Taking
the Bait
The ARC Operatives, #1
by Audrey Noire
Date of
Publication: May 6th 2016
Cover
Artist: Avery Knott
Genre:
Romance Sci-Fi/Superhero
From The Book Junkie Reads . . . Taking the Bait (The ARC Operatives, #1) . . .
Heroes. Heroine. Trophy wife. Bait. Possessive fake husband. Spies. All this and more entwined in a quickie read that introduces the world of superheros, sexy males specimens, hot accents and the world of The ARC Operatives. This installments has two sexy partners that have more in common than the assignment they are on. Join the fun, with sexy sarcasim, steam filled quickies, minor adventure, while being undercover or "Under the Cover". Daria and Nicolai have one enjoyable time in Taking the Bait.
**This ARC was provided
via Bewitching Book Tours in
exchange for an honest review.**
BLURB
Daria Griffin is a newly-minted
undercover operative with ARC, on a mission with her partner. Nicolai Novik an
augmented human with super-fast speed. Their first job? Infiltrate a conference
of billionaires as a newly-wed couple and dig up the dirt on shady business
dealings.
Daria's the bait, tasked with luring
in businessmen with her unhappy-trophy-wife routine while Nicolai talks shop.
But the operation goes all wrong when Nicolai starts acting strangely in the
middle of it. Will they be discovered by forces who may not have their best
interests at heart? And why is Nicolai acting so possessive of Daria when he
never said more than a few words to her during training?
Part one of a three-part romance story
in The ARC Operatives series!
Author's Note: Taking the Bait is a 12,000-word novella.
No cliffhanger, HFN ending. Due to strong language and sexual content, this
book is not intended for readers under the age of 18. The first scene from it's
sequel is included as a bonus at the end of the book!
Buy Link: Amazon
“You want my first
mission to have me pretending to be what?!” Daria Griffin gripped the side of
her chair as she stared at her boss, and then looked back down at the dossier
open in front of her on the desk. She wrinkled up her nose and tried not to
make a noise of distress as she wondered if she was really ready for something
that required that level of acting skill. Daria had never been particularly
confident in her own appearance on a good day, let alone having to pretend to be
a trophy wife while undercover (although damn had she day-dreamed of being
swept off her feet by billionaire-du-jour when reading those frequent eligible
bachelor articles). She shot a look over at her future-partner.
Nicolai Novik’s
expression was deadpan, unreadable, and a little unnerving. He was eyeing up
his dossier, gaze flicking back and forth over the paper and profiles within
it. He ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair and sighed, long and low. At
least because English was his second language he wasn’t super-fast at reading
it, since he was super-fast at pretty much everything else (including getting
into the pants of the receptionists and assistants that were running all over
ARC’s offices, holy wow had he burnt through ladies like Daria’d gone through
funny-shaped erasers in elementary school).
There was nothing
like a team made up of a nearly-dead-half-recovered ARC operative and a
nameless ARC former-intern to do an undercover mission at a billionaire
business convention, right? At least, Daria hoped there would be nothing like
them and they wouldn’t fail and go down in a hail of bullets. Even over a year
of training to be an undercover operative hadn’t exactly boosted her
self-confidence, especially since in quite a few of her courses she’d only
passed with middling grades.
She thought back to
before she’d begun down the path towards super-secret spy work. Her supervisors
had plucked her out of her internship in the labs as the ink was still drying
on her degree. She’d been hustled off (‘transferred’ was the official word for
it) from her tiny job paper-chasing after a kind but generally hapless
bio-engineering scientist named Dr. Robert Fowler, and put through a series of
rigorous tests designed to ‘assess her skills and talents’.
During the testing
process there’d been no coffee-fetching test, and definitely no pop-quiz on how
to scoop up great thrift-store finds. Daria had figured she’d failed miserably
and would have to do the workplace walk-of-shame back to her old boss down in
Lab #3b, continue her internship and hope for a good letter of recommendation
from him. Not that she would have minded… Robert had been the laid-back kinda
boss-guy, and she’d liked working with him even if the hours were kinda wonky.
To her great surprise
though she’d passed the tests she’d been given. When she’d looked down at her
acceptance and new employment contract with astonishment, Anastasia Rykov, the
operative administering the majority of the testing had just raised one
perfectly groomed eyebrow and said,
“What, you think ARC
picks fools for interns? You were groomed for this from the start.”
Buy Link: Amazon
Author
Info
Audrey Noire grew up in the pacific
north west, climbing trees and swimming in the sea. She spent her formative
young adult years travelling the globe alongside her musician husband as he
toured and played across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia.
They’ve settled down (sorta kinda)
with a bundle of cats in a sea-side town. When she’s not on the road watching
her rocker husband from side-stage, she’s writing about handsome gents and
lovely ladies falling for one another.
She believes that every day is ripe
with possibilities, and that life is precious. Don’t waste a second – fall in
love with your life all over again!
Author Links:
How would you describe you style of writing to
someone that has never read your work?
Passionate,
character-development driven, first-person and usually littered with
pop-culture references. I like to tuck in just-between-us jokes for my readers
to find, a bit like Easter eggs,
What mindset or routine do you feel the need to
set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or
just free writing)?
I guess I'm lucky in
that I'm a 'write where you are' type of writer. I've written on planes,
trains, the roof of a boat when helping a friend move their vessel from one
country to another, coffee shops, libraries, in bed, or sprawled on the couch
with a cat trying to convince me that he's a keyboard and I should be petting
him instead of typing. Still the most important thing to me is having my
outline up, at least for the next few chapters, that way I can point myself in
the right direction and just have at it.
Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you
nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you
people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character
during story creation?
My preference is to
have a basic outline of the characters before I dive in, but I like to let them
grow me as I go. The longer I work on a project, the more in love with them I
fall, and the more of their quirks and personality traits come into the
forefront. I love watching a character wise-up towards the end of the story and
go “hey I have fallen in that pothole before, maybe I'll walk around this
time”. I take their personal growth pretty seriously.
Have you found yourself bonding with any
particular character? If so which one(s)?
Ugh, god yes. It's
especially heartbreaking when they get a mind of their own and take themselves
off in a different direction than the one you wanted for them, a bit like
children, I suppose. Right now I'm pretty enamored with my leading lady, Daria
Griffin. She's young, inexperienced, and the world is huge and dangerous to
her. She feels totally out of her element, and a bit not-worthy of the job
she's been given. I think as women, we can often feel like we're “faking it” or
“imposters” in what we do, even if we're highly qualified or have lots of experience,
so I wanted to capture that in a character. Daria's been through intense
training to be a young spy, and knows her stuff, she just doesn't know that she
knows.
Do you have a character that you have been working
on that you can't wait to put to paper?
A young werewolf lad
who's recently become the alpha of his pack, and is desperate to keep them
safe. He's second in command is his best friend, and the entire pack is now
depending on him to take care of them, guide them, lead them even. He's
determined to do a good job, and navigate the difficulties of taking charge of
a younger pack with no elder werewolves. And then he meets the girl... a witch,
who's powers could help secure his pack's place and keep them safe, but there's
some pretty strict rules about fraternization between wolves and witches,
mainly: don't.
Have you ever felt that there was something inside
of you that you couldn't control? If so what? If no what spurs you to reach for
the unexperienced?
Probably my unending
addiction to buying everything on Modcloth. Also, eating all the chocolate. I'm
pretty good at controlling my emotions, being a very Spock-like logical gal,
but I cannot for the life of me resist a cute dress with cats on it, or a
strawberry cream chocolate. Life is too short to resist the wonderful
temptations!
Author Links:
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