Remote viewer. Supersoldier-spy. Sex maniac. Now that was some resume for a future job application when she retired from this crazy life.

Helen splashed cold water on her face. It didn't help cool her down one bit. That weird sensation was bothering her again, like invisible fingers, up and down her heated skin, barely brushing the surface of her body. It moved like an electric current, giving little shocks of awareness whenever something came into contact with her skin too long. It was as if her nerve endings were working overtime, overwhelming her senses with details that would normally be routine.

She wiped her face with a dry towel from the rack. Like this cloth. Its softness. The way it caressed like a ... like a lover's hands. Like that night.

The thought evoked memories that brought a hot flush through her body. She thought of how she'd lain in bed, half-dreaming, half-coming out of an erotic dream, and feeling a hundred times more sensitive than she did now. She'd called out his name and he'd appeared--like magic--in the cover of darkness, taking her by surprise, and unhinging the last shred of control she had. His seduction and her capitulation were complete.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Stop thinking about Hades. Stop thinking about his hands and lips.

"Okay, let's be rational about this," she said out loud, tossing the towel into the laundry basket. "You hadn't had sex in months and months and then you took this drug that suppresses your body chemistry, and during the downtime, this sexy man seduced you and gave you the best..."

No, no, no, no, no, this was exactly what she was trying to avoid thinking. The stupid night was all about him having his way with her and she had willingly let him pleasure her any damn way he pleased.

Oh, she could give an excuse or two--that she had been under the influence of the serum, that she wasn't herself that night--but it all boiled down to the fact that she hadn't fought him at all. That she'd actually enjoyed being under his control. Every orgasm had left her wanting more.

"Arghhhhh!" Helen shrieked out in frustration, storming out of the bathroom. The memory of her orgasms was making her insides tighten with sensitive need.

What killed her was that she still didn't know who the hell her trainer was. She was in lust with a persona she'd created in a virtual reality program.

"How lame is that, Helen Roston?" she muttered.

He was too damn clever. She had been so excited to be the winning candidate for the experimental "Super Soldier Spy" program. COS Command Center, the agency that had contracted her to win this project, had immediately prepared her for their version. The first few months were easy for her since it was all physical challenges, training that she'd already undergone as a candidate. However, the next level involved virtual reality, something that tested her physical and mental stress levels.

When she was told she had control over what her trainer would look like in virtual reality, she'd thought it was the scientists and programmers testing her. Her new trainer was going to be an avatar, a "personality" she herself imagined and created with a nano-digital program, because they didn't want any contact between the two of them while they set and synced their brainwaves.

She had rubbed her hands in glee. She couldn't resist the fun of putting together a dreamboat of a man for a personal trainer. And while she was at it, why not make him naked too? Heck, she hadn't seen a gorgeous naked man in a long time, so here was a chance to indulge herself.

Helen wanted to smack herself now for swallowing the bait. Looking back, she realized--too late--that he'd been studying her all along and looking for ways to get in under her radar. He found one. How could he not, when every single thing she'd done for the last two years was probably there for him to look at, inspect and analyze?

She sat down at the desk and turned on the computer, leaning back in her chair as she watched the screen. What was he doing now? Had she gotten Jack Cummings' location right?

She sighed. Virtual reality and remote viewing. Science and weird science, and she was the conduit. Her trainer, the virtual reality version, was supposed to be the monitor, someone to anchor her while she was remote viewing, making sure that she didn't stray too far into the ether.

She had a real-life monitor when she was in the CIA remote-viewing program, so she hadn't questioned about working with a virtual monitor. Trainer-monitor was a generic enough term that it'd escaped her notice that, besides training her, he was also "preparing" her mind to respond to his will. All in virtual reality, with their brainwaves synchronized.

Insidious bastard. Normal monitors use an image as a mind trigger, projecting it to the remote viewer to anchor them to the physical place. However, her damn monitor wasn't normal, not in the least. The experiment was done in virtual reality so her mind could project what she saw into her monitor's mind; he would be able to see exactly what she was seeing and thus, there would be no secondhand reports.

She should have seen it coming. A normal trigger wouldn't work because that was just a basic "knock on the door". Her mind had to be kept keenly aware of him while she was remote viewing. A sexual trigger, on the other hand, was a whole new ball game. The more aware she was of him, the more he was able to be "present" in her remote-viewing sessions, and oh, was he good at making her very aware of him with his sexual games and magic movement-inhibiting pills.

Helen gritted her teeth. Now, if it was possible that it could get any worse, something had happened to her that she hadn't imagined possible. The serum, a bio-neuro blocker, created so that the remote viewer could function without rest and under stress, had tricked her brain into overcompensating the chemical balance in her body during the downtime. Simply put, whereas under the influence of the serum, she'd been unable to feel pain and stress, now that the drug had dissipated, she was extremely sensitive to touch and feelings. Every sensation filled her with an overwhelming need that confused and even scared her.

Because she hadn't slept throughout the whole mission, everyone had expected her to immediately rest up during her downtime, except that she couldn't. It had felt like walking at the edge of a cliff. In the dark.

Until Hades surprised her with a late-night visit.

She hadn't known it, but he'd understood. Her body, injured and stressed out from the drug, and now bombarding her with too many neuro-signals, wasn't going to relent until she gave in to an outlet. It seemed that the antidote to an overload of neuro-blocker was excessive sensation that needed to be allayed. Fighting it only made it worse. The edginess wasn't going to go away by itself.

Helen pulled her hair up, one hand opening a desk drawer to get a scrunchie. Even the feel of her hair brushing against her skin was bothering her right now. It was definitely coming back.

She needed to concentrate on what she'd been thinking about instead of her body. Normally, she was a logical operative, able to connect unrelated things in many a puzzling situation. That ability had saved her ass many times. Her friends had called it intuition.

Whatever. Intuition or sixth sense, it was telling her now that it wasn't just the after-effect of the serum. Something had happened to her during the test mission when she'd gone off after the decoder. Those few minutes, while running down the stairs, she'd experienced pain to the point of blinding her. It was so bad she'd almost fallen down the stairs.

She licked her upper lip and frowned as she tried to ignore the temptation to do that again. She touched her fingers to her lips. He hadn't kissed her that night, not on the lips. How would it feel--

Helen! Stop this!

She needed to focus. She had this theory about what happened--

But the memory of the feel of his mouth on her breasts kept intruding. It was like tunnel vision, every part of her zeroing in on how it'd felt as his tongue tortured her nipples, his teeth nibbling the soft flesh around them. It'd been incredibly erotic to just lie there in the dark, unable to fight the waves of pleasure that pulsed through her, unable to see the face of her lover, as his hands and mouth explored her, giving her what her body was craving.

Helen could hear her own breathing becoming agitated. She shook her head, uselessly attempting to shut the images out, but it was difficult when her body appeared to be responding to the stimulus. Her eyes widened at the sight of her nipples straining against her shirt. Touching them with a fingertip, she gasped at their sensitivity. Pebble-hard.

She took in a long breath. Her cotton shirt scraped her skin gently as she exhaled loudly. Just as before, the more she fought, the more her body and mind demanded release. And because he'd planted that sexual trigger in her head, of course her brain was using thoughts of him to feed what her body was craving.

Sexual trigger. Chemistry. That and what happened at the stairwell. These were all somehow linked. If only she could stop getting distracted and overwhelmed by all these feelings...

Abruptly, she leaned forward and tapped at the keyboard, hooking into the COMCEN database and opening the program that had created the virtual reality avatar. She pulled up the original model she'd worked on, the one that became the avatar, and stared at him in all his naked glory.

So obvious. He'd guessed correctly that she would put in a fantasy man. Easier to bond with, right? With their brainwaves in sync and the controls at his end, her mind was ready for his stimulation. How the hell did she miss that happening to her? She'd been trained to catch these little things and he'd outwitted her. He'd even called himself Hades, the ultimate seducer to the dark side, and had played the part to her captive Persephone to perfection.

"It's always the obvious." Helen scowled, wagging her finger at the image of the blond man on the screen. She wanted to yell at someone right now but her damn trainer was a digital avatar, a naked male with the sculpted and perfect body, the kind she made up in her fantasies. Her scowl deepened. "I haven't had a serious relationship while I've been training. Two freaking years. No time. What did I do? Created a fantasy man and gave him the vehicle to seduce me. Brilliant move, Helen, just brilliant."

She'd thought it was hilarious fun to walk around in virtual reality with a deliciously sexy naked man. Why not? What could be more ridiculous than her remote viewing with a man resembling a Greek god?

She sighed, resting her chin on her hand as she kept staring at the perfect body in the screen. "Well, they don't call me Hell for nothing. Of course I have to up the ridiculous factor," she murmured. "I now get horny when my avatar wants me to."

If she weren't so pissed, she would laugh at the analysis. Something had happened to her during the mission. The serum she'd taken had an unexpected side effect. She needed to go over what happened as objectively as possible.

"From insensitive to pain to super-sensitive to touch," she muttered. Try super-super-super sensitive. She had avoided contact with anyone, managing to fall asleep finally, but somehow, in her sleep, connected to his brainwaves, she had invaded Hades' dream or vice-versa.

She shook her head. Didn't matter now. Whatever happened, he'd woken up knowing exactly what she was going through and had come for her. Super-super-super sensitive became super-super-super sensual. Helen shook her head harder. Objectivity-smojectivity.

"It's just sex," she told herself.

Yeah. With her avatar, her fantasy man. Only he'd come in human form that night, finally appearing to her in darkness. And boy, he didn't diminish her fantasy one bit with his sexual repertoire. The man knew how to touch a woman.

She reached out for the computer mouse. There was something wrong with her fantasy avatar. She just knew the reality looked nothing like this blond god she'd created. Her mind wandered idly as she clicked her mouse, moving the cursor around. Dark hair. Eyes? Dark? Black? Leaner body?

His hands. She didn't want to think of his hands, but that was what connected her to him physically. She could remember his touch--every intimate detail. He had very powerful hands; he'd shifted her body on her bed effortlessly. And talented lips and tongue. She remembered those too well.

He'd explored her in the darkness, using first his hands, then his mouth. While rubbing some kind of lotion on her injury, he'd wickedly lavished it elsewhere, using it to arouse her even more. She had almost died from pleasure when he'd settled his mouth into her heat, leisurely licking her aching need for what seemed like hours, while he massaged and caressed her body. Sensitized beyond reason, she'd finally given in to his silent persuasion, responding eagerly to his touch.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," she'd panted out repeatedly, needing and wanting, uncaring about her loss of control. He'd been quite obliging in addressing her demands. Several times.

Helen licked her lips, feeling flushed again. That edgy feeling inside was growing exponentially. She shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable. She closed her eyes. She desperately wanted his hands on her again, virtual or not, but he was on a mission, on a ship heading toward Russia...

"Hades," she whispered.

Water. She smelled the sea, felt the swaying motion under her. Her jaw dropped as realization dawned. She was remote viewing. How was it possible when she hadn't modulated her brainwaves yet? She didn't even feel her phantom form shoot through the ether, like she usually did while pinpointing the location.

She turned, taking in the odd-shaped walls and low ceiling. The smell of the ocean. She had a nasty suspicion about her location. There were sounds coming from the other side of the wall. Her heart thudded with anticipation as she moved toward the noise. Fighting. She cocked her head. Very intense fighting. She peered around the corner and immediately felt ridiculous. No one could see her while she was remote viewing; there was no need to be sneaky about looking.

But instinct told her there was danger for her here and she wasn't going to ignore it, especially when she'd traversed unexpectedly, without preparation. She had somehow sent herself to this place and she'd a feeling that something else was going to happen.

She saw a man lying on the floor. Dying. She felt the air thickening even as she looked harder, trying to make out the man's face. A gurgle of pain escaped from him and then ... nothing. She wanted to turn away from death, but felt compelled to keep looking. Where was the other fighter? She couldn't see him.

The atmosphere felt oddly smoky, although she couldn't smell any smoke. She could make out the outline of a man as he turned toward her. Even her vision got cloudy, and she blinked hard, trying to focus. Must. Try. To. See. She took a step forward. Hard to breathe, as if the air was very thick here.

All of a sudden, her heart started to beat erratically. Something was definitely wrong. But she so wanted to get closer, to see this man...

Okay, calm down, Hell. Step back. Step away.

At the last second, Helen turned and ran. She felt herself sinking, falling into oblivion, but not before she caught a glimpse of the other man.

Silver eyes. Blue jeans.

Oh God. Not him!

It always came to this. Jed McNeil had no illusions about his role as Number Nine in the Covert Subversive (COS) commando unit.

Governments declared war--open and covert--and technology provided the instant highway, but no matter how precise artificial Intel had become, with its laser accuracy, its ability to be in places no human ear or eye could gather Intel, and its useful function of keeping danger away from operatives, there was always the one element not factored into the formula: Human beings were unpredictable, and sometimes, it was much easier to just send one man in after another.

His target was quick, making the first move, going for his throat. Jed leaped out of the way, at the same time swinging his knife upwards. The other man jumped back, wincing at the first slice of his flesh. Startled wariness entered his eyes before he gave a grim smile and resumed attacking.

There was a certain look in a man's eyes when he knew his time was up.

Jack Cummings hadn't shown any surprise when Jed appeared, knife in hand. A small nod of acknowledgment. A token, although fierce, resistance.

Cummings had some martial arts training and the hand-to-hand became a short silent dance of death, with swift punches and kicks, which Jed evaded and countered with equally lethal speed. His opponent was quick on his feet too, moving hard and fast as he jerked back and forth, looking to get Jed off-balance. He suddenly lunged forward, fist punching out forcefully.

Jed deflected the jab to his solar plexus, twisting Cummings' wrist and locking it outward. He twirled his knife into position, intending to give the final lethal blow, but the other man immediately coiled his frame around Jed's body, his other hand going for the throat. To avoid having his neck broken, Jed elbowed the ribs and rotated sideways. He rammed a fist into Cummings' face. Another. Then silently advanced toward the man who was holding the bloodied side of his face.

From his expression, the CIA rogue appeared to know that he wouldn't make it, even if he'd managed to scream for help, and to his credit, he hadn't. He'd seemingly been expecting someone to come after him.

Never underestimate a desperate man gambling with his life. Jed anticipated the sudden roundhouse kick, springing into a back flip. But not before he saw the flash of steel on the tip of the shoe that had barely missed his throat. Landing on his feet, he flicked his wrist and released the knife in his hand. His steel hit the mark. And it was over.

Jed slipped his bloody knife into the sheath on the back of his belt. He tapped on the tiny unit attached near the buckle, which was equipped with a GPS and coded satellite transmitter, signaling that he'd just completed his mission. He looked down at Jack Cummings' body for a moment.

To him, there was one simple truth about warfare. All the technology in the world couldn't equal hand-to-hand combat. He had seen violence from every possible angle since he was sixteen--as a street thug, an IRA lookout, a CIA trainee, an Airborne Ranger in the Army, time with the Green Berets, a covert Special Forces commando, and a few undercover stints that had him working for his enemies. It was a long resume, years spent in wars created by governments, some more secret than others.

It wasn't something he boasted or talked about, as some warriors did, comparing their adventures at one war-torn place or another, mainly because he'd seen enough in his job to learn to respect silence. Especially about death.

Mission accomplished. Not that it brought any sense of accomplishment. He had wanted to bring Jack Cummings in alive but had failed in the first attempt a few days ago. There was no other option during the second attempt. Not in the middle of the ocean, on an enemy ship.

He frowned. There was that prickle of awareness again, a feeling that someone was watching him. Years of being in his line of work had honed his senses razor-sharp; he seldom second-guessed himself.

He stepped away from Cummings' body, totally on alert, watching for the slightest movement, listening for any kind of noise that might betray the enemy. If they were any good, they would have shot him by now and not given him a chance to escape. Unless, of course, they were just watching.

In his world, there were agents assigned to just watch and report, entities his kind called "ghosts". Data-miners. Jed had caught up with a few of them in the past and was even friends with some of them. Objective information agents were useful and provided a valuable service.

But this wasn't that feeling of being watched. Definitely different. This was even more subtle. A light brushstroke. A soft breath on a mirror.

Jed squinted in mild amusement. He was getting poetic about his job. There was nothing at all light or soft about the bloody nature of covert warfare. The feeling persisted, although for some reason, he didn't feel threatened, just a vague nagging sensation that he wasn't alone. He circled the small room slowly and stopped in mid-stride. His gaze darted upwards and around. Nothing, but he was sure he'd felt something. There. Again.

He frowned, trying to gauge what he was feeling. It felt like ... he shook his head ... a vibration, and not from the ship. He didn't have time to stand here and analyze. Giving the dead man on the floor one last glance, he slipped into the shadows and headed back up to the deck.

He felt no compassion for the likes of Jack Cummings. Betrayal always had a price. Instead, he ran through the usual comprehensive profile of his target. Jack Cummings, early thirties. CIA TIARA Task Force Three, security clearance Level Four. One-half of the team who stole and tried to sell SEED--a miniature satellite encryption device, newly tested at Los Alamos. Eluded capture. Attempted escape to Russia. Information exchange/barter aggregated at ninety percent. Info risk at ninety-five percent.

Jed mentally closed the file. Operation status: target eliminated on international waters.

Helen couldn't open her eyes. They felt weighted down, as if she was in the middle of a dream and was trying to wake up. A drum thundered so loudly, it sounded as if she were listening to her iPod with its volume set way up. It took her a minute before she realized it was her own heart beating.

Her whole body felt feverish. The room was too hot. She still couldn't open her eyes. Her heartbeat grew erratic as she struggled, fighting something she couldn't see.

Wake up, Helen, wake up!

Her own scream pierced through her consciousness and her eyes flew open. She stared up at the ceiling of her living room for a few seconds as she gulped in deep breaths of air. Her heart was still racing, although that odd echoing was gone.

What the fuck was that?

She gingerly moved her arms and legs, trying to figure out what'd happened. She felt hot, as if she'd been exerting herself, but the last thing she remembered doing was sitting in front of her laptop, playing with the virtual reality avatar program.

And...

But it was no mistaking who she'd seen before everything went cuckoo. She slowly turned to the side and got on her knees. Grasping the back of the chair for support, she started to get back on her feet.

Headache. Blinding, throbbing, intensely painful headache. It struck her down like a branch hit by lightning, her knees hitting the carpeted floor.

She grasped the sides of her head, in her mind trying to loosen the imaginary band around it. Imaginary or not, the pressure was tightening to the point where she felt herself gasping for air.

Concentrate on your breathing, Hell. Concentrate.

She tried to stand but found herself unable to open her eyes more than a crack. The light coming from the tall lamp by the desk stabbed at her vision. Everything was a distorted red haze that seemed to pulse bright, then dark, with each throbbing thump in her head.

Groping around uncoordinatedly, she found the lamp stand and reached for the switch. She almost screamed her relief as the room plunged into darkness, taking some of the pain with it.

She leaned against the desk, taking deep breaths, counting to ten. The tension around her head loosened and she opened her eyes cautiously.

"Oh man, what the hell was that?" She swayed on her feet. The pain was a dull ache now. Manageable.

The computer screen illuminated the room and she reluctantly turned her eyes grimly back to the figure of the avatar. She swallowed.

No use avoiding the truth. Jed McNeil was Hades, her trainer. While trying to imagine what her avatar really looked like, she had somehow sent herself into remote-viewing mode and went in search of him instead. She knew the identity of the dead man she'd seen. After all, she'd been the one who had remote viewed and located Cummings on a ship.

"Jed McNeil," Helen said, her voice a soft hoarse. The knowledge of who Hades was would have filled her with satisfaction if her body didn't feel as if she'd gone ten rounds with someone much stronger. She felt incredibly weak and a little nauseated from the sudden migraine.

She closed the file and sent the system into hibernation. Then, slowly, she hobbled toward her bedroom. Her muscles felt stiff, contracted. She needed to sleep this off.

Stretching out on her bed, she released a sigh of frustration. She wasn't feeling like her old self yet. No use calling Dr. Kirkland; she knew he wouldn't give her a straight answer and would probably warn Jed McNeil that she now knew the truth. She didn't know exactly what she was going to do yet about confronting Mr. McNeil and demanding the truth from him, but one thing she was sure about was that she had better be one hundred percent or that man was going to eat her for dinner.