Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

31. Daisy

Afew days later I stepped into the kitchen and found Jace standing at the open terrace door, speaking in low tones to someone on the other side.

I stopped mid-yawn and listened, trying to get a handle on who he was talking to, but I couldn’t make out any of the words and I finally walked farther into the kitchen and stopped a few steps behind him.

The Beasts had gotten better about telling me stuff, although we still tiptoed around the question of my dad and the missing girls, and no one — and I did mean no one — wanted to talk about Blake.

But this, this was weird.

It was early, morning sunlight streaming in through the wall of glass leading to the terrace, the house silent around us. Wolf and Otis weren’t even up yet, which was the weirdest thing of all. Wolf, sleep-tousled and sexy as all get out, was usually the first one in the kitchen in the morning, and I could usually count on at least a few torturous minutes of trying to picture him naked, his glorious inked chest against the crisp white sheets I used on all the beds.

I still hadn’t slept with any of the Beasts since I’d been home — not even Otis, because fucking Otis when Wolf and Jace were so close seemed like opening the lid on a Pandora’s box of sexual possibility — and it was getting harder and harder to deny the near-constant lust surging through my veins.

Jace said something else, his voice low and coaxing, and I edged closer to him.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

He spun around, his eyes wide. It was the closest I’d ever seen him to panic and it took me a few seconds to register the furry bundle in his arms.

A cat. And not just a cat, but a scraggly, mangy-looking cat missing patches of hair.

“No one,” he said, his gaze sliding nervously around the kitchen, like a thief who’d just gotten caught copping a candy bar.

He was wearing jeans and a faded black T-shirt. I tried not to stare at the slice of skin visible where the shirt didn’t quite cover his flat stomach and the glory trail that led under the waistband of his jeans, tried not to remember the way his pierced dick had felt in my hand.

“Okayyyyy,” I said. “Then what are you doing?”

He was holding the cat easily. It definitely wasn’t his first time. “Just leaving some food out for Cat.”

I crossed the room and looked through the open door to the terrace, then spotted a dish of wet cat food on the porch. “You bought cat food?”

This was starting to seem less like a one-time thing and more like Jace had a secret pet.

“He was hungry.” A note of defensiveness had crept into his voice. “I think he’s a stray.”

I turned around to look at him, the sun warm on my back through the open door and the birds chirping their early morning song.

Jace looked almost human holding the cat, if you took away the fact that he was a giant with biceps the size of tree trunks.

He started petting the cat’s nearly hairless neck and I narrowed my eyes before walking to the cupboards.

“What are you doing?” He almost sounded scared.

I opened a few cupboards before finally finding what I was looking for under the microwave: stacks of wet cat food in a variety of flavors. I had a sudden image of Jace at the grocery store, standing in the pet food aisle and carefully choosing cans of food for the cat still in his arms.

I turned to face him. “You’ve been taking care of this cat!”

I couldn’t keep the triumph out of my voice because Jace taking care of anything felt like finding a piece of gold in the shimmering rocks at the bottom of the river.

“So?” He held the cat tighter. “He doesn’t have a home. And he was hungry.”

“It’s not like I”m mad,” I said. “I’m just… surprised.”

His eye started to twitch, his jaw set in a hard line. “I’m not a monster.”

I held his gaze. “I know.”

“Morning,” Wolf said, stepping into the kitchen from the back staircase. He looked every bit as delicious as I’d feared in loose faded denim that hung off his hips and the sleeveless black Pixies T-shirt that looked vintage. He looked from me to Jace and back again. “What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” Jace and I said, too fast and at the same time.

Wolf raised his eyebrows and I wondered if Otis had told him about Jace and I almost fucking in the hall, or if Jace had told him, sharing the details the way Wolf had with Otis.

It should have made me feel self-conscious. Instead I got wet thinking about them talking about me, about the most intimate details of our sexual encounters.

What the actual fuck kind of reverse voyeurism was that?

“Okay,” Wolf said, pausing to scratch the back of the cat’s neck on his way to the coffee maker.

I was pretty sure I could hear the cat purring across the room.

Otis came into the kitchen from the other direction, like he’d come down the front staircase or had been outside in the front. “Hey.” He put his palm possessively against my cheek and kissed me, like it was totally normal. “Morning, doll.”

I scowled, trying to pretend I was annoyed at his presumptuousness when really I felt all flushed and tingly inside. “Morning.”

Jace turned back to the door and set the cat outside. “See you later, Cat.”

He left the door open and I had to admit, it felt good, being back in the kitchen with the three unfairly hot men who’d turned my world upside down, being in the house that my mom had left me with the sun shining and the birds singing through the open door to the old stone terrace.

I could hear the falls rushing beyond the edge of the cliff, and I realized that I was happy here, that I didn’t need my old life filled with girls’ nights out and shopping with Cassie and Sarai and nice meals at Chasen’s.

Not good. Not good at all.

Because temporarily setting aside the fact that the Beasts had killed Blake was a completely different animal from settling in with them for the long haul.

“I’m glad you’re all here,” Jace said.

Wolf leaned against the counter and I wondered, not for the first time, how he made something as simple as a lean look so hot. “Why’s that?”

“I got word from Aloha this morning,” Jace said. “He’s not done, but he had a question.”

“What kind of question?” Otis asked.

“Wanted to know if we knew anything about the Velvet Rope.”

Wolf scolded. “Why would he want to know that?”

“Apparently it turned up in Calvin’s email,” Jace said.

I was obviously missing something. “What’s the Velvet Rope?”

“It’s a sex club in the city,” Otis said like it was obvious.

“What does Calvin have to do with a sex club in the city?” Just saying it was gross. I did not want to think about my dad’s body man — the guy who’d kidnapped me for my dad — in a sex club.

“Not sure,” Jace said. “Aloha said the messages were cryptic, which was why he called. Wanted to know if we want him to dig deeper.”

“Hell yes, we do,” Wolf said.

And I understood why: if my dad was involved in trafficking girls, a sex club didn’t seem very far removed. Maybe they were trafficking the girls through this place.

“I’ll tell him,” Jace said. “Maybe he can find a connection in some of Calvin’s other shit. Although…”

Wolf looked at him. “You got another idea?”

“Just something we could add to the mix,” Jace said.

“Like what?” Otis asked.

“He wants to go,” Wolf said. “To the Velvet Rope.”

I stared at Wolf, then looked at Jace. “What? Why?”

Jace shrugged. “Just seems smart to scope the place out ourselves while we wait for Aloha to dig through the data. Only so much words on a screen are going to be able to tell us.”

Otis shrugged. “I’m in.”

“Okay,” Wolf said. “I’ll bite.”

Jace turned his gaze on me. “What about you, princess? You in?”

I wanted to believe the thrill that ran through my body was fear, but the truth was, I was turned on by the idea of a sex club. Or put more accurately, I was turned on by the idea of going to a sex club with the Beasts.

I should think this through. I was barely not a virgin. A sex club might be a bit much.

But there was a challenge in Jace’s eyes, something that said he didn’t think I’d do it.

That I was still Daisy Hammond. Blake’s little sister. Rich girl. Princess.

Fuck that.

“I’m in.”