Page 53 of Pay the Price

I almost laughed. Figured.

Then I spotted another scrap of black fabric inside the box. Apparently the dress wasn’t the end of Jace’s gift.

I reached inside and withdrew some kind of contraption crafted out of embroidered black flowers. It wasn’t until it unfurled that I realized it was a bodysuit.

If you could call the little bit of fabric in my hand a bodysuit.

It was barely there, the intricately embroidered flowers strung together with bits of silky black elastic. Here and there, the pieces were connected with tiny gold fleur-de-lis.

I stared at it, trying to get a handle on where all my body parts would go, then realized it didn’t matter.

It was a gift from Jace. At some point in the past few days, he’d either gone into a store and purchased the dress, the bodysuit, or he’d bought them online with me in mind.

The thought gave me a flush of pleasure I had no business feeling.

I looked in the box, wondering if he’d spelled out a message, an order that would be printed in angry handwriting on a postcard or piece of paper.

It was empty.

But I didn’t need a note. I’d gotten the message.

Wear it all tonight. When we went to the Velvet Rope.

Chapter 33

Wolf

Iwas nervous waiting for Daisy to appear, although I didn’t know if it was because the recon we were gong to do would be Daisy’s first time at a sex club or because I was faced with the prospect of a bunch of other guys eyeing our girl.

And I knew they would, because Daisy didn’t realize it yet, but she was a fucking bombshell.

Jace stood in front of one of the mirrors in the living room, adjusting his tailored black blazer. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, but he couldn’t stop fucking with the buttons on the blazer, fastening them both, unfastening them, and finally unfastening the bottom one.

Jesus fucking christ.

Five years ago we’d been kings.

Then we’d been convicts.

Now we were lapdogs, panting after a girl who couldn’t stand the sight of us.

I’d changed my shirt three times, from black to gray to midnight blue. We’d never been anywhere nice with Daisy, and I wanted to make a good impression, both because she deservedto have well-dressed men on her arm and because I was dying to get her back into bed. I was haunted by the scent of her skin, the slide of her tongue against mine, her fingers twining in my hair when I went down on her.

Beating off to the memory of fucking her had become my favorite pastime, but only because I knew I couldn’t have her.

Because I knew I’d lost her.

Only Otis seemed calm, playing a video game on the sofa while Jace paced the living room and I pretended I wasn’t as nervous as a freshman on prom night.

“Remember,” Jace said, “you two stay with her every second.”

“We know,” Otis and I said in unison.

We’d been over it: the sex club had rules, but it was still full of horny men and women, and Daisy wouldn’t know what to expect. Otis and I would be on Daisy duty, walking her around the club while Jace tried to snoop behind the metaphorical velvet rope.

“Just reminding you,” Jace said.

I wasn’t surprised when he’d offered to do recon while Otis and I kept an eye on Daisy even though I knew Jace was dying to fuck her. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d come close in the hall (thank you, Otis, for the image of Daisy in a wet T-shirt pulled up over her tits, ass out and underwear down around her knees). The sexual tension between them was palpable, a current of hunger that ran through all of their interactions.

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