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Stripped
Julie Leto


Sassy heroines and irresistible heroes embark on sizzling sexual adventures as they play the game of modern love and lust. Expect fast paced reads with plenty of steamy encounters.The power of lust! Detective Mac Mancusi had fallen under Lilith St Lyon’s spell. And the feeling was mutual. After all, what woman could resist having a scrumptious man like Mac dreaming of her every minute they were apart?But that was until their stormy break-up! Now divinely handsome Mac is back in Lilith’s life and he needs her help to solve a tough drugs case. Working together on the intense job could draw them closer, but is it enough to rekindle the magic?







In all the time he’d known Lilith he’d never heard her voice so raw,

her emotions so close to the surface. He could practically feel them through her skin. Fear. Reluctance. Desire. Hope.

Her kiss mirrored all that and more. The moment he lowered his head, she grabbed his cheeks and tugged him down. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her body flush against his, marvelling at how petite and fragile she seemed even as she was raking her hands through his hair and darting her tongue against his with wild abandon. For once, neither one knew what the other wanted – except to be filled, to be completed, to be loved.


JULIE ELIZABETH LETO

With twenty-six novels under her belt, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Elizabeth Leto has established a reputation for writing ultra-sexy, edgy stories. Julie writes primarily for the Blaze® line. A 2005 RITA® Award nominee, Julie lives in her home town of Tampa, Florida with her husband, daughter and a very spoiled dachshund. For more information, check out Julie’s website at www.julieleto.com.



Dear Reader,

Welcome back to the BAD GIRLS CLUB!

Bad girls. Mills & Boon® Blaze®. I can’t imagine a better combination.

What was amazing about writing the series in Blaze® was getting permission to really push the book and the characters to the limit. The only rule in the Bad Girls Club is to break all the rules. So in this story, I’m going to bring you deep into a paranormal world. My heroine, Lilith St Lyon, is a real witch. And by that I mean a real witch. She’s more Serena than Samantha Stevens, admittedly…but that’s what makes her so much fun.

Happy reading!

Julie




STRIPPED


BY

JULIE ELIZABETH LETO




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Special thanks to Elissa Wilds, for sharing

her knowledge and her love of her craft so that

I could ground my fictional characters in

the very real community.

Shout outs to Brenda Chin, Tori Carrington

and Leslie Kelly, for once again bringing the

Bad Girls Club back to life…with a vengeance.

Drinks are on me.

And as always, to the Plotmonkeys.




Prologue


“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”

Lilith St. Lyon slapped the newest muscle-car magazine on her coffee table and slammed to her feet. She really hated when her sister barged in without as much as a call. Or a simple knock. Hell, even a whisper along the lines of Excuse me, sis, but I’m about to shimmer into your apartment, so don’t get freaked would suffice.

Sometimes Lilith hated being a witch.

Especially when Regina showed up all regal in her deeppurple robes, flaunting how she could bypass Lilith’s psychic powers and appear without warning. One advantage of Lilith’s talent was that, for the most part, no one could sneak up on her. No one except the most powerful witch in the realm—her big sis. Yet here she was, startled, pissed and staring daggers at Regina, gorgeous as always with her flowing dark hair and penetrating lilac eyes, and the gray-haired, pinched-faced members of the Witches Council who flanked Regina on either side.

“Lilith St. Lyon, you are charged—” Regina started, but Lilith cut her off by kicking over the coffee table. Her boots shattered the glass and scattered her magazines to the floor in a glossy, jagged heap.

The councillors jumped back, their arms instantly stiff in defensive postures Lilith could bypass with another swift kick. Regina remained still.

So in control. So royal. So damned perfect Lilith wanted to puke. Or scream.

“Don’t do this, Reg,” Lilith ordered.

Lilith tried to ignore the pained look on her sister’s face. Regina hadn’t asked for this gig, but she sure took the whole power trip seriously. Had since day one. Not that she’d had any choice in the matter.

“Lilith, you’ve given the Council no other recourse.”

“You’re the freaking Guardian,” Lilith shouted, sweeping her hand toward Regina’s amulet, the silver-dollar-size alexandrite that dangled from a platinum chain and glowed red and blue and green just between her breasts. “You can tell the Council where to shove their asinine rules. Or, better yet, shimmer all their fogy asses over here and I’ll tell them myself. You can’t take my powers.”

As a powerful psychic, Lilith knew that was exactly what her sister had come here to do. Though, honestly, she didn’t need clairvoyance to figure it out. Lilith had known the rules before she’d broken them. No utilizing powers for personal gain. First her mother and then her aunt Marion had tried for years to drill the concept into her brain. But Lilith couldn’t understand why, if she had to live with all the crap that accompanied being a living, breathing witch of the higher realm, she couldn’t also have a few of the finer things in life to make the sacrifices worthwhile.

“The Council does not fear you,” Regina said, her mouth twitching.

She was lying. Oh, Regina herself wasn’t afraid of Lilith. As Guardian, Regina had no reason to fear anyone except the occasional witch hunter or warlock or demon. She and Lilith had broken in their wands sparring together, even after Regina’s powers had grown so that she no longer needed carved teak to focus her magic. Lilith had long ago accepted that she’d never wield the type of magic Regina could, even after her psychic powers had come into their own. And that was fine by her. She’d seen her sister’s future. Picnics were not on the schedule.

“The Council has lived apart from mundanes too long,” Lilith countered. “They don’t remember what life in the normal world is like. We’re sisters, Reg. The bond we share runs deeper than rules and regulations, even those carved into stone tablets shortly after the dawn of humanity.”

Regina’s expression softened, but the Council was another story. The twin towers of old-world thought that stood one to each side of her sister swirled with auras white with fear and admonition. Everyone in the witching world feared Lilith, reviled her even—had her whole life—though Lilith could never quite understand why. Sure, she had a habit of losing her temper and hurling epithets with more precision than a major league pitcher. Her psychic prophecies had sometimes caused distress here and there. But in the long run she was just a sassy pain in the ass. Her powers were nothing compared to her sister’s. It’s not as though she could blow anybody up.

“I need my powers, Reg,” Lilith whispered.

“You no longer deserve them,” Regina countered, her gaze glittering purple like the stone of rank she wore around her neck.

“Do you hear how you sound like a complete hypocrite?”

Regina sucked in a breath. For a split second Lilith felt guilty.

Then she got over it.

Four years older, Regina had been barely a teenager when she’d been tapped as Guardian following their mother’s brutal murder at the hands of a warlock. But unlike most witches attacked by the thieving race of witch killers, their mother had transferred her powers to her older daughter before she died. From that moment, Regina possessed a wide range of powers that included being able to shimmer from one place to another and the ability to form and hurl energy bursts that could blast a demon or warlock to kingdom come—an act Regina had executed only seconds after their mother had taken her last breath.

Baptism by fire, literally. There might not have been as many demons and warlocks in the world as a certain popular television show about witches might lead one to believe, but when one popped up, the burst had come in damn handy. And for this everyone loved Regina.

All Lilith could do was read minds and predict the future. And even then, sometimes her predictions came too late.

As it had for her mother.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and stood firm.

“What about all the good I do with my powers?” Lilith argued. “My work with the cops?”

Regina arched a brow. “You abruptly stopped working with the police three months ago.”

Lilith had the insatiable need to stick her tongue out. “I can’t help it if they don’t call me anymore.”

A smile twitched Regina’s generous lips—a family trait. St. Lyon women never needed collagen.

“Can’t you?” she asked knowingly. “And, besides, can you honestly tell us that you have gained nothing personally from your association with the police?”

Not without lying.

Lilith had gained plenty—first and foremost, major bedroom action with chief of detectives, Mac Mancusi. But that was over. Had been since he’d figured out that she was a real psychic and not simply an ultra-intuitive woman, as he’d rationalized. Oh, and that she’d been using her powers to manipulate him into falling head over heels in love with her. Yeah, that had pretty much sealed him kicking her ass to the curb.

“My benefits were short-lived and not without repercussions,” Lilith said, jabbing her hand through her spiky short hair. “I’m on my own again. Just me and all the bad guys I help the cops catch whenever they come to me. I could clean up Chicago once and for all.”

“And disrupt the balance of good and evil?” Regina asked, her voice hitching higher than her normal sultry tone. “Jeez, Lilith, are there no rules you won’t break?”

Lilith stamped her foot, crunching down on a large, serrated glass triangle. “The only rules I won’t break are the ones I make for myself.”

“Like?”

Lilith scowled. She wasn’t a big rule maker. She definitely ascribed to a live-and-let-live philosophy. “I do no harm, Regina.”

“What do you call the aftermath experienced by your clients once you’ve bilked them for a peek at their futures?”

“It’s not bilking if what I tell them is true,” she countered. “If they can’t handle the truth, that’s their problem.”

The two elders on either side of Regina whispered simultaneously in her sister’s ear.

Once again, her smart mouth wasn’t helping. Nothing would. No amount of pouting or manipulating was going to get her out of this one. She did a quick probe of their minds. They wanted her powers. The future of order in the witching world depended on Lilith’s punishment. Blah, blah, blah.

Regina nodded to the elders, then with a swish of her hand, shimmered them out of the room.

Lilith took a hopeful step forward.

“What just happened?”

“I don’t need them to witness what must be done.”

Betrayal cut a slash through her heart. “Reggie, you can’t.”

Her sister’s eyes glossed with emotion. “You’ve given me no choice, Lilith. Please take the punishment the Council has chosen. Use this time as a mundane to prove to them you are capable of selfless good, and maybe you can earn your powers back.”

Instinctively Lilith squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “The Council can kiss my ass.”

Regina quirked a quick half grin before she placed her hands gently on Lilith—one hand on her forehead and the other on her heart.

She made short work of the incantation, a spell as old as time itself. Lilith planted her feet solidly on the ground, refusing to yield as her psychic energy was sucked out of her. She loved her sister, but if she’d had the strength at that moment, she would have coldcocked her as soon as the spell was complete.

Instead she drifted to the floor, unconscious and unaware of how deeply her life had just been irrevocably changed.


1

“YOU HAVE TO CALL HER.”

Mac Mancusi stood, eyes focused on his perp on the other side of the one-way mirror. The jackass was forcing his hand. With teeth grinding until his jaw ached, Mac cursed. There had to be another way to save this case before it was flushed down the crapper, his career along with it.

“I don’t have to do anything, Fernandez. Last time I checked, I was still the chief of detectives in this department. Or did your sorry ass somehow get promoted by the new mayor when I was wiping his footprints off my back?”

Through the reflection in the glass, Mac watched Lt. Rick Fernandez run his hand through his thick hair.

“Boss, I’m just saying… We all know the mayor’s been riding you since the election. His smarmy staff boys have been sniffing around the precinct all week, hunting for some damning shit to leak to the press. If this drug bust doesn’t happen, you can kiss your job goodbye.”

Mac forced his words through his tight lips. “I know the stakes.”

“Then why are you waiting around? Call the bruja!”

Sounded so easy. Call the witch whoan’d ripped his heart out, filleted it, then served it on an Italian roll with onions, peppers and a side of you’re-a-fool. Yeah, no problem. Wasn’t as if he had any pride or anything as inconvenient as self-respect to stand in his way.

“Know what, Fernandez? I remember a time when this department could beat a confession out of a perp without having to call some voodoo princess to do our dirty work.”

Fernandez shoved his hands in his pockets. “Listen, boss, you want to beat the crap out of Pogo Goins and hope he gives up the location of three hundred kilos of cocaine, I’ll back you up. But you know that shit won’t fly anymore. We need the location of the drugs and we need it two hours ago. I don’t know what happened between you and Lilith, but it can’t be as bad as what’s going to happen if we don’t find that blow before it hits the streets. Word is the shit ain’t pure. We’re going to have ODs, turf wars, retaliations. Chaos. Goins hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet. He still thinks we’re talking to him about his stolen car. We don’t have much time before his brain clears enough to know we’re trying to flip him for the information. He’ll call his mouthpiece for sure.”

And then the interview would be over. Mac and the detectives in his department didn’t have anything to hold Pogo Goins, just a tip that the low-level hood had been the go-between in a huge shipment of cocaine. When Goins’s car went missing and he actually reported it to the cops, the Chicago PD had gotten the break they’d been waiting for—a chance to put a real dent in the drug trade, maybe even take down the masterminds behind the renewed influx of high-priced, low-quality coke. If the rumors were true and the drugs weren’t pure, the stakes went through the roof.

Time was running out. He needed Lilith.

“Go grab a pack of cigarettes for our guest,” Mac said, gritting out the words between his tightened teeth, “while I make a call.”

Rick grinned, gave a quick nod, then headed out, closing the door behind him.

Mac pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed-dial button he’d yet to delete. When Lilith didn’t instantly answer, his stomach hardened. She used to pick up on the first ring—sometimes before. She claimed to always know when he was calling. He figured she had caller ID and a less-than-busy work schedule predicting future love matches for idiots with too much disposable income.

But today she ignored his call.

Maybe she didn’t want to talk to him.

He couldn’t blame her.

When he’d figured out exactly how she’d become his perfect lover, how she’d always known exactly when he wanted to talk and when chatter was the last thing on his mind, he’d never been so angry, so confused, so completely infuriated. He’d heard crime victims say they’d felt violated after a rape or robbery, and while he’d understood them on an intellectual level, he’d never truly accepted the full meaning until he’d learned what Lilith really was.

Not a clever con woman.

Not a supersmart people watcher.

Not even a deeply intuitive woman.

Nope, she was a psychic.

A real one.

The kind only fools believed in. The kind only bigger fools fell in love with.

He buried his cell phone in his pocket and charged out of the observation room and into his office. He buzzed the switchboard and asked them to dial Lilith’s number from a secured line.

After four rings, she finally picked up.

“Lilith St. Lyon.”

“Hey,” he said.

Pause. Long pause. The kind of pause that made his teeth hurt.

“Lilith? It’s Mac.”

“And I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.”

“I’m thrilled to hear your voice, too,” he couldn’t help snapping.

She hung up.

Damn.

On a string of bluer curses, he had the switchboard dial again.

This time she waited six rings to pick up.

“What do you want, Mancusi?”

He should have expected her cold response, but he was supposed to be pissed off at her. Not the other way around.

He cleared his throat. “We’ve got a case.”

“How nice for you.”

“We need your…input.”

“Too bad. I’m out of business.”

Mac shoved a few files off to the side of his desk and leaned his hip against the hard surface. She could be so damn stubborn.

“Look, Lilith, clearly you’re still pissed at me.”

“Ooh, do you suddenly possess the evil clairvoyance? Aren’t you afraid of yourself?”

“I wasn’t afraid of you,” he insisted, affronted.

She sighed, her tone lilting with disbelief. “I’m hanging up now,” she said. “Not that I need to tell you that. You already knew, right?”

“Hey, those cracks should be coming from me, not you,” he barked.

“Maybe I’ve developed a new skill—channeling! Either way, I don’t want to talk to you any more than you want to talk to me.”

“Then talk to Fernandez,” Mac offered, thinking quickly. His lead detective viewed Lilith with a mixture of fear and respect, topped off with a heavy dose of good old-fashioned lust. Every guy in the department had the hots for the woman, and he couldn’t blame them. He’d bullied every single one of them out of his way on the path to her bed. Slim, sleek and brunette, Lilith strutted to a soundtrack of “Black Magic Woman.” But despite Mac’s territorial warnings to the men he supervised, Lilith and Fernandez had struck up a weird friendship. Mac wasn’t beyond exploiting the relationship for his own benefit. He’d learned some lessons from her very, very well.

“Rick’s in on this?”

“The whole department is. This case isn’t a joke. We’re talking large quantities of drugs about to hit the streets unless we can pry the location of the stash out of Pogo Goins.”

“Goins? He’s a moron,” Lilith snapped. “Why would he have such high-level information?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

Silence. Mac replayed the conversation in his mind while he waited. He definitely had her interest. That much he knew without any extrasensory perception.

“I’ll be there in a half hour,” she said, her voice resigned.

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Twenty if you’re lucky. And I want my hot water ready, got it?”

She disconnected the call.

Mac placed the handset down gently on the cradle, his breathing surprisingly even, though a little deeper than usual. A smile teased the edge of his lips, but the moment he acknowledged the warmth of laughter in his chest, the emotion turned to ice. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down. He’d called her. He’d heard her voice. Sparred with her. He couldn’t allow the old feelings to resurface.

Except the anger.

Mac knew he had to drop this resentment, but it was hard to let go when Lilith’s secret abilities had caught him so completely off guard. The revelation had wrecked what he thought might have been the relationship of a lifetime. They’d been so compatible. So in sync. But that had been an illusion. A con. She’d used her powers to become his perfect partner. She’d stripped away his free will. Made him fall in love.

Lord, how pathetic.

Except for the one supersize secret of her psychic ability, Lilith had been the quintessential what-you-see-is-what-you-get woman. And now that he thought about it, she hadn’t really kept a secret at all. She’d said from the start that she was a genuine clairvoyant. He’d simply never believed her.

Sure, he’d used her in his investigations, having met her when the parents of a missing child had begged her to help find their daughter. He remembered their first encounter vividly. She’d been in the little girl’s room. Alone. Lightly fingering a tiny porcelain tea set, her eyes glossy, her cheeks streaked. She didn’t try to cover up her emotions when he barged in but instead threw them at him like weapons. She’d been raw and uninhibited and larger than life. He’d instantly realized that she wasn’t some charlatan trying to raise false hopes in the hearts of desperate parents. She hadn’t wanted to be there. She hadn’t wanted to help. But she had, and the child who had disappeared without a clue, without a trace, had been recovered in less than twelve hours.

Mac tried to remember exactly how he’d rationalized her talents back then, but accepting that she possessed real extrasensory power had never been an option. He’d simply attributed her talents to hypersensitivity in reading other people. The missing child’s stepfather had, after all, been involved in the kidnapping. She’d realized quickly that he had been lying and had not only produced the child relatively unharmed, but had also helped Mac wrangle a confession that had held up in court.

After her initial performance, Mac had authorized her to work with the department, mostly with interrogations. She was more reliable than any polygraph and much nicer to look at than a department examiner. He’d established a comfortable sexual banter with her that inevitably exploded into a full-blown affair the night he’d lost a detective in the line and she’d shown up as if she’d known someone had ripped a hole in his gut.

From that night on he’d ignored all the other signs that pointed him toward facts he couldn’t accept. How could one person know what another person was thinking? He’d made a conscious effort to never lie to her, since she was so adept at ferreting out the truth, but he’d never in a million years imagined that she could creep into his psyche and extract tiny facts and fantasies he’d never admit to out loud.

And now, with her on her way back into the precinct and his life, he wouldn’t be able to hide anything from her.

Or from himself—and that rankled most of all.

“I’M SO GLAD I CAUGHT YOU!”

Lilith swung around, flattening her back against the just-locked door to her apartment. Her heart slammed against her chest, then tried to pound its way out. She hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her. Hell, she hadn’t felt anyone. Until she’d lost her powers, she hadn’t realized how dependent she’d become on her magical abilities.

Which is the whole point of losing them, she could hear her sister say.

“Shut up,” Lilith spat under her breath.

Josie Vargas’s blond eyebrows shot up under her wispy bangs. “Excuse me?” Josie marched to a stop, her hand clutching the pentacle charm she wore around her neck.

“Wasn’t cursing at you, Josie,” Lilith said, rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, “just at myself. I’ve got to bolt. Can I catch up with you later?”

Josie’s eyes widened. A practicing Wiccan, Josie wrote spells, worshipped the god and goddess and led rituals for her small coven. She brewed potions from time to time, but her main talent was in creating candles enhanced with essential oils.

She was an ordinary witch. A mundane. No active powers.

Like Lilith. Not before, but now.

Despite her lack of tangible powers, however, Josie always seemed to know when Lilith was up to something—particularly when she was marching straight into disaster.

“Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Josie asked, her tone omniscient.

“The police station.”

“Mac’s police station?”

“There are hundreds of police stations in the city. And yet I keep going back to the same one. Isn’t that a sign of insanity or something?”

“Possibly, since Mac is hot and you’re in love with him.”

Lilith’s jaw dropped open.

Josie tapped her under the chin with her finger. “Don’t gape. It’s unattractive.”

“I’m. Not. In. Love. With. Mac.”

Josie nodded condescendingly. “Then why are you going to the police station?”

Lilith growled as she stuffed her keys into her hip bag. In contrast to Josie’s purse, which was roughly the size of Lake Michigan, Lilith’s bag contained three items. Her keys, her favorite lip gloss and cash. She wondered how much longer she’d have any spending money now that she’d been stripped of her ability to do psychic readings. Too bad the cops didn’t pay her one red cent. Other than all the herbal tea she could drink and a sense of accomplishment, she didn’t get a damn thing from the department. Though without her powers she wasn’t sure she’d be any use at all.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mac no. As much as she’d wanted to, as much as the logical part of her brain screamed at her to stay clear of her former lover, she couldn’t deny him.

He needed her.

And she needed him. Or at least, his case. If the Council wanted to witness her good and selfless heart, they could watch her now. So she wasn’t psychic at the moment. She’d find a way to help.

If nothing else, she could flaunt what she hoped Mac was seriously missing from his life—namely, her in his bed.

She’d chosen her outfit with extreme care. Tight jeans. See-through blouse. Skintight tank underneath. Killer spiked boots. Of course, she wouldn’t know if her primping truly enticed him since her powers were gone. Though, how hard could it be for a woman to figure out if a man wanted her? Even ordinary women knew.

Ordinary.

Lilith blanched, then vowed to never, ever be ordinary.

“Did you need something, Josie?”

Discussion of Mac visibly flew out of Josie’s brain. “I had a really odd dream last night.”

Dream interpretation had never been Lilith’s forte. She marched toward the elevator, trying to psych herself up for seeing Mac again. Smelling Mac again. Hopefully feeling Mac again, even if it was just a brush of hands or a shoulder bump.

“You know I can’t help you with that.”

Josie huffed. “Hello? Not everyone who hangs out with you wants something. I didn’t come to you as a psychic. I came to you as a friend.”

Lilith winced and turned slowly.

“Sorry. You know I suck at the whole interpersonal-relationship thing. I’m too self-absorbed.”

Josie took a step back. “You say that as if you think it’s a bad thing.”

“It is according to the majority of people in my life.”

Josie joined her friend across the hall and pushed the down button. “Well, yeah, but I’ve never heard you say so. Since when did you get self-awareness?”

“I’ve had a life-changing experience,” she muttered.

“Something bad?”

Nothing she could talk about. Well, she could tell Josie. There wasn’t actually a witch law that forbade her from revealing herself to a mundane. But centuries of history proved it wasn’t a good idea. Regular people tended not to believe in the paranormal. Dumping such a wild story on her pal would mean she’d risk losing the one and only person beyond her sister that she considered a close friend. Most Wiccans who, like Josie, studied the craft and worshipped the deities never realized that there was a level of witches that existed between the mundane and the divine. Witches with powers that, without utmost secrecy, could be exposed. Some witches possessed telekinesis or the ability to become invisible. Others were adept healers or, like Lilith, could read minds and see the future.

Past tense, she reminded herself.

Still, exposing the presence of such power could put a lot of people in danger—especially the person she told.

“Not all life-changing experiences have to be negative,” Lilith insisted, startled when the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She really was going to have to get used to operating without her sixth sense.

“That’s a mighty optimistic thing for you to say,” Josie replied, joining her on the lift.

Lilith punched the L button. “Are you implying that I’m a pessimist?”

Josie pursed her lips. “You’re certainly not an optimist. You kind of skirt the line.”

“Story of my life.”

“Is that why you’re going to see Mac? Some sort of danger thing?”

Lilith couldn’t argue that returning to the scene of the crime of her affair with Mac was likely not the smartest thing to do. But helping him find this drug shipment might boost her karma just enough to get the Council to reconsider their declaration and restore her powers. Besides, she intended to show Mac how she’d survived his callous rejection. She was still sexy. Still irresistible.

And he couldn’t have her.

“Let’s just call it extreme dating,” Lilith declared, “only without the date.”

“Sounds more like extreme teasing.”

“Works for me.”

They reached the lobby, but Josie didn’t exit after the doors sliced open. “Do you want to hear about my dream or not?”

“Got a hot date tonight?” Lilith asked.

“You know I don’t,” Josie snapped.

Actually, she didn’t know, but why quibble?

“Well, now you do. Have a date. With me. I’ll bring the tequila and you bring the dreams.”

“I don’t drink tequila,” Josie shouted as Lilith pushed her way out of the apartment building and into the sultry Chicago-in-August afternoon.

“Good! More for me.”

And she had a feeling that after this encounter she was going to need every last drop.


2

HE COULD FEEL HER EYES. As slowly and as nonchalantly as possible, Mac peeled his back off the one-way mirror, certain Lilith had arrived and was on the other side of the deceptive glass. Close. With her palm pressed against the barrier. Her warmth, her spiced perfume, permeated the window with no more effort than a wisp of smoke through a screen.

He’d made a colossal mistake in calling her.

But he couldn’t turn back now.

“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pogo Goins insisted, his eyes redder and droopier than they had been four hours ago when he’d come in. Goins was coming down off his high, which to Mac was both good and bad. On one hand, a little clarity on his part might help him keep his facts straight. On the other, good old Pogo might soon be lucid enough to figure out they had no reason to hold him and he had no reason to answer their questions. “I just want my ride back, got it?”

The interrogation—now being run by Rick and his partner, Det. Barbara Walters, with Mac observing in the background—had been going on for nearly an hour. Why Pogo hadn’t called for his attorney yet, Mac couldn’t begin to guess. Likely because they hadn’t accused him of anything. In fact, they’d catered to the guy, bringing him all the cigarettes and doughnuts necessary to appease a serious hangover. They’d shot the shit since this morning, stringing him along with leads on his beloved stolen vehicle. But criminals came in two types: those smart enough to keep their traps shut until their lawyers showed up and those stupid enough to think they could deal with the cops without legal counsel. He could only hope that Pogo fell into the second group today.

Technically Pogo hadn’t done anything wrong. This time. He simply had information—possibly information he didn’t even know he had.

They’d had a tip.

Nothing more than a vague inference.

Which was why they had to proceed with caution.

Which was why Mac had called Lilith.

Which was why he was heading to Flanagan’s on the River right after work for a stiff drink.

“My, my, don’t you look delicious from behind.”

Mac nearly swung around, but he held steady. He was wearing an earpiece, but even the mechanical device couldn’t dull the intensity of Lilith’s sultry voice.

She even wolf-whistled. She nearly deafened his left ear.

He stretched his hands into his blazer pockets, somewhat obstructing her view of his ass. What he couldn’t do was respond. If Goins got even a hint that Mac was taking help from the other side of the one-way, the interview would be over.

“Mr. Goins,” he said, alerting his detectives to the fact that Lilith had arrived, “I’m real sorry that your car got jacked and that you’ve been here so long. I know you’ve given us all the information you can recall.”

God, he hated playing good cop.

“Yeah, yeah,” Goins replied. “I mean, the snacks and cigs have rocked, but I think maybe I need to get going, you know?”

“He’s nervous,” Lilith said.

No shit.

“We’ve really been trying to cut down on the petty crimes in your area,” Mac said. “I mean, guy like you, on the straight and narrow for, what, a year now?”

Goins nodded, his greasy hair swiping along the sides of his razor-sharp cheeks. “I’m clean, man. You can ask my PO. Nothing dirty on me…nothing dirty around me.”

“You know he’s lying, right?” Lilith interjected. “This is boring. And it’s hot in here. Why don’t you take off your jacket? I could take off my blouse. It’ll be fun.”

He was going to kill her.

“We know you’ve been clean, Pogo,” Mac reassured, attempting to ignore the instantaneous image of a bare-breasted Lilith, licking her lips lasciviously, anticipating the strike of pleasure she’d experience when he took her nipples into his mouth. Moisture swelled on his tongue. He swallowed hard. With conviction.

Conviction. Yeah. Cop word. Remind him of the job. Of the point of calling Lilith in the first place.

Though Pogo had been more relaxed with the other detectives, Mac couldn’t ask Rick or Barbara to plug in with Lilith. Not because he feared she’d tease them mercilessly with her nonstop sexual suggestions, but because he was skirting all kinds of protocols by using a psychic in the first place, especially for a case that had little to bolster it except one vague tip. If anyone got heat from the chief or the new mayor for bringing a civilian into the investigation, it would be him.

Mac patted Pogo on the shoulder. “We know you’re one of the good guys now, Pogo. Word is out you’re not in the game anymore. That’s why we’re all pissed about this punk stealing your ride. Here you are trying to get your life back together and you lose your transportation to work. Where are you working again?”

Pogo’s crooked front teeth chewed on his scarred bottom lip. “I’m driving trucks. For my cousin.”

Barbara tilted her head to the side, her bright blue eyes sparkling with just enough feminine interest to mask the not-so-subtle crinkle of her nose. “Which cousin is that again?”

“Larry. He’s got six rigs. Small stuff. But he makes clean money, okay? Nothing shady.”

“He’s telling the truth about Larry,” Lilith interjected. “But he’s nervous. The word trucks got him. Fish in that direction, hot stuff. See what you can catch.”

The “hot stuff” notwithstanding, at last Lilith had offered something useful. Maybe the cousin, Larry, was on the up-and-up, but someone else in the operation possibly wasn’t.

“Is that where your car got jacked? At the truck yard?”

Goins swallowed deeply.

Lilith whistled softly. “Ooh, that one registered on the Richter scale. Have you ever noticed that the word jacked is sexy? Why is that?”

Mac growled.

Lilith sighed. “Keep going back to the car.”

“We’ve got to establish scene of the crime, right?” Mac asked. “You look a little nervous. You don’t have to be nervous, Pogo. You’re here just as a citizen who has been victimized by a growing criminal element. But we can’t help you if you don’t tell us the whole truth.”

“Can you blame him, boss?” Rick offered, taking the tack of—what?—better cop to Mac’s good cop? The way they’d all been catering to this criminal lowlife made Mac’s stomach turn, but the ends simply had to justify the means. “Mr. Goins has been in here as a suspect. Probably doesn’t trust us. I mean, if I were him, I wouldn’t trust us.”

In Mac’s ear, Lilith cursed. Instinctively Mac’s neck jerked, but Goins’s suddenly sullen expression kept him steady. Mac watched the man’s lips pull tight across his teeth, and when he shook his head, sweat dripped off the stringy strands of his hair. Mac expected Lilith to break in with some sort of insight, though he hoped she’d keep strictly to business. He didn’t know why he bothered with such an unrealistic expectation. The sound of her voice, coupled with her sexy commentary, were playing cruel tricks on his body. She’d always had a knack for banter that ping-ponged between serious insight and naughty suggestions—suggestions she’d make good on once they were alone.

Mac’s mouth instantaneously watered in anticipation.

Damn Pavlovian response.

Yet this time she remained silent.

“Come on, Pogo,” Mac urged, leaning on the cold metal table separating the petty thief and low-level former drug dealer from his detectives. “Tell us where you really were.”

“I was at a bar, okay?”

“Where?”

He gave the location, a hole-in-the-wall with a less-than-reputable clientele.

Rick scooted back his chair, the legs screeching on the tile floor. “You told us earlier you were at the grocery.”

“I was there before. I just went to grab a beer before going home. There’s no law against that. Someone must have followed me.”

“Someone like who?” Barbara asked, her blue eyes narrowing. In her late fifties, she was the top female detective in the department and was especially effective in interrogation, though she and Goins went back so far that any trust between them had been broken long ago. That was the trouble with Goins. He knew practically every cop in the precinct, thanks to his less-than-honest ways. He was particularly hard to trip up, despite his obvious hangover, simply because he’d been in enough interrogations to teach a class at the academy.

“Look, Pogo,” Mac broke in. “We just want to help you find your ride, but now your story is changing on us. Where were you? Shopping for milk and eggs or club hopping with that new squeeze of yours?”

Goins rolled his eyes. “Yeah, do I look like the type bouncers are going to let in some club? I just went in for a brew.”

And overheard something?

Where was Lilith? Mac glanced at the window. He couldn’t see anything, of course. Had she taken off?

Mac considered slipping out for a minute, but Goins seemed on the verge of telling them something. He had to ride this out.

“But you got more than a beer while you were there, didn’t you?” Barbara asked.

Goins pushed back from the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I just want my car.”

“There. That’s it, Mac. Go in for the…”

Mac didn’t have a chance to respond when the door to the interrogation room slammed open. The minute he saw the tacky diamond ring on the intruder’s left hand, Mac knew the interview was over.

Shit. Why hadn’t Lilith warned him?

And now what the hell was he going to do?

TORTURE. PURE TORTURE. It was bad enough when Mac faced her, flashing her with glimpses of his deep maple-brown eyes, stubbled square jaw and lips that curved just enough to be delicious and manly at the same time. But when he’d spent the interview with his back to her, she’d had an unhampered, uninterrupted view of his amazingly tight ass. An ass she’d once adored with her mouth and hands in unadulterated appreciation. An ass she craved even now. Damn him.

She sipped her hot drink, brewed with the chamomile tea bag she’d swiped from Det. Walters’s desk. Barbara didn’t seem to mind Lilith’s continued petty thefts. One of these days Lilith was going to replace what she’d taken. That ought to be good for an extra-credit karma point.

But first she had to concentrate.

Okay, she couldn’t read Goins’s mind. When she’d had her psychic powers, she could plug into most people’s thoughts as if she had a listening device implanted in their brain. With more sophisticated liars, her psychic vision had allowed her to see images—pictures, sometimes even words spelled out in block letters—which she’d had to then interpret into the information she needed. Oftentimes, the interpretation had been the hardest part of the experience. Only after years of training with her aunt Marion—the witch from whom she’d inherited her power—had she learned how to block out all the detritus and focus only on the information she sought. Now when she focused, her screen was blank.

But the stirring in the pit of her stomach that alerted her when someone was lying still seemed to work.

And Goins had her feeling as if she needed a huge dose of Tums.

Having Mac so close and yet so far wasn’t helping matters either.

She pressed her fingers against the glass and tried to focus on the subject of the interview. She closed her eyes instinctively, but when she did, the roiling in her stomach ceased. She forced her eyes open. Good goddess, she was going to have to relearn how to do everything. Back when she’d been a child, before she’d grown fully into her power of clairvoyance, she’d suffered endlessly from an upset stomach. Not until her mother had caught her chugging Mylanta had she learned that her physical reaction to lies had been strong enough to sicken her. Her mother, filled with guilt and remorse, had then—and only then—sat her down and explained that Lilith was a witch of sacred gifts and that someday she’d hold sway over those around her because of her abilities.

God, how old had she been?

The sick feeling returned, and not because of mistruths. Only a few months later Amber St. Lyon had died, leaving Regina and Lilith to discover their magic alone. Okay, not alone. Aunt Marion had been there, as well as the rest of the Council, all of them keenly aware that the scope of power passed down through the St. Lyon line required that the girls be groomed and molded with precise care. They’d done a hell of a job with Regina, who’d taken over as Guardian on her sixteenth birthday, the youngest witch in two centuries to assume such a lofty position. With Lilith…well, suffice it to say that by the time she was sixteen, she could control her power…and little else.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Chicago Police Department’s resident soothsayer.”

Lilith spun around, cursing at being caught off guard yet again. She sharpened her four-letter words from mildly offensive to shockingly harsh when she recognized who’d called her out.

Boothe Thompson.

“That would make you the criminal element’s equivalent of Santa Claus, wouldn’t it?” she snapped.

Boothe smoothed his manicured hands down the length of his tailored Italian suit. “I’m much too slender for that comparison, Lilith, don’t you think?”

She raised an eyebrow. “When exactly did we get on a first-name basis?”

“I find it hypocritical to trade insults with someone and then address them formally. And I may be a lot of things, but hypocrite is not one of them.”

“No, I suppose being a bottom-feeding ambulance chaser takes up way too much time for anything else,” she retorted and then added, “Mr. Thompson.”

His lips curved into a half smile. “You are the feisty one, aren’t you?”

Lilith stepped forward, inwardly cursing at how she could read nothing from this man. And not because of her lost powers. From the first minute she’d crossed paths with this infamous defense attorney over a year ago she’d been unable to read him. She sometimes ran into mundanes—nonmagical mortals—who could effectively block her psychic abilities. She figured a scum-bucket attorney like Boothe Thompson had honed his truth-masking abilities from an early age. She experienced the same effect with some stage-trained actors and, not surprisingly, experienced boutique saleswomen. Particularly those who worked on commission.

“The feisty one? Compared to whom?”

“All charlatans of your ilk,” he replied, sneering. “How the mayor allows his department to employ frauds and swindlers like you is beyond me.”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “I expect there’s quite a bit that’s beyond you. Like the fact that I’m the real deal.”

He stepped closer. “Is that so? Tell me, then, Ms. St. Lyon…” he said, emphasizing the miz sound so that he nearly hissed like a snake. “What does your third eye reveal when you look at me?”

Lilith squared her shoulders and, despite her lack of magical powers, stared into his steel-gray gaze with bold rebellion. She concentrated but saw nothing. Not so much as a flicker. And the sick feeling in her stomach had nothing to do with lies. Pure feminine instinct turned the juices in her belly into hydrochloric acid.

“I see a handsome, arrogant man who believes he holds sway over every man and woman within a fifty-foot radius,” she answered.

Boothe frowned. “Only fifty feet? You seriously underestimate my ambitions.”

She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from smiling. His overconfidence struck her as funny somehow. Probably because in a way it mirrored her own.

“Perhaps. But you like to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You work in small, concentrated bursts, luring people to your side, confident that even when they’re out of your sight they’ll still love and adore you.”

His eyes brightened. “Perhaps you’re not the fraud I suspected you to be.”

She didn’t reply. A few short days ago, she would have gloated, knowing her abilities were as real as the diamond on his left ring finger. Now all she could rely on were her feminine instincts. But with a guy like Boothe Thompson—slick, attractive and precision-oiled—she had insights to spare.

“You, on the other hand, are all smoke and mirrors,” she concluded.

He chuckled, raised his hand to…what? Pat her cheek? Her fingers coiled into a fist, but he stopped before his skin touched hers when he caught sight of the action on the other side of the one-way.

“Now that isn’t good.”

Lilith spun around and caught the fearful look in Pogo’s eyes. She pushed herself away from Thompson and reestablished the connection to Mac.

“There. That’s it, Mac. Go in for the…”

The door to the interrogation room slammed open.

Instantaneously her earpiece exploded with dueling shouts from Mac and Boothe Thompson.

Game over.

She yanked the listening device from her ear and wondered how one filled out a job application. Judging by her nonmagical performance as a psychic, she needed a new profession. Soon. Very, very soon.


3

MAC PEEKED ONE EYE OPEN, then immediately pressed his lids tight. “Go away, Lilith.”

He heard her close the door. Her stiletto heels clicked across the terrazzo floor but stopped their ominous tattoo when she reached the edge of his desk. A desk he liked in an office he liked—all courtesy of a job he liked. A job he’d devoted his life to since trading his college degree in criminology and four years’ service in the military police for a badge emblazoned with the City of Chicago’s official seal.

A job he might have been kissing goodbye right now if the chief of police didn’t owe him for saving his life once.

“So got any ass left for me?” Lilith asked.

Mac shifted uncomfortably in his seat and opened one eye halfway. “Let’s just say it’s a miracle I’m sitting.”

“Chief chewed off all that prime meat?”

“And spit it out right in my face.”

She leaned forward on her hands, her green eyes twinkling with carnal knowledge. “Then I’m glad I had a chance to check your butt out earlier, before there was nothing left to see.”

“I thought you hated my guts.”

She snickered. “Takes too much energy to hate. It’s much more fun to hang around the people you’re pissed at and make their lives miserable.”

The tease in her voice should have annoyed him, but Lilith’s laugh never failed to remind him that life wasn’t over just because some perp got off or the new mayor was using Mac to show the rest of the force what a tough guy he was. Or that a woman he once thought he loved believed him to be an asshole.

Not that he blamed her. He’d acted like a first-class bastard when he’d realized she possessed a power he couldn’t wrap his just-the-facts mind around. Even now, resentment burbled in his belly because she’d used her natural advantages to coil him tightly around her finger. He’d been blindsided by her true abilities, even though she’d assured him from the start that her powers were real.

But when the truth had finally sunk in, he’d said things no man should ever say to a woman. His guilt was lessened only by the fact that she’d shot back with venom of her own—venom that stung. Venom he’d deserved.

Mac crossed his arms over his chest and balanced his heels on the stack of reports he should complete within the hour.

“Well, you’ve succeeded. I’m officially miserable. Is that why you didn’t warn me Boothe Thompson was about to blow my interrogation?” he asked, ignoring how delectable she looked in skintight, painted-on jeans and one of those flimsy blouses that made no secret of the curves underneath.

She stood her ground. “Didn’t know it was my day to keep defense attorneys from doing their jobs.”

“Pogo Goins never asked for his attorney.”

“Then why was Thompson at the precinct?”

Mac shrugged. “Followed an ambulance in? I forgot to ask.”

“Yeah, you were too busy assaulting him,” she replied, and not surprisingly, he heard no chastisement in her voice. Except for criminal types, anyone with a brain knew in less than ten minutes that Boothe Thompson was a creep.

“Well, it’s one way to relieve stress,” he said.

She pushed Mac’s feet aside and settled onto the corner of his desk, her feet dangling in impossibly sexy high-heeled boots. “Not to mention end a career. What exactly happened in the chief’s office? Beyond the rending of gluteus flesh.”

Mac kicked off his desk, rolling backward in his chair before her increasingly alluring scent stole his ability to think. The exotic spices counteracted the effects of the aspirin he’d choked down in anticipation of writing the report of the incident that had left Boothe Thompson with a bruise on his chin and Mac with his ass in a sling.

“Same old warnings and ultimatums,” he replied. The lie tasted natural on his tongue, which worried him even more.

“You suspended?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you expect to be?”

This time her voice had sharpened with the sound of outrage. Great. Just what he needed. A loudmouthed ex-lover who would relish a chance to march into the chief of police’s office and give him a piece of her mind on Mac’s behalf. Or maybe she’d make sure his possible suspension turned into a permanent firing. With Lilith, he never could tell.

“Look, it’s been a kick seeing you again, and if not for the interruption, your help might have scored us the information we needed, but I have to get this newly flattened backside to work while I still have a job. I’m sure you have…I don’t know…palms to read somewhere.”

“That’s the best thank you I’m going to get, isn’t it?” she asked. “And for the last time, I’m out of business.”

“Then maybe we’ll soon finally have something in common,” he replied. He grabbed the corner of the report and tugged, but the paper didn’t budge, securely held down by her curvaceous backside—a backside she gave him a delicious view of when she shifted to release his paperwork.

Her mouth, so sensually shaped and enhanced by her dark burgundy lip gloss, dropped open. “Something in common beyond an insatiable need for hot, sweaty sex?”

Despite the instantaneous spike in his temperature, Mac snorted. “We don’t even have that anymore.”

“That was your decision,” she responded, taking the opportunity at their proximity to slide her dark-red-tipped finger across the path from the monogrammed police logo on his polo shirt to the base of his throat.

“You gave me no choice,” he said, gazing straight into her eyes, daring her to contradict him.

As if she needed a dare.

“You always have a choice.”

He leaned closer and instinctively breathed in the scents he’d forever associate with the red sheer curtains, silk sheets and gold satin pillows of her bedroom. “Did you have a choice to be a psychic?”

She pressed her lips tightly together. “At first, no.”

His mouth dried. “And now?”

Her lip quirked up, bringing the tiny scar on her cheek into sharp relief against her ivory skin. “I’m working on it.”

When a jolt of hope shot through him, Mac stepped back. This relationship could not be renewed. Not when he and Lilith were so diametrically opposed in every aspect of their lives they might as well have hailed from different planets. “What does that mean?”

In a quick move, she stood and charged toward the door. “Never mind. Look, don’t call me again, okay? I’m not the w-woman I used to be. I can’t help you anymore.”

Mac narrowed his gaze. He might not have psychic powers, but he’d managed enough interrogations to know when someone he’d once been close to was both uncomfortable with the subject matter and…lying? Lilith? She broke rules, defied conventions and generally caused consternation among any group that demanded adherence to a certain code of behavior, but she never lied.

At least not to him. With him she’d always told him the truth. Unfortunately what he’d chosen to believe of that truth had ultimately caused the destruction of their affair.

“Lilith, what aren’t you telling me?”

She stopped at the door, startled. “I’m not telling you a whole hell of a lot. You see, when you call a girl a freak and then bolt out of her bed as if the sheets are on fire, you pretty much lose your right to be a confidant.”

Ouch.

“I deserve that,” he admitted.

“Damn straight you do!”

“I’m sorry.”

Lilith opened her mouth, stopped, then popped her lips closed.

Mac shoved his hands into his pockets. Those words, hard as they were to say, were woefully overdue.

For a split second her gaze softened. But before she could respond, his office door banged open, nearly knocking her against the wall.

“What the fu—”

The mayor, the newly elected Perkins Dafoe, gave her a quick and startled glance, then dismissed her. Okay. So she didn’t exactly look like a typical voter. Not with that bloodred lipstick and pentagram charm dangling between her generous breasts. But Lilith didn’t cotton to blatant disrespect.

Oh, the man was going to be sorry.

“Mancusi, what the hell kind of operation are you running here? This is the twenty-first century, man. Al Capone and Eliot Ness no longer work here.”

Mac pressed his lips together to smother a smile when Lilith muttered, “What a moron.”

The mayor turned toward her again, his eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me?”

Lilith’s grin could have cut glass. “Capone never worked here. He was the criminal. And Ness was a fed, not Chicago PD.”

The mayor’s face was stone until his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrow cocked over keen blue eyes. “And you are?”

Lilith stepped fully into the man’s personal space. “A friend of the detective’s who doesn’t appreciate being run over by politicians on power trips.”

Yeah, this was helping.

Mac cleared his throat. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Mayor?”

With reluctance, Dafoe turned away from Lilith. “You can pack up your things,” the politician declared.

“What?” Lilith yelped.

Mac held up his hand. “Mr. Mayor, I was told by the chief that the matter would be adequately reviewed before any action was taken.”

“One look at Boothe Thompson’s face is all the review I need. You’re out of here. Two weeks. Maybe more if I hear one whiff of you interfering in any police matters during your suspension. I can’t have my police officers beating up on my defense attorneys.”

“I had no idea you personally owned the justice system of Chicago,” Mac retorted.

Dafoe’s bloated face reddened. “This is a new administration, Mancusi. An iron fist is what I promised my constituents, and that’s exactly what I’m going to provide.”

Mac’s throat burned from the exertion of keeping his mouth shut. He’d walked right into this one. Common sense had told him to let Goins go when it was clear the information he may or may not have possessed wasn’t forthcoming. Instead he’d called Lilith and pushed the boundaries of good police work.

But it still stank.

“There’s still a shipment of drugs out there, Mr. Mayor. The distribution could be transpiring as we speak.”

The mayor’s jaw tightened. “That’s no longer your concern.”

Lilith grabbed the mayor’s sleeve and spun him around. Mac couldn’t react fast enough. Not with the desk in the way. A split second later, a security guard had Lilith’s face pressed against the wall, her arms tight behind her back.

“Back off, you oaf!” she demanded, striking backward with her head and knocking the guard in the chin.

“Lilith…” Mac warned, his body burning from the inside out in his efforts to remain still. The last thing any of them needed was a free-for-all. Especially when more than one person in the room was armed.

The mayor had been shuttled to a corner by his handlers. Through the dark sleeves, he could see the man’s sweaty face.

“Call off your man,” Mac insisted.

The mayor stuttered, “Sh-she attacked m-me!”

“I barely touched your arm. Boy, won’t the press love to know how you react when a woman merely touches you? Your wife must be so—”

“Lilith,” Mac said, his volume low and his tone dire.

Surprisingly Lilith quieted, the obvious insult to the mayor’s masculinity hanging heavy and acrid in the air.

Mac turned to the mayor, whose skin had turned the color of boiled beets. “I’ll pack up my stuff with no comment to the press if you allow…Ms. St. Lyon…to leave, as well.”

Two aides whispered in the mayor’s ear. He nodded.

“No comments to the press from her either?” the aide verified.

Mac waited for Lilith to agree. After a tense minute, her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, am I allowed to speak now?” She twisted so she could eye the security guard still holding her tightly. He made no move to release her. With a sigh, she agreed to the terms.

The aides shuttled to the door. The mayor straightened his jacket, then marched out behind them, stopping at the threshold. Once certain his security guard had planted himself directly between Lilith and the politician, he cleared his throat to speak, punctuating his words with jabs of his finger. “Not a word from you, Detective Mancusi. If one quote appears in black and white attributed to either you, your representatives or this…this…woman…you’ll turn in your badge for good.”

With that, he left. Ten seconds later, the room cleared out entirely. And yet Lilith remained by the door. Almost immediately her naturally pale skin went entirely white. Mac vaulted around his desk to catch her before her knees buckled.

“Lilith?”

Her lids drooped over her stunning eyes but didn’t entirely close. He was immediately struck by the scent of her perfume and the spiked fringe of her hair striking against his neck like a thousand matchsticks. She kicked her feet and shook her hands, mumbling unintelligibly. Whatever had come over her, she was fighting to remain conscious.

With a curse, he lifted her into his arms just in time for her to mutter, “Holy sensory overload,” against his cheek.

“You’re joking?” he snapped. “This is a joke?”

She groaned. “No…joke. Put…me…”

The demand trailed away. He set her down in the nearest chair, pressing his palm against her clammy cheek. “Are you sick? Should I call someone?”

Lilith shook her head gingerly. “No,” she insisted, pushing him aside. “Give me a minute.”

Mac backed away, realizing after he had some distance that his chest was sore from the pounding of his heart. “What are you doing, Lilith? Trying to manipulate me the old-fashioned way now that you’ve quit being a psychic?”

She’d put her head between her knees but looked up slowly and with pure poison in her eyes.

“You’re kidding, right? I just got manhandled by the mayor’s goons and you think I’m playing a game? I’m not used to relying on my normal senses. Smell. Touch. Look, I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say that adjusting to life without my—”

She stopped and flopped back down into the crash position.

“Without your what?”

“Without my common sense, apparently,” she snapped.

Mac took a deep breath and turned to the storage closet, digging around until he found a box whose contents—a collection of ball caps from the department team—he dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. Forget her. She wasn’t part of his life anymore. He’d saved her from arrest for assaulting a public official, but now that she was safe, he simply had to give her a few minutes to get her equilibrium back after being nearly choked by the mayor’s muscle and then she could leave. And he could leave. They could both leave and be done with the insanity that had been their relationship.

Not to mention the sudden craziness of his job.

“You’re just going to give in?” she asked the minute he shoved the ashtray crafted by his six-year-old niece into the box.

“She lives!”

She sat back in the chair, the soft pink color in her cheeks slowly returning, and shot him the finger.

“Disappointed?” she asked.

“I never wished you ill, Lilith. I just wanted you out of my life.”

“Then why’d you call me this morning?”

He grabbed a commendation off the wall and shoved it into the box. “I was trying to stop a crime wave. That’s what usually happens after some drug lord dumps a couple of hundred kilos of powder on the streets.”

“Do you always put the requirements of your job ahead of your personal needs?”

“Do you really need to ask that question?”

Lilith pressed her hand to her roiling stomach and realized she was going to have to either get used to interacting with people without her power to anticipate their every thought and action or she would have to hole up in her apartment until the Council came to their senses. Since the chances of that happening were closer to none rather than slim, she figured she’d better start acclimating herself to a new, psychic-free life.

“Do I have a choice?” she muttered. “I can’t read you anymore, Mac. If I want to know what you’re thinking, I have to ask.”

He shoved a stack of files and a date book into the burgeoning box. “But I don’t have to answer.”

Touché.

“What about the police union?”

Mac pawed through a drawer, looking for…what? Knickknacks? Mementos? Forgotten packs of gum? Lilith didn’t have to be psychic to know that he wanted his files. His notes. His cases. Cases that would turn to ice the minute he walked out the door. “They’ll advise me to take the temporary suspension in lieu of assault charges.”

“Thompson could still have you charged,” she reminded him.

“Are you going to try and beat him up for me, too?”

Lilith smiled at the thought, but she wasn’t much of a scrapper. She left the big physical confrontations to her sister and her handy-dandy energy bursts.

“The mayor’s a wuss. I really was only trying to get his attention.”

“Well, you definitely succeeded.”

“Score one for the home team,” she cracked.

“Thompson told the chief he wouldn’t file charges,” Mac told her. “I’m guessing he wanted to buy a chance at my cooperation at a later date.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re a real quid-pro-quo kind of guy,” she said snarkily, knowing that to Mac, a game of tit for tat was as appealing as a being the lead-in pitcher for a Little League team playing against the White Sox.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She did know Mac. As she’d known no other man in her entire life. Their affair had started off as a lark, an act of surrender to a lust so powerful even her psyche had been overwhelmed. Though she’d never admit it, she’d employed her powers in ways she never had before. She’d wanted to be his dream woman. She’d wanted to become a part of his life, a segment of his soul. The connection between them had been inescapable until he’d torn away from her so brutally. Why was she back again? For more punishment?

Or to undo her past mistakes?

“Go home, Lilith,” Mac insisted. “Thanks for trying to help out, but I don’t think I need your services anymore.”

She slid her slim fingers onto her not-so-slim hips, a smile tugging at her insides. At the core of her belief system, Lilith accepted that everything happened for a reason. Her meeting Mac. Their affair. His discovery of her powers. Their dramatic breakup. The stripping of her powers by the Council. His phone call earlier. The confrontation with Boothe Thompson. Mac’s run-in with the mayor and his suspension.

She’d come to the precinct today in an attempt to prove her worthiness to the Council. Maybe, just maybe, she could prove something to Mac instead.

And even to herself.

“You said you didn’t need me three months ago,” she said. “And yet here I am.”

Her voice had gone all sultry, deep and husky, and Mac’s body responded. His chin tightened. His pupils dilated. His nostrils flared.

“Yes, here you are.”

She swept closer to him, knowing that the fragrance she wore—one Josie had created just for her—never failed to intensify whatever emotions Mac felt toward her. Anger. Curiosity. Lust. Especially lust. Just because she’d had her powers stripped didn’t mean she couldn’t use someone else’s magic to get what she wanted.

Namely, Mac.

Another chance to do things right.

He clenched his fists at his sides. “Lilith, you and me…we aren’t a good idea.”

Lilith took one of his hands in hers and eased the tension from his fingers. Long fingers. Skilled fingers. Fingers she wanted to feel in her hair, on her breasts, between her legs.

“Then let’s be a bad idea. Come on, Mac. You’ve had one hell of a day.” She slid her hands around his neck, groaning at the powerful feel of his muscles against her flesh. “What have you got to lose?”


4

“MY MIND?”

And yet, when Lilith moved toward the door, throwing him a saucy look over her shoulder, Mac grabbed his box and followed. The tension that had drawn them together months ago on the missing-child case still tugged at him with relentless power. And, God, he was too tired to fight. Thanks to this second fit of uncontrolled temper, his entire future as a cop was in jeopardy. And worse, a shipment of drugs that could turn the ebb and flow of crime in the city into a killer tsunami was likely even now flooding onto the streets. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing.

So why resist what could be at least a few hours of blissful sensation while his world drowned?

When Rick stopped him in the hallway to insist they review a case before he left, Mac handed over his badge and his gun, then blew him off. He’d call him later. Chicago wasn’t going to morph into Sodom or Gomorrah before quitting time. The cases could wait. Mac’s common sense could wait. Everything could wait.

Everything except Lilith.

Once they were in the shadowed parking garage, Lilith eased her backside gingerly against his car, a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302. The car’s need for restoration never screamed for attention as much as it did with Lilith’s sleek lines and bold colors contrasting against the Mustang’s rusted bumper and peeling racing stripes. Instantaneously an image flashed in his mind. Lilith in the same pose, with the same innocent expression, staring at him intently while the sales rep from the auction talked him into buying the car despite the fact that he didn’t have the time or the extra cash to fix it up. But now, as then, she’d looked too alluring leaning against her automotive equivalent—fast, powerful, in complete control of whatever road she drove—for him to resist.

He dropped his box, his arms shaking.

She quirked an eyebrow. “Slippery fingers? I hope you haven’t lost your touch,” she purred.

He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, fully aware of his protective stance. “Are you doing this?”

“Doing what? Turning you on?” She wriggled her backside against the faded metal. “I sure hope so.”

He shook his head, his gut gurgling from the emptiness in his stomach. “No…I mean, yeah. Are you, you know…making me feel this way?”

Anger churned his insides. Mac could forgive Lilith for just about anything but not for manipulating him again. Not with her…powers. Not if he was unable to fight her.

Her chuckle was devoid of its usual lighthearted rumble. “I told you, I—”

“Chose to stop using your power to make a living. I get that. But—”

“No,” she said, her voice firm and just a little bit sad, a sound that caught him unaware. Lilith wore many emotions on her sleeve, but sadness was one she kept carefully contained. “I don’t have my abilities anymore, Mac, and it wasn’t my choice. My powers are gone. They’ve been stripped out of me the way a surgeon would cut out a spleen. Or a heart. You could be thinking right now that you want to strangle me with your bare hands and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

And this wasn’t insignificant. Once Mac had accepted that Lilith’s psychic abilities had been genuine, he’d figured out so much about her. Why she didn’t carry a cell phone but always seemed to know when someone needed to talk to her. Why she hardly glanced around her when she exited the L but still managed to thwart the thief who once tried to grab her jewelry. She relied on her heightened intuition to ensure her connection to the world and her safety. Suddenly it occurred to him that she wouldn’t give up her abilities without a fight.

Someone had cut them out of her. Against her will. But who? And why?

“What happened?”

“Long story,” she responded, her eyes averting and her fingers toying with the silky edge of her blouse.

He lifted the box back into his arms. “That’s convenient since I recently acquired more free time than I know what to do with.”

Tension seeped out of her shoulders when she licked her lips. “I know precisely what to do with all that free time, if you’ll stop being afraid of me.”

“I was never afraid of you.”

A burst of laughter echoed in the deserted parking garage. “I distinctly remember terror in your eyes the minute you realized that I could read your thoughts.”

He shifted uncomfortably. She was right. He had been scared. All his years in law enforcement, both in the military and walking the beat, he’d seen a hell of a lot of freakish stuff. He’d even run across a few situations that seemed completely unexplainable. But never in his life had Mac considered that the forces at work were beyond the ordinary. Ghosts, to him, were manifestations of people with vivid imaginations. Practitioners of voodoo or Santeria scared their followers into submission with lots of goat’s blood and manipulative placement of slaughtered sacrifices.

Yet when Lilith had proved her abilities to be very real, he’d been totally unprepared. She’d told him precisely what he was thinking—word for word—with images and visualizations he knew no one could guess at. She’d picked his brain open like a safecracker and cleared the contents without breaking a sweat. He’d freaked out, reacting from pure, basic fear of the unknown.

“Then how about if I say I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

She shrugged. “I lost my powers. You don’t need to be.”

He narrowed his gaze, searching for some sign that she wasn’t being straight with him. Not that she’d ever earned his distrust, but once a cop, always a cop.

“So you can’t manipulate me now. You can’t make me want you.”

She ran her hands through her hair, then laced her long and sensual fingers behind her neck, causing her breasts to jut temptingly. “I never could. Read your thoughts, yes, but put them in your head? I wish. I could never make you want anything, Mac, not the way you think. Well, not using those powers anyway.”

A tightening that spawned in his chest dipped decidedly lower. “What other kind of magic do you have?”

Her smile instantly allayed his residual fear. “Relax, Mancusi. I’m talking about the kind of magic all women possess. There’s nothing supernatural about you wanting me now. In fact, I’d be damn worried about you if you didn’t.”

She held out her hand, then with a coy glance over her shoulder indicated precisely what she wanted. Instinctively he tossed her the keys. Though he wasn’t entirely sure that she had a driver’s license, Lilith’s unexplainable adoration for his car spawned his habit of always allowing her to drive. When the metal hit her palm, she squealed with delight, immediately unlocked the driver’s-side door and slid inside.

The popping of the trunk acted like a starting pistol. He tossed the box of his memories into the back and spun around to the passenger’s side just in time to see her lean slinkily across to let him in.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Is that another way of saying My place or yours? Those really are the only two choices, you know.”

Mac was about to agree when another car eased by behind them. A Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster. Silver. Expensive. And driven by none other than Boothe Thompson—with Pogo Goins riding shotgun. Mac couldn’t ignore a unique opportunity. Sure, he was off the force. And, yeah, he’d been ordered by the mayor to leave all of his open cases alone. But how could he bypass such a perfect opportunity to find out exactly why a high-priced mouthpiece like Thompson was fronting for a lowlife like Goins?

“Speak of the devils,” Lilith muttered.

Mac turned toward her, his face blank. He could only wonder.…

“You want to follow him?” she said.

He frowned. “I thought you lost your psychic ability.”

She rolled her eyes impatiently. “A girl doesn’t have to be psychic to figure out what you want to do, Mac. I mean, if I were you…”

He slid into the passenger seat. “You’d make a great cop.”

She turned the key in the ignition. “I’d suck as a cop and you know it. No matter how I try—and, frankly, I don’t try, very hard or very often—I can’t manage to follow rules.”

With a quick glance over her shoulder, Lilith eased out of the parking space, then maneuvered down the row just as the tail end of Boothe Thompson’s car dipped down the ramp.

“I’ve followed rules my entire life,” Mac lamented, “and look where it’s gotten me.”

Lilith didn’t reply, concentrating instead on pursuing their quarry at a stealthy distance, reinforcing Mac’s suggestion that she’d make a decent police officer. Psychic or not, Lilith was a street-smart woman, and if she possessed even a modicum of fear, she kept the emotion skillfully hidden. He wouldn’t take this risk with any other civilian in the car, much less driving. Besides, they were just following someone. He didn’t anticipate any danger to anyone but himself, since stalking charges didn’t look good on the chief of detectives job evaluation. If Thompson made him and complained to the mayor, his suspension would become permanent.

Unaffected by the potential consequences, Lilith clucked her tongue but continued to pursue the Roadster at a safe but tight distance. “I’m corrupting you,” she said without the least bit of remorse.

“Maybe it’s about time.”

The light at the corner changed to red, trapping Thompson’s car at the intersection. Lilith used the delay to turn toward him completely.

“Damn, Mancusi. Just when I thought I was over you, you go and do something that’s got me melting inside. Putting your job on the line. Disobeying orders. Breaking laws.”

Even with the rumbling of the engine and the vibration of the overstressed metal beneath the stripped leather seats, Mac heard her breath switch from normal aspiration to tiny little pants. The green rings of her irises tightened into strips of intense color.

“Bad boys turn you on?” he asked, realizing for the first time that he knew little, if anything, about her sexual past. Beyond him, of course. Beyond assurances of safe-sex practices, neither one of them had shared many details about previous lovers. Their relationship, such that it was, had left little time for conversation.

“On occasion,” she confessed haughtily. “But if you want to really get me wet, it’s the good guys gone bad who do the trick.”

Before he could stop himself, Mac grabbed the back of her head, yanked her close and kissed her hard. The jolt of electricity that shot through his body nearly sent his heart into cardiac arrest. She tasted like honey and tea and woman. She smelled of melted candle wax and fragrant herbs. Her tongue battled with his, fighting for dominance, yielding only after he slipped his fingers into her hair and teased the tips of her earlobes with his thumbs. She whimpered, acquiesced, then retaliated by splaying her palms over his chest and pressing hard against his beating heart. His muscles bunched and ached as he fought from pulling her out of the driver’s seat and onto his lap.

But no matter how much he wanted to make love to Lilith and lose himself in the hot, familiar sex they’d once shared so freely, the honk from the car behind them reminded them that they had a more pressing goal.

With a look that promised more at the soonest opportunity, Lilith jumped back behind the wheel and threw the car into gear. They’d lost some ground on Thompson, but thanks to rush-hour Chicago traffic, they hadn’t fallen too far behind.

The rest of the trip transpired in relative silence, with Mac breaking the thick quiet with quick instructions that Lilith deftly followed. They arrived at the South Side neighborhood unseen. Surrounded by the common props of industrial blight—overturned garbage cans, one shuttered door or window for every visible pane of glass, loiterers on the street who ranged in age from about fourteen to eighty but who all shared a common distaste for hygiene—Mac’s battered car blended in.

Lilith slid the Mustang into a space in front of a Laundromat, while Boothe double-parked across the street in front of a dingy bar whose only glitter came from a score of flickering neon signs.

The Lamborghini gleamed amid all the dust and grime, yet none of the people on the street seemed to stare or ogle the vehicle. A few, however, stepped quickly away.

Boothe got out of the car, his step springy as he engaged the security alarm, which Mac figured had to be the type that shut down the engine at unauthorized entrance or else Thompson would never park in this neighborhood. Of course, a shut-off switch wasn’t going to stop someone from relieving him of his state-of-the-art car stereo or any other sellable items stored in the vehicle.

In contrast to the attorney, who acted as if he walked these mean streets every day, Goins had his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his head buried in his upturned collar despite the late-summer heat.

“Hmm, if you drove a pimped ride like his, would you leave it alone, illegally parked, in this neighborhood?” Lilith asked.

Mac’s mind whizzed with a dozen scenarios, each as unlikely as the next, as to why Boothe Thompson would drive Pogo Goins home, much less join him in some dive bar for a drink. The same dive bar that was the last known location of Goins’s stolen car.

“Seems to me that Thompson knows his ride is safe here, where Goins’s wasn’t. And do you notice anything about the locals?”

Lilith took her time, leaning forward and then back. “They don’t seem to think that a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car on their street is anything unusual. Which means…?”

“Mr. Thompson is a fixture.”

“He is a defense attorney. I’d venture to guess that there are a lot of people around here who need defending.”

“Yeah, by fee-free public defenders, not attorneys who import their cars, their suits, their shoes and their jewelry from Italy.”

“How do you know that ring is from Italy?” she asked, curious.

He tapped his temple with his finger. “Logic, deduction and intense police work.”

She smirked. “He bragged about it, didn’t he?”

Mac matched her sardonic grin with one of his own. “Maybe. Once. Boothe Thompson isn’t the kind of guy who wants to blend into the woodwork.”

“Hence his sharing a brew with a guy whose entire net worth is less than the cost of Thompson’s haircut.”

“Precisely.”

Mac unbuckled his seat belt and opened the car door. Lilith moved to do the same, but he stopped her. “Whoa, there, hot stuff. I broke enough rules letting you tail the guy. As a civilian, you stay in the car.”

She skewed him with a bored expression, then proceeded to do what she wanted to anyway. “If that’s the case, you need to get that fine ass of yours back in the car, too. Remember? You’re among mortals now, too.”

The irony struck Lilith powerfully, but she fought her reaction and instead concentrated on scoping out her surroundings, something she’d never really had to do before her psychic abilities had been stripped away. Like Mac, she’d lost the one thing she’d depended on her entire life to define who she was. For her, it was her magic. In his case, his position of authority. In her many forays into his mind, she’d witnessed scenes of six-year-old Mac lecturing his two-year-old brother and three-year-old cousin on the proper way to engage their G.I.Joes in action. She’d seen glimpses of him captaining his football team with strictness that rivaled the hard-assed coach. His service in the military had struck her most deeply. He’d had the lives of his men in his hands, and instead of fearing his responsibilities, the authority had empowered him.

Too bad she had to defy him now. She couldn’t prove a thing to the Council about her ability to sacrifice for others and act selflessly if she sat in the car, now could she?

Luckily he didn’t argue. She locked the car door and tossed him the keys. Mac popped the trunk, dug out a crappy old jacket from underneath his box and shrugged into it, lifting the hood over his head in a way that made him look like a stalker or the Unabomber—and also ensured that he fit right in with the locals. He grabbed a moldy, holey sweater and held it toward her.

She sneered. “Not in this lifetime, Mancusi.”

“You want everyone noticing you?”

“They’ll notice me no matter what bag lady costume you try to put on me,” she said, smoothing her hand over her hip.

“It’s a curse.”

He chuckled. “Tell me about it.”

Abandoning the trunk, he went into the backseat and pulled out his own bomber-style leather jacket. One thing about Chicagoites—they never went far without a collection of outerwear, even if the weather, like today’s, bordered on balmy.

She shrugged into his jacket and inhaled the intoxicating scents of tanned animal skin and male musk. Only a few days ago, such sensory overload would have jolted her with a flash of premonition. Instead she experienced a dizzying infiltration of memory—her own—of wearing this jacket and nothing else after Mac had spent the night on a stakeout. They’d made love in the courtyard of his apartment building, then again on the stairs. The mating had been much like the jacket itself—carefully made, warm and hinting of age and experience.

The recollection made her shiver.

“You okay?” he asked, his eyes glinting as if he knew precisely what she was thinking about.

She quirked a grin. “I’d be better if we were crushing the hibiscus again rather than following two creeps into a crappy bar.”

He bit his lip and, if she wasn’t mistaken, blushed before he turned back toward the street. “So would I.”

They waited for a delivery truck to squeeze around the Lamborghini, then used the massive vehicle as cover to cross the street unseen. For all they knew, Boothe had positioned himself next to one of the blackened windows. Wouldn’t the defense attorney have a field day reporting back to the mayor that a detective who had lost his badge and a civilian with a questionable reputation were tailing him?

They slipped into an alley next to the bar, nearly tripping over a guy napping in a cardboard box.

“How do we play this?” she asked as they picked their way through the garbage cans to the side-door entrance to the bar. “Boothe Thompson isn’t stupid.”

Mac tested the doorknob, rolling his eyes when it opened without protest. “I’m counting on this joint being anything but a clean, well-lighted place. Add to it the clouds of cigarette smoke and we should be fine.”

Though Lilith doubted the bar served more than peanuts or stale chips with their well drinks and less-than-premium beers, the kitchen smelled like rotted cabbage and rancid grease. Just beyond the door, a stereo blared, unbalanced to favor the bass, with hard-metal riffs that would effectively drown out any conversations transpiring within. Lilith held her nose as they scurried through the kitchen like the rats that clearly lived among the torn cardboard boxes and grimy crates. Mac opened the swinging door into the bar a few inches, spotted Boothe Thompson sitting near the back, then grabbed Lilith’s hand and hauled her inside.

She nearly choked from the stench of tobacco and unwashed bodies, suddenly craving the sweet celery and woodsy cedar that dominated her altar in her quest for healing. Mac dragged her into a booth, gestured to the bartender for two beers and pulled the hood of his jacket closer to his face.




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