Limit

by McAdams, Molly

  But I never got that cold feeling that usually crept over me when something was wrong—or about to go wrong.

  I racked the slide, palmed the unused round, and was putting the safety back on just before I heard it.

  “Momma?” Lexi’s groggy voice was loud enough that it stopped me mid-step.

  I rocked back, waiting.

  “Momma. Momma!”

  I barreled through the door of their room and took in what was happening, my hand on the slide and finger on the safety again.

  But as soon as I had both of them in my sights—once I was sure there wasn’t a threat—I dropped my arm and pressed the gun tight to my side to keep it from Lexi’s view as I hurried to her.

  She was kneeling on the bed next to Sutton, shaking her shoulder and trying to wake her.

  And Sutton? Sutton was tense and trembling and whispering what sounded like pleas. Her chest was jerking with rapid, forceful breaths, and her face was pinched, as if she were in pain.

  I touched Lexi’s shoulder and then reached past her to wrap my hand around one of Sutton’s tightly clenched fists.

  My mouth was opened to say her name when her gasp tore through the room and her eyes flew open.

  And in those few seconds, terror and anguish were etched there before she was able to focus on us.

  “You’re okay,” I said softly. “It was a dream.”

  Her eyes darted from me to Lexi, nodding as she did. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  Lexi bent closer to her mom. “Were your dreams really scary or only a little scary this time?”

  “They were nothing,” Sutton said, her voice shaky and weak. “It was nothing.”

  Her hands finally unclenched below mine and then she was pushing up so she was sitting.

  A frantic-sounding laugh left her. “I didn’t realize we were having a late-night party. I would’ve been ready if I’d known.”

  Lexi turned to me and climbed to her feet on the bed so she could whisper in my ear, “Momma has bad dreams. A lot. But she never says so.”

  “Alexis,” Sutton hissed, reaching for her daughter and pulling her back to the bed. “That isn’t something you tell people, understand?”

  Lexi’s head lowered in embarrassment. “I understand.”

  “I’m really sorry you came in here. You shouldn’t have—”

  “Sutton.” I waited until she finally looked at me, the first time she’d met my stare since waking, and shook my head. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  She gave me a look. “You’re here to protect us.”

  “Lexi sounded scared. And you—” I snuck a glance at Lexi and then swallowed what I’d been about to say. “It’s what I’m here for.”

  Her mouth curled into a grateful smile, but it wasn’t enough to hide the humiliation that still covered her features.

  I ran a hand over Lexi’s head and left without another word. Sutton was so damn proud, and I could tell my being there was making it harder for her to keep it together.

  I dropped to the couch and put my gun back in its spot underneath, but I knew if I laid down or closed my eyes, all I would see was the pain and the fear and her strained, labored breaths.

  A groan built in my chest as I stood again and began pacing the length of the living room.

  Over and over as I wondered what it was that Sutton saw in her sleep.

  As my mind went wild with possibilities.

  As my need to find and put an end to the man who called himself her husband grew.

  To make it worse, she didn’t realize what he’d been doing was abusive.

  Or she refused to acknowledge it.

  Brainwashed. She was brainwashed by the worst kind of man, and I wanted to erase everything he’d ever put in her head.

  I looked up when the door to their room clicked open in the otherwise silent suite.

  Sutton’s eyes sought out mine as she gently closed the door behind her before walking toward me.

  Unsure.

  Slow.

  But moving forward, nonetheless.

  She stopped a few feet away, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Of course, I just couldn’t go back to sleep.” Her head listed to the side. “I didn’t want to wake Lexi again.”

  I watched the way her body jerked every few seconds, interrupting the constant trembling, and then I walked over to the couch to pick up the blanket I’d been using earlier.

  When I turned, she was a handful of feet away and moving closer, once again slow and unsure.

  As though she were testing the boundaries, seeing what I was going to do. Where I was going to draw our line in the sand this time.

  I just closed the distance and draped the blanket around her, holding it tightly together in front of her longer than necessary before finally stepping back toward the couch.

  Once she was sitting near me, I asked, “How often does it happen?”

  Her forehead creased. “Being cold?”

  She knew that wasn’t what I was asking, just as we both knew that chill had nothing to do with the temperature.

  With a subtle shake, I said, “The dreams.”

  “Oh.” A shield, made of little more than a faint shrug and a dismissive laugh flew up around her. “It was really nothing. I told you.”

  “Sutton.”

  Her brows lifted and a fake smile pulled at her lips, but her eyes didn’t meet mine.

  I leaned forward and pressed my hand under her chin until she looked at me. “You’re a bad fucking liar.”

  Her jaw tightened against me—stubborn and prideful.

  After a few seconds, she released a weighted breath and admitted, “Once a week, sometimes twice. More since we started living in the motels.”

  I dropped my hand and folded my arms across my chest so I wouldn’t reach out for her again. “Tell me.”

  She looked like she would argue, but just as quickly, she sighed and leaned against the couch, pulling the blanket tighter around her. “It’s the same thing every time. Well, more or less. It’s being chased.”

  “By him?”

  She nodded through a full-body shiver. “It’s never the thought or the feeling, it’s a memory. Tonight was from the first time it happened, right before Lexi turned one.”

  She didn’t go into detail, and I didn’t need her to.

  She’d told me enough that I could already imagine what she was seeing.

  I would listen, God knew I would listen to whatever she would tell me. But when Sutton finally accepted what had been happening to her for all these years, she would need someone who would understand what she’d been through.

  “There’s something you should know so you don’t feel ganged up on or betrayed by me when it happens.”

  I felt her tense even though there was at least a foot separating us.

  “When Jess was here, I asked her to talk to you. I didn’t give her specifics,” I hurried to add. “I didn’t tell them anything. But Jess seemed to already understand. And, Sutton, I think you need to talk to someone like Jess about this.”

  “Why? I don’t . . . I told you that I didn’t feel comfortable, and I won’t. What makes you think she is who I need to talk to anyway?”

  “I didn’t tell her your story. I’m not going to tell you hers.”

  A blanket-covered shrug and a dismissive laugh. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not talking with her or anyone else about it. It isn’t anyone’s business, and it isn’t a big deal.”

  “Sutton, stop.” One of my hands betrayed me by reaching out for her before I was able to force it to my side. “Everyone has shields, and yours are becoming more obvious with each day. You do it to make something huge seem like nothing. You do it to brush things away and come out looking unharmed. And I can tell by that horrified look on your face that your mom probably does it too.”

  “Oh Christ.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched into a smile. “You aren’t hard to figure ou
t, Sutton.” I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “But I know that if I were to tell you exactly how fucked-up those games were . . . how gaslighted you’ve been . . . you wouldn’t hear me. You need someone who has been there.”

  “It’s private, Conor. What happens in a home is meant to stay in the home.”

  “You told me.”

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. After a moment, a jagged exhale left her. “That’s . . . it’s—”

  Different.

  The unspoken word hung in the air between us as if she’d shouted it.

  “I’m not asking you to go public with it. But you were told to allow and accept something until you believed it was normal, something that never should’ve happened. And, right now, only your subconscious seems to understand what you don’t or won’t.”

  Minutes came and went, and the silence between us only grew.

  Indecision warred on Sutton’s face until she finally let her head fall onto the couch with a soft bounce.

  Her eyes shifted to mine, but her expression was so impassive that I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had a normal dream or nightmare,” I admitted, shattering the silence. “It’s like you, I see parts of my life played out instead.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Usually the latter. Beck . . . I see Beck a lot.” I forced out a rough breath and looked up into her curious stare. “He was murdered right in front of me.”

  “Oh God. Conor . . .”

  “Kieran was shot once, and then Beck pushed him out of the way. Took the rest.”

  I’d stood there, torn, because Kieran had been yelling for me to go save Jess. Not realizing what had happened to his best friend and my brother—that he had been dying on the grass. And I’d known there was nothing I could do to save him.

  I would’ve given anything in that moment to take his place.

  “I’m . . . I’m so sorry.” One of Sutton’s hands slipped into mine as if it belonged there. “Was this on a case? What happened to the person who shot them?”

  I considered what to tell her.

  For asking so much truth from her, I knew it was hypocritical to withhold so much of my own.

  But my truth was a dark life that she was just learning existed. That she was just beginning to fear. The last thing I needed was for her to be afraid of me.

  “Uh, no. No, it wasn’t. And he was killed.”

  Savagely, by Kieran.

  Seconds after Beck was shot. Minutes before I emptied an entire magazine into the Holloway boss. And hours before we permanently shut down the Holloway Gang. A decade-long dream of Kieran and Beck’s that Beck didn’t live to see.

  Sutton seemed to accept my vague response because, after a moment, she whispered, “You really miss him.”

  My chest moved with a pained huff. “Yeah. Yeah, we were close. Our parents died when I was eleven. We didn’t have anywhere to go, and Beck was afraid we’d get split up if we went into the system, so we lived on the streets for a couple of years until we were found by—” I choked back Mickey, the Holloway boss’s, name. “Well, Kieran was one of them. They took us in, and we were with them until the day Beck died just over a year ago.”

  “That’s why you trust him so much,” she said, as if finally understanding something.

  “Kieran?” I dipped my head. “I know how he looks. I know how Jess looks too,” I said with a soft laugh. “Kieran never looks anything less than ready to kill the next person who walks in front of him, and Jess looks wild and a little crazy, but they have their reasons. Just as I do, just as you do. But they’re the best. No one I’d rather have on my side.”

  “If I’ve learned anything this week, it’s how deceiving looks can be. And if you’re telling me they’re the best, then I have no doubts it’s true.” Her lips curved into a thoughtful smile. “Jess said something similar about you. So did Einstein. You all must mean a lot to each other.”

  “Yeah, it’s a weird family that shouldn’t work for so many reasons. But it does.”

  A soft laugh sounded in her throat. “I don’t know what it’s like to have friends like that. To have anyone like that, really.”

  “Sutton . . .”

  Another one of her shields formed around her. “Sorry, that was . . . I’m sorry. Anyway—”

  “Sutton.”

  “What did you do?” she asked before I could continue. “Before ARCK. You, Beck, Kieran, and whoever else took you in?”

  We were in the Irish-American mob.

  Our boss was a sick fuck who I was happy to put into the ground.

  Beck sold drugs for him. I counted and ran and did all sorts of shit until the time came where I had to keep his daughter safe from our rival gang. Kieran was—and still is—one of the most feared assassins in the country.

  “I protected women.”

  Sutton’s brows lifted in surprise. “So, the same thing?”

  My head moved in a slow denial.

  The surprise faded to wonder and curiosity. “Why do I feel like there’s so much that you aren’t telling me?”

  “You wouldn’t be this close to me if you knew.”

  Her stare fell to my lips. When she spoke, her confession was so soft that I wasn’t sure she meant to say it aloud. “I’m not sure anything could make me want to be farther than I am now.”

  A groan rumbled in my chest. “Sutton . . .”

  Those wide eyes slowly shifted to mine. “Yes?”

  “Fuck.” I dragged a hand over my face and tried to remember every reason I needed her to leave.

  “She’s it, or she isn’t.”

  I couldn’t think past that first one with her face so close to mine.

  It would be so easy to lean in. To pull her to me.

  To press my mouth to hers. To taste her.

  To hear her sigh my name . . .

  Fuck.

  “I think you should go . . .” The words were strained and rough, and I wasn’t sure how I managed to say them at all when I was imagining all the ways to make her stay. “You should try to get some sleep.”

  She quickly blinked, as if my words had brought her out of a daze, and jerked back.

  Embarrassment flooded her face. Her lips parted, but no words left them.

  I sat there, locked in indecision.

  Wanting to take it back. Wanting to keep her there.

  Knowing she needed to leave and that it was dangerous to even entertain those thoughts and wants and fucking needs.

  The second her foot touched the floor, I grabbed her arm, hauled her back to the couch, and brought her mouth down onto mine.

  Her reaction was instant.

  Her body shifted so she was in my lap and relaxed against me. Her hands moved to drag through my beard and then weave into my hair. Her lips parted, and a whimper climbed up her throat when I teased her tongue with my own.

  Fucking ecstasy.

  I dragged my hands down the curves of her body, gripping the top of those damn sleep shorts that had been taunting me for days and groaning when she rocked forward over my hardening dick.

  I moved across her jaw and down her throat in slow kisses and teasing bites, listening to her moans and her hitched breaths as I did.

  Making sure I wasn’t pushing her too far.

  Knowing we needed to stop and not giving a fuck.

  I grabbed her hands and gently pulled them from where they’d been locked in my hair to behind her back. Taking both her wrists in one hand, I slowly pulled until she was slightly arched, keeping my eyes on hers as I did.

  Heat.

  Need.

  Trust.

  “If you want to stop, we stop. No questions.”

  She rocked against me in response, a whimper escaping her parted lips.

  Using my free hand, I pressed the tips of my fingers to her stomach and slowly dragged her shirt up. Inch by inch, waiting for her to put a stop to this, waiting for any sign that this was too much.


  As soon as the shirt was over her breasts, Sutton leaned forward, only to be stopped by the grip I had on her wrists.

  A sound of frustration built in her chest. Passion burned in her eyes. “Let me kiss you.”

  The corner of my mouth curled up.

  I slowly pulled down on her arms again until she was arched more than before, her breasts fully exposed to me.

  Full. Fucking perfect.

  I leaned forward and captured one of her nipples in my mouth and groaned when she shivered against me.

  “Conor, please.” The tips of her fingers curled against my hand, pressing tight as she pushed down on my lap and rocked harder than before. “Oh, God, please.”

  Sliding my hand into both of hers, I pulled down farther still and dragged my mouth from her breast in a line down her stomach.

  Without warning, I released my hold on her, wrapped an arm around her hips, pressed the other hand to her back, and stood.

  Her shocked laugh ripped through the room as she struggled to wrap her arms and legs around me, and then her mouth was on mine and she was sighing against the kiss.

  I paused to close the door softly behind us and then took those last steps to the bed, and gently laid her in the middle of it.

  With one last kiss, I pushed back to search her face.

  Bright. Excited. Free.

  So damn beautiful.

  “Tell me where your head is,” I begged.

  Her eyes skated over my face before meeting mine again. “Wondering why there was ever a part of my life that didn’t consist of you.” She shifted up to press her lips to mine. Soft. Teasing.

  I captured her mouth then, telling her everything in that kiss that I couldn’t say with words.

  That I was afraid we were going to hurt each other.

  That allowing ourselves to do this was only going to make our fallout so much worse.

  Because there was no doubt in my head that there was going to be fallout.

  I had been sure I wouldn’t be able to handle the heartbreak that came with Einstein. But this? There wasn’t any coming back from it. I should’ve known that, the second I fell for anyone at all, there wouldn’t be.

  Especially if it was for a woman I was already so set on hating . . . and couldn’t.

  I pushed away when she started tugging my shirt up my body, finished tearing it off, and then let it fall to the floor.