Page 114 of Crashed (Driven 3)
My heart is pounding and my hands are trembling with excitement. I know the answer. He’s referring to the Penthouse where we had sex for the first time after the Merit Rum party, but nothing prepares me for what is inside the first box.
My breath catches and I instinctively lift a hand to cover my mouth before I reach out and lift the lone earring from it. The earring I couldn’t find that night as I tried to gather my dignity and leave the hotel room. The earring I left, never caring if I saw it again or the man now giving it back to me.
Something about the sight of the earring and the fact that he kept it all this time, kept it when I walked out on him, causes so many emotions to surface I can barely speak as I thank Aiden and Austin before picking up the other box and hurrying back to Haddie and our next destination.
I climb in the car, stunned and bewildered, as I tell Haddie about the significance of the earring. She starts to drive to the hotel as I tear open the larger of the two boxes. And the air punches from my lungs from laughter as I look into a box of all the panties that have been ripped off me. Included in the box is another envelope that takes me a minute to open because I’m laughing so hard at the memories they evoke, and the fact that he actually kept them all.
“Geez, woman! You weren’t kidding when you said the man put a dent in your drawers!” she teases as she nods her head, urging me to open the envelope.
I tear it open and a gift card falls out to La Perla for a ridiculous amount of money. The note wrapped around the gift card is worth ten times more to me though. It says: You better buy a large supply, Ry, because I don’t see my need to have you when, where, and how I want stopping any time soon.
The blatant sensuality of his words causes an ache of desire to coil and spring to life between my thighs that I don’t even bother to ignore.
“Wow!” Haddie drawls, breaking me from my less than pure thoughts as she looks over and reads the card while we’re at a stoplight. “The man is that fucking hot and has a dirty, dominant mouth like that?” She draws in a shaky breath. “Shit, Ry … I’d tell him to handcuff me to the bed and let me be his sex slave for life.” She laughs.
I’m feeling a little blown away that this man is most definitely mine. “Who says I haven’t?” I say with a smirk on my lips and a raise of eyebrows.
“Well hot damn!” she says, slapping my thigh. “That’s my girl talking!”
We laugh together and try to figure out what the next clue at the hotel is going to be until she pulls up into the valet circle. “I’m assuming I’ll be right back,” I tell her as I climb out and jog into the lobby before I suddenly stop. I just can’t go up to the Penthouse and knock on the door.
I head over to the front desk and when I approach, a woman eyes me up and down. “Ms. Thomas, I presume?”
“Yes …” I reply, a little astounded she knows who I am.
“This way please,” she says, leading me to a private elevator on the side of the lobby. She takes out a key card and presses it to the scanner causing the door to open. “There you go,” she says, her stoicism breaking as she grins broadly at me before walking back to her desk.
“Thank you,” I call out to her before stepping in. The familiar décor inside the car causes memories to flood back from our first time, my nerves heighten from the dark promise of the words Colton said to me as we made the same ascent in a different elevator. The car dings when I reach the top floor and I exit, unable to fight my smirk over the desperation-filled, clumsy exit we made that night.
I knock on the Penthouse door and hear a giggle from behind it as the knob starts to turn. Zander opens the door with Avery standing behind them, both have beaming smiles as they look at me. And the carefree giggle that falls from Zander’s mouth warms my overflowing heart even more.
“Hi, guys! Let me guess, you have a clue for me?”
Zander nods his head frantically as he looks over at Avery to see if it’s okay to give me what’s in his hands.
“Hey, Rylee.”
“Hi!”
“Okay, our clue is, what one word first comes to your mind when you see what Zander has?”
I look down as Zander produces a small black box from behind his back and holds it out to me. I look down at it, as perplexed as the look on Avery’s face, until Zander flips it over.
And then I laugh.
The box contains a fire engine red pocket square for a tuxedo. My senses are suddenly assaulted with every sensation Colton evoked from me in the limo that night, when we were overdressed and underdressed. But that can’t be the answer because that’s two words. “Anticipation!” I almost shout when the word hits me like lightning, images of that more than memorable evening flashing through my mind.
“Bingo!” Avery cries out as Zander hops up and down.
“Good job, Ry!” he says as he holds out another box and envelope to me. I look at him with a furrowed brow that has him giggling again before I take it from him.
“This is for me?” I ask him.
“Uh-huh!” he says, nodding his head.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes! Just open it!” he says with amused exasperation.
