Taking the Bait: An ARC Operatives Romance (3 page)

“Mrs. Dushku, your husband was just telling me how you went to Brown. My daughter is there, perhaps you know her? Emily Bouvier?” He finally let her hand go. The name of course, didn’t ring a bell and she smiled, looking over at her husband and laughing lightly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know her. The last year of my time at Brown was honestly spent in a cloud because of this guy.” She tugged lightly at Nicolai’s tie and then smoothed it down over his chest, ducking her head against his shoulder, suddenly the picture of an adoring wife. Internally she cursed herself. She was supposed to be bait, a desperate housewife that a lonely old man would take interest in, loosen his tongue around and talk a little too freely about business dealings. She had a damn job to do. But for some reason she couldn’t, in the heat of the moment, let herself be manhandled by someone she didn’t know. Nicolai was warm against her and surprisingly comforting, his hand shifting to curve around the side of her waist. Maybe he had anticipated her becoming uncomfortable. She exhaled slowly and tried to get her shit together. She was not going to blow this. She was not going to let her team down. Nicolai was an anchor, and she was gripping on tight to him.

“Yes, I believe we spent most of that year talking on the phone than focusing on studies and business,” Nicolai said, looking down at her with such adoration in his expression that her heart skipped a beat. Dammit. They were supposed to be having marital problems, not be besotted with each other, but it wasn’t like she could be mad at him, he was only following her lead. His hip was firmly planted against the dip of her waist, and he took her free hand, kissing the back of it softly. It erased the feel of Mr. Bouvier’s grey whiskers on her skin, and she had a hard time not melting in Nicolai’s embrace. Fine, the game was changed, the plan was changed, Balfour and Rykov would just have to forgive them. Well, Balfour was always harping about how strategy was an overall game plan, whereas tactics were how you actually fought on the ground. This was just a change-up of their tactics. Maybe playing a less shrew-like wife would attract more old men to her honey. Or something.

“Oh, you,” she said teasingly as Mr. Bouvier cleared his throat with a low chuckle, and when she caught the older man’s eye she noticed there was considerably more heat in it than there’d been before. Well, that was something. She took a long sip of her drink, grateful that it was nearly gone. “I’m almost out-”

“I will get you another,” Nicolai said, plucking the glass out of her nerveless fingers and looking at Mr. Bouvier, “please keep my wife company? There are too many attractive single men here. I will get you a drink as well. What are you having?” The older man laughed, heartily, and clapped Nicolai on the back before giving him his drink order. Nicolai moved sedately away, at a pace that Daria knew must’ve just been killing him. As soon as he was ten feet away, Mr. Bouvier closed in on her. Still good enough as bait, she thought, as he put an overly warm and sweaty hand on her wrist, thumb and finger clasping around it. He stroked slow circles on the inside over her pulse, right on the skin. Her throat contracted in a bad way and she looked up at him through her lashes, not wanting to tilt her head up as he hovered in her space in case he lost his mind and decided to kiss her. God, she did not want to even think about that.

“Dushku, in line to the Dushku shipping throne,” he murmured and bent his head to talk into the crown of her hair, “excellent choice for a starter husband, but I believe you can do better.”

Good lord, he smelled like expensive booze and some sort of cloying vanilla musk cream that overwhelmed her in all the wrong ways. She took a moment, trying to get used to the scent of him before she could speak.

“I thought I was the starter wife,” she blurted out, flustered and feeling an uncomfortable blush crawling up the back of her neck. She fluttered her eyelashes prettily to hide the fact she really wanted to stab the man in the solar plexus, because murderous thoughts had a tendency to manifest themselves on her expression if she wasn’t careful or so Rykov had said. The man edged ever closer to her, until she could feel his knee sliding against the side of hers, stroking right above it and brushing against her thigh. Her breath hitched in her throat as panic set in and she wrestled with herself to stay calm and focused.

“Women like you start at the bottom but always rise to the top, my dear. He would be a fool to trade you in.” His fingers were under her chin, and he was lifting her face up, a millimeter at a time until she was looking at him. He had eyes that were just black pools, she realized, dark and cold. A tremble ran through her, and he smiled, predatory and hungry. Every nerve in her body screamed to get away, but she merely smiled as if dazzled and flattered by his words and prayed that Rykov’s training would hold.
              “Such pretty compliments, I hardly know how to respond,” she said breathlessly, and he chuckled as he bought into the idea that she was actually interested in him and his unfortunate paunch.

“I’ve got an idea or two, but I left them up in my hotel room. Perhaps you would join me later to review the list?” His words were like oil over her skin, unpleasant and slowly crawling to cover her everywhere. She felt the immediate need to scrape her nails over her flesh and have a long, brutal hot shower.

“My husband-” she deflected, and Mr. Bouvier looked beyond her, stepping out of her space just slowly enough to send a message that he controlled the little encounter she’d been trapped in. Daria wondered if he personally tried out the women he sold to European bankers and South American drug lords- he’d taken no great liberties with her but she’d felt entirely consumed by him in the few short minutes she’d been in his grip.

“Has returned with our drinks, such a thoughtful young man. I haven’t met your father, Mr. Dushku, but you are clearly a credit to him.” Mr. Bouvier held out a hand for his drink, and Nicolai passed it off to him. When Nicolai turned to Daria, she reached for her drink, but Nicolai, picture of grace and agility, Nicolai who never fell over anything, dropped anything, stubbed an elbow or a toe, spilled her drink right down the front of her dress. Ice chips plinked against the paillettes, and cold liquid sloshed right through the mesh and soaked into her slip. The fabric immediately stuck to her skin and she cringed at the feel of the wet satin hugging right into her bellybutton and over her curves.

“Oh,
Mila
, I am so sorry, I did not-” Nicolai produced a silk handkerchief out of his suit pocket and dabbed at her chest delicately, “I know how you loved this dress, I am so clumsy sometimes.” Her cheeks flushed as the warmth of his fingers seeped through the fine fabric over her cleavage and she tried to bat him away shyly.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, Nicolai…” She shivered as Mr. Bouvier watched them with one eyebrow cocked, bemused and slightly annoyed expressions warring on his face. Nicolai shot him a bright smile.

“My lovely wife is forever telling me to be more careful. I nearly broke my leg last year when we were hunting in South Africa. Is it ruined, love, is the dress-?” He fluttered over her, the picture of a concerned husband doting on a treasured trophy wife. She bit the inside of her lip and hoped that her thoughts of what the hell are you doing weren’t showing, and smiled weakly.

“I think if I go change, it should be fine, dry cleaners at hotels are so good these days.”

“Mm, yes, they are,” Mr. Bouvier said flatly, lifting his head and looking at someone before walking away from them both, “Charles, it is so good to see you…”

Daria breathed out in relief when he left their orbit, and Nicolai grabbed onto her upper arm suddenly, curling her into him.

“I will take you upstairs,
Mila
, I am so sorry about the dress,” he said, sounding contrite, but his eyes were hard in his face as he tugged her through the crowd, leading her to the door. She almost stumbled after him, he was so quick. Once they were out in the hallway, she yanked back her arm, twisting it out of his grip. He rounded on her, his normally cheerful expression dark.

“What the hell was that,” she hissed under her breath. He shook his head and looked to the elevators.

“You must be cold, let us go up to our rooms,” his words were duller, no hint of the sweet caring husband that had just been coveting her in the ballroom. She grit her teeth and threw up her hands, marching towards the elevators and letting him catch up. The jerk blew so hot and cold she could never figure him out. He’d been the one to spill drink all down her dress and end the night’s espionage, not her, so she had no idea why he was being such a fucking dick about it. She steamed all the way up to the room and burst into the bedroom without a word to him, slamming the door behind her and leaving him in the living room by himself.

She stripped off the dress and kicked $8000 worth of mesh and sequins across the floor, and yanked herself out of the slip. The delicate satin held up to her rough treatment and quickly followed the dress. Outside she heard a door open and close, and a low agitated voice murmuring. They’d fucked the op, she knew, that evening was supposed to be the night to make acquaintances and cement Nicolai’s position as a young shipping executive. It was a persona he would’ve been able to use again and again.

Luckily her underwear had been spared the worst of it, only a few flecks of liquid spotting the peachy silk bra, and nothing had touched the low-cut silk thong either. She grabbed a pair of grey pyjama bottoms from her suitcase, and a white tank-top, hauling them both on. The voice next door had grown quiet, and she pulled the door open. Balfour was there, in his bellboy uniform, his earpiece dangling over his shoulder as he and Nicolai stood in the middle of the living room. They were signing back and forth, faces angry, and too fast for Daria’s very limited signing vocab (only the ARC basics that every low-level agent learnt so they could communicate silently) was quickly outmatched. Finally Balfour threw up his hands and slapped them down on his thighs with a grunt and looked over at Daria before shaking his head and storming out into adjoining suite’s. He had the good sense to close the door silently behind him, and Nicolai walked over to it, throwing the bolt on it, before leaning his head against it, and pressing his hands into it like he wanted to shove it over.

His muscles were tensing and releasing so fast it was like they were vibrating, and it made his suit-jacket twitch. In that instant, all her anger melted out of her, seeing him so clearly enraged at someone, probably himself.

“Hey, it’s fine, we had an early night of raunchy newly-wed sex and we go back out tomorrow,” she said, guessing at what had him and Balfour so worked up. He whirled around, eyes bright and wide in his face and he pointed at her.

“No. You… you do not go out again.” His chest was heaving, and she almost stepped back from the heat in his gaze.

“What the hell? Uh, are we not still doing the op? Or is it done? Are they pulling us out?” Daria lifted a hand to the back of her neck and flicked open the catch on her necklace. She pulled it off and casually looked at it, trying not to glance at his face, his body, as if that could keep her hammering heart steady. She’d never seen him so enraged, certainly not at her. Maybe at a football game on TV in the break room. She pressed the centre diamond as she’d been instructed earlier, to turn the feed to their surveillance team off, and went to lay it down on the counter.

She never got there. He was next to her in breath, grabbing the necklace from her nerveless fingers and throwing it down on the marble-top. Then he took her in his arms and tugged her against his chest, one arm banding around her waist, and the other cradling the back of her head. She made a muffled indignant squawk, but couldn’t pull away from him, too surprised to move.

“Seriously, Nicolai, what the ever-loving fuck,” she hissed out, twisting her head and finally yanking it out of the cup of his palm. She glowered up at him, eyes narrowing, channelling every inch of her best bitch face. “Let me go.” He just stared back at her, unblinking, and then his lips were on hers, hot and insistent. She froze, fingers curling in on her palms against his chest as her breath stopped still in her chest.

“You… you do not go back out there. That man? That man is never… never going to look at you, no. Not again,” he had pulled away to breathe for a moment and then shook his head. Given how shaken he seemed, she opted to go for nice-gal-Daria and not punch him in the teeth. She could put aside the whole inappropriately-kissing-your-op-partner thing for now, maybe-sorta-kinda because she had liked it a little too much.

“You wanna clue me on on what’s going on here, Seabiscuit?” she asked gently, wriggling a bit in his arms. He unbent, letting her step back and his shoulders dropped, his head hanging as he ran a hand through his hair.

“I know his type. I saw it, in my neighbourhood, men like him would… they would grab the girls, and… he was touching you, Daria. He had plans for you, and I…” he trailed off, looking away. She reached over slowly and grabbed his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. There was a hurt in him that she didn’t understand, a layer of protectiveness he was showing her that she’d never expected. She could roll with it, be whatever he needed. She’d seen it between Balfour and Rykov… they were always there for each other. Partners.

“Hey, it’s okay. That was supposed to happen. Remember? Me? The bait. You? The escape. That was the plan. But it’s fine, really, we can go back out there and do our thing. I can even just put on a new dress, it’s not too late at all.” She smiled at him encouragingly, but he didn’t return the expression.

“You do not understand,” he said, dropping his hands to hang loosely at his sides. “If you go back out, I will not go with you. I will not let…. I will not watch that vreću za smeće touch you again.” He set his jaw stubbornly and she sighed, realizing why Balfour had stormed out in exasperation. Nicolai was being insufferable, and difficult to work with. Balfour was a saint, but even saints had limits. Plus she was pretty sure Nicolai had just called Mr. Bouvier a trash bag, but she wasn’t sure.