Taking the Bait: An ARC Operatives Romance by Audrey Noire Read Free Book Online Page A

wrapped around the coffee cup.
    “You slept well,” he said, not asking but telling. She cocked an eyebrow at him and he chuckled. “As well as you might after a late-night visitor.” He set the coffee down on the bed-side table and she breathed him in, the sharp scent of the hotel body wash on his skin, and the underlying scent of him . She struggled to find something to say, because she wanted to ask him if it had meant anything to him, as much as it had meant to her. He’d said things, words might’ve just been in the heat of the moment even as much as she wanted them to be true. Being on his arm, sleeping with him, all of it had sparked something in her that had been waiting for almost a year.
    “You slept okay too?” she asked, and his face split into a smile, ridiculously happy as his arms reached out for her. He enfolded her in them and she scooted forward, letting him pull her against his bare chest. The towel looped around his waist was damp, and half-falling off.
    “Better than I have in many months,” he murmured low and quiet into the side of her cheek. She felt him close his eyes, the flutter of his eyelashes against her skin, and something in her heart bubbled. Whatever they had, between them? She wanted to protect it, see it through. Whatever it was that they were, or might be. She had a good inkling it was more than just basic, sexual need, but something more . She was going to take it, whatever it was, with no reservation. Nicolai blew out a puff of hair into her curls and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Are you hungry? Coffee is not enough to sustain you, or me.”
    She mulled it over for a moment and then shifted back to look at him properly, a sly grin crossing her face. He watched her, a smile echoing her own tilting up at the corner of his mouth.
    “How does breakfast in bed sound? I think I earned room service.”
    She barely finished the words before he was up and over to the phone in a blink, dialing down and shooting her a heated stare.
    “It normally takes hotels twenty minutes or more, to prepare a room service meal, yes?” He had a tilt to his forehead, his hair hanging in his eyes, and he looked like pure mischief. She couldn’t contain the feeling in her chest, expanding and filling every inch of her as she nodded.
    “If you’re saying what I think you mean,” she licked her lower lip as heat sprawled across her stomach and between her thighs, “you’ll have to be quick about it.”
    He smirked, phone still cradled against his ear and he winked before looking down at the menu.
    “That, Mila , goes without saying.”
     
    ~*~

Taking Sides – SNEAK PREVIEW
    Here's a look at the first chapter of the next book in the ARC operatives series!
     
    Daria Griffin stretched her arms up above her head and wondered how the hell she'd gotten so damn lucky. It'd been just over a month since their first (and very successful, hell yeah to her kickass acting skills) mission pretending to be newly weds. She might not have been able to keep the falsie-wedding ring after the operation wrapped up, but she'd definitely gotten to keep her new 'husband'. Nicolai was down on the main floor of his loft while she lazed around up in his bed. She could hear him padding around the wood floors, knowing full well he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and he was making her breakfast.
    With a self-satisfied noise, she rolled over and looked out the the twelve foot windows of his ARC-assigned apartment. As an Augmented, there were a few perks that Nicolai received that Daria didn't, part of the agreement that had been signed when he'd let the ARC scientists mess with his genetic coding. All Augmented were given housing, if they didn't have their own, and even if they did it was strongly encouraged that they move into one of the ARC buildings located in the artsy district of New York City. Nicolai had made a comment once that it was buying him off for the sheer agony that had been the process of