With Every Breath (Slow Burn #4) - Maya Banks Page 0,84

leave her eyes as she gently extricated herself from his arms and got up to head for the shower. Wade didn’t waste any time placing the call to Dane.

After outlining everything Eliza had shared and listening to Dane curse long and hard, Wade outlined the plan and what he wanted Dane and his operatives to do. It clearly didn’t sit well with Dane not to take action and to be low-key but Wade was firm and reinforced his instructions with the fact that if they didn’t follow them to the letter, they could get not only members of Dane’s team killed but also Eliza.

“I need your best on this, Elliot,” Wade said with utter gravity. “Their job is to not be seen or noticed and to go absolutely undetected. Their only assignment is to tag Harrington the minute he’s released from custody and to shadow his every movement undetected. One wrong move and people die. And if anything happens to Eliza because one of your men fucks up, I’ll have his head and yours. We clear?”

“We don’t fuck up,” Dane said, ice dripping from every word. “We’ll shadow him and when he makes his move, we’ll be there when this all goes down. You just make sure that Eliza is safe at all times. You get her killed and I’ll have your balls.”

“Understood,” Wade said smoothly. “Now, how soon can you get up here?”

“We’re already on our way.”

There was a brief pause and then Dane grew quiet.

“You take care of her, Sterling. Make sure you don’t fuck up. I’m trusting you with one of the most important people in my life. And tell her . . . tell her I’ll always have her back and that isn’t ever going to change. I don’t profess to know what’s going on in her head right now other than she’s a goddamn mess, but you make damn sure she knows that nothing changes between us or anyone at DSS. She’s ours and she will always be ours.”

EIGHTEEN

TRUE to his word, Wade was not visible, nor did she spot any of his men, and he’d introduced her to them before she’d left the safe house to go into town. But she could feel his gaze and how she could discern his from the many other stares she was receiving mystified her, but she knew it was him. His interference and determination to protect her should annoy her—had annoyed her in the beginning—but now she drew comfort knowing he was so close even if she couldn’t actually see him.

Knowing—feeling—that he was watching her, never taking his eyes off her warmed her all the way through and made her feel . . . safe. More than safe. Cherished.

Rare and precious.

Those words he’d said with absolute sincerity, words she hadn’t put much stock in at the time, now meant something because he made her believe them, or at least made her believe that he believed them. He made her feel all of those things. Safe. Cherished. Rare and precious. And it was a heady, foreign sensation. Never before had she been made to feel so important to someone.

Oh sure, at sixteen she’d convinced herself that Thomas made her feel special but after learning of his abilities and the fact that the moment he was no longer able to manipulate her, her true feelings for him had emerged. He’d made her feel what he wanted her to feel. He’d wanted her to be as obsessed with him as he was with her, but it wasn’t real and it had taken her far too long to recognize that.

Never would she forget leaving the courthouse, Thomas’s hold on her no longer existing, and the veritable storm of emotions that had swamped her. Anger, humiliation, sorrow but most of all . . . hatred. In that moment she’d hated him with every bit as much passion as she’d once loved him. The realization that she had never truly loved him at all had ripped the few remaining vestiges of her soul into irreparable shreds. Because she’d allowed him to make her feel things she hadn’t ever truly felt for him. It had all been a carefully orchestrated deception, her choices taken, leaving her powerless to his control. She’d felt violated. Raped. Not physically but emotionally because he’d raped her mind, had taken everything from her and left her with nothing.

She hated him for giving her false hopes and dreams. For making her believe for a brief time that all the things