A review by jackie_of_all_books
Breathless by Willow Winters, W. Winters

4.0

Breathless picks up exactly where heartless left off. Carter is in shock and a little heartbroken that aria is holding a gun at him right now. She demands they let Nikolai and her cousins go. He tells everyone to drop their weapons besides aria and they can leave but Nikolai is refusing to leave without aria even though she tells him that she’s staying. Aria convinced Nikolai to leave her. She apologizes to Carter and says she wanted to warn him they were coming and he fully felt betrayed so when his brothers asked if they were really letting them go he wanted to hurt her like she hurt him and said kill them all. Jace tells declan to not shoot to kill that Nikolai needs to make it back to Talvery and let him know that aria chose to stay. Carter tells aria to leave that she chose them over him when she told him she loves him. He won’t listen to her. She can’t find the painting to get to her cell so she goes back to the lockbox where she had had a panic attack before and puts herself inside of it so he can calm down. Carter stares at the box waiting for her to come out. Jace and Daniel come in to talk to him. And while aria is crying in the box, Addison comes in and sees what’s happening as well and freaks out at the fact that aria had been in a call and is now trapped in a box. Addison finally convinced aria to get out of the box. She tells Daniel she is leaving and taking aria with her and he needs to let her go that she can’t stand to be with him when he knew what Carter was doing to aria. Addison and aria get in a car with one of the drivers and leave. Aria is upset because she really wanted Carter to fight for her to stay but he doesn’t. Her and Addison are taken to the safe house and told they’ll be there for a week and she realizes that’s how long Carter plans until her family is killed and the war is over. They have the girls staying at Sebastian and his wife Chloe’s house. But they never came back. Carter shows up at the house to see aria. He whips her with the belt and then he fucks her. He tells her he fell in love with the thought of her and he fell in love with fucking her but she’s making it impossible for him to be with her. She wants him to surrender and he can’t do that. She tells him she’ll die protecting her family but she would never attack him or his brothers. She tells him she can’t be his songbird anymore and he leaves her. The next morning she receives a letter from Nikolai wanting her to meet him at the candy shop. Eli says that him and Carter have both seen it so now Nikolai isn’t safe either. Carter gifted her a phone and a sketch pad and has been watching her. His brother Daniel says that Romano and Talvery know where the girls are and asks what they should do. Carter says if aria doesn’t come willingly he wants her back in the cell and Daniel tells him he can’t do that. He tells him if you treat her like a partner this could end differently. He calls her and they end up having phone sex. Aria goes and meets with Nikolai and he tells her he’s going to kill Carter for what he did to her and begs her to go with him. She tells him she loves Carter and she doesn’t want him killed but Nikolai won’t listen to anything she has to say and he admits that he’s the one who handed her over to Carter. Carter said he’d get her out and set her free but that’s not the case. Aria can’t believe that Nikolai had turned on her and had turned her in. Daniel tells Carter he has a date with Addison so Carter makes plans for aria. She goes into her room and he’s there in the dark. He hand cuffs her and blind folds her and then pulls out a vibrator and edges her when she won’t answer his questions. He allows her a few orgasms and then he asks her if she’ll still love him when he kills her family and she tells him no and he takes the handcuffs off and he’s gone. Aria asks Eli to take her to the store and on their way he tells her they need to go back to the house. A shooting starts and aria watches a man run away. She chases him and beats him to death. She was so mad at him for attacking them when all they were doing was walking to the store. She killed her second person. Aria has a weird feeling about the night and how quiet it is and she wakes up to Addison screaming. Addison tells her she dreamed of Tyler and he was so real and he was holding her and he told her he’s not upset she’s with Daniel but that she needs to go back to the house. She tells aria she’s going to go back and return to Daniel and asks her to go back with her but aria tells her that Carter doesn’t love her and she has no reason to go back. Carter is there and hears this and it pains him to hear her think he doesn’t love her but he’s never told her. Gun shots begin to fire. Talvery has invaded them. He hasn’t been able to get ahold of his brother Daniel and eli tells him their house was bombed. The war rages on. Cason comes upstairs to tell Addison and aria they need to go to the basement but Cason gets shot through the window and dies. The girls hide under the bed and the door gets kicked in and a man comes upstairs. He attacks aria and Addison takes the gun and shoots the man. Aria goes downstairs to find eli but he’s dead and she sobs realizing these men died for her. Daniel shows up for Addison. Aria goes into the backyard for darkness and peace and then she gets grabbed. Carter is beating a man trying to get info on why they attacked the safe house when jase tells him that Daniel has Addison but aria is gone. And that’s how the book ends. I loved this one. Although aria and Carter were at odds throughout most of it. I love the bond aria and Addison are forming. And Carter is finally starting to show his softness to us. We know aria is his weakness he just needs to tell her that. The war is raging on. A lot happened throughout this one. I believe the title breathless could go towards a number of things. Aria makes Carter breathless. Carter makes aria breathless. When Addison got the dream about Tyler is made her breathless. When aria and Addison both killed it made them breathless. The people they killed were breathless. Lots of route you could go with the title meaning.