Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

32. Daisy

Three days later I entered my room to find a black box with the biggest, silkiest violet ribbon I’d ever seen sitting on my bed.

I looked around, half expecting to find the anonymous gift giver lurking in the shadows, but the room was empty.

I approached the bed suspiciously, wondering if my stalker was back, but that didn’t make sense. Otis had installed more cameras on the path leading to the house, ensuring no one could come up the driveway without the Beasts knowing.

This was obviously from one of them.

I sat on the bed and held the box in my lap, trying to guess which one. The box was light but obviously expensive, the ribbon expertly tied. It didn’t scream Otis, whose love language was acts of service.

Otis showed his feelings for me by taking care of my car and fixing the antique watch that had belonged to my grandmother. He kept my gas tank full and my oil changed, kept the Mustang purring like Jace’s cat, who I’d seen a lot more of in the days since I’d first discovered Jace feeding him in the kitchen.

And Wolf had been careful around me, was obviously giving me space to process the Blake thing, to decide if I still wanted him in my life as more than just a roommate while we figured out the details of my dad’s trafficking ring.

Which meant the present was from Jace.

I pulled at the ribbon and watched it unfurl, then set it on the bed while I lifted the box’s lid.

There was a sea of violet tissue paper inside. At first I thought the box was empty, some kind of joke designed to make me think Jace had given me something when really he was still an asshole.

But as I got to the bottom of the tissue paper, I spotted a piece of black silk.

I pulled it out of the box and realized it was a tiny black wrap dress, so small it might have been a shirt.

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.