Dark Taste of Rapture (Alien Huntress 6)

Outside, Noelle jumped down the fire escape, landed in the dirt, the moonlit air cool as she pressed her back against the dilapidated bunkhouse wall. When no one sounded an alarm, she whipped out her phone. The new message? A photo of Noelle with her face scrunched up, about to sneeze.

Caption read: Here’s a true screen savor 4 U.

Little witch, she thought with an inward laugh.

Storing her phone in her back pocket, she considered her options. The path from bunkhouse hell to instructor’s paradise would take fifteen seconds, give or take a few depending on her hustle, and was completely illuminated. No one was outside, but if an agent were to walk past one of the many windows, she’d be spotted instantly.

No reason to worry about the trainees. Ava would tackle whoever wanted outside and perform a total knockout. Besides, after this morning’s torture session, everyone was mentally and physically exhausted and more likely to die in their beds than get up to so much as pee.

Apparently the only way to learn how to interrogate your targets was to be interrogated. Also apparent, interrogation sometimes involved getting beaten to a pulp. Noelle’s ribs had stopped her instructor’s fist from slamming into the back of her chair, oh, about thirty times, and they were now probably cracked as hell.

Thanks to the nerve-frying procedure, those cracks hadn’t and wouldn’t bother her. Noelle wouldn’t even know if she were dying. In fact, the only time she ever knew something was wrong was by the bruising—she had that in spades right now—or if she passed out from blood loss.

Her father had thought he was doing her a favor, and yeah, maybe he had, but the process had inadvertently destroyed some of her pleasure receptors, too. Now a guy had to really work to give her an orgasm.

Would Hector be able to give her an orgasm?

She didn’t have to think about the answer. After that combustible kiss they’d shared, yeah. He would be able to give her one without trying.

Don’t think about that right now. The mission was more important. Okay, so. She could either walk with purpose and risk enemy—aka instructor—capture and have to explain her presence, or crawl and risk damaging her ribs further, possibly cutting into her lungs and not knowing it until she woke up in a hospital bed. Also, she’d ruin her pretty cotton T-shirt that way.

She’d walk, she decided. The T-shirt was a gift from Ava and read Good Girls Need Spankings Too.

To her relieved surprise, no one spotted her and she reached the cabin without incident. Another surprise, the window closest to her was open, allowing fresh air inside and noise outside. She propped her arms on the pane and leaned in. Sounds, so many sounds. Laughter, cheering, taunting, curses, beer slurping, glasses tinkling together.

No wonder the agents hadn’t paid any attention to possible infiltration. They surrounded a holoscreen and were watching a football game. Otherworlders had only been accepted into the NFL a few drafts ago, and no one had known what to make of that until after the first few games. Violence on the field had intensified, and so had the love of the fans.

Noelle had a profile view of everyone, and wow, Hector had the most wonderfully sloped nose, a little bump in the middle. Probably from being broken so many times. A girl could get ideas about that bump. Like kissing it all better.

“Damn, but Corban Blue is the best quarterback I’ve ever seen,” Dallas said after finishing off his beer and grabbing another from the cooler beside him. “He’s got an arm like a cannon. He throws and the ball just shoots to the receiver like it’s on a string and being tugged.”

Think of the past, and boom, it would fill your present.

Corban. An Arcadian with long white hair, eyes of the most brilliant violet, and the face of God’s favorite angel. Would Dallas (cough Hector cough) be shocked to know Noelle had dated him? That she and Corban had practically lived together once upon a time? Something they’d managed to keep out of the media. An easy trick when you owned a lot of the media outlets in your city.

“We should recruit him,” Hector said, slamming his glass into Dallas’s in some kind of parody of a toast. What long lashes he had, fanning out like a peacock’s tail feathers. “Imagine him tossing a target like that. With his perfect aim, he could have the body in the back of our cars without us ever having to take a step.”

Dallas whistled. “Goddamn, Agent Meanie. I like the way your mind works. Noelle must not have damaged your brain as much as we feared.”

Hector grinned. “Doctor asked me if I’d introed my face to the windshield of a Mack truck.”

A grin. A freaking grin. And there were dimples in his cheeks. Noelle barely stopped a dreamy sigh from leaving her. Mostly relaxed, a lot amused, the tension drained from him, he was beyond gorgeous. His golden eyes were bright, his lips plumped and red rather than thinned with displeasure.

“She was some kind of lucky, getting the drop on you like that,” Dallas said. “And you were some kind of stupid, letting her get the drop on you like that. She’s a cream puff, man.”

The urge to sigh vanished. She gnashed her teeth together. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown so much fuel on the I’m-so-stupid fire. They’d had weeks to uncover her intelligence, or what she liked to consider intelligence, yet only Hector had questioned his initial impression? Come on!

“Hey,” Jaxon barked from the other side of the couch. “That’s my cousin. Show some respect.”

She noticed he didn’t defend her smarts, the bastard.

“You didn’t hear me say she has the IQ of a peanut, did you? Anyway.” Blue eyes flipped back to Hector, and those strong shoulders lifted in a give-a-guy-a-break shrug.

“So she’s still here?” Hector asked, and he sounded less than thrilled, if resolved.

This kept up, and her pretty white smile would be nothing but powder. Funny that when she came up in conversation, Hector’s mood instantly soured. He’d just rejected her again, yet this time she hadn’t had to say a single word to him.

“Yeah, and dude. Interrogation 101 was today, and you shoulda seen her.” Dallas finished off his second beer and tossed the glass where he’d tossed the first. On the floor.

Hector scrubbed a hand across his scalp. “Who ran the op?” His tattoos. The ink was darker than it’d been before he’d left, and there were more swirling designs on both arms. Odd, but her mouth watered for a taste of them.

“None of us could bring ourselves to do it, to hit her, you know, so we called in the girls. Phoenix was already here, but Siren and Kitten came to help.”