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He kept kissing her and tried to ignore her voice in his head.

“This isn’t the right place.”

“It never is, with you.”She bit his lip, driving him wild.

“We need to talk to this witness, and then we need to talk, okay?”

“You’re being the sensible one now? What the hell is wrong with you?”He wrenched his mouth away from hers, breathing hard. “And how are we going to managethatwhen I’m living in the city, and you’ve banned me from your house?”

“I haven’tbannedyou. How about I come and hang out with you at your hotel? We can have dinner and talk.” She sighed, and looked into his eyes. “And have sex. Can we do that?”

He set her away from him. He’d never thought he’d be the one who had to beg for her time. With his powers, he could compel her to do anything he desired, but he wanted her to come to him willingly. He wanted her to crave him as much as he craved her. “All right.”

She smoothed down her clothing, not that it made much difference to her appearance. She always looked as if she’d just rolled out of bed. “It’s a deal. Let’s go and meet Penny Jordan.”

4

“He was just so…immature,you know?” Penny Jordan glanced from Vadim to Ella, who nodded understandingly. “So full of himself that I couldn’t trust him at all. He flirted with all my friends and lied to my face. I was sick and tired of it and finally broke up with him.”

“In the Blue Flamingo bar last night?” Ella asked.

They were sitting in a small consulting room on the first floor of the hospital, near Penny Jordan’s workstation. The space smelled of disinfectant and fear and made Ella’s empath senses jangle like a toothache. She and Vadim sat on the only two chairs, and Penny perched on the side of the paper-covered gurney, legs swinging in her green scrubs. She was a slim, dark-haired woman with a sweet expression and a wide smile.

“Yes. I asked him to meet me there, because I hoped he wouldn’t make a big scene in public.”

“Had you been to that particular bar before?”

“Not with him. I chose it because it’s a great place to pick up a taxi, and I wanted to make a quick escape.”

“How did he take being dumped?”

Penny grimaced. “He smiled right in my face and said that he was okay with it because he’d already hooked up with someone else and was going to dump me anyway.”

“Did you believe him?”

“It doesn’t matter if I did or not, does it? It was just so typical of him to try and turn everything around and make it all about him. It actually made me glad I’d found the nerve to break up with him.” She sighed. “No doubt he’s telling everyone he dumped me.”

“He’s not saying much at all at the moment, actually.”

“What do you mean?” Penny put a hand to her mouth. “He didn’t go and do something stupid, did he?”

“To be honest, I don’t think what happened between you had much to do with what’s happened to him, other than that Brad was in the wrong bar at the wrong time.”

“Was he mugged? I don’t want to date him anymore, but I don’t want him dead or hurt.” She stared at Ella. “You don’t think I did something to get back at him, do you?”

“It’s okay. You don’t seem the type to send someone to break his legs.”

“So, he is hurt?”

“In a manner of speaking. From what we can make out, he stayed at the bar until closing and got drunk. Someone took him home in a taxi, and he didn’t turn up for class this morning.”

Penny shrugged. “That’s a fairly normal night for him, so what else happened?”

“He was found in a distressed state this morning by the emergency services and brought into hospital for further observation.”

“Did he use something illegal?”

Vadim sat forward. “Why would you think that?”