Loe raamatut: «Stripped»

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

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.