Chapter 12 Rory #5
Maxwell sighed, running a hand through his short coils, the tight curls springing straight back into place.
“It’s… complicated. Being a telepath during sex is…
” He searched for words. “I can make it good for the other person, obviously. I know exactly what they want. But I also hear their insecurities, their comparisons to previous partners.” His voice dropped low.
“You know, when they’re thinking they’ve had better. When they’re imagining someone else.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t considered that. “That’s… not ideal.”
“And before you shout at me, it’s literally impossible to block thoughts when I’m having sex. There’s too much direct skin contact. And it’s… too intimate a moment.”
“Normally I hate you reading my mind,” I said. “But it was actually so great that you knew what I wanted. Knew I didn’t want gentle treatment.” I grinned wickedly. “Knew I like dirty talk.”
“That was actually just a guess.” A slight smile played at his lips.
“But… did you enjoy that then, or not?” I asked, an anxious knot coiling in my gut.
Maxwell’s face softened. “I enjoyed it very much. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. Actually, I’ve never had sex with anyone who knew about my gift before.”
“Never?”
“Not many people know about me.” He shrugged. “My mother. Killigrew Street. That’s it.”
“You never told any of your ex-girlfriends?”
Maxwell fixed me with a pointed look. “You’ve spent eighteen months abusing me for ‘reading your thoughts’ even when I’m doing my damnedest not to.”
“Fair point,” I winced. “Sorry about that.”
He sighed, his gaze drifting to the window. “Plus, I’ve always been scared they won’t believe me. That the next day, a team of psychiatrists will turn up, ready to cart me off to the psych ward.”
I watched the shadows play across his face, seeing him—really seeing him—perhaps for the first time. How lonely it must be, carrying a secret like that.
“Well,” I started tentatively, “maybe sex with someone who knows about it will be better for you. Great, even.” I cleared my throat. “You know, in case we need to, um… ‘get it out of our system’ again, or something.”
Maxwell laughed, the sound warm and rich. “I have a feeling you’d just merrily voice your desires aloud anyway.”
“True.” I grinned. “I usually have no problem being very vocal during sex. My ex before Dev, Jamie, used to say I was so loud the neighbours were sending him death—”
I cut off as Maxwell visibly flinched. He looked away sharply, but not before I caught the unmistakable flare of anger in his eyes.
Zap.
That sensation again—like a bolt of electricity arcing between us, connecting us. But this time it wasn’t just a tingle or a flash. This time it felt like someone had hooked jumper cables to my ribs and cranked the power to maximum.
The force of it knocked the air from my lungs. My entire body jolted, muscles spasming as the current ripped through me. My vision blurred at the edges, and for a moment, I swore I could see the air between Maxwell and me crackling with blue-white energy.
My hand flew to my chest, pressing against my sternum where the sensation had centred.
“Fuck,” I gasped when I could finally breathe again, still dizzy from that overwhelming scent that seemed to have seared itself into my senses. “Did you—”
But one look at Maxwell’s face told me everything. His hand mirrored mine, pressed flat against his chest. “What is this… this thing that keeps happening to you?” he demanded. “I’ve never come across anything like it before. And don’t just say ‘wolf thing’ again. What is it?”
Panic flared through me. Because I did know what it was. Or I thought I did, anyway. And there was no way that Maxwell could know.
I forced my mind blank, imagining a pristine white wall.
Like that’s not suspicious, Rory.
Gah, stop thinking about how that’s suspicious!
“I’m going to go wash quickly,” I blurted, scrambling off the sofa and nearly tripping over my own feet in my haste to escape.
I bolted for the bathroom, shoulder pain flaring, not looking back. I slammed the door behind me, leaning against it as I tried to catch my breath.
“No, no, no,” I murmured to myself, pacing the tiny bathroom floor. “Why is my life always so complicated?”
I washed my body, then splashed cold water on my face, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My hair looked like I’d been dragged through a bush backwards, but that was no different. It was the deranged, terrified look in my eyes that made me seem like a stranger.
The first times the zap had happened, I’d brushed it off. A weird static electricity thing. Maybe Maxwell’s telepathy interacting strangely with my quirky brain. But there was no denying it anymore, not after that.
I’d never felt anything like it with anyone else. Not with Dev, not with any of my previous relationships or hookups.
It wasn’t something that was heavily discussed in my pack. Or if it was, it wasn’t something that teenage me paid attention to—too busy hating my life and being hormonal to learn about mate bonds.
But I was fairly sure that this was what it was.
It felt different from the bonds I’d had with my pack.
Pack bonds were comfortable, familiar, like a well-worn jumper that fit perfectly.
They felt like belonging, like home. Even the weird not-quite-pack-bond thing I had with Kit—that tenuous thread that somehow survived despite everything—was nothing like this.
This thing with Maxwell was demanding, almost painful in its intensity.
It pulled at something deep inside me, something I couldn’t control or ignore.
I had asked Kit about it once. In a very rare moment of candour, he’d told me extremely briefly that he’d fallen in love with one of his comrades during his time in the covert military unit.
I’d asked him if he’d felt that magical mate bond thing I’d heard a bit about.
Turns out no, he hadn’t. I’d asked him if he’d ever felt it.
And then he looked so sad, I stopped asking him about it.
I wish I’d asked him more questions, like, “If it happens to me, how do I make it stop?” Because I needed it to. Immediately. Before Maxwell found out and thought I was an even bigger freak than he already did.
In some sort of bizarre twist of fate, Maxwell wasn’t actually straight after all, and even more bizarrely, he wanted to fuck me.
Wanted to fuck me.
Not be my bloody mate, tethered to me for all of eternity, in all of our soulmate reincarnations, if our species’s stories were to be trusted.
This was so typical of me. My stupid brain must be glitching out. Muddling up my attraction to a hot man, who I’d had mind-blowing sex with and was sometimes a bit nice to me, with something more. No cosmic connection, no mate bond, no destiny. Just sex.
I’d done this before. With Jamie, I’d planned our future wedding after three dates.
With Dev, I’d pushed him away when I asked him to move in with me.
I always came on too strong, too fast, too much.
It was why everyone left me in the end—tired of my intensity, my neediness, my everything-all-at-once approach to relationships.
“It’s just sexual attraction,” I muttered to myself. “Nothing else. Maxwell will never want you like that.”
I needed to sort out my priorities. We were here to find Dev, solve a case, and maybe have some more casual sex along the way. Nothing more.
With a deep breath, I straightened my shoulders.
There would be no more zaps. The next time I felt it, I’d fight against it with all my might.
And I wouldn’t now look for extra meaning in every glance or touch.
I would be cool, casual Rory. The kind of bloke who could have sex with someone without planning a future together.
Even if every cell in my body was screaming otherwise.
A knock at the door, then it creaked open slowly. Maxwell’s head poked through. His glasses were back on his face but sitting slightly askew, giving him an endearingly dishevelled look.
“So, I’ve had a good look for Freddy, but there’s no sign of him.”
My heart did this pathetic little somersault that I absolutely refused to acknowledge.
Because only I could turn “bloke remembers conversation about missing zombie ferret” into “clearly destined to be together forever.” Still, the fact he’d actually looked…
I bit my lip hard, forcing down the soppy smile trying to escape.
“That’s okay. He’s probably just out feasting on the Scottish sheep. I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Riiiiight.” He suddenly looked hesitant. “So, I’m about to drop dead from exhaustion, but I wanted to check before I went to sleep that you’re okay with sharing the bed…”
“Yeah, no worries,” I said, trying to sound casual despite the way my heart skittered about. “I’ll just quickly build the pillow barrier for us.”
His face fell so dramatically that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. A warm, tingly sensation flooded through me when his lips quirked upward, my joke finally landing.
“Bold of you to assume I’d let you near me after you snored directly into my ear last night,” he shot back, adjusting his glasses with mock indignation.
“I do not snore!” I clutched my chest in mock offence.
“You sound like a chainsaw attempting to cut through concrete.”
“Slander and lies!”
As we moved toward the bedroom, a creeping anxiety wormed its way into me.
What if Maxwell woke up tomorrow morning filled with regret?
What if the harsh light of day made him realise he’d made a terrible mistake letting another man suck him off?
It was a tale as old as time—blokes who were curious, experiment, then panic afterward and disappear.
But Maxwell was stuck with me. Not just up here, but while we still both worked for Killigrew Street.
Fuck, if he quits because of this, Seb will kill me.
“So,” I said, trying to sound casual as I flopped onto the bed. “Not that straight after all, huh?” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively. “I’m rather pleased I was the one to turn the great Detective Inspector Theodore Maxwell to the dark side.”
Maxwell shrugged, a touch too stiffly. “Sexuality is fluid. I actually think maybe I’ve always been attracted to men, just never acted on it.” His words came out almost rehearsed—had he been waiting to announce this to me?
“So… you’re not like, freaking out at all?” I asked, watching his fingers drum a pattern against his thigh.
Very slowly, he sat on the edge of the bed, folding his arms tightly across his chest. “Are you freaking out? What happened to ‘it’s just sex?’” His voice was steady, but his eyes wouldn’t quite meet mine.
I propped myself up on my elbow, ignoring the twinge in my injured shoulder. I didn’t believe Maxwell’s attempt to appear completely unfazed. I needed to throw him a lifeline. Give him a chance to shut this down before it went any further.
“Well, in that case, I was thinking…” I paused, gathering my courage.
“Tomorrow morning, it would be best to um… properly get it out of our system, don’t you think?
” I shot him a wicked grin to cover up my bubbling anxiety—that he’d reject me, say that once was enough for him.
Say that we needed to forget it ever happened, for professional reasons.
“Hmm.” Maxwell tilted his head to one side, making a show of pondering the question, and my stomach knotted. “I suppose it’s important that it’s completely out of our system, yes.”
Butterflies exploded across my nervous system, but I forced myself not to react.
“Before we get straight back to finding Dev, of course,” he added quickly, as if reminding himself as much as me.
“Of course,” I said.
The realisation sent a wave of guilt flooding through me.
Here I was, flirting and joking while my ex-boyfriend was still missing, and we hadn’t made any headway on the case.
But the way Maxwell looked at me—like he was seeing something worth wanting, even as fear flickered behind his eyes—made it hard to focus on anything else.
When we both crawled under the covers, we left a generous amount of space between us, an unspoken reinforcement of our “it’s just sex” agreement.
My leg started bouncing beneath the duvet almost immediately—a restless rhythm that matched the spiralling thoughts in my head.
What if Maxwell changed his mind? What if Dev was in real danger while I was here selfishly focusing on whether Maxwell wanted to keep kissing me or not?
The mattress shook slightly with each bounce of my foot.
Maxwell spent several minutes lying stone still, staring at the ceiling, his breathing carefully measured.
Then, almost hesitantly, his hand crept across the mattress—pausing twice as if he might change his mind—before finally making contact with my elbow.
His touch was feather-light at first, uncertain, before settling into softly caressing up and down my arm.
The restless energy in my leg began to ebb, the bouncing slowing to a gentle tremor before stopping altogether.
And when I finally fell asleep, it was to his fingertips brushing tenderly around the angry marks Callum left on my shoulder, as if he could stroke my pain away.