Page 75 of Elven Crown

Especially not for something as stupid as an internal squabble over clashing character defects.

By the time she rounded the rear corner of the truck, Maxwell was already trying to work it out on his own, half-shouting, half-snarling incoherent expressions of his anger.

Rebecca thought those included a few choice expletives, but she couldn’t be sure.

He seemed oblivious to her approach when she stepped around to his side, though she gave him a moment longer to notice her arrival.

He just kept snarling to himself, pacing back and forth in irritation, as naked as the last time she’d caught him shifting out of his wolf form.

She cleared her throat, but that didn’t make a lick of difference. So she stopped beside the wall of the trailer, turned slightly away from him, and said, “Hannigan.”

“What?” he snarled, spinning toward her.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of his furious scowl and wide silver eyes. It took the rest of her concentration to activelynotlook at the rest of him standing entirely nude in front of her.

“I thought you might want these,” she said and extended his collected clothes toward him in one hand.

He didn’t immediately respond, which made her wonder if she’d made the wrong call trying to help him out in this one small way.

But then his bare feet padded toward her, and he snatched his clothes out of her hand all at once before stepping away again.

She listened to him dress, punctuated by his endless snarling, and the only real surprise hit her when he let out another growl that ended in a massive sigh, paused, then muttered, “Thanks.”

“Yep.” After that, it seemed he lost any urgency in putting on the rest of his clothes.

Or maybe it was just her imagination.

Maybe she justwantedhim to take his time, because now she couldn’t stop herself from stealing quick glances at him as he moved. It was all she could do not to stare.

The low exterior lights around the docks illuminated far more of him than she’d seen the last time she’d waited for him to put some clothes on—back when he’d borrowed an outfit from someone else’s clothesline in a trailer park.

The sight only confirmed she hadn’t imagined the chiseled lines of his chest and abs in the darkness that night. She certainly wasn’t imagining it now. Tonight, though, her gaze caught on a new detail she hadn’t noticed before.

A dark patch of skin on Maxwell’s chest at the top of his right pectoral muscle. Vaguely circular and slightly darker than the rest of his skin.

The docks didn’t offer enough light to see any other details clearly, but she tried to hide a smile at the thought.

She wouldn’t have pegged Maxwell Hannigan as the type to splurge on tattoos, but something told her asking him about it point-blank wouldn’t benefit him or his current mood.

Then she turned away, as if his privacy were suddenly necessary, and left him behind the trailer until he finished.

When Maxwell stormed out from behind the vehicle, he was fully dressed in his own clothes, his face, hair, and bare forearms still smeared with dirt and dust and debris from their recent battle.

He looked like he was about to snarl and spout off obscenities to himself again. The way he stormed around, huffing and clenching his fists, he might not have even noticed she was there, but he hadn’t settled down, either.

It didn’t even occur to her that being talked down to by the elf he used to suspect of all the wrong things, who had recently become his superior, might not have been what he needed.

“Hey,” she called as she headed toward him. “We won this one tonight, in case you’ve forgotten. We took them down, Max. We had everything we needed.”

That didn’t even sound right. Wasthatsupposed to calm him down?

She wasn’t sure, but she expected him to at least offer more of a reply than what she got.

“Sure.” That was all he said before he stomped away from her without so much as a look.

Like he blamed her for what had happened and just didn’t want to confirm it for her.

She watched him walk away and puffed out a sigh. They were back onthattrain now, were they?

---