Dark & Dangerous: A Collection of Paranormal Treats Read online

  “As a matter of fact, he did. I’m Bonnie.” After hearing about Bonnie’s success using touch therapy on a former spy who’d resurfaced with total amnesia, Logan Kincaid had hired her to help John recall the information he’d repressed during torture.

  She took in the glass-and-concrete mansion behind her, the royal palms holding court over an outdoor bar, a mile-long grill and a stainless steel kitchen. Even better were the wall of citrus trees along the estate’s side fences that lent a private intimacy to the spacious yard. A perfect setting for a one-on-one with a gorgeous man.

  Bonnie stared boldly at him through her dark shades, enticed by the confident smile that tipped the corners of his mouth and the glint of wary interest in his eyes. She’d never have guessed that one month ago he’d been too weak to walk. The doctors and physical trainers had done wonders, but then again, they’d had great material to work with. And now it was her turn.

  She flung her arms wide to take in the grounds, the gazebo, the windsailers on the Intercoastal waterway. “The Shey Group sure knows how to take care of its people.”

  John’s grin widened. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “To take care of you? Oh, yeah.”

  She planned to take care of every little part of him—his head, his heart. Whatever was broken, she’d fix it. After all, that’s what a psychiatrist did. And after seeing how easy he was on her eyes, doing her job well, touching him, was going to be even more pleasant than she’d anticipated. Already she longed to graze her palms along his tanned skin, wondered if he would feel closed and dark like an underwater cavern or frenetic like a cascade of color rushing by too fast to gauge or simply so still that he seemed to hide at the bottom of a deep green lagoon.

  Considered by many to be a maverick, Bonnie wasn’t a traditional psychiatrist. However, her unusual success with touch therapy had brought her to the attention of the Shey Group, a covert organization of ex-military specialists who needed her expertise to help John Cameron recover very specific memories that pertained to national security. Through work with a previous patient, Bonnie had learned that the Shey Group took on impossible missions, everything from protecting the nation from terrorism to preventing assassinations. John had discovered some information when he’d gone undercover to infiltrate a terrorist cell but had never had the opportunity to pass it on to his boss. It was critical to national security that John recall this information. With possibly thousands of lives at stake, Bonnie was more than ready to begin.

  She peeled off the cover-up, let it pool at her feet, then kicked off her mules. His gunmetal gaze singed her with a toasty glow. She awarded him an extra moment for an appreciative head-to-toe ogle before she dived into the pool, pleased that her breasts, which had less material covering them than a postage stamp, had his eyes smoking.

  Let him burn.

  To bring back the memories trapped deep in his mind, she needed to keep him aroused and distracted, a tactic that would enhance her methods—until her “secret weapon” arrived. John Cameron’s medical file was quite explicit. To get through to him, she had to excite him, provoke him, stimulate him. She had to use her odd but natural powers of touch—and more. Thanks to her friend, Cate, she’d soon have the “more” she needed. In the meantime she’d flirt and distract. She expected to push herself beyond her normal limits, but what she hadn’t expected was how much she’d enjoy her role.

  After growing up as the only child of a single military mom, Bonnie knew John’s type. Hard-core. Patriotic to the bone. A man like her dad, who had never married her mother, but who’d been a good father to her and who’d served his country with pride. While her parents had roamed the world, Bonnie had lived with her aunt, a civilian who worked for Cent-Com at MacDill Air Force base, and Bonnie considered herself lucky to have lived in the same neighborhood for her entire childhood. However, on that kind of government pay scale, she’d never stayed in digs as fancy as this mansion. Someday, she’d finish paying back her student loans and buy a house in Tampa, but even her Bayshore condo couldn’t compare to the luxury here. For this assignment, she’d struck twenty-four-carat gold.

  A Miami waterfront estate, a man that could have starred in a James Bond movie and an intense attraction that already placed him center stage in her fantasies. Yeah, she’d fallen into a tough assignment, this time. The sacrifices a woman had to make for her country. She grinned in total satisfaction, dived into the pool, then blew air out of her nose and stroked right past John.

  After the short flight from Tampa, then the drive through congested traffic, she was ready to stretch her muscles. A strong freestyle swimmer, she sprinted for the other end, the cool water streaming over her warm flesh, reinvigorating her. When the water frothed and lapped at her feet, then her calves and thighs, she knew he’d joined her, and had easily matched her stroke for stroke.

  For ten laps he mirrored her pace, neither pulling ahead nor falling behind. When she turned her head to take a breath, she glimpsed the power of his strokes, his effortless speed and sensed he could maintain this pace for hours. She slowed and stopped in the middle of the pool, pleased when he did the same. Standing, the water came to her midriff. Mischievously, she took water into her mouth, tilted her head back, then let it fountain onto her chest. Just as she’d intended, his gaze followed the water droplets. She dipped under again, this time surfacing and shooting water in his direction.

  He cupped his hands together and sprayed her. His gaze was warm, his eyes friendly, but she noted that while he remained by her side, he never came close enough to touch her accidentally.

  She released a sigh of contentment. “This is just what I needed.”

  “What?” He raised one curious brow.

  “A few days of R and R with you.”

  “A few days…with me?” His expression bordered on sheepish. Obviously he’d assumed just what she’d intended for him and now was attempting to backtrack. “Maybe we should introduce ourselves. I’m—”

  “John Cameron. And I’m Bonnie Anders. Doctor Bonnie Anders.”

  “Son of a bitch.” He grinned, taking all the sting out of his words. “You’re my new shrink.”

  She chuckled. “In the flesh.”

  “Mm. Nice flesh, too.” His mouth firmed a tad, as if contemplating a task he dreaded, but would tackle because he must. The pressure on him had to be enormous, but his mind wouldn’t cough up memories just because he commanded them to. Sometimes the mind needed to be cajoled, seduced and distracted before the pressure eased enough for it to resume normal functioning. John raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect therapy to start until tomorrow. So when Kincaid told me he was sending over a woman…and when I saw you, I assumed…”

  She grinned. “I’m flattered.”

  He eyed her face, his expression mischievous, interested, yet with just a touch of reserve gleaming in those gorgeous eyes. “You don’t look like a shrink.”

  “I assure you I have all the proper credentials.” Or at least she’d had all the proper credentials, until the American Medical Association had suspended her license. She’d known from the moment she’d opened her practice that she’d face some opposition. As long as she achieved the results her patients needed, she figured all the controversy would eventually die down. She’d figured wrong. But she wasn’t worrying about that. Logan Kincaid had promised to stop the fuss over her unconventional treatment methods. “We’re off the clock until tomorrow, so relax.”

  He frowned. “Doc—”

  “Call me Bonnie.”

  “Doctor Bonnie, did Kincaid tell you—”

  She splashed him full in the face. “Work starts tomorrow, dude. Today we get to play.”

  He splashed her back. “And what does the lady doctor want to play?”

  Although he teased, although he kept up the charming demeanor, he’d just erected a mental wall. She didn’t need to touch him to know. His lips had tightened and a muscle in his jaw jerked. Bonnie had always been intuitive and without a doubt the m
an was in serious need of another distraction. She was grateful for her curves as she swam to the edge and climbed out of the pool, giving him an eyeful of her back and her Brazilian-cut bikini that exposed a good portion of her bottom.

  John was wary, but for a moment when she turned and caught his gaze, the banked embers in his eyes riveted her to the deck, telling her clearly that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. No matter his reluctance to touch her, one shared sizzling glance and she knew their eventual coming together was inevitable. It wasn’t like that had ever happened before with a patient, but she knew it would with this man. She wished he was far enough along in their sessions for her to reach into her bag, pull out the suntan lotion and ask him to apply it, but just because she ached with a fierce need to touch, didn’t mean he was ready. Although he’d also climbed out of the pool, he maintained a careful distance, putting on shades that hid his eyes, wrapping a towel around his corded neck.

  Today was a day to establish trust, a day to remind him that he was a charming man with a lot to offer a woman, a day to get back in touch with the salty tang of the sea, the gentle northerly breeze and tidal rhythms. Her sessions with, first, a spy who’d suffered from amnesia, then a crusty diplomat who’d spent a horrible year kidnapped in the jungles of Colombia and, after that, a mountain climber who was the only one to survive an avalanche had taught her that proceeding slowly removed stress and upped the patient/doctor trust quotient, increasing chances of removing blocked memories. However, on the down side, none of her former patients had had an aversion to touch—a gift she depended upon to help break mental blocks. Not since his captivity and his torture would John accept anyone’s touch. But on the up side, she’d never had such a sensual attraction to a man—and from his hot glances, the attraction was mutual and one she fully intended to use to her advantage. Perusing the assortment of boats at the dock, she considered the speedboat and two personal watercraft. They all had noisy engines, which would make conversation difficult.

  Then she spied the catamaran. “Do you know how to sail?”

  “Sure.”

  She dried off with a few swipes of the towel, applied lipstick to protect her mouth from the sun, donned a straw hat and her sunglasses, then pulled out the suntan lotion. So what if he wasn’t ready to touch her. Ignoring her own yen to graze one fingertip down his broad chest, she reminded herself she had other tricks under her hat. “Take me for a ride?”

  He chuckled. “You do have a way with words.”

  Brazen and playful, she winked at him over the rim of her shades and let her eyes pierce the distance between them. “I’m very direct.”

  “I noticed. And you always go after what you want?”

  “Don’t you?” she countered. Turning the lotion upside down, she squirted it into her hand. She began with her forehead, slicking the lotion on her nose, cheeks and chin. She squeezed more into her palm and held out the bottle. “Want some?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Not right now, thanks.”

  “Well, I spent one rotation in dermatology and I never go into the sun without my SPF 30.” She smoothed the lotion over her neck, her collarbone, her chest.

  He didn’t glance away. Not once. He simply watched her hands, a hungry look on his lips, an admiring glow in his eyes, but she didn’t miss the wounded slice of pain that glittered for just a moment, preventing him from touching her as he so clearly wanted to.

  She took her time, smoothing in the oil over her rib cage and stomach. After sinking into a chair, she crossed one leg over the other and slathered the lotion over her thighs, calves and feet.

  “And do you always get what you go after?” he asked, his tone casual, but she sensed more than nonchalant interest. He might be a wounded warrior, but that wary caution was part of the secret agent persona that had kept him alive through many dangerous missions.

  “That depends.” She considered telling him she’d attended Johns Hopkins and Harvard, then nixed the idea. She considered telling him about her work with other patients, but she didn’t need him comparing his own torture to other terrifying survival stories. She considered telling him that if her natural skill to help him wasn’t enough, a special enhancement to her ability was about to be delivered. But trust wasn’t about credentials or objects with special powers. Trust was about sharing and getting to know one another. “Are you taking me sailing or not?”

  “That depends,” he tossed her words back at her, his attitude challenging. “You’ll have to wear a life jacket because with all that lotion, you look slippery enough to fall overboard.”

  “Slippery? That’s not an attractive image.”

  “Doc, if there’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, it’s your looks.”

  She couldn’t miss the blatant approval in his tone and stood, noting that he hadn’t offered to put lotion on her back. “We’ll both wear life jackets. Because I don’t know how to sail at all. And if you fall over, I won’t be able to turn around and save you.”

  She expected him to make some snappy retort, but despite her best intentions, he clearly had other things on his mind. He would be tough to distract. But the more he tried to force the memories, the less likely he’d succeed. She needed him to relax, to let go of the horror and think of pleasant pursuits so he’d drop his mental shields—not an easy thing to do under any circumstances. With so many lives at stake, the task became much more difficult.

  “I’ll inform security that we’re heading out.” He padded over to an intercom system and spoke for several minutes, then loaded a cooler from the minibar in the outdoor kitchen to take with them on the boat. When two men went down to the docks and fired up the personal watercraft, John gave them a casual wave.

  When she’d arrived at the estate, Bonnie had had to pass through the tight security at the front gate. She understood that John Cameron had vital secrets of national security in his head. To avoid revealing what he did or did not know to his captors, he’d so deeply repressed the information he’d stolen from them that now he couldn’t recall where he’d stashed the critical data. His torturers had wanted to know if he’d spilled the beans to law enforcement—but John hadn’t had a chance to pass on the information before he’d been caught. So the danger that the terrorists would continue with their plans was very real. To prevent disaster the Shey Group needed to know what John had hidden in his head. Drugs and hypnosis had failed. Now it was her task to help him remember. But only when she saw those men checking their guns as she climbed onto the watercraft did the urgency of her work sink in. Until John Cameron divulged the information he’d suppressed, not only would his life remain in danger, but according to Logan Kincaid, head of the Shey Group, so would the lives of thousands of others.

  John Cameron’s official file gave her a lot to go on. As a kid he’d grown up in New Jersey and had shown his dedication early, winning the Golden Gloves state championship by age twelve. Then he’d rounded out his skills with judo and karate, and his old army file rated him as an expert marksman. But he wasn’t just comfortable with guy stuff. With two sisters and married parents, he came from a stable background of hardworking entrepreneurs.

  But Kincaid’s unofficial file on John Cameron proved the most interesting. She skipped over the classified missions to the more fascinating stuff. The man loved women. He had women friends and lovers, though no one steady in his life right now, clearing the way for her to approach him any way she wished. Despite all her psychiatric training, Bonnie knew the fastest way to get to him wasn’t by talking, but by touching.

  And the sooner, the better.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BONNIE ANDERS HAD MADE yesterday special. She hadn’t poked or prodded him. She hadn’t attempted to debrief him. Instead, John and Bonnie had swum, sailed and sunbathed during the glorious day in the Miami sunshine. Their evening consisted of drinking piña coladas and enjoying the sunset, eating oysters on the half shell with fresh lemons and horseradish sauce on the lanai, then watching a comedy on the tube
with bowls of gourmet vanilla ice cream smothered in hot fudge sauce. Normal, everyday things that most people took for granted, except John hadn’t known rest, relaxation and companionship had been exactly what he’d needed until Dr. Bonnie Anders had carved out this day for him.

  Nor had he known how special Bonnie was under all that luscious skin, but after spending hours together chatting, he also appreciated her sharp wit, her playful demeanor and her tantalizing sensuality. With her voluptuous curves, her chestnut hair streaked with shimmering gold and a stunning face, Dr. Bonnie Anders could have posed for Playboy. In his mind, she was one hot babe.

  Before he’d been tortured John wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to spread suntan lotion over her gorgeous skin. But ever since those bastards had shot high voltage through him, the idea of touching or being touched pained him. And being around a woman as sensual as Dr. Bonnie Anders, wanting to caress her and taste her and get naked together so badly, and yet being unable to do something so simple as touch her, deeply concerned him.

  He’d figured that today she’d have her hair tied up in a neat twist, wear some stodgy dress and put on her business demeanor, giving him a means to resist her compelling sensual allure. But wearing a spaghetti-strapped top that left her midriff bare, white short shorts and bare feet with candy-apple-red toenail polish, Dr. Bonnie Anders looked like no doctor he’d ever met. Nor did she act like one.

  Her every breath expanded her lungs, emphasizing breasts that diverted his normal wariness of all things medical. With her perfectly rounded breasts, her carnally painted mouth and exotic toes, she was his idea of the perfect dream woman. But she was no dream. She was real enough to touch—if he hadn’t been damaged.

  She’d set their first session in the backyard gazebo that bloomed with a variety of rust, violet and honey-colored flowers. Coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts, his favorites, had been delivered and sat within reach on a glass table. Climbing vines with shiny emerald leaves shaded them from the cloudless sky and bright morning sun, yet allowed the sea breeze to cool them. But the best view in Miami was lounging in the chair right next to him, her toned skin taunting him, within reach yet so untouchable.