Stripped. Julie Leto

      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?”