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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.
