Dark Taste of Rapture Read Online Free

dust coating the air. So … borderline-poverty basics, she thought with a grimace.
    How would she survive?
    There were only three essentials in Noelle’s life. Ava, money, and comfort. In that order. Ava was her rock, her coconspirator, and her biggest supporter. But she couldn’t wrap Ava around her like a mink to ward off the slight chill in the air. Not again. And her truck-loads of money were (supposedly) off limits while she was here. That meant comfort had a big fat “denied” stamp over it.
    For the next three months, at least. That’s how longshe was required to stay here. But the worst part? When those three torturous months were up, she still wouldn’t be considered an AIR agent. Not until someone within the organization finally deemed her worthy enough to carry a badge.
    Yeah, good luck with that . No one besides Ava had ever before deemed Noelle worthy of anything—except therapy. Her parents had claimed to love her and her dad had sought to protect her, but she’d never been … enough. Not for either of them.
    Can’t you do anything right? How many times had her father shouted that little gem? In fact, he’d been dead for years, but every so often she would swear he was yelling at her from the grave.
    Are you really that stupid, Noelle Jade? Then and now, that was her mother’s favorite phrase. And tossing in her middle name for that extra demoralizing affect? Priceless.
    God, Noelle, when are you going to grow up? That delightful query came courtesy of her three older brothers every time a news station blasted a story about something she’d done.
    Corban Blue, the first, last, and only real boyfriend/ relationship she’d taken a chance on, had insisted on picking out her clothes, telling her how to wear her hair and what to say. And yet, she’d stayed with him for a little over a year, proving her mother right. How stupid was she?
    Only when Corban had demanded she cut Ava from her life had she dumped him. That very day, actually. Hell, that very minute.
    The moment the door had closed on his ass, Noelle had realized she had never really loved him, that she’d just hoped someone would … want her, she supposed. Someone who would at last admire and respect her, even in the smallest way, beyond her looks and money. Someone who would fill the void inside her. That hollow, hungry place that had never known a moment of satisfaction.
    A void carved from anger, frustration, and bitterness. A wound that never quite healed, sometimes flared up, but always poisoned her sense of self. Her hands fisted at her sides.
    Well, not this time. If AIR didn’t want her, she’d start her own agency and offer them a little competition in the bagging and tagging of predatory otherworlders’ business. Wasn’t like she truly wanted to be an agent. But Ava did, she reminded herself, and what Ava wanted, Ava got. So, never mind on the new agency. Noelle was doing this, one way or another.
    “Remind me why we’re excited to be here again,” she said to Ava, needing the pep talk after the award-winning performance she’d had to put on for the Three Blind Mice outside.
    “We’re going to make a difference, fight injustice, blah blah blah.”
    “The blah blah blah part sounds familiar, but I’m still mostly drawing a blank.”
    “Well, do you remember the part about getting to carry a weapon and hurt people legally?”
    “Ah. Now it’s coming back to me.” But seriously.Starve her, beat her, sleep deprive her, but don’t take away her feather down comforter. Or her genuine wool rug. Or her servants. God, what she wouldn’t give to have a servant fetching and carrying for her this very second.
    “How sweet is this?” Ava spun like a ballerina on crack, her arms splayed. “It’s perfect, just perfect.”
    “Are you retarded? This place is a dump,” another agent-in-training said as she folded her shirts and jeans and placed them in the nightstand next to her bed.
    The bed next to Noelle’s.
    First, no