Flirting With Fate by Lexi Ryan

don’t know who you are, but you should know patience is not one of my many
strong points.”
    “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.
    He set his jaw, mentally ticking off the
weaknesses in his apartment’s security. Even Paige shouldn’t have been able to
get past the doorman.
    He focused just enough to activate his power,
which allowed him to steal and block the power of any Special he touched.
    He blinked and suddenly it was Tara in his arms,
sweet, selfless, naïve Tara underneath him, biting her bottom lip and rocking
her fucking hips to grind into his erection.
    Her gaze dropped to his lips, and he
thought—fucking rotten bastard that he was—he really thought about accepting
that invitation. It wasn’t as though this was the first time he’d been tempted.
Tempted by a child.
    He was the lowest of pond scum.
    He rolled off her and found his jeans. “What the
fuck, Tara?” She was a child, he reminded himself—reminded his fucking hard on—a
child whom he’d already exploited, and until he could forgive himself for that,
he wasn’t ready to move on to the next royal fuck-up.
    The woman on the bed morphed into the blond,
voluptuous Josie. “I don’t see any Tara here,” she said. She spread her legs
and pressed her breasts forward provocatively. “I can be anyone you want me to
be.” But she couldn’t. He’d taken enough of her power that she couldn’t hold
the shift and her eyes and face were already shifting back.
    Collin growled. “You’re a fool.”
    “Josie” rolled her eyes before shifting completely
back into Tara’s form. “What do you think of my new skills?”
    He studied her, watching her eyes. It was
definitely Tara. Which meant— “Shit,” he muttered. She’d warned him, hadn’t
she? “Who the hell—” He cut himself off, better he not react at all.
    “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
    He closed his eyes and swallowed. Not a little
girl. Yeah, he could vouch for that. He’d felt every inch of her not a
little girl against him, and his dick was still thinking about it.
    He opened his eyes and focused on her face,
determined not to give into the temptation to study those curves he’d somehow
missed until these last months, determined to focus instead on the short dark
hair that had come in thick again after months of chemo and the eyes that
reflected her innocence.
    His cell phone rang and he looked at the clock—not
even six in the morning.
    The display on his phone told him it was his
brother, Rider.
    “Hello?”
    “Collin, I just got word that Josie broke into
Martin’s lab tonight.”
    Fuck. He’d worried about this when he’d seen she’d
been nosing around fertility clinics. “What did she find?”
    “She shouldn’t have found anything,” Rider said.
“I removed her file last year.”
    “But she knows something,” Collin said, more to
himself than to his brother. “I’ll be in touch.”
    He disconnected the call and turned to Tara. If
she was going to be throwing herself into trouble, he might as well direct her
toward something productive. “You interested in using your powers for good
instead of evil?”
    Her eyes lit up and she grinned, looking far too
damn excited. And innocent.
    He sighed. “How long can you hold a shift?”
    “Depends,” she said, frowning. “Are you going to
use that power-sucker thing on me?” She rolled her shoulders and rubbed her
neck. “I’m drained and feel like crap. That’s from you, isn’t it?”
    He ignored the question. She knew the answer
anyway. “How long under normal circumstances?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, “but I can find out.”
    He nodded. “Show me your Josie again. I need to
see how believable it is.”

Chapter Seven
     
    Her apartment had been torn to pieces, and Josie
was hurting too much to do more than watch as Tanner did his best to put it
back together again.
    The first of the morning’s light slipped in the
windows as he swept glass off the floor. Her mother’s crystal.