Eliza and to make my play. After those twenty-four hours, you get your team together, make damn sure they know what’s at stake and make very certain they have their heads on straight and then you get your asses to Calvary, Oregon, which is where I found her, and start discreetly poking around and see what you can dig up. In the meantime, I’m going to plant a few seeds. Make it clear that Eliza was there and that she left with me and I’m not going to make it hard for me to be found.”

  “Jesus,” Dane muttered. “You’re using her as fucking bait?”

  “No, the fuck I’m not!” Wade bellowed. “I’m making myself the goddamn bait. She’s made it clear to you and to me that she isn’t worried about herself. She’s worried about anyone she’s associated with. Whatever the fuck is going on with her, she knows enough about the threat to know that she won’t be the target. Which is why she’s on this goddamn suicide mission. She’s sacrificing herself for everyone who matters to her. Don’t you think if she were the target, that if she feared for herself, that she would have the sense to confide that in you so her team could have her back? Come on, Elliot. You’ve worked with her. You call her your friend. She’s not stupid. When has she ever been stupid? She’s not afraid for herself. She’s fucking terrified that everyone she loves is going to die. I’m setting myself up to be an easy target and to draw this son of a bitch to me. And Eliza will not ever have the opportunity to take anything for me.”

  “I get it,” Dane said sharply. “I don’t like it, but I get it. We’ll check in when we have any intel. I’d appreciate it if you did the same.”

  “When I know something, I’ll clue you in.”

  With that, Wade ended the call and stood there several long seconds, composing himself for the most difficult hurdle yet. Confronting Eliza. Finding out what godawful demons she’s lived with for far too long. And why she’s never shared them with anyone.

  THIRTEEN

  QUIETLY, Wade returned to the table where he’d left Eliza cuffed, to find her staring seemingly a long ways away, her gaze fixed on some distant point. At first, she didn’t register his presence, and when she did and bro
ught her gaze level with his, the sadness in her usually vibrant, teasing eyes clutched at his heart.

  He thought back to the letter Dane had read to him. Words penned by Eliza. This wasn’t a woman on a quest for absolution. She’d already condemned herself and thought herself beyond redemption for whatever sins she carried. Nor was this woman out for revenge. She wasn’t angry enough. Not cold enough to be plotting revenge.

  He’d seen her in revenge mode, when she’d been so adamant about going after the bastards who’d tortured her and made Ramie, Ari and Gracie’s lives hell and taking them down. This was a woman grieving for people she’d already resigned herself to losing, not because they’d die, but because she would.

  Which meant she had no illusions about surviving either her attempt to bring justice against someone who’d escaped it or the punishment for killing a man.

  Dane coining this a suicide mission was chillingly accurate.

  Doing his best not to succumb to the ice invading his veins, making his blood sluggish and slowing his reaction time down, he went to her and bent to one knee so he could unfasten the cuff from her wrist. When she would have pulled her hand away from him, he caught hold of her wrist, turning it so he could inspect her flesh.

  Cursing when he saw the faint red marks, he pressed a gentle kiss to the damage he’d done.

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”

  She yanked back her hand as if he’d scalded her, clutching her wrist to her chest, covering it with her other hand in a protective measure. Shock rounded her eyes as she stared at him, clearly bewildered by the tender gesture.

  “Let’s go where we have more privacy,” he said, helping her to her feet.

  He propelled her toward one of the bedrooms, one that had no windows to the outside and he secured the lock behind them after flipping on the lights. She glanced wildly around as if assessing her escape options and then her shoulders sagged when she realized she had none.

  “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 magni
ficent 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.

  He sucked in his breath when she slid her lips from his mouth down his jaw, and then nipping at his earlobe before going lower and grazing her teeth over the side of his neck before following it with a sharp nip that had him growling deep in his throat.

  Her fingers loosened, freeing his shirt, and her hands glided across his chest, then lower, yanking his shirt up and sliding her palms over his taut abdomen and then his chest before traveling in a downward path again, this time going much lower.

  She dipped into the waistband of his pants, her fingers finding him hot and turgid, shoving with growing urgency against his fly. She fumbled with the button and then he heard the throaty rasp of his zipper and then he was free, his dick thrusting outward into her waiting grasp.

  Jesus, but it was like coming home. Sweat broke out on his brow and his breaths grew more rapid as he strained to suck in more air. Never had anything felt as good as her fingers curled around his erection.

  “Fuck me, Sterling,” she whispered, a plea. “Take me hard and fast. Make me forget. Just for a little while, make me forget.”

  Wade gently circled both her wrists with his fingers, stilling the pull of her hand on his rigid length, and then he moved her hands outward, away, and then lifted them to press her palms against his chest.

  “Eliza, stop,” he said quietly. “Breathe for me, baby. Deep breaths and stop for just a minute.”

  Her eyes dulled, the shadows lengthening, as shame crept into her beautiful, soulful gaze. She turned her face away, presenting only one cheek to his view, her eyes closing as a thin rivulet of moisture slithered down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, so faintly he almost couldn’t hear. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to be tainted.”

  Wade cursed savagely and then he cursed even more that she would believe for one moment that she was tainted. That he didn’t want her. When he was nearly blinded by his need of her.

  She opened her mouth to speak again but he reached for her chin and turned her so she fully faced him once more.

  “Shut up,” he said fiercely.

  And then he kissed her just as fiercely as his outburst had been to stop any further words from her. Words that had already cut him like the sharpest blade.

  His fingers tightened around her chin and he softly rubbed his thumb over her swollen lips when he finally dragged his mouth from hers. Though she faced him, her gaze was downcast, refusing to meet his.

  “Look at me, Eliza.”

  She closed her eyes, her nostrils quivering.

  “Look at me.”

  Her eyelids fluttered, unshed tears collecting like gems on her lashes.

  “I am not going to fuck you. I’m going to make love to you. I’m going to show you how very beautiful you are to me.”

  “I’m not beautiful,” she said in an aching, pain-filled voice. “God, Wade. You have no idea how ugly I am. On the inside. My soul is so black . . . dead.”

  Every word that came from her cut him razor sharp to the bone. He couldn’t bear to hear a single other one. He silenced her once more with a kiss.

  He took over, giving her no chance to speak, to condemn herself even further in her own eyes. Not leaving the silken heat of her mouth for the few seconds it would take him to remove her clothing, he kept his mouth fused to hers and fumbled clumsily with her shirt, unfastened her jeans, yanked downward, leaving them gathered at her knees for now.

  As he unhooked her bra and used his fingers to push the thin straps down over her shoulders, he whispered into her mouth, “I’m going to leave your sweet mouth only for as long as it takes me to get you fully undressed, but I don’t want to hear a single word out of it unless you’re saying my name.”

  Her only response was the light hiccupping sound of her breath as she sucked it in.

  Moving swiftly, he took her hands and placed one over each of his shoulders for her to hang on to while he divested her of her shoes, socks and then her jeans, leaving her to stand before him in only her silky panties.

  “I’ve spent countless sleepless nights dreaming of this,” he murmured.

  Faint color rose in her cheeks, sweeping upward from her neck. She stared at him in obvious disbelief but there was also a flicker of . . . guilt. As though she’d been caught out on something she’d rather die than have be known. He smiled.

  “You too, huh.”

  “Wade . . .”

  “I like hearing my name on your lips. Before a few days ago, you never called me by my first name. Only my last.”

  Not giving her a chance to respond, he pulled her back against his body, sliding his thumbs down her sides to catch at the lacy band of her underwear. He pushed just enough that when he let go, it slipped the rest of the way down her slender legs and finally she was fully nude.

  His bold gaze took in every exquisite inch of her, from her tousled blonde hair to the silky golden tufts between her legs. Her breasts were utter perfection. Gently rounded with just enough bob and sway to make a man’s mouth water but they, like the rest of her body, were toned, sleek . . . beautiful. They fit with the rest of her figure. Not so muscled or flat that they were shapeless pads with only nipples to differentiate them from the rest of her body.

  Her hips flared enticingly, just crying for a man’s hands to palm them, to