Virtually Hers

He can’t get her out of his head…literally.

Virtually, Book 2

In Helen “Hell” Roston’s elite black ops world, failure isn’t listed as an option in the rule book. As the leading guinea pig in a dangerous combination of virtual reality training and a mind-altering serum, though, every day offers a thousand ways to blow it. And the very real sexual chemistry that sizzles between Hell and her trainer is messing with her head even more.

COS Commando Jed McNeil is an expert in mind manipulation games. He’s been chosen to be Hell’s monitor and anchor in the Super Soldier Spy program. Trained to compartmentalize his needs and feelings in an assignment, he’s unprepared by how much Hell affects him.

When the experimental serum gives Helen incapacitating headaches, her pain throws Jed into protect-at-all-costs mode. A position the fiercely independent Hell would rather die than be in. But with a rogue CIA faction out to sabotage the program, Hell has no choice—even if it makes her head explode. It’s trust Jed, or die.

Book 1 of this series was published by the Mira imprint of Harlequin.

Warning: Contains scenes of voyeuristic hanky panky, bad guys that feed off mind-blowing sexual energy, a heroine who knows how to get her kick-ass on, and a hero who gives as good as he gets.

MEMO

FYEO (For Your Eyes Only)

Cc: Intelligence Security Command (INSCOM), Los Alamos Task Force Unit Chief Scientist for Operation ; Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC) Task Force Unit Chief Bio-Scientist for Operation Bio-Bot; Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Asymmetrical Strategic Counterintelligence Warfare Task Force Unit Chief for Operation ; Comptroller of Special Activities, General Accounting Office (GAO); COS COMMAND

Past memo collected from various sources regarding human augmentation.

Re: The Virus Program

Unclassified 2003 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Report: “The human is becoming the weakest link. Sustaining and augmenting human performance will have significant impact on Defense missions and systems.”
[1]

Latest DARPA budget request to fulfill projects researching on:

* cracking the brain’s neural codes

* manipulating complicated machinery or remote-controlled weapons by thought alone (robotics and thought manipulation divisions) (Re: MACAQUE EXPERIMENT—success in manipulation of robotic arm with implanted brain sensors in monkeys)

* more work on the exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation. The $40 million program is already midway through the projected six-year run, experimenting on amplification of human muscle movements through a super body suit for the average soldier.

DARPA plans for further augmentation marrying brain and muscle power are challenged by the natural boundaries of human endurance.

On the $20 million Continuous Assisted Performance program, DARPA Director Tony Tether in a statement to the House Government Reform Committee: “The CAP is investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers to stay awake, alert, and effective for up to seven consecutive days without suffering any deleterious mental or physical effects and without using any of the current generation of stimulants.”

DARPA’s top-secret still classified bio-research and human augmentation programs are also up for more funding. Identities of all operatives in program to be held top secret.

Dr. Paul Saffo, research director at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., from interview, please click on link to hear entire quotation:

“Human augmentation is coming; the only question is how soon. This stuff is being worked on in all sorts of places all over the world. I’ll give you three options. We can stay in it and be state of the art and deal with the moral issues. We can get out of it completely and be bystanders. Or we can do this half-assed thing in the middle. Now, of those three options, which one do you think is rational?”

Of interest to Dr. Kirkland pertaining to his questions on remote viewing: Military Applications of Post-Quantum Physics:
http://www.qedcorp.com/Q/ChiaoBell.html
.

Glossary for Acronyms

COS/ CCC/ Triple C/ Command

Various names for Covert-Subversive Command Center

COS Commandos

Covert subversive commandos

GEM

Independent contractors, mostly females, who are information-gathering experts. The acronym’s meaning isn’t shared with the public.

NOPAIN

Non-persuasive and innovative interrogation, a special GEM technique in information-gathering.

SITREP

Short for situation report

SSS

Super Soldier Spy project

TIARA

CIA’s Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities, divided into task forces, one of which is headed by Ricardo Harden.

TIRVVR

Pronounced as “terror”, for Totally Immersive Remote Viewing Virtual Reality, the newest in spy technology

VIRUS

A top-secret project, a prelude to SSS, in which the nine COS commandos are trained

Chapter One

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.