Page 62 of Elven Throne

“Rebecca, stop,” he rumbled, then stepped so much closer and reached for her shoulders.

“It’s fuckingwrong!”

“Stop.” Then his hands settled on her shoulders with a flare of heat, and he pulled her forcefully against him.

With indignant fury blinding her to everything else, Rebecca only realized what had happened when she found her cheek pressed against his chest, the steady thundering of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

Her entire body blazed with fire and heat. She couldn’t tell anymore if it was from the shifter’s arms wrapped around her, holding her against him, or the fury now toeing the line into a battle-crazed fugue.

Maxwell’s deep inhale through his nose, the sound of breath rushing into his lungs as his chest expanded against her cheek and then his slow exhale again with the simultaneous slowing of his pounding heartbeat. Those became her entire existence for that one suspended moment, and she tried to breathe with him.

How the fuck was he socalm?

“No law prohibits this,” Maxwell said, the words vibrating deeply through his chest and into her ear.

“Then why?” Rebecca pushed herself away from him, his arms loosening around her so she could look him in the eye. “Why would you just—”

“To punish myself.” His jaw settled again into a grim hardness. “I think. To…atone.”

“That’s not an answer,” she snapped and tried to push him away again, though he didn’t entirely let her go. “That’s not even—”

“Thankyou.” His eyes flashed once to catch her in their livening glow and did not release their hold on her.

The intensity of his gaze—so strikingly sudden after seemingly gone forever—and the solidity of what he felt now flooding into her made her freeze.

“With all sincerity,” he added. “I was ignorant to your experience of it. Inconsiderate. And I… Just thank you.”

No matter how much she might have wanted to rage against everything, indiscriminately and without conscience, all the fight rushed out of her at his words.

At the way he stared at her now, the electrifying heat racing through her from his hands still gently but firmly settled on both her shoulders.

What the fuck?

Was he back now? The real Maxwell Hannigan?HerMaxwell Hannigan?

Or was all this just an incredible act to calm her down, so she didn’t jeopardize his arrangement for Shade?

That didn’t really matter, though, did it?

She’d spoken her mind, and Maxwell hadn’t tried to change it,

They were here now, out of the worst of it, it seemed. And they were alone.

Even if it didn’t last, this was still worlds better than sitting beside him on that damn log and watching the shifter come apart, piece by piece, with every look not sent his way and every passing second of aggressively unsubtle isolation.

She’d take what she could get.

After drawing in and releasing one more deep breath to settle herself into themomentinstead of her rage, she nodded and searched the shifter’s glowing gaze. “So what now?”

He released her shoulders and pivoted out of the way to stand by her side. “We take that walk.”

It seemed so easy for him to leave everything else at the proverbial door. She didn’t understand how, after spending the last few hours in silent, unacknowledged torment. But he seemed to be out of it now.

Then she realized how much she was still shaking, trembling with the last remnants of her residual rage that still had nowhere to go. Somehow, though, Maxwell had guided it along a course of dissipating into the ether.

And they weren’t going to do anything about it. Were they?

Confused by how quickly all her own boiling energy had suddenly settled, she turned in the underbrush to walk at the shifter’s side, hoping more than anything that she would find more similarities in him than alarming differences.

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