Page 78 of Elven Prince

He searched her face beneath the brilliant flashing of his silver eyes and snarled again. “Because I wanted a reason,anyreason, to get rid of him.”

“And now he’s gone,” Rebecca muttered, her voice having recovered more of its strength. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Itdoesmatter! Blackmoon tookeveryopportunity to endanger us from the start. To endangeryou. Some people are like that, but not all of them know how to push all the right buttons every time. Not the way he pushed yours.”

Fuck.

This wasn’t Maxwell’s attempts to threaten her now that he’d gotten her alone.

This was his confession. The unsolicited reveal of everything he’d noticed and watched and suspected now coming out at once because it had nowhere left to go.

With a painfully heavy sigh, he lowered his arms from the wall, careful not to even brush up against her along the way, and took one step backward with his next shaky inhale. “I thought I was losing my mind. But that night, at the warehouse… That night, Blackmoon knew exactly what you needed to help me. Like he’d done it before. Like he’d already agreed to do something no one else should have been able to do, and he did it foryou.”

The way he said it made it feel like an accusation.

Maybe that was exactly what this was, but he hadn’t outright said it. No, he wanted to push her to the very edge until she broke and told him everything, and that would never happen. Itcouldnever happen.

Rebecca took a deep breath and shook her head, unable to look away from him as his multiple realizations flashed one right after the other across his face. “Hannigan, this isn’t—”

“Then downstairs, just now, the way you all but banished him publicly for everyone to hear… That’s not a response to the actions of a random operative overstepping his bounds and turning his back on this task force or any other. That’s personal. Vindictive, cautious, and hyper-vigilant.”

His silver eyes roamed across her face, leaving a trail of irresistible heat across her cheeks and nose and lips.

She had to stop this.

“Because he’s dangerous,” she said.

“Toyou, Rebecca. That’s what this is. You can’t deny it, and I need to know why. I need to know what he did. I need you to—”

With another growl bursting out of him, Maxwell tore himself away from her, as if he meant to pace the office again. But he couldn’t stay away from her for longer than that, turning back and forth in an aggravated half-circle while he tried to find the words he wanted.

While clearly battling the urge to be as close to her as physically possible.

The same urge Rebecca was afraid would finally win if she did or said anything else.

Then he stopped his restless shuffling and looked her dead in the eye. “Who is he to you?”

Oh, fuck. He’d figured it out.

By the Blood, she wanted to tell him everything. She wanted to tell him everything for weeks now, since before she’d brought him back from death that night at the warehouse. Several times, she almost had.

Rebecca had almost bared all to the shifter. The same shifter with a fucking elven rune tattooed on his chest.

But that mark had nothing to do with Rowan, did it? If that were the case, Rebecca might still have a decent shot at trusting her Head of Security enough for this—of trusting Maxwell as someone she might actually let into her life.

But if she wasn’t sure and she still told him…

The anguish behind his eyes, their silver light pulsing slower now as he heaved another shaky exhale, silently pleaded with her to give him something to confirm his suspicions where Rowan was concerned. To reassure him that he wasn’t crazy and hadn’t lost his mind because of what he’d seen and how he felt.

In some ways, seeing it hurt even worse than the physical pain of separating from him. It was the pain of Maxwell’s pleading, his physical need to understand what he’d seen between her and Rowan and all the implications of it.

To know where he stood with her.

To understand why he was still alive when, by all rights, he shouldn’t have been.

If it had been anyone else but Rebecca there with him at the warehouse that night, Maxwell would be dead now. This conversation would have never existed.

Rebecca had fought against this growing connection between them for so long. She’d resisted the overpowering longing it birthed inside her, had used every bit of logical thinking and possible rationale for why she must ignore it at all costs.

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