Lahat ng Kabanata ng OFF LIMIT: FOURTEEN NIGHTS WITH MY HUSBAND'S BEST FRIENDS : Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

Chapter 151Zac called when the cab was four streets from Caroline's building.I answered on the first ring because I'd been staring at my phone since I got in the car, turning it over and over in my hands without realizing I was doing it.The sound of it ringing made my heart jump before I even saw his name on the screen."Stay where you are," he said, and his voice was wrong immediately, tight and controlled in a way that told me he was working very hard to keep it that way. "Don't come back to the apartment yet. Just stay wherever you are right now."I sat up straighter. "Zac, what happened?""Caroline was released about twenty minutes ago." He paused, and in that pause I felt the shape of whatever was coming before he said it. That was before I visited Adrain. "She and Damien were on their way back, she'd wanted to surprise you. But some women attacked them on their way. We don't know who they were, nobody got a clear look. They've both been taken to the hospital."The cab felt ve

Chapter 153"That she should be ashamed. That women like her were the reason good men ended up alone." His voice had gone flat in the way that meant he was controlling it very deliberately. "I tried to pull them off her and I didn't see the weapon until it was too late."I was crying by then and I hadn't noticed when it started, only became aware of it when Damien's expression shifted into something that looked faintly panicked, the way it always did when he was faced with a crying woman and no clear instructions for what to do about it."The doctor said she's going to be fine," he said quickly. "She's not seriously hurt, Elowen. She's just exhausted and her body shut down. They said she can probably be discharged today.""This was Adrian," I said.Damien went quiet."I know it was him," I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "The timing, the way it was done, the women saying exactly what his video made people believe about Caroline — it fits perfectly with how he operates,

Chapter 155 The apartment felt colder after Adrian left.I stood in the hallway for a full minute after the elevator doors closed, listening to the faint mechanical hum fade away. Thursdays were his long days—client dinners, late strategy sessions, the kind of nights that stretched until the city lights dimmed to almost nothing. Midnight. Sometimes later.I had hours.I walked back to the bedroom slowly, each step deliberate, like I was giving myself time to change my mind.I didn’t.I sat on the edge of the bed and opened my phone. The message I’d typed earlier stared back at me, unsent.*I’m so tired of all this. Why won’t you just let me leave? What do I have to do to be free? How do I end it all?*My thumb hovered on the keyboard, then I hit send.The little typing indicator appeared almost immediately. Stopped. Started again. Stopped.Then his name lit up the screen—Incoming Call.I watched it ring. Once. Twice. Three times.I let it go to voicemail.The silence that followed f

Chapter 157Elowen I looked up immediately, shock evident in my face like it was my first time ever hearing about it.He wasn't looking at me but I knew he could see me through his peripheral, and that was all I needed."She was twelve and I was eight, I came home from school and I found her," he said, his voice was even and quiet the way voices got when someone had said something so many times inside their own head that the words had worn smooth.Except I knew he hadn't said this to anyone, I knew that from the article and from everything else I had found, and the smoothness wasn't from repetition, it was from years of carrying it alone and learning to hold it without shaking. "When I got there, it was already too late. I couldn't save her."The room was very quiet.I looked at him and I felt the surprise move through my face the way I needed it to, the widening of my eyes, the slight parting of my lips, but underneath it, underneath all of it, I felt something I had not accounted f

Chapter 159Elowen "Kian." His name came out like a plea."I know, baby. I'll take care of you." The endearment made my stomach flip.His hand slipped lower and cupped me through the lace. I gasped out loud. He groaned like the feel of me was enough to undo him."Fuck, you're soaked." The words sounded like they'd been punched out of him.I was. I could feel it. The wetness. The heat. The way my body was already responding to him like it had been waiting for this just as long as he had.He pressed the heel of his palm against me and rubbed in a slow circle. I moaned. My hips rocked up into his hand automatically. Chasing the friction. Needing more. Not caring how desperate I looked.This was what I wanted. What I'd planned for. But lying here under him, feeling his hands on me, feeling the way my body was already on fire, I realized the plan hadn't accounted for this. Hadn't accounted for how much I would want it. How much I would need it.How much I would enjoy it."That's it. Sho