Page 86 of Elven Throne

To come back toher.

It seemed like the right idea to stop trying to think of nothing and just let her mind wander however it wanted.

And it wandered in only one direction.

Toward Maxwell.

The heat of his body pressed up against her, with the crumbling brick of the compound’s outer wall at her back. His chest bare, skin nearly on fire after the harrowing battle they almost hadn’t survived. The way he’d warred between wanting to touch her and fearing she might disappear in a burst of smoke if he did.

The feeling of her hand on his chest. The aching burn in her fingers as she’d traced his skin around the elven rune, never quite touching it but coming so dizzyingly close…

That rune strobing with an alarming golden-orange light when she’d found him in the woods beside the Polly L Bridge, freshly shifted out of his wolf and trying to find his feet. Her surprise and horror when Maxwell’s enormous gray wolf had leapt in front of the nurúzhe’s deadly attack to intercept what was meant for Rebecca.

The fear she’d felt when the shifter had intervened and then struggled against that glowing rune on his chest. All the horror of thinking she might lose him again in battle, every second of it mirroring the very same terror consuming her when she’d watched him slip toward the edge of death at Harkennr’s warehouse of magical-experiment victims.

And then the horror smoothing away, dissipating beneath the memory of so much staggering, all-consuming relief when Maxwellhadn’tdied. When she knew, even with all his injuries, that he would pull through. That he would be okay.

Seeing him alive and well in the infirmary.

And then that kiss…

The memories and emotions of her wandering mind surged through her with such incredible speed, Rebecca was hardly aware of the change from one to the other, each moment in time blending into the next in an endless rush.

Then, her memory of that one kiss with Maxwell seemed to stick in her awareness, captured by the visceral sensations she remembered only too well.

The raging hunger and darkness behind it, belonging to each of them. The overwhelming desire and need. The feeling that it was everything she’d ever wanted.

Theknowingthat if she fully gave into it, it would consume them both. The growing presence between her and the shifter—that unknown thing that wanted for itself something she couldn’t name. Thatitwould consume them, and what lay in wait on the other side of it would never be known to either of them until the moment they reached it.

Until the moment they surrendered everything. Together.

Well now she sure as shit wasn’t falling asleep withthisracing through her mind.

Rebecca only realized how much her breath had quickened, how painfully hot the flush in her cheeks and neck and across her collarbones had become, when the motel-room door burst violently open.

She sat bolt upright on the bed, already breathless from nothing but fucking memories.

But she reacted anyway and scrambled off the mattress as quickly as if she’d been fully rested and prepared.

By the time her bare feet thumped onto the carpeted floor at the same time the door banged against the inside wall, she already had a crackling, hissing orb of crimson battle magic summoned in one palm. Just waiting for any excuse to launch it.

But this wasn’t an enemy.

It was Maxwell storming into the room like the rest of the motel had caught fire and mere seconds remained before they burned with it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What did you see?”

He kicked the door shut with a bang and surged toward her, looking crazed, eyes flashing dangerously as he stormed across the room.

Rebecca staggered toward him, surprise and adrenaline failing to alleviate all her exhaustion, but she snuffed out her battle magic anyway. “Did someone follow—”

He gave her no more chance than that to put two and two together. To recognize the mad need in his flashing eyes. To sort through the jumble of which emotions belonged tohim.

Growling like he meant to rip apart the entire room, Maxwell pulled her against him with a breath-stopping ferocity.

She would have gasped when her back thumped against the wall behind her if he hadn’t already smothered her mouth with his, pinning her there beneath him. His hands burning her face then tangled up in her hair as he kissed her like a dying man.

Then everything else disappeared, and nothing else mattered.

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