After giving up being a billionaire's mistress

A thirty-year-old man’s wants are never complicated. They’re plain, straightforward, right out in the open.

Sariah Allen had lost all track of time. Every muscle in her body felt like it had been wrung dry, pinned under a suffocating heat that left her gasping just to catch her breath. Emory Kelly knew her body better than she knew it herself—every sensitive spot, every trigger, every touch was deliberate, perfectly calculated to unravel her.

"Starting tomorrow, clear my whole schedule. I’m taking a week off. Book two tickets to the Caribbean," Emory finally said. He stood beside the bed, slow and steady as he buttoned his shirt, every movement meticulous.

Sariah shifted just a little, trying to ease the dull ache throbbing in her lower back, and a tiny flicker of hope sparked in her chest. "Emory—are you taking me on vacation?"

Emory hesitated. Then he frowned, glancing over at her like she’d said something ridiculous. "I’m going with Adelaide."

The smile froze solid on Sariah’s face. She dropped her gaze, awkwardness curling tight in her throat. "Alright, Mr. Kelly…"

He caught the disappointment etched across her face, so he spoke again. "Sariah, you’re just an orphan. You’re so young. I can’t marry you."

Sariah lifted her head to look at him, her smile cracked and tinged with raw sadness. "I never asked you to marry me… But now that Adelaide’s back from her divorce, isn’t it time we ended this? This thing we’ve been hiding?"

Emory’s jaw tightened. He brushed a hand softly over her hair, then set a black credit card down on the nightstand, his voice soft like he was trying to soothe a tantrum.

"I won’t be the other woman, Mr. Kelly," Sariah said firmly. She already knew—his marriage to Adelaide was inevitable. It was always going to happen.

"It’s too soon to hash this out now. We’ll deal with it when I’m actually at the altar. Don’t throw a scene. Ending this isn’t your call to make." Irritation sharpened his tone. He glanced at her one last time, then walked out, the door clicking shut behind him.

Silence swallowed the room after he left. It pressed in on Sariah, loud enough to thud against her eardrums.

Sariah had been an orphan since she was a kid. Back in college, her beauty turned Jasmine Kelly green with envy, and it spiraled into bullying so brutal it left her permanently deaf in one ear, a finger that never healed right, and faint cigarette burn scars crisscrossing her skin.

A video of the attack went viral, blowing up into a whole scandal. The school had to bring the families in, and it was Emory Kelly who stepped in to handle it for Jasmine.

Emory Kelly was Jasmine’s older brother.

Maybe it was just family pride, or maybe it was simple kindness. Either way, he reached out to the broken, beaten girl Sariah was back then. The first words he ever said to her were: "Don’t worry. I won’t let