Craved By My Husband's Best Friend
Marissa was the perfect wife. She gave up her high powered corporate career to build a beautiful life supporting her husband, Ethan—home cooked meals, a curated home, and unwavering loyalty. But her world shatters when Ethan confesses to a four-month affair, not out of guilt, but because his mistress is blackmailing him for $300 million.
His solution is as cold as his betrayal: “Cheat back. Get even. Stay married.”
Fueled by rage and humiliation, Marissa agrees. Determined to reclaim her power, she steps into the night seeking one reckless moment to erase the sting of his betrayal. It leads her to an exclusive masquerade club, where identities are hidden and desire rules. Behind a mask, she meets a commanding stranger—mysterious, intoxicating, and unlike anyone she has ever known.
For one night, he sees her not as a wife, but as a woman with fire still burning inside her. Their connection is intense, unforgettable. By morning, Marissa disappears, intending to leave it as nothing more than a calculated act of revenge.
But some secrets refuse to stay buried.
When she returns to the corporate world, Marissa comes face to face with the man behind the mask....Xavier Sterling, her former boss, a ruthless billionaire CEO… and Ethan’s best friend.
Xavier recognizes her. He knows her in ways no one else does and he knows exactly what Ethan did.
Now, Marissa is trapped in a dangerous web. Her husband is desperate to keep her, his mistress wants her gone, and Xavier is determined to claim the one woman he was never meant to touch.
As power, betrayal, and desire collide, Marissa must decide....will she remain a pawn in their game or become the one who controls it?
Baca
Chapter: 89. Relax MarissaMarissa POVSo We Basically decided to inform Alina immediately we came back from our first date, I decided to break the news personally to her and her reaction was everything."Marissa, Are you sure you are not under duress?""If you are which I am ninety percent sure you must be...you should know you have rights as a citizen to sue him and put his ass to jail where he probably belongs....""Oh Alina you can say that to am innocent and law abiding citizen especially if he is your brother." I said."Xavier and Innocent shouldn't exist in the same sentence honey. He is the most cunninest man I have ever known and he stops at nothing to get what he wants.... But what do I know girl...what do I know...""Alina,I think you need to take deep breaths in order to absorb this information..." "Yeah you are right can you repeat what he said again? I need to process this information over and over again till it sinks in." She asked this time more calmly..I did and her voice next immediately sta
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24
Chapter: 88. The ProposalXavier POVThe private rooftop garden connected to my office was bathed in the cool twilight, the city lights below winking on like scattered diamonds. I was pacing up and down completely panicking.. I had invited Marissa up here for just one thing... To confess my undying love to her.But the thing is...I am scared no I think terrified is the exact word to describe this.Marissa stood near the edge, her slender fingers wrapped around a warm mug of tea. The cool breeze tugged at her Auburn hair, bringing with it the faint scent of floral perfume that had been driving me insane all afternoon.I stepped up behind her, taking a slow breath to steady the rapid thud of my heart against my ribs. Tonight was the night. I couldn't keep standing in the shadows, playing two different men while watching her navigate her world alone. I needed to claim my place beside her in the light, as myself."You look like you are miles away, Miss Vance," I murmured, my voice dropping into a low, quiet regist
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-21
Chapter: 87. Count Me InMarissa POVMy breath hitched in my chest as my running shoes slapped against the damp concrete, the sharp morning air biting at my lungs. I was on my third mile through the city, my mind still a chaotic, tangled storm after everything that had happened. My legs were burning, sweat trickling down the back of my neck under my high ponytail, but I kept pushing the pace...desperate to burn off the restless, electric energy humming beneath my skin.I needed to clear my head. I needed a second to ground myself before heading into the office and facing Xavier again.Up ahead, the familiar golden glow of my favorite corner café appeared through the morning fog. Digging my heels in, I slowed my sprint into a jog, my heart hammering against my ribs as I pushed open the glass doors and ducked inside, panting softly.The warm, rich aroma of roasted espresso beans hit me instantly. I leaned against the counter, catching my breath while the barista prepped my usual order, before heading toward my
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-21
Chapter: 86. Pay Up MarissaXavier POVI sat at my desk, staring at the financial reports spread in front of me, but I couldn't focus on a single number. All I could think about was Marissa. The memory of her laughing under the afternoon light, holding the red roses I gave her, kept looping in my head.A quiet knock at the door broke my thoughts. Julian walked in, holding his digital tablet."Your schedule for the rest of the evening is clear, Mr. Sterling," Julian said, his voice smooth and professional. Even with that I could hear the tiredness in his voice, he obviously needs a break to relax."Though if you were wondering why the floor is emptying out early, the team is heading down to the rooftop bar on Fifth. They are celebrating Marissa's win on the Kensington project."I paused, leaning back in my leather chair. "A celebration? Why wasn't I informed?"Julian raised an eyebrow, a small, sarcastic smirk touching his lips. "It was announced in the general group chat, sir. Technically, everyone was invited—i
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-21
Chapter: 85. Make WayMarissa POV The glass doors of Sterling Architecture parted with a crisp and deep hum as Marissa stepped into the sunlit atrium, her heels tapping out a confident rhythm against the polished travertine floor. A genuine, bright smile tugged at her lips, her chin held high as she carried her leather briefcase toward the central elevator bank.The moment her boots clicked past the reception desk, the entire floor erupted into a barrage of loud, echoing applause."She is here! The woman of the hour!" a senior drafter called out, raising a mug of steam toward her.Marissa paused, her chest swelling with a sudden, overwhelming wave of emotion. Colleagues spilled out from their cubicles....architects who had been at the firm for a decade, junior designers, and project managers...all clapping, cheering, and raising their voices in congratulations. The Kensington account wasn't just a win, it was the most fiercely contested contract of the quarter, a deal half the senior staff had been vying
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-21
Chapter: 84. Entire NightXavier POVThe room was completely quiet except for the sound of our heavy breathing and the distant hum of the city far below.I hovered over Marissa, easing my weight down onto the mattress with deliberate, agonizingly slow care. Every muscle in my arms was locked tight as I held myself up, terrified that if I lost control for even a second, I would hurt her. I leaned down, kissing her brow, her temple, and then the corner of her lips with a tenderness that felt almost foreign to me.I moved into her slowly, taking my time, watching her face for any sign of discomfort or pain."Xav..." Marissa breathed, her hands coming up to rest on my biceps."I am right here," I whispered against her skin, keeping the pace soft and steady. I brought my hand down to smooth back the damp strands of hair clinging to her forehead. "Tell me if it's too much. I don't want to rush you."She looked up at me through the dim light, her almond eyes searching mine behind the silver frame. Instead of the deli
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-17
Chapter: 63. Coming For YouIVORY POVMom did not ask me about the growl.She listened to the whole story in the kitchen, with her hands wrapped around a mug, her face as still as a lake. When I finished, she sat quiet for a long time. Then she stood, crossed the room, and hugged me so tightly my ribs creaked."It's coming," she whispered into my hair. "I can feel it. I told you your blood knows.""Mom, it scared me.""It should." She pulled back and cupped my face. "The first time always does. But you didn't run, Ivory. You stood there and you held your ground. That's how a wolf is born."She made me tea. She sat with me until the cup was empty. And when I finally went upstairs, the house was quiet and the moon was already climbing.I stood in my doorway for a while, listening to the wolves settle down for the night.Then I closed the door behind me and decided I would think about the growl tomorrow.A soft knock rattled my door before I'd even taken two steps. Lia's voice whispered through the wood, "Sweethear
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: 62. Say It ProperlyDANIEL POV I followed my father's rules. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I ate three meals a day, even when the food tasted like paper, and I slept every night, even when the ceiling kept me company until four. I ran along the river at dawn, until my lungs burned. I went to the gym. I answered Blake's texts. I kept all of it going, mechanically, like a man winding a clock he didn't believe in. Because my father had said, keep your friends close, and for once, I decided to obey him. I was finishing my third set of pull-ups at the gym on Friday morning when I heard Blake's voice booming across the weights room. "There he is! The ghost of the Connor mansion! You are harder to find than an eclipse Daniel." He came lumbering toward me with Gav in tow, both of them in ridiculous neon workout gear. Blake was carrying a laptop under one arm like a football. Gav had a coffee in each hand and an expression that said they were up to something. "We need to show you something," Gav sa
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: 61. SEVEN WORDSIVORY POVTwelve days after Gabriel planted the roses, the cuttings put out their first two leaves.I knew because I checked every morning before dawn, on my way to the clearing, kneeling in the wet grass in the half dark just to see whether anything had changed. Two small, crumpled, bright green leaves, the size of a baby's fingernail. Gabriel had come out to check, too, and he had looked at them for a long time without saying anything. Then he had patted my shoulder so hard I almost fell into the flower bed.I took that as a good sign.My body was changing as well, in ways I didn't talk about. The three laps around the lake had turned into five, and I no longer threw up behind the pine tree. I could hold a plank for four minutes. I could hear Mom's footsteps from the porch before she opened the door. When I woke up at night, I sometimes found my hands curled into tight fists on the quilt, with the faint, half-moon marks of my nails pressed deep into my palms.Mom noticed. She never
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: 60. YellowIVORY POVIt took exactly one day.By the next afternoon, the rumor had run through the Academy like fire through dry grass. I knew the moment I walked through the gates. Conversations stopped. Heads turned. Two girls in the stairwell leaned together, whispering, and when they saw me they didn't even pretend to look away."...heard she was out there at midnight with Jude...""...of course she was. That's how they get in, the new ones...""...Rose's daughter. Like mother, like daughter..."My cheeks went hot. I climbed the stairs with my chin up and my eyes straight ahead, and every step felt like walking on glass.In the corridor outside Mr. Henshaw's class, somebody had scrawled on my locker in thick black marker. A single word, in large letters. I won't write it here. It was an ugly one. It was a word Stella would have used.I stood there and looked at it for a long time."Wow," said a voice behind me, bright and sugary. "Who would do something like that?"Evelyn stood with her frie
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: 59. Ice coldDANIEL POVThe stranger took the leather armchair by the window without being asked. He moved like water, no wasted motion, no sound. His grey coat didn't wrinkle when he sat down.My father had not stood. He had not even looked surprised. And that was how I knew that whatever was about to happen in this room had been decided long before I knocked on the door."Sit down, Daniel," he said."I'd rather stand.""Then stand. But breathe. You are very pale."I pulled out the chair and sat.The man in the grey coat tilted his head. His eyes were a washed-out color somewhere between grey and green, and they were very patient. "You want to find a girl," he said, in that dry-leaf voice. "A girl whose mother took her somewhere and cut every thread behind them.""Yes.""Do you know how hard it is to hide a person in a world this size?""No.""Nearly impossible. Phones. Cameras. Cars. Credit cards." He smiled slightly. "Unless someone very careful, who has done it before, decides to do it properl
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: 58. Watching UsIVORY POVMy ribs healed in two days, just like the nurse had said.I stood in front of the bathroom mirror that morning with my shirt pulled up, poking at my side. There was no bruise. No swelling. Not even a faint yellow shadow where something had cracked. I pressed my fingers against the spot and felt nothing but skin."That's not normal," I told my reflection.My reflection looked back at me with wide green eyes and didn't argue.That night, after Mom's second training session and dinner and a long, stiff hour of pretending to study, I couldn't sleep. The house creaked around me. The wolves were singing again on the ridge. At midnight I pulled on my hoodie, slid down the back stairs in my socks, and let myself out through the kitchen door.I wasn't going anywhere in particular. I just needed air.My feet took me to the training field anyway."You're late," said a voice out of the dark.I nearly screamed. Jude was sitting on top of one of the scarred wooden posts like a cat on a fe
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
The Beta's Forsaken Daughter
"Do you honestly think a cosmic mate bond will stop me from taking the Luna title?" Lyra sneered, twisting the silver heirloom ring that used to belong to my mother.
"Blaine and I already shook hands on this marriage months ago. Fated or not, I am the only choice to rule this pack, and he loves me, not a wolfless glitch like you."
She tapped a manicured nail against his chest, her eyes flashing with malice. "Go ahead, Blaine. Free yourself from this mistake."
Blaine didn't even blink as he looked down at me. "I, Blaine Cross of the Eclipse pack, formally reject you, Isabella Brooks, as my fated mate and future Luna. You are stripped of your name and your place in our bloodline."
Growing up as the Beta’s daughter, Isabella Brooks was supposed to inherit everything. But when her shifting ceremony turned into a public failure, her perfect life fractured into a nightmare. Branded a fraud, stripped of her rank, and treated like a slave by the pack she was born to lead, her breaking point arrives when her own fated mate publicly rejects her for her treacherous stepsister.
Left with nothing, Isabella escapes into the royal Iridescent Wolfe Ball hoping to get eliminated and... finally Freedom at last. But she was in for a big surprise because not only did she manage to make enemies but also caught the eye of the ultimate tyrant: Alpha King Killian Blackwood
What happens when the wolfless exile becomes the King's dangerous secret weapon?
Baca
Chapter: 118. New. Silver. Quiet.Isabella POV"Hold still," said Clover, through a mouthful of pins."I am holding still.""You are breathing.""People breathe!""Not when I am measuring." She tugged the tape tight around my waist. "There. Done. You are the same size as last month. Which is very rude, considering how much you eat."I laughed. Wren, tucked warm and happy in my chest, said, She is right. We ate three pies yesterday.Two and a half.Rounded up.It was the sixth day after the full moon. The sun was bright, and the palace smelled like fresh bread and sawdust, because Aelion's soldiers and the palace carpenters had been rebuilding the north gate all week. Somewhere downstairs, a very loud argument was going on about napkins."The wedding is in spring," Clover announced, sticking her tape measure in her apron. "That is what the Princess said this morning. On the west balcony. Under the arch.""Of course it is.""Spring! That is five months! I need to make forty dresses.""You do not need to make forty dress
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Chapter: 117. Not YetKillian POVThe sun rose over a palace full of broken glass.I stood on the north wall at dawn, with a blanket around my shoulders and a bandage on my ribs, looking down at what was left of the gate. A watchtower lay in pieces. A long black scorch mark ran across the stones like a scar. Soldiers in red and gold coats were already clearing rubble, and the smell of smoke hung over everything."He is gone," said Marcus, coming up beside me."Where?""North. Over the mountains. Two of Aelion's scouts followed him as far as the pass." He rubbed his eyes. "He left a trail of burning pine. One of his eyes is gone, Alpha. The Princess's arrow took it.""She hit it?""Dead center. In the old scar."I let out a breath that was half a laugh. "She said she was bad at aiming.""She says a lot of things."We stood in silence a moment."He will come back," I said."Yes.""With whatever is left of his rogues.""I would be surprised if he did not." Marcus straightened. "But not this season. He is hur
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Chapter: 116. Hello DariusIsabella POVIt did not hurt the way I expected.It hurt worse.The moonlight pouring through the ceiling did not feel like light at all. It felt like a thousand cold hooks sinking under my skin, in my chest and my wrists and my spine, pulling. Pulling something out of me, gently and steadily, the way you would pull a thread from a seam.I screamed. I could not stop screaming.Somewhere far away, I heard Killian roaring my name. I heard Matilda chanting in a low singsong. I heard Darius sobbing.And inside me, in the silver hallway I had walked so many times, I felt Wren howl.Isabella!The hallway flickered. I was suddenly standing in it, barefoot on the warm stone. The iron door stood open. The chains had fallen away. But across the threshold, coiled around the frame like a snake, was the thin black line, and it was growing.It was not thin anymore. It was thick as my arm. It writhed and tightened, dripping purple light, sinking black roots into the walls and floor. And at its cente
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Chapter: 115. Why?Isabella POVThe moon chamber looked exactly as it had on the night of my wedding ritual. The black obsidian floor. The wolf runes carved into the walls. The great round glass ceiling, open to the sky, with the full moon hanging in it like a silver coin.But the beauty was gone. The runes glowed a sick purple. The air tasted like metal and old flowers. And in the center of the floor, drawn in thin black lines, was a circle as wide as a carriage, filled with tiny crescents.I was lying in it.I could not move. Thin purple threads ran from my wrists, my ankles and my throat down into the stone, holding me like a fly in a web. I could breathe. I could blink. I could speak, if I tried hard enough. But my body felt like a heavy glove.Wren, I whispered, for the hundredth time.Silence.I turned my head. Barely, an inch at a time.Across the circle, kneeling on the floor, was Darius.He looked worse than he had in Valerie's description. His clothes hung off him in rags. His hair was matted.
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Chapter: 114. ReloadKillian POVI had never been so afraid in my life.Not when my mother died. Not when Darius ran. Not even when I fell off that cliff with Vaelin Frost's claws in my chest. This fear was different. It had nothing to do with swords or fire. It was a thin, cold wire of terror pulled tight between my ribs and the tower, and it hummed with one sound over and over.Isabella."Alpha!" Marcus shouted. "The gates!"I was already running. I had shifted halfway across the garden, and my wolf tore across the grass faster than any man could follow. Behind me, Aelion's soldiers were pouring out of the barracks in red coats, shouting orders. Valerie ran at Aelion's side, her cloak flying, a little glass jar clutched in her fist."The tower!" I roared in my mind, to anyone who could hear. Someone get to the tower!Thane's men are already running, said Marcus, in the pack link. Go! We will hold the wall!I did not slow down. The bond was screaming now. Pain. Cold. A sudden, awful silence where her wol
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Chapter: 113. Your Majesty.Isabella POVThe west tower smelled like old stone and candle smoke.It was a round room at the top of a winding staircase, with narrow windows facing the forest and a ring of low beds against the wall. Someone had hung bundles of dried herbs from the beams. Shelves held jars of salve, rolls of clean linen and a row of tiny glass bottles. It looked like a place where people got better.I sat on the edge of a cot in my plain gray dress, with my hands folded in my lap. Across the room, Winifred Aldous was snoring gently in a rocking chair, her stick across her knees. Twelve guards stood along the walls, silent and straight. Thane was by the door, arms crossed, eyes sharp.Wren paced inside my ribs. It is too quiet, she kept saying. It is much too quiet.They are good guards.I do not like it.You do not like anything tonight.I like Killian.Yes. I know.I rubbed my wrist. The little black crescent had not stopped itching since sunset. Under my skin, it pulsed in slow beats, cold as a d
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-19
Masuk
