Breathless Encounter. Cindy Dees

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.

      The girl. Unconscious and drifting down toward the depths. Angling deeper, he came up underneath her, catching her slender body in his arms and kicking mightily toward the light above. Four minutes.

      He swore mentally. If she’d been down here four minutes, she could be very close to brain death. He stopped kicking to plaster his mouth against hers tightly. Angling her head down so he was directly below her, he blew into her mouth enough to clear the water out. Then, he exhaled hard into the air pocket he’d created, forcing air into her lungs. Underwater mouth-to-mouth wasn’t exactly the ideal way to prevent drowning, but he couldn’t just hold her in his arms and let her die!

      He closed her mouth with one hand, while his free arm went around her once more. He resumed kicking hard toward the surface and air.

      After sacrificing his own oxygen reserves to the girl, he actually began to feel the burn of it in his muscles. Thankfully, his body was extraordinarily efficient at processing oxygen. Although he was getting close to his limit, he had enough gas left in the tank to save the girl.

      They burst up out of the depths, and he took a long, gasping breath. He looked around frantically for something big and flat and buoyant, and spotted a portion of the destroyed boat’s hull not far away. Pinching her nose shut, he breathed another lungful of air into the girl’s mouth. Then he dragged her over to the hull and quickly up onto the makeshift raft. He clambered onto his knees beside her and commenced CPR.

      “Come on,” he growled. “Don’t you die on me.”

      He’d been compressing her chest for about thirty seconds when, without warning, she threw up a bunch of seawater. He rolled her over onto her side fast. She coughed and more water came out of her mouth. She drew in a rasping breath and coughed some more.

      At least she was alive.

      Steig had obviously seen him surface with the girl because the Sea Nymph was making painstakingly slow progress through the debris field toward them. Several of the crewmen were leaning down over the prow with long poles in the water, shoving debris aside as the yacht crawled forward. When the yacht pulled alongside, the crew lowered a backboard to him on a pair of ropes, and Aiden horsed it underneath the unconscious girl.

      He was huffing hard by the time he got her strapped onto it. He swore. Not now. But he should have known. He’d just spent a long time underwater and then surfaced and exerted himself hard. That wasn’t how his gift worked. Now he got to pay the price of it. As the crew hoisted the girl upward, his chest tightened until it felt like a massive anvil was parked on top of him. He lay down on the makeshift raft.

      Inhale slowly. Exhale fully. Relax. Don’t freak out. His nebulizer was just a few yards away aboard the Sea Nymph. He’d be fine in a few minutes. But in the meantime, he got to endure the mother of all asthma attacks.

      He vaguely heard voices shouting from above.

      “Aiden’s down!”

      “… send a man to him …”

      “… help him up the ladder …”

      “… don’t think he’ll make it …”

      And then all was darkness and silence around him.

      He dreamed of a mermaid with warm brown hair streaked honey-blond. Her tanned skin was dewy and flawless, her eyes a golden-green hazel that matched the sensuous warmth of her voice. Her lips were bee-stung and rosy, her body slender but juicy enough to promise sinful delights. Her aquatic lower half was covered in golden-green scales that glittered exactly the color of her eyes.

      She hovered easily in the water before him, her elegant tail fin waving just enough to hold her position. She reached for him with a dazzling smile, her slender arms beckoning him into her eternal embrace. She was the sea. And he loved it—her—more than earthbound life itself. He swam forward, surrendering himself to her.

      Her arms closed around him with surprising strength, and she turned, kicking with controlled violence, shooting them downward toward the inky depths of the abyss. His lungs felt strangely tight, and the clock in his head ticked past six minutes. Seven. Eight was about his normal limit.

      Nine minutes. Ten.

      If she didn’t turn around pretty soon, his beautiful mermaid was going to kill him!

      He struggled in her embrace trying to tear free. But she was too strong. Completely disinterested in his silent pleas to let him go. Down, down she went with him. The pressure was too much. Every cell in his body screamed for relief. For air. He thrashed violently. He had to break free or die!

      “Wake up, Aiden. For God’s sake, quit flailing around! We just got your breathing settled back down.”

      Disoriented, he opened his eyes. Bright lights blinded him and he squinted against the painful glare. Something plastic descended to cover his mouth and nose, and he sucked in the aerosolized bronchodilator medication desperately.

      The pressure in his lungs eased. His panic receded. Exhausted mentally and physically, he sagged back against the pillows. Memory returned. “The girl?” he rasped.

      The ship’s medical corpsman answered, “Alive. You got to her in time. Gemma doesn’t think she suffered any brain damage, but we won’t know until she wakes up. Gem’s got her sedated and on antibiotics.”

      Aiden relaxed. Dr. Gemma Jones was the best. He took belated note of his surroundings and recognized one of the yacht’s cabins. As he recalled, it was outfitted with two twin beds. He turned his head on the pillow and spied the occupant of the other bed. He lurched.

      His mermaid.

      Except she was pale against the white sheets, her glorious hair dry and spread out across the pillow like honey-streaked silk. Her eyes—if they were the golden-hazel of his dream—were closed, her breathing light and slow.

      He took the nebulizer off his face and sat up, swinging his legs carefully over the side of the bed. He felt as if he’d gone a few rounds in a boxing ring against the Champ … and lost.

      He stood long enough to shift his weight to the edge of the girl’s bed. He couldn’t resist running his fingers through the soft strands of her hair. “Who are you?” he murmured. “What were you doing out on the open sea by yourself?”

      Her eyelids fluttered slightly.

      “Can you hear me?” he said more urgently. “Can you open your eyes?”

      Her eyelids fluttered again and then opened. They were his mermaid’s eyes. Except right now they were confused. Frightened.

      He spoke gently. “You’re safe. You’re aboard the Sea Nymph. I rescued you when your boat sank.”

      The girl frowned. “Water,” she croaked. “Dark. Cold. Dying.”

      His recent nightmare of nearly drowning vivid in his mind, he didn’t have to ask what she meant. “I dived for you and pulled you out,” he explained.

      Her gaze filled with tears and her hand slid across the sheet to touch his. He jolted at the touch of human flesh against his. It had been so long. So very long …

      She whispered hoarsely, “Thank you.”

      “Sleep now. You need rest.”

      “Be here? When I …”

      As her eyes drifted closed he answered low, his voice rough, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

      Sunny drifted in a white world that was safe and warm and blessedly bright. And always her rescuer was there with her. Anytime she opened her eyes, his was the only face she saw before she drifted, comforted, back into her cocoon. But eventually the demands of her body began to intrude. Thirst. Hunger. An ache in her chest and raw soreness in her