Jack had to grab Sara’s shoulders to prevent her falling against him.

  But it brought her close. Too close. Jack didn’t pull her in, but he didn’t push her away. A flood of sensual memories washed over him. The heady fragrance of ginger-lemon soap and the sound of the rain beating on the windows brought back vivid memories of burying his fingers in the frothy, scented strands of Sara’s hair as he bathed her in the shower.

  A heartbeat after the thought flashed in his mind, he found his tongue in her mouth. Hot, steamy water pounded his shoulders. Sara’s slick, soapy, naked body pressed against his.

  They kissed frantically until they were both panting and breathless.

  Without warning, Sara ripped her mouth from beneath his, her breathing labored, her eyes flashing fire. “I’m going to kill you, Jackson Slater.” She used both hands to shove him away. Hard.

  “Hell—it wasn’t—” The steaming water suddenly turned cold, just like her eyes before she vanished.

  Braced by his arm, Jack thumped his forehead against the cool white tiles. To say he was in trouble didn’t begin to cover it. Sara might be amping his powers, but she was messing with his head—and apparently with his ability to control his powers.

  Turn the page for rave reviews of Cherry Adair’s sensual thrillers!

  Night Shadow

  “Smoothly blends sensuality and espionage…”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Pulse-pounding … all the danger, treachery, and romance a reader could wish for. … Exceptional.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Cherry Adair’s intricately woven plot … will make your pulse race and your palms sweat.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Night Secrets

  “Tremendous!”

  —Romantic Times

  “The night sizzles to new heights in these novels of romantic suspense.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  White Heat

  “A steamy fusion of romance and heart-stopping suspense.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Heart-stopping adventure … spicy.”

  —Library Journal

  Hot Ice

  “A relentless page-turner with plenty of enticing plot twists and turns.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “A very sexy adventure that offers nonstop, continent-hopping action from start to finish.”

  —Library Journal

  Hide and Seek

  “Cherry Adair stokes up the heat and intrigue in her adventurous thriller.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Wow, it’s gripping, sexy as all get out, and the characters will send you into orbit in steam heat … enough chills to keep you on an adrenaline high for the duration of the story.”

  —The Belles and Beaux of Romance

  “Full of highly charged sensuality and violence.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Outsize protagonists, super-nasty villains, and earthy sex scenes.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A reason to stay up way too late.”

  —The Romance Journal

  Kiss and Tell

  “A sexy, snappy roller-coaster ride!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susan Andersen

  “A true keeper.”

  —Romantic Times

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  Pocket Star Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Cherry Adair

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Pocket Star Books paperback edition August 2010

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Text design by Jacquelynne Hudson Cover illustration by Juliana Kolesova

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-5381-9

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6710-6 (ebook)

  In memory of friends

  I loved and admired for more than half my life:

  Cynthia Reed and Kate Duffy.

  Two extraordinary women who had strength, humor,

  and integrity, and whom I’ll miss more than they could

  have ever known.

  Damn rude of you both to have left when things

  were just getting interesting.

  BLACK

  MAGIC

  Prologue

  Jackson? Get your ass in here.”

  Shit. Another minute and he’d’ve been upstairs. Sixteen-year-old Jackson Slater paused just inside the door to his father’s study, fingers shoved into the back pockets of his jeans. “What’s up?”

  The log fire in the hearth cast flickering shadows on the walls of the dimly lit room, which was littered with untidy stacks of books and old newspapers. It smelled strongly of scotch fumes. Great. The old man had been boozing it up again. His father sold newspaper advertising space during the day, and spent his nights drinking.

  Everything in the room looked the same, but an unfamiliar, electrically charged vibe made the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck prickle.

  Looking at his father was eerily like looking at himself in the mirror twenty-five years from now. Same dark hair, same piercing go-to-hell blue eyes, same strong jaw, but with deep lines of dissipation pulling downward around his father’s mouth. His father hadn’t smiled in the ten years since Jack’s mom had died of lupus.

  No excuse. He’d been a violent, unpredictable shit as long as his son remembered. Before the drinking had started. There was no reason for his father to be the way he was. Jack figured some people just chose to be goddamned unhappy and shitty all the time. His father was one of them.

  “How was school?” Sitting in his worn leather easy chair beside the fire, his father beckoned him into the room. He sounded tense. Not surprising. Verbal communicating wasn’t his style. Give him a nice sturdy stick or a fist, and Jackson Slater Sr. was a happy guy.

  Jack glanced at the bottle of scotch sitting within easy reach. Half empty. He could already predict what was coming. “Good,” he muttered cautiously, trying to remember any infraction, minor or major, from the last couple of days. He could think of several right off the bat. But it was unlikely his father knew or gave a shit that he’d had sex with smoking-hot Rachel Thomason in the backseat of her car after school that afternoon.

  Jack slouched against the doorjamb, neither in nor out. He had a date with Rachel later. She’d taught him the nuances of French-kissing, and he was an avid student. Tonight he’d teach her a thing or two when they weren’t restricted by time and a gearshift.

  “Come in,” his father said impatiently. “There’s something I have to give you.” Irritation laced his words.

  Have to? Today was Jack’s birthday, but since his father wasn’t into gift-giving, it was unlikely he was talking about the car Jack wanted. And he was pretty damned sure his father hadn’t sent him the watch that had appeared hovering over his head in the early hours of that morning. Where it had come from, and why today, Jack had no idea. But it was a cool watch with a striated agate face and a gold bezel. He’d worn it to school.

  “But first we have to talk,” his father added belligerently.

  Crap. “No need for a lecture,” Jack said coolly. “I’m saving money for the car myself.” The odd jobs he’d been doing for a construction company after school not only added to his savings, they kept him the hell out of the house.

  His father’s blue eyes flashed a warning. “This isn’t about a damn car. Sit.”

  Jack crossed the room to flop in the opposite chair. He might look relaxed, but he sure as hell wasn’t. Sitting meant he was pinned and might not be able to move fast enough to block anything Dickwad threw at him. He braced himself to deliver some serious whoop-ass if his father made a wrong move.

  Jack’s wizard skills weren’t as honed as his father’s, but he was working at them. Cold had been the Slater family’s power to call for seven generations. For years, Jack had considered it a wussy power. His friends and fellow wizards had kick-ass superpowers, like Chad’s ability to become amphibious, or Edelstein’s ability to Mindwipe. But those were skills he could, and would, learn over time.

  Still, once he’d mastered conjuring a hailstorm, he’d advanced to materializing razor-sharp shards of ice. Now Jack had an arsenal of cold powers that was just as serious as the superpowers of his friends.

/>
  This better not take long—he didn’t want to keep Rach waiting. Bring it on, old man. Jack shifted his center of gravity, ready to move. Fast. “Things to do, places to go,” he told his father, glancing at the broad-banded agate face of his watch before looking up to meet his father’s icy gaze. And fuck you too.

  His father cleared his throat. Uh-oh. Throat-clearing indicated his father wasn’t happy—and high stress for Jackson Slater Sr. equaled pain for Jack.

  He was taller than his father by almost a foot now. Taller, and stronger. If the son of a bitch came at him, Jack would take him down. Hard. He was through having his father’s point of view shoved down his throat. Never again. Today he was sixteen. A man. No one was ever—ever—going to use him as a punching bag again.

  He leaned forward, bracing for a long lecture about … something. They rarely had a real conversation. It seemed to Jack that when they did, his father saved up every unused word, then strung them together in a monologue that could last hours. Jack felt a monologue coming and silently cursed.

  “The Book has decreed that you have ownership of it from this day forward.”

  Holy shit! Stunned, Jack sat up, his heart pounding. He’d only glimpsed the Aequitas Book of Answers once, the day his mother died. His father, drunk and destroyed, had looked for answers. Jack, standing nearby, had too—any kind of damned answers to explain why a terrific mother had to die, while the shitbag she was married to lived. He’d seen the Book, but only the rightful owner could retrieve it from its invisible psionic safe.

  It had been in the family, passed from father to son, for thousands of years, a mark of their family’s leadership position within the wizard community. Being an Aequitas was far more important to his father than Jack himself had ever been. His father was a relatively young guy—forty-one—and Jack had always figured, if he’d thought about it at all, that he’d receive the Book when he was in his thirties or forties. “Isn’t that a bit … premature?” he asked cautiously.

  “Not my decision.” His father cleared his throat. Twice. “The Book has spoken. Stand up.”

  Jack rose, but kept ten feet of carpet between them. The fireplace poker—a favorite nonmagic weapon—was right by his father’s chair.

  “Put out your hands, palms up, to receive it.”

  He extended flattened palms, ready to yank them out of the way if Dickhead struck. The fine hairs on Jack’s body suddenly rose as magically charged air shifted and swirled around him in a current of cold air. Holy shit, it was strong. He braced his feet, holding his breath as he felt the power of the psionic safe hovering nearby. Waiting for him.

  “What do I do?” he whispered. He felt it, but still couldn’t see anything. He had the odd sensation of being underwater as sounds muted, and his vision pinpointed down to his outstretched hands.

  “Call it to you.”

  Jack focused on bringing the invisible safe to him. His skin felt ice cold as if the psionic safe holding the Book hovered inches above his spread hands. He sucked in a breath that caught in his lungs as the safe instantly materialized. “Holy shit,” he breathed, awestruck by the strength of the magic emanating from the glowing cube.

  A twenty-three-inch square, the safe was an intricately carved, clear block of ice with a slightly convex top. A faint, pulsing green light revealed that nothing was encased inside. Where was the book?

  “Open it.”

  Jack swallowed against the dryness in his throat as he mentally repeated the spell he’d learned from his father when he’d been a small kid. Jesus. Did he even remember all the correct words?

  Apparently so.

  A hingeless door in the front of the cube opened with a distinct pop as the seal broke. A plume of acid-green smoke, smelling strongly of ozone, spiraled from inside, then hovered like a drape over the safe as if to protect it.

  The cube disappeared, and the book fell into his hands. Unprepared for the sudden weight, Jack dropped it. As he lunged to catch it, his father shimmered in front of him, face red with fury, breath reeking of scotch. Jack closed his fingers around the heavy, leather-bound book as it hovered inches off the floor.

  “Clumsy idiot!” The poker swished upward, then slashed down. At the same instant, the Book jerked between Jack’s hands, partially blunting the blow. It still hurt like hell as the cold metal rod bit into the side of his hand. More concerned for the safety of the impossibly heavy tome, Jack barely felt the pain, although he was pretty sure his thumb was broken.

  Gently lifting the Book, he straightened with it clutched firmly in both hands. Almost without thinking, he shot a powerful bolt of cold toward his father, who was yelling as he swung the poker again. The noise cut off abruptly. In his peripheral vision, Jack caught his father’s shocked expression as he was literally thrown back, then pinned in his chair by thick ice restraints across his chest, wrists, and ankles. His father cursed him as he struggled uselessly against his bonds.

  Awed, Jack hefted the Book. Little sucker must weigh fifty pounds or more. Unlike the icy safe, the Book was almost alive in his hands. Warming to the touch. Vibrating. Its magical power jolted up Jack’s arms and traveled pleasantly through his body.

  Hundreds of Slaters had held it in their hands, just like this. Felt the heartbeat of its power flow through their veins. Felt the same surge of energy and strength that Jack felt now. How was it possible for something so small to exude so much power? he wondered, examining the intricately embossed leather cover, brown and cracked with age. The gilt-edged papyrus pages were warped with a thousand years of careful study, the gold-leaf text on the tooled cover flaking in places and hard to read.

  Carefully supporting the weight on one hand, he attempted to flip open the cover. No go. He tried again. The Book was sealed shut. “How do I open it?” he demanded, not taking his eyes off the Book. When his father didn’t answer, Jack glanced up, narrow-eyed. “Tell me how to open it.”

  “You can’t keep me pinned here forever,” his father snarled, livid. “You won’t take me by surprise again, you ungrateful little shit. I have powers you’ve never—” His eyes opened wide as a dagger of ice nicked the skin beneath his right eye. Jack kept it hovering there, a millimeter from his father’s eyeball. He got a bloodthirsty thrill from seeing a few red drops run down his father’s lean cheek.

  “I’ll kill you for this,” his father snarled.

  Not tonight, old man. “Answer the question.”

  “The Book will answer when you have a valid question.”

  Jack didn’t know what the hell a valid question was.

  As suddenly as the Book and safe had made their appearance, he found himself empty-handed again. “Damn it!” His heart sank. What had he done wrong?

  A glance at his father told him no help would come from that quarter. Bitterly disappointed, Jack turned to go.

  “Release me from these damned restraints,” his father shouted. “I have to do my duty and tell you of your heritage.”

  “No thanks. The subject was covered in school.”

  “There are things you can’t learn at wizard school, Jackson. If you want access to the Book, you have to listen. It’s part and parcel of the transference.”

  Damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. Jack paused at the door, then half-turned to pin his father with a withering glance. “Make it fast, then.”

  His father glowered at him. “If you want the Book and all that goes with it, sit your ass down and listen. There’s magic in the words of the ancient tale. They must be repeated in the same way they’ve been repeated for centuries as the Book passed from son to son. If you’re too damn busy to listen, then I wipe my hands of you.”

  Jack didn’t bother keeping his dislike out of his voice. “Thought you already had.”