With Every Breath (Slow Burn #4) - Maya Banks Page 0,104

roll in and cover it with black clouds, never to be revealed to her again.

What she hadn’t realized was that Wade was the sun. Her sun. And even the fiercest storm could never suppress his warmth, his light, his love.

Her sobs quieted, leaving only soft hiccups in their wake. She lay limply against Wade, her face buried in his neck as she clung desperately to him, afraid that if she so much as blinked, he would be gone.

Wade ran his fingers over her face, wiping the last of her tears from her cheeks and then he carefully tucked the tousled strands of hair stuck to her face and partially covering her eyes behind her ears and smoothing the rest away, leaving no wayward strands behind.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and sighed softly. “Baby, what happened just now? Have to say, that wasn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting to me telling you I love you and that you’re marrying me. Is the idea of me loving you so terrible? Or is it the marrying part that freaked you out?”

He carefully maneuvered her face from his neck to look at him. There was such a look of vulnerability in his eyes, something she’d never seen in this hard man who rarely let his emotions out from behind the impenetrable mask that was such a permanent fixture on him.

Seeing that naked, raw uncertainty so clearly reflected in his expression made her tear up all over again.

Wade’s expression immediately became frantic, agitation radiating from him in waves.

“Baby, don’t cry. Please don’t cry anymore. You’re breaking my heart. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it, I swear. I won’t rush you. I’ll wait forever if I have to. I’ll give you all the time in the world you need and when you’re ready, I’ll be right here, waiting.”

“Oh God, Wade,” she said tearfully. “I love you too. So much. And it scares me to death. I’m terrified. I haven’t allowed myself to love anyone except the few people I call friends—family,” she corrected. “But even them I keep at arm’s length, never letting them too deep inside me, because it’s so ugly and I’d never let them see that part of me. I can’t lose you, Wade. Not you. It would destroy me. I don’t know how to love. I’ve never loved the way I love you and have never been loved like you love me.

“I thought I was in love, but I was so wrong. You’ve shown me what love is, how beautiful and selfless it is and I want it more than I want to breathe, but I’m so scared, because I don’t know how to love someone the way you deserve to be loved. It terrifies me to care so much about someone. To have so much—all—of my happiness depend on one person.”

For a moment Wade didn’t respond. He didn’t seem capable. He closed his eyes, his relief a living, breathing entity, and it was then she noticed that he was trembling just as she had been shaking a short time ago. When he reopened his eyes, they were so full of love and understanding that they looked near to bursting and they were lighter than she’d ever seen them before.

“Now you understand how I feel,” he said gruffly. “I’ve never loved anyone in my life, Eliza. Never even knew what love was, what it felt like, what it meant. It’s beautiful and scary as hell all at the same time. You think you have ugliness? You have nothing on me. I’m not a good man. I’ve done things you can’t even imagine and I’ve never suffered a single regret. But that’s over with now because I would never risk you that way. I will never let anything ugly touch you again and if that means me going straight and becoming legitimate then I’m more than willing to do that if it means I have you. You are everything to me, which is why I’m not letting you risk yourself to take this maniac down. I will always stand in front of you and anything that puts you in harm’s way. You need to understand that and deal, Eliza. Life with me won’t be easy. I’m an overbearing, controlling bastard and I will never allow you to take risks with your safety.”

He framed her face and looked fiercely into her eyes as if willing every bit of his impassioned statement to be permanently engraved in her mind, her heart and