Page 117 of Elven Lies

The kind of fire she’d been searching for all her life and never even knew…

Then something changed.

Something joined them.

She’d felt it before, like a third presence and a new entity, separate from both her and Maxwell but not independent of them. Existing only when they were close, like this.

She noticed its existence right away, and yet the strength of that third presence, that somethingelse, continued to grow.

It was there with them through every brush of Maxwell’s lips against hers, with every breath they shared, urging Rebecca forward, closer, farther, deeper with every second, but not like before.

Until now, she’d been drawn toward Maxwell with increasing intensity over time. But this felt as if this third presence had been split between them somehow. Like the half of it inside her recognized the half of it inside him and now surged forward on its own to seize, as if to pull that missing piece right out of the shifter.

Rebecca was no longer in control of that new presence too powerful to ignore, too promising to deny.

Need and hunger and a desire to claim and consume raced through her. Urging her to keep going. Challenging her to stop, if she dared risk what would happen when she did.

This thing inside them both pulled at them for who knew how long until, somehow, Rebecca’s awareness returned to her and she realized what she was doing.

She was kissing Maxwell. In his recovery bed in the infirmary. And he was kissing her back.

None of this was why she’d come down here to see him in the first place…

She broke away, ending the kiss that hadn’t yet become anything more and catching her breath with her mind reeling.

How the hell had that happened?

She drew another shaking inhale and opened her eyes to find Maxwell’s silver gaze on her already.

By the Blood, what waswrongwith her?

The realization mortified her, and at the same time, she couldn’t help but want more.

Undoubtedly, she wasnotin the right frame of mind to judge what she wanted against what was best.

She leaned away, the moment interrupted and now gone, and blurted, “I didn’t mean to—”

“That wasn’t what I—” Maxwell said at the same time, looking just as stunned.

There was no turning back now, no misinterpreting what had just happened, no matter who had instigated it—her or him or that other thing within them both, whatever it was.

No more pretending that what they each had been feeling for weeks now might not actually exist for the other.

Rebecca could see it in his eyes, right there alongside the confusion. Maxwell knew there was something there, something different. That he could name it no more than she could.

With seemingly no more walls between them in the moment, Rebecca went for it. “You felt all of that, didn’t you?”

“All of—” The raspiness of his voice made him stop, clear his throat, and try again. “All of what?”

“Don’t. You can quit pretending, Hannigan. Hell, I’m ready to quit with you. This thing between us, thisfeeling… I need to know it’s not just me.”

“It’s not.”

He said it so firmly, with such a calm certainty of what he seemed to have already accepted, that Rebecca wondered how she could ever have thought this was all in her head.

She studied him, searching for hidden cues or a sign of underlying doubts he didn’t want to share, and found nothing. “How long?”

Maxwell swallowed before immediately answering as if it had been at the top of his thoughts for days. “Since Hector’s attack on the compound. That I know of.”

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