With Every Breath (Slow Burn #4) - Maya Banks Page 0,91

more rigid, she hurried to explain.

“I’m not defending him, Wade. I’m trying to explain him, how he was, how demented he was. How could he have treated me like a queen while torturing and raping and murdering other women? It sickened me to know that I was spared that treatment because he loved me, put me on a fucking pedestal convinced I was perfect and couldn’t bring himself to ever hurt me and so he slaked his perversions on others.”

Wade pressed his lips to the top of her head and simply held her as she continued the painful recount.

“He will want me back, yes. But he won’t use violence. He won’t seek revenge or hurt me. He’ll attempt to manipulate me like he used to. Nothing I felt for him then was real. My feelings for him weren’t my own. They were his. He planted the thoughts, feelings, emotions he wanted me to have for him and he manipulated every aspect of my life. My actions. I thought it was all real, that what I felt for him was my choice, my decision. It wasn’t until I walked out of that courtroom and his connection to me was finally severed that my real feelings emerged and, God, I was sick to my soul over what I allowed him to do. What I allowed myself to become. And how pathetically weak and needy I was that I was such an easy conquest for him. I have never hated like I hated him in that moment. That was real. That was me. Finally myself and capable of having feelings not orchestrated by Thomas. Hatred and revulsion were my true feelings. Because God help me, Wade, even when I discovered what he was, what he’d done, even when I went to the police and when I testified against him, I loved him. I was heartbroken and felt like I was betraying him for turning against him. I still loved him and I can never forget that. Can never forgive myself.”

“Oh baby,” Wade said, his voice aching with sorrow and regret.

“And that’s what he’ll try to do again,” she said, forging ahead, needing to get everything out. There was so much to do before tomorrow and it was going to take everything she had to convince Wade to go along with her plan.

“He’ll be convinced that all he’ll have to do is plant feelings for him, make me think I love him and then he’ll sweep in and take me away so we can finally be together.”

“Can he?” Wade asked, worry giving his words an edge. “Can he still do that?”

“He’ll think he can,” Eliza said grimly. “And that’s all that matters. But no. Never again. I’ve spent years working to strengthen my mental barriers. I researched endlessly, reading every article, study, book I could get my hands on dealing with psychic powers and strengthening mental barriers that make people susceptible to psychic influence.”

She pulled slightly away from Wade, returning the gesture he’d made moments before. She cupped his face, staring earnestly into his eyes.

“I didn’t know any better then. I didn’t know what love or hate was. So it was easy for him to convince me that what I felt for him was love and that it was real. But then I felt hate when he was no longer manipulating my thoughts and feelings. And the hate was so much stronger, so much more powerful than the love I was made to feel for Thomas because that love wasn’t real,” she said fiercely. “But my hate was. It was very real and it was mine. It belonged to me and wasn’t controlled by anyone else. That was when I understood the difference between what was real and what was merely a manifestation of childish fantasies and hopeless wishes and that I was a naïve idiot for believing in dreams coming true.”

“Will he know he can no longer control you?” Wade asked, his brows drawn together in concern. “And how certain are you that you can block him now?”

There was a hint of fear in his tone, one that made Eliza realize that Wade feared losing her to the man who’d once controlled every aspect of her life. A man she had freely admitted she’d once loved and would have done anything for. A man she’d planned forever with.

“No one will ever control me again,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’ll have to be careful to keep my emotions in control because he’s as