Page 9 of Elven Prince

She wanted to make him stay and keep him from the truth he requested. She wanted her brooding-shifter cake and eat it too.

Only once had Rebecca successfully lied to him before, and it had been small. Tiny. A thin warping of the truth with her own unveiled intentions at its core. Before her Shade teams had advanced on Harkennr’s warehouse, she’d shared with Maxwell that she’d told Rowan to stay behind with the vehicles, in case they needed a quick getaway.

The brilliant agony of those few seconds of twisted honesty had sufficiently convinced her lying would be difficult and agonizing.

But itwaspossible.

“Rebecca,” Maxwell growled, dipping his head toward her ear until they were almost pressed together, the heat of his body wild enough to spark a fire and her inexplicable need ready and waiting to fan the flames.

The sound of her name on his lips made her shiver. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe.

“I need to know,” he murmured. “And I need to hear it fromyoubefore I do something I already know I’ll regret.”

By the Blood, he made that threat sound like the promise of seduction—if they weren’t already there right now.

The next deepening growl in his voice almost masked the tremble there too, but she heard it.

Either Maxwell fought against this blazing cord tugging each of them ever closer to the other, or he was using it. Manipulating it to poke and prod in all the right places until her resolve finally crumbled.

How could anyone even learn to do such a thing?

The second she opened her mouth to respond, she knew lying to him about this would never happen. This thing between them had already grown to the point of making it impossible.

It left her with only one other option.

“Please don’t ask me again,” she whispered.

“Tell me why.”

Was she trembling now, or was that just her head spinning beneath his closeness and the urge to reach for him anyway and offer it all?

“Because I don’t want to lie to you,” she said, failing to support the sturdiness she’d wanted in her voice. “Because Ican’tlie to you, and I can’t give you the answer you want.”

“That’s not fair.”

When Maxwell finally drew away from her, the cold rushing in against the side of her face to fill the space his lips had just occupied made her shiver again. The exquisite agony of him physically pulling away from her made it even worse.

Then Rebecca was looking up into those silver eyes. Hooked. Captured. Possessed by the shifter’s gaze in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.

“You could askanythingyou wanted of me,” he said, “and I would give it to you without question. Any task. Any truth. Anything at all.”

Fuck, he was baiting her.

Blue Hells, he’d made this way too tempting.

The only thing Rebecca wanted to ask him now was where he’d gotten that damn tattoo and what it meant to him, to her, and to everyone else who might have been involved. But she couldn’t bring it up. Not yet.

Not until she had a hell of a lot more information about it. The problem was figuring out where else she would get that information.

So instead, staring up at him and fighting the urges nearly overpowering her as they squared off like this, Rebecca went with her last resort in sticky situations. She turned the tables.

“So you’re telling me I could ask why you’re a lone wolf in Chicago without a pack, and you’d give me the whole story, just like that?”

Maxwell blinked, then his expression darkened. His perpetual scowl returned, just like she knew it would, but his words still surprised her. “If that was what you wanted to know, yes. I would tell you everything.”

He wouldn’t tell her now, though. No, because she hadn’t specifically asked him to or ordered it. But hewascompletely serious, wasn’t he?

His jaw muscles worked furiously as he loomed over her, his breath like a the steady, in-and-out whisper of the surf crashing on a beach.

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