by Cindy Dees
A man—only, much more powerful...
...rescues filmmaker Sunny Jordan from certain death on the high seas. Someone wants her dead, but her mysterious savior, Aiden McKay, seems intent on guarding her life—and keeping his emotions at a distance. Sunny never imagines the sexual chemistry involved in being saved by a godlike man, a chemistry the man seems determined to ignore. He has secrets about who he is and how he can navigate oceans with the ease of an underwater killer. Swept up in an adventure, Sunny falls hard for this man whose love runs deep but is potentially deadly....
“Who wants to hurt you?”
Aiden waited expectantly for the woman to answer, but instead she merely shivered in his arms.
Eventually she sighed and relaxed, her slender body shifting against his and making his chest tighten—but pleasantly. The moment threatened to become intimate as a sexual charge started to build between them. He knew better than to indulge himself like this. He’d sworn off women. Turned over a new leaf...and apparently been lying to himself like a big dog about the fact that he’d actually changed.
“I’m a filmmaker,” she announced as if that answered everything. “I was collecting footage for a documentary on the commercial deep-sea-fishing industry.”
He frowned. “Are you sure it was fishermen who ran you down?”
“I’m not sure of anything except that my boat is gone, and I’m really glad you came along when you did and saved my life.”
So was he.
Books by Cindy Dees
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
†Soldier’s Last Stand #1665
The Spy’s Secret Family #1673
Captain’s Call of Duty #1684
†Soldier’s Rescue Mission #1689
†Her Hero After Dark #1703
‡Breathless Encounter #1716
Silhouette Romantic Suspense
Behind Enemy Lines #1176
Line of Fire #1253
A Gentleman and a Soldier #1307
*Her Secret Agent Man #1353
*Her Enemy Protector #1417
The Lost Prince #1441
**The Medusa Affair #1477
**The Medusa Seduction #1494
†The Dark Side of Night #1509
Killer Affair #1524
†Night Rescuer #1561
The 9-Month Bodyguard #1564
†Medusa’s Master #1570
The Soldier’s Secret Daughter #1588
**The Medusa Proposition #1608
†The Longest Night #1617
Dr.Colton’s High-Stakes Fiancée #1628
**Medusa’s Sheik #1633
†Soldier’s Night Mission #1649
Nocturne
Time Raiders: The Slayer #71
*Charlie Squad
**The Medusa Project
†H.O.T. Watch
‡Code X
Other titles by the author available in ebook format.
CINDY DEES
started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan, where she grew up, to attend the University of Michigan. After earning a degree in Russian and East European studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include medieval reenacting, professional Middle Eastern dancing and Japanese gardening.
This RITA® Award-winning author’s first book was published in 2002 and since then she has published more than twenty-five bestselling and award-winning novels. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.
Cindy Dees
Breathless Encounter
Dear Reader,
When my mother and mother-in-law were diagnosed with cancer within a few weeks of each other, it sparked a flurry of research about possible treatments. Along the way, I read a whole bunch about advances in modern medicine. I’m delighted to say that, five years later, both moms are cancer-free.
I continue to be fascinated by the latest ongoing medical research. As a writer, I can’t help asking myself what some of these technologies might mean for our future. Many of the ideas currently under development are highly controversial, perhaps partly because the misapplication of them could be truly terrible for mankind.
Of course, that got me thinking. While governments might restrict their own researchers from delving into some extreme experiments, a private company would be under no such restrictions. What do body-altering technologies mean for the individual field operative who volunteers for them? How do they change the person? Can such an altered person live any semblance of a normal life? How does a regular person attempt to love a quasi-superhero? Is it possible? Dangerous?
And voilà, the Code X project was born. Please join me on the breathless roller coaster that is loving a superhero. Who knows? Maybe you’ve already got one of your own, or maybe yours is waiting for you when and where you least expect it....
Happy reading!
Warmly,
Cindy Dees
Breathless Encounter
I was thrilled to dedicate a book to my mother and mother-in-law during their simultaneous fights against cancer, and it’s my great joy to dedicate this one to them in honor of their double win against the beast. For all of you who have fought the good fight yourself, or who have watched a loved one go through it, win or lose, my heart is with you. You know the true meaning of courage.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 1
Ankle deep in salt water, Sunny Jordan stared in dismay at the silent diesel engine in her boat. It was dead, and all her plans were dead in the water with it. An urge to cry washed over her. Her documentary film was dead, her goal of exposing the more egregious operators in the commercial fishing industry was dead. She didn’t dare think about the porpoises and sharks and sea turtles that would die without her exposé to rouse the public to save them.
She yanked the hand starter on the bilge pump. At least it coughed to life, and sluggishly began to suck in water and spit it overboard. The New Dawn had a slow leak somewhere, but she’d been unable to locate it so far.
Wearily, she closed the engine cover and slogged over to the ladder. She climbed through the cramped cabin that contained all her worldly possessions and up on deck to stare at the horizon. A slow, three-hundred-sixty-degree check revealed nothing but water and more water stretching away to infinity along the earth’s faint curve. No wonder ancient sailors thought it was possible to sail off the ed
ge of the world.
Not the smallest bump of land or even another boat marred the smooth line of the horizon. She was marooned in the middle of nowhere—literally. If she had half a brain she’d be worrying about her own life and not the helpless little fishies below. But no one had ever accused her of being overly bright when it came to matters of self-preservation.
She ducked inside and turned up the volume on the UHF radio. Static crackle filled the tiny space. She checked her position near the junction of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, not too far south of the
Yemeni archipelago of Suqutra. She jotted down the location coordinates off her GPS before picking up the microphone.
“This is the New Dawn requesting assistance. My engine has failed and I need a tow. I am currently located at eleven degrees, twenty-five minutes, thirty-six seconds north latitude and fifty-four degrees, four minutes, seven seconds east longitude.”
She repeated the message twice more. Now she simply had to wait. Despite its desolate appearance, this stretch of water was crisscrossed by plentiful shipping lanes and fishing grounds. And it was the rule of the sea that any ship who heard a distress call must respond to it. Nobody might own these international waters, and nations might fight like dogs over them, but sailors stuck together.
The sun set in a brilliant splash of crimson and faded into the violet hues of twilight without anyone responding to her periodic radio calls. As the utter blackness of night at sea fell around her, she sighed and settled down to wait out a long, uncomfortable night. She needed to preserve her battery for radio calls and had turned off all unnecessary equipment, which meant no air conditioner or even an electric fan for her tonight.
She must have dozed off because the stars had wheeled around in the sky overhead and the night was balmy when she blinked her eyes open. The New Dawn bobbed on light swells, pulling against the sea anchor she’d deployed to keep from drifting too far from her reported position.
A faint rumbling caught her attention. She looked about eagerly for the running lights of her rescuer and gasped as a massive black shape loomed off her port side. The sharp point of a ship’s prow was bearing directly down upon her. Fast.
Yikes. That ship was really bearing down on her fast! Her sleepy mind exploded to full consciousness as the deadly danger of her situation registered.
“Hey! I’m here!” she shouted, waving her arms frantically over her head. As if anyone would hear her over the roar of the much bigger vessel’s engines. A white V of water sliced away from the black blade of the prow. The ship displayed no lights whatsoever as it raced at her like an attacking shark closing in for the kill.
Panicked, she scrambled backward, stumbling and falling over her waterproof camera bag. She hit the deck hard and her head smacked the cabin wall painfully. She flung herself toward the railing, every survival instinct screaming at her to get out of the way before that ship sliced the New Dawn in half. Clutching her camera bag in one fist as she rolled, she plunged over the side and into the icy water.
The Pacific Ocean closed in over her head, entombing her in a dark so cold and heavy, she felt as if she’d been buried alive.
Panic gave way to shock as every muscle in her body clenched at the frigid grip of the sea. She kicked hard for the surface, but it was as if she attempted to swim through concrete. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get anywhere. Assuming she was even headed in the right direction. She tried to feel which way the bubbles racing past her skin were headed, but who knew if she’d gotten it right. For all she knew she was kicking down toward Davy Jones’s locker with all her strength.
And then a new threat registered—a deep throbbing noise that pounded through her body rhythmically, growing in volume and intensity with every beat. Oh, God. The larger ship’s propellers. She kicked like a madwoman, praying her random swimming would carry her clear of the rotating blades before they made bloody chum out of her.
The water grew violently turbulent, tossing her head over heels in a chaotic swirl that left her so dizzy she wanted to throw up. Probably not a good idea with the single breath in her lungs already running painfully low on oxygen. Little sparkles of light erupted behind her eyelids.
The ocean calmed around her as abruptly as it had gone mad. She was farther than ever from knowing which way the surface and air might be. Perhaps her best bet was to quit fighting and let her natural buoyancy and lungful of air lift her to the surface. But would it be in time before she passed out?
In a few seconds she wouldn’t be able to hold her breath anymore and she would inhale a single, lethal lungful of salt water. And then in twelve to fifteen seconds, as the last oxygen in her brain was used, she’d lose consciousness. Without the buoyancy of air in her lungs, she would slip down into the depths of the sea, lost in its cold embrace forever. Vague curiosity about whether or not there was life after death passed through her mind. Guess I’ll know one way or the other pretty soon.
Who’d have imagined she would end up like this? It seemed like such a waste to die so young. She was only twenty-seven. She’d assumed she had so much more time. So much more to experience. Her parents’ faces flashed through her mind. Her sister’s face—Chloe was going to be furious at her for dying.
Sunny reached deep and fought one last time. It was simply not in her nature to give up. She’d go down trying to save herself. But her kicks were feeble now, and to no avail. As she used up the last of her strength and oxygen, the darkness claimed her.
* * *
Aiden McKay scanned the ocean through binoculars from the bridge of the Sea Nymph, one-hundred-forty feet of pure yachting luxury on loan to him from billionaire Leland Winston.
“Do you see her?” he asked the Nymph’s captain, Steig Carlson.
“Negative. We are exactly at the last coordinates the girl transmitted, though.”
Aiden frowned. The sexy female voice had been making periodic calls throughout the day asking for assistance with her marooned vessel. He’d been annoyed at having to break off his mission to respond to the call, but it wasn’t as if he had any choice. He was one of the good guys, after all.
“Large vessel off to port,” Steig announced. “Must have responded to the New Dawn’s distress call, too.”
Aiden snorted. Every vessel within a hundred miles had probably set course at full speed toward that girl’s sensuous voice coming across their radios. Sailors were nothing if not a lonely bunch.
He swung his binoculars around to port. It was a dark night, but he made out the bulk of a good-size ship. “That vessel’s moving fast,” he commented, frowning. Looked to be pushing twenty-five knots or more. Why would a ship searching for a small boat be tearing along like a bat out of hell? Wouldn’t they be trawling slowly like the Sea Nymph, searching the waters quadrant by careful quadrant?
He swung his binoculars to the next quadrant of his search, in front of the speeding boat, and lurched. He thought he’d caught a glimpse of—
He swore as the Nymph rolled and he momentarily lost his target. He scanned left and right with the binoculars and caught sight of it again. A small vessel bobbing like a helpless cork in the swells directly in front of the racing ship.
“Sweet Mother of God,” he breathed. “Those bastards are going to ram her.”
Steig swore beside him. “They’re going to smash her boat into matchsticks at that speed.” He reached for the throttles and threw the sleek yacht’s twin diesel engines to full power.
Aiden shouted into the radios, “Unknown rider, alter course! You are about to collide with a small craft. I say again, alter course immediately!” But the black hulk in front of him either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Or worse, it knew good and well that it was about to sink the disabled cabin cruiser that could only be the New Dawn.
Aiden watched in helpless horror as the blacked-out ship slammed broadside into the
smaller boat. With a terrible grinding noise audible even from here, the big ship’s prow crashed through the New Dawn’s hull. The little boat lifted up in the air like a toy in a bathtub and then all of a sudden disappeared underneath the larger ship, dragged below the water like flotsam in the ship’s path.
The girl with the sexy voice was on that boat!
He kicked off his deck shoes frantically and reached for the swim goggles that were always in his pocket.
“Don’t do it,” Steig bit out. “The water will be full of debris and it’s too dark to find her.”
“This is what I do. Who I am.”
“But, sir—”
He was already shirtless, so he merely tore off his pants and dived directly off the bridge of the yacht to the sea below.
“Aiden!” someone shouted behind him as his body knifed through the air and into the welcome embrace of the sea that was his true home. He swam with powerful strokes toward the last position of the New Dawn. The silence and pressure closed around him, and with them came the peace he always found in the ocean. A jagged piece of white-painted timber came into view.
He surfaced near where the boat went down and shouted, “Hello! Where are you?”
No response. The Sea Nymph’s spotlights came on, illuminating the wreckage in harsh light. He made a quick visual search of the debris field. No sign of any human clinging to a piece of the New Dawn. He took a big breath and dived under the surface. His ears popped as he reached a depth of fifteen feet or so, but the rest of his body absorbed the crushing weight of the water with something resembling relief.
No sign of the girl. He swam in a wide circle that encompassed most of the debris field. She had to be here somewhere. He kept a time count in a corner of his mind. Two minutes. Three. He widened his search area, worry setting in. If he didn’t find her soon, it wasn’t going to be a search and rescue anymore. It would be a corpse recovery.
He kicked harder. Spotted a flash of white waving softly in the current like a piece of fabric. He pulled powerfully toward it. A shirt. A pale face flashed in the scant light from overhead.