Page 78 of Elven Shadow

If he was supposed to be the shadow Aldous had assigned to her, the shifter had just blown his cover. If he wasn’t the shadow, he still didn’t have much left to stand on.

She wouldn’t tell him a damn thing.

“That was me saying we’re done here,” she told him instead.

When Maxwell dipped his head farther toward her, his gaze settled on the hollow of her throat before moving across her collarbones, then one bare shoulder exposed beneath the strap of her tank top. His nostrils flared once.

“Maybe you don’t already know this,” he said slowly, his silver eyes pulsing with internal light as his intense gaze roamed all over her. “But a lot of information can be drawn out of someone without them ever having to tell me a thing.”

She scoffed. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“Like whether or not they’re lying,” he continued, as if she hadn’t said a thing. “Or if they’re hiding something. If they’re scared or nervous or mistakenly overconfident. I can smell all of it. Try lying to a shifter. It doesn’t go over very well.”

She wanted to shove him away. She wanted to offer some biting quip about how very scary big Mr. Head of Security was, sneaking around behind her after dark. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself because this was none of his business.

She didn’t.

Because the way he looked at her now, standing so close like this and looming over her with the light of those silver shifter eyes tingling across her skin…

Well, all that made her want to stay.

That was the dumbest possible decision right now, especially after what she’d done here tonight. Whether or not Maxwell had witnessed any of it didn’t change a thing.

Only an idiot would stand here any longer than she had to, letting the shifter make her toes all tingly just by staring at her with those silver eyes.

She almost expected him to lick his lips at any second now, like he was about to bury his teeth into a giant steak.

And doinganythingwith Shades’ Head of Security—shifter or not, present at their secret little rebellion meeting or not—was the worst idea of all.

That didn’t mean she could stop herself from egging him on now that he’d brought it up. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t accept the challenge and toss the ball right back into his court.

“And what, exactly,” she asked, lifting her face even farther toward him, “do you smell onmeright now?”

Of course it was a loaded question. That was the point.

She wanted to make him back the hell off—and, at the same time, she didn’t quite want him to. In fact, part of her was particularly interested in seeing exactly how far he would take this little ruse behind a dark alley next to his favorite magical-friendly bar.

Maxwell’s silver eyes took an eternity to move away from her throat and rise to meet her gaze. He dipped his head even lower until the heat of his face washed over hers, then he slowly inhaled through his nose.

It should have been creepy.

Somehow, it wasn’t.

Rebecca stood perfectly still, silently daring the shifter to just fucking try something—and still insanely curious as to what that might possibly be.

After Maxwell exhaled again slowly through his nose—playing up the act of “smelling all of it” on her, whatever the hell that meant—his flatly muttered response put an end to the whole thing. “I smell rats.”

And just like that, the tension of their little standoff melted away.

He could have been insinuating he thoughtshewas some kind of rat, but she chose not to entertain that train of thought at the moment. Too many complications.

Instead, she had to let this go.

“See?” Rebecca spread her arms. “You’ve figured it out. Now that you’ve gotten allthatout of your system, I’m only gonna ask you once to move out of my way so I can get on with the rest of my night. And if you decide not to, Ipromiseyou won’t like what happens after that.”

At first, he didn’t move, and Rebecca started to think he really would force her to make good on that promise.

But then Maxwell finally stepped aside enough to let her slip past him by turning sideways and gestured down the alley behind him—like it had beenhisidea for her to get out of here. “Your off-duty time is to do with as you like. As is your decision not to tell me what you’ve been up to.”

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