Stripped

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.”