On second thought, no matter what we wore, people would still notice. Mad Rogan wasn’t the most beautiful man in the Galleria, but that masculine . . . aura? Air? Whatever the heck it was, it rolled off him. It was in the set of his shoulders, in the way he walked, as if there was nothing he couldn’t handle. It was in the slight roughness of his skin. In the hardness in his eyes. In a sea of generic illusion faces, he stood out, and people zeroed in on him.
We passed a gift shop selling bouquets of flowers arranged in crystal vases. The middle bouquets held carnations, big, frilly blossoms with gentle pink in the center and pale, wide borders along the petals’ edges. I loved carnations. They were delicate but surprisingly resilient. When roses withered in the vase, carnations still bloomed. And I loved the scent, the delicate, fresh, slightly spicy fragrance.
“What is it?” Mad Rogan asked.
I realized I had glanced at the flowers for a second too long. “Nothing. I just like carnations.”
The fountain by Nordstrom sat on the first floor, a round basin with plants rising up in a tight arrangement in its center. A ring of white underground lights surrounded the plants, glowing gently under the water. A blond stood next to the fountain. She wore a dress made of intertwining, shimmering dark-purple braids, which formed a complex latticework over her shoulders. I had no idea how she managed to even get into that dress, but I had to give it to her, the woman knew how to pose. She stood relaxed but bending back a little, one foot turned inward and pointing toward the other in that slightly awkward pose fashion magazines liked. The dress fit her like a glove, just a quarter inch too loose to turn from form-fitting to vulgar. Her figure was perfect, her waist slender, her legs tan and toned, her breasts and butt curvy but not too big. She’d dyed her hair from platinum to soft strawberry blond, and it fell in ringlets over her shoulders. Her makeup was fresh and flawless. Too flawless. Harper had had herself spelled before she came to meet us. Nothing too obvious, but human skin typically had pores.
“How can I make it easier for you to tell if she’s lying?” Mad Rogan asked quietly.
“Yes or no answers are best,” I said.
Mad Rogan stopped by the sitting area just short of the fountain and sat. I sat next to him.
Harper walked toward us, slowly, like a cat, her golden, high-heeled, strappy sandals making a slight clicking sound on the tiled floor.
“Rogan, I presume.” Her voice matched her—throaty. She slid into the chair across from Rogan and put one long, tan leg over the other, exposing a dangerous amount of thigh. She eyed him up and down in a slow, blatant appraisal and smiled. “I like.”
This wouldn’t go well.
Harper gave me a quick but thorough once-over and turned back to Rogan. “What can I do for you, Mad Rogan?”
He leaned back against his chair. “When you marked the safe-deposit box in the vault of First National, did you know Pierce intended to blow up the bank?”
Straight for the jugular. Okay, then.
Harper smiled. “You called me here to talk about Adam? I would much rather talk about you. What have you been doing all these years?”
“I’ll ask again: did you know Pierce would set the bank on fire?” Rogan asked.
“And if I don’t answer?” Harper raised one eyebrow. “Will you do things to me? They say you’re a tactile.” She glanced at me. “Is he a tactile?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I had no idea what a tactile was.
“Oh. You haven’t had sex.” Harper’s blue eyes brightened. “Don’t feel bad. I imagine he doesn’t go slumming very often.”
Slumming? Cute.
Harper looked me over with a critical eye. “The dye job isn’t bad, but the rest needs help. Especially the shoes. I’d give you pointers, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good.”
In that moment I got Harper’s number. She was one of those women who judged other women’s worth by the kind of men they were with. I came with Mad Rogan, and she wasn’t sure at first if I was competition or not. Now she realized we weren’t a couple, but she demolished me just in case. This was actually sad.
“Answer my question,” Mad Rogan said. His eyes had turned darker. He was getting annoyed.
“I dated a tactile once,” Harper purred. “The Ramirez branch of the Espinoza family. He wasn’t on your level, but it was . . . an experience. He could take my clothes off with his mind. Can you?” She tilted her head. “Can you take my clothes off without touching me?”
Mad Rogan leaned forward, his grim mask suddenly cracking into a smile. “Sure, sweetheart.”
Uh-oh. I’d heard that tone of voice before, just before Peaches went splat.
“Show me,” she said. “And then I’ll tell you about Adam.”
Wow. Here was a dangerous Prime she’d known for all of thirty seconds, and she went right to making out. God, she must really have been desperate. I felt a little embarrassed for Harper Larvo.
Mad Rogan leaned back and smiled. He looked at her as if she was already naked and he owned her. Harper smiled back, showing white teeth. And why exactly did I develop a sudden urge to throw some of that fountain water on both of them?
Harper gasped.
“Did it feel something like that?” Mad Rogan asked.
She gasped again, drawing her breath in sharply. Her cheeks flushed. Something was clearly happening. I had no idea what, but she seemed to enjoy it.
The braids crisscrossing on her shoulders slid, moving against each other on their own. They unwound, turned, left, right . . . Harper swallowed and her eyes opened wide, her pupils growing larger.
“Touch me again,” she breathed.
Another braid, weaving in between the others. Was he actually going to undress her right here? I followed their movement. Oh no. He wasn’t taking her clothes off, like she thought. He was braiding them into a noose around her neck.
“Don’t you dare.”
Mad Rogan ignored me.
“I mean it. Stop.”
“Don’t interfere,” he said.
“If you’re too embarrassed, you can go wait by the fountain,” Harper murmured and glanced back at Rogan, her eyes half closed. “I wouldn’t have expected you to employ a prude. You’re an interesting man . . . full of . . . oh my God . . . surprises.”
The braids twisted again.
“Rogan!”
Harper leaned forward, stretching like a limber cat ready for a stroke of her owner’s hand. Her words came out in quick, breathless bursts. “Give her a hundred bucks, tell her to buy something so she’ll leave us alone . . . More, Rogan. More . . .”
The noose snapped tight, clamping Harper’s neck. She gasped for breath, her mouth gaping.
“You can’t just strangle her.”
“Of course I can,” he said.
Harper clutched at her dress, clawing at her neck, trying to get it off her throat.
I pulled a gun out of my purse and pointed it at Mad Rogan’s leg. “Let her go, or I’ll shoot you.”
Mad Rogan turned to me. “You would shoot me?” He looked genuinely puzzled.
“To save her life, yes.” Even if it meant he would crush me a moment later. “Let her go.”
Harper’s face turned bright plum red. She struggled, her back rigid.
Mad Rogan looked at me. Looking into his eyes was like staring straight into the dragon.
I took the safety off my Kahr. “Please let her go.”
The noose on Harper’s throat fell slack. She fell back into her chair, gulping air in hoarse breaths. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Look at me.” Mad Rogan leaned forward. Menace and contempt dripped from his words. “Did you know Adam would blow up the building?”
“Yes!” Harper gasped. “Yes, I knew, you sick fuck!”
True.
“Do you know what was in the deposit box?”
“No!”
True.
“Do you know what was in the building next to the one Adam burned yesterday?” I asked.<
br />
“No!”
True.
People were looking at us. Blood swelled in the scratches on Harper’s neck where she had clawed at herself.
“Do you know what Adam is planning?” I asked.
She glared at me. “You think Adam is planning something? Adam just wants to burn shit! He’s just a glorified O’Reilly’s cow. He’s a means to an end. You have no idea what’s coming. Soon the Change will happen, and the only thing that will matter will be whose side you were on. I’ve earned my place. I was on the right side. I will be on top. You, you fucking bitch, you’ll rot in hell with this fucking pervert! I hope you two fucking suffer.”
Harper jumped to her feet and ran away, sobbing. A large cityscape billboard hanging from the second-floor bridge moved slightly, turning up as she came toward it, about to peel off the bridge. If it fell on her . . .
I put my hand on Mad Rogan’s arm. “Don’t.”
The board stopped. Harper ran under the bridge and deeper into the mall, her cell phone to her ear. I thumbed the safety back on and put the gun away.
“You would have shot me over her?” Mad Rogan asked.
“You can’t just kill people.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s morally wrong. She is a person, a living, breathing human being.”
“Morally wrong according to whom?” he asked.
“According to the majority of people. It’s against the law.”
“Who is going to tell the law?” he asked. “I could’ve snapped her neck and shot her up on those arches above us. Nobody would find her for days until pieces of her started to fall down.”
“It’s still wrong. You can’t just kill people because they annoy you.”
“You keep saying ‘can’t,’” he said.
“You shouldn’t.” It was like talking to some alien creature.
He leaned back and examined me. “I’ve helped you and protected you. More, you need me to apprehend Pierce. So you have both an emotional and a financial interest in maintaining a working relationship with me. I’m important to you. She insulted and belittled you. She’s a completely useless human being. In five years she will still be doing exactly what she’s doing now, flitting from club to club, supplying tabloids with gossip, and bitching to her friends about her mother, except the clubs won’t be quite as nice and the tabloids won’t mention her quite as often. She contributes nothing.”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty for protecting her?” I asked.
“No, I’m trying to understand. You’re not annoyed at her.”
“I’m annoyed at the people who taught her that her only goal in life should be attaching herself to someone with better magic. I’m annoyed by her because she thinks that having a little bit of money lets her belittle other people. But I’m not threatened by her in the least. Rogan, I own my own business. I’m good at my job. I’m successful enough to keep the roof over our heads and be respected by my peers. My family loves me unconditionally. And when some strange man calls me and orders me to be somewhere, I don’t drop everything and rush over. I’m free. I make my own life and my own choices. I’m not desperately trying to earn the approval of people who think I’m worthless because I don’t have enough magic or because I’m failing to meet their expectations. Don’t you think that if Harper was honest with herself for a moment, she would wish she were me?”
“You’re giving her too much credit. She can change her life any moment she wants to,” he said.
“You still can’t kill her.”
“Yes, I can. I wasn’t necessarily going to just yet, because I wanted information, but your argument that I shouldn’t is baseless. You do realize she participated in an arson that resulted in a man dying?”
“You can’t kill her, because it’s against the law. Because you live here in this country and its laws apply to you no matter how much magic you have. We let police handle things. We have a justice system. Because killing random people just because they did something you don’t like makes you the bad guy.”
His lips curved. A light, amused spark flashed in his eyes, and Mad Rogan laughed at me.
I threw my hands up and got to my feet. “I’m done talking to you.”
He got up, chuckling. “We could’ve gotten more out of her if you had let me choke her a little longer.”
“I think we got about as much as we were going to. You humiliated her. I’m guessing you were making out somehow and then you nearly killed her. She’ll be scarred for life.”
“And if she tried to choke me?”
“I would’ve shot her. I might have warned her first. I don’t know.” I frowned. “So, we know she is involved. She doesn’t know what’s in the deposit box.”
“They probably told her just enough to get her on board,” Mad Rogan said. “Still, we could’ve gotten more.”
I shook my head.
“What?” he asked.
“Rogan, I am not an idiot. By now you probably bugged her car and her house, cloned her phone, and slipped spyware into her computer. You terrified her, and you know she will snitch on you to whoever handles her and your people will be in on the conversation.”
He laughed again.
I pulled out my phone and texted Bern to ask him to search the net for some mention of the Change. Then I paused. She’d said Adam was just a glorified O’Reilly cow. I wondered if she’d meant O’Leary. Did someone call Adam that and she misheard, maybe?
We moved toward the nearest exit. The crowd had thinned out. It was just me and him.
“What’s a tactile?” I really shouldn’t have been asking him that.
His face blank, he didn’t answer.
I must’ve made him uncomfortable. “Never mind. I understand it’s probably personal. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, I’m just thinking of the best way to explain,” Mad Rogan said. “My father survived nine assassination attempts. House Rogan always had its share of enemies. If we can see a threat, we can deal with it, but one can’t always see a sniper hiding in the dark. My father was obsessed with compensating for what he perceived as weakness. He wanted a child with telepathic magic in addition to his own telekinetic powers, so after careful consideration, he found my mother. She had a minor telekinetic talent and she was also a very powerful empath. My father had to go all the way to Europe to find the right combination of genes.”
“Where was your mother from?”
“Spain. She was Basque. My father wanted me to have a secondary talent and be a telekinetic sensate, someone who senses when they are being watched or targeted. But my telekinetic magic proved to be too strong, so instead I’m a tactile. I can make you feel touched.” He paused. “It would be easier if I showed you. Do I have permission?”
Yes. “No.” Being touched by Mad Rogan wasn’t a good idea.
We kept walking. What would it be like?
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
How would it feel?
Would it feel . . . oh hell.
“Okay.” I stopped. We were in front of a small alcove. Nobody was around. If I made an idiot out of myself, nobody would notice. “Just once.”
A soft burst of heat touched the back of my neck. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was as if someone had touched me with a heated mink glove, but the touch wasn’t soft, it was firm. It felt . . . it felt . . .
The heat slid down my neck, fast, over my spine, setting every single nerve on fire before melting in the small of my back, its echoes pulsing through me. My body sang. He’d strummed me like I was a guitar. I wanted him and I wanted him now.
“That was . . .” I saw his eyes. Words died.
All the hardness had vanished from his eyes. They were alive and heated from within. “You want me.”
“What?”
The magic warmth slid over my shoulders, melting into pure pleasure.
“I feel the feedback.” He took a step toward me, grinning. “Nevada, you’re
a liar.”
Uh-oh. I backed up. “What feedback?”
“When I do this . . .” The heated pressure zinged from my back up my ribs. I gasped. Oh dear God. “. . . what you feel loops back to me. I’m partially empathic.”
“You didn’t mention that.” My heart was doing its best to break through my chest, and I couldn’t tell if it was alarm, lust, or some weird mix of both.
He grinned, coming closer. “The hotter you are, the hotter I am. And you’re on fire.”
My back hit the wall. He closed in with an almost terrifying intensity. His muscular body boxed me in.
“Rogan,” I warned. In my head, a song played over and over, singing to me in a seductive voice, Rogan, Rogan, Rogan, sex . . . want . . .
“Remember that dream you had?” His voice was low, commanding.
“Rogan!”
The delicious warmth danced around my neck.
“Where I had no clothes?”
The warmth split and slid over me, over the sensitive nerves in the back of my neck, over my collarbone, around my breasts, cupping them and sliding fast to the tips, tightening my nipples, then sliding down, over my stomach, over my sides and butt, down between my legs. It was everywhere at once, and it flowed over me like a cascade of sensual ecstasy, overloading my senses, overriding my reason, and rendering me speechless. I hurtled through it, trying to sort through the sensations and failing. My head spun.
He was right there, masculine, hot, sexy, so incredibly sexy, and I wanted to taste him. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted him to press himself against the aching spot between my legs.
His arms closed around me. His face was too close, his eyes enticing, compelling, excited. “Let’s talk about that dream, Nevada.”
I was trapped. I had nowhere to go. If he kissed me, I would melt right here. I would moan and beg him, and I would have sex with him right here, in the Galleria, in public.
A spark of pain drained down my arm, driven by pure instinct. I grabbed his shoulder. Feathery lightning shot out and singed him.
Agony exploded in me, cleansing like an ice-cold shower.
Rogan’s body jerked, as if struck by an electric current. It lasted only a second, and I didn’t push as hard as I could have. I was learning to control it.
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