Page 38 of Elven Crown

Maxwell had joined her once more, fulfilling his previously established duties as Head of Security that apparently still included stationing himself inside the commander’s office whenever she happened to be there. Today, he’d even brought his own chair.

Rowan hadn’t yet attempted to find her or corner her for a conversation today, but it was only a matter of time before he figured out she was in her office, pretending to be busy. She had a feeling even Maxwell’s presence wouldn’t serve as an effective deterrent on its own for much longer. She had to stay busy.

After tapping her pen against the desk for several minutes within the uncomfortable silence of being alone with Maxwell—while neither of them looked at or spoke to the other—Rebecca had had enough. She dropped her pen and turned in the swiveling desk chair to face him where he now sat on an extra stool inside the office door.

“All right,” she said. “What else needs to be done around here?”

The shifter looked up from his reading, which she assumed was either a printed mission report or one of his personal dossiers he apparently kept on each of Shade’s members. When he met her gaze without expression, that tingling, beckoning weight of his presence doubled in intensity.

Rebecca had finally started to feel like she’d figured out how to ignore that overwhelming sensation, but that was much harder to do when they were alone.

Swallowing against the urge to be closer to him, she spun in her chair to face her desk again, trying to avoid the warmth spreading across her body beneath Maxwell’s gaze.

He cleared his throat. “On a general, large-scale timeline?”

Rebecca shot him a quick frown before the hot flutter in her belly at the flash in his silver eyes instantly reminded her why she’d looked away. “That would be nice to have too, but I’m talking about more of an immediate timeline. As in right now.”

“Oh.” Maxwell adjusted his reading material in his lap, then returned his attention there. “We’ve got it all covered. Basically.”

“Basically? Because if anyone knows how out of placebasicis here, it’s you.”

“Fine. I’ll rephrase. Everything that needs to be taken care of right now already has been. Better?”

Rebecca puffed out a sigh and slumped back in her desk chair. “Not really, no.”

Maxwell’s reading material hit his lap with a muffled slap. “Why the hell not?”

Rebecca drummed her fingers on the desk this time, swiveling back and forth in the chair and refusing to look at him. “Because I can’t just sit here all day. There’s work to do. There’s always work to do. Maybe Aldous preferred to spend his downtime locked up in here, counting his stacks of gold or whatever, but I can’t do that.”

The office fell into another uncomfortable silence, but Rebecca still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

She still felt his gaze on her like a physical weight, like gently probing fingers studying her face, examining her for fault lines and cracks in the surface of her composure that might weaken the entire mask.

That had to be what he was doing. What other reason would he have for studying her so intently in total silence?

No other reason made sense. Otherwise, she would have felt like he was staring at her for so long simply because he liked what he saw.

That was insane.

Maybe the perceived stress of commanding Shade was taking its toll. Maybe she was losing her mind.

Then Maxwell snorted, and it sounded not like his usual suspicion but like true amusement this time. “You’re bored.”

She whipped her head back toward him and narrowed her eyes.

The nearly invisible twitch across the shifter’s lips could have been his version of a smirk. He was making fun of her.

She knew it even before his silver eyes locked onto hers and made the tingling warmth of his presence ten times stronger. It took all her effort not to squirm in her chair.

What the hell was wrong with her? Rebecca Bloodshadow didn’t squirm, under any circumstances.

“I’m not bored,” she quipped. Once she said it, though, she recognized the lie, though her boredom was only one of her reasons for wanting something else to fill her time.

Now it felt like Maxwell recognized it too.

With a quick roll of her eyes, Rebecca shrugged. “Fine. I’m alittlebored. I just don’t like sitting up here doing nothing and wasting my time. Wasting everyone else’s time too.”

When he didn’t immediately respond, she figured Maxwell intended to sit there with his reading and keep making fun of her within the privacy of his own mind. That was his right, but it didn’t help her solve any of her current issues.

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