With Every Breath (Slow Burn #4) - Maya Banks Page 0,47

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