Page 77 of Elven Prince

No matter how much it hurt to pull away from him, how much it felt like a physical wounding, she couldn’t do this right now.

He wanted more from her than she could ever give, and Rebecca’s only duty to anyone, including herself, was focusing on the task at hand now. On the multitude of threats Shade faced from every direction.

On trying to take them down at the very core so her task force wouldn’t have to suffer through any further consequences of a terrible leader’s even worse decisions.

Once, not too long ago, Rebecca would have put Maxwell above all of it. Shehad,the night she’d broken all her own rules to use her magic out in the open and save his life.

But that was gone now. There was too much at stake, and putting this thing with Maxwell first was more likely to ruin them sooner rather than later.

She finished fully turning the doorknob, hauled her office door open, and prayed to any gods of either world who might be listening that this would be the end of it.

21

Rebecca burst through the door and into her office like her life depended on it. At this point, she couldn’t tell the difference anyway.

She had to get away from Maxwell, away from this thing between them and its power over her.

As soon as she slipped inside, she spun around, fully intending to slam the door in the shifter’s face and leave it at that.

The hallway erupted with a furious snarl a second before Maxwell barged through the door. The force of his entrance ripped the door out of Rebecca’s hand and sent her staggering backward while he muscled his way into her office in all of half a second.

As she gaped at him, the physical pain of tearing away from him receded beneath an explosion of roiling anger. “What the hell do you think you’re—”

“I need to hear this fromyou, Knox,” he said in something between a growl and a rumbling shout. “And I’m not leaving until you give me a real answer.”

“Arealanswer! You think I’ve been lying through my teeth this whole time? If you still think I’m playing everyone here for some secret ulterior motive, that’s your choice. I don’t have time for it!”

“Iknowthere’s something more about Blackmoon you’re not telling me,” he snarled, pacing in a short line across the center of her office, the pulsing strobe in his silver eyes providing their own light show. “I need to know what it is. I need to know, or I can’t—”

“No, what youneedis a cold shower,” she snapped, following his pacing with a furious glare. “Alone. Once you’ve had a chance to cool down, then we can talk. I can’t have a conversation with you when you’re snapping in my face like a rabid dog.”

She stormed back toward the door, grabbed the doorknob again, and whisked it open to give him a clear shot out of her office.

She only got the door a quarter of the way open again.

Maxwell leapt across the room. The doorknob once more ripped painfully out of Rebecca’s grasp when he slammed the door shut, this time with both of them still on the same side of it.

Rebecca whirled around to face him, another furious retort at the tip of her tongue.

He was right there, nearly on top of her, slamming both hands against the wall on either side of her head, like he meant to pin her there without actually touching her at all.

“You knew him before he ever broke into this compound!” His words and the threatening act of pummeling the wall in a show of strength without touching a hair on her head only fueled the intensity of the energy flaring up between them.

Maxwell loomed over her, snarling, his silver eyes flashing and his rage and desperation washing over her as heat and energy and need roiled within the laughably small space between them.

Rebecca could hardly think beneath the all-consuming intensity pulling her body toward him while she would have preferred to punch him in the face, while he seethed at her, barely containing himself around her because she couldfeelit.

She struggled for a response. The only thing that passed her lips was a shakily whispered, “What?”

“From the moment you first laid eyes on that elf the day he got here, Iknewthere was something. His blatant disregard for orders. His disrespect for everything we do here. His recklessness endangering all of us. You vouched for him, and I never could figure out why.”

Rebecca was captured in his gaze again, unable to move or say a thing, hardly able to breathe, half-expecting him to yell at her one second and snap her head off with one fatal blow from a wolf’s jaws clamped around her neck.

At the same time, she couldn’t ignore the fact that Maxwell’s arms trembled now as they pinned her in on either side, pressing against the wall like he meant to bring the whole office down with one mighty shove.

Or like he was finally losing control.

“But therewassomething between you two,” he snapped through another violent growl rippling up his throat. “I saw it. Isawit, and I told myself I was making assumptions where nothing existed because I—”

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