Stripped

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.…