All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

AURELIOThe taste of Camille's lips lingered on mine like a brand.I'd kissed her in front of everyone, the cameras, the reporters, Beatrice, her father, and I didn't regret a single second of it. I had done it perfectly so nobody saw it, but nothing would compare to the way Camille had frozen against me, her breath catching, her body going still with that perfect mix of surprise and want.She was trying so hard to hide it now, to smooth her expression into something neutral, but I could see right through her.The flush creeping up her neck, the way her fingers trembled slightly as she clutched that ridiculously small purse, the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat where I wanted to put my mouth.She was flustered. Completely undone.And I was absolutely fucking delighted."Shall we?" Ronald's voice cut through my observation, all jovial energy as he gestured toward the entrance.I forced my attention away from Camille long enough to nod, to play the part of the respe

AURELIOThe drive home was silent.Not the comfortable kind of silence that existed between two people who understood each other. No, this was the heavy, suffocating silence of two strangers trapped in the same car, going through the motions of a marriage that might have died long ago but neither of us had bothered to bury.Beatrice stared out the window, her profile illuminated by the passing streetlights, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd really looked at her. Really ‘seen’ her. She was beautiful, objectively, undeniably beautiful. Polished. Perfect. Everything a man in my position would take pride in having in as a partner but looking at her all I felt was emptiness.And I felt nothing.The city blurred past us, and all I could think about was champagne silk bunched around slim hips, dark eyes wide with desire, the way Camille had said my name like a prayer when I'd been buried inside her.Fuck.The car pulled into our driveway, and I was out before the engine fully stop

CAMILLE The silence stretched like taffy, sticky and uncomfortable, until Aurelio shifted beside me."I think," he said, his voice maddeningly calm, "we might need to talk."Before I could process what was happening, he was moving, throwing back the duvet and standing up in one fluid motion. The blanket fell across me, a pathetic shield, while he walked across my bedroom completely naked, completely unbothered, like this was a perfectly normal Sunday morning.Keisha made a strangled noise.I wanted to die.Aurelio bent down, collecting his joggers from where they'd been discarded on my floor sometime around three in the morning. His shirt, his phone, he gathered them with the casual ease of someone picking up groceries, not someone who'd just been caught in bed with the daughter of his wife's partner."I'll give you two a moment," he said, and then he walked out of my room, still naked, clothes tucked under his arm, disappearing into the hallway.The bathroom door clicked shut.Kei

CAMILLE"Why didn't you leave?"The question sat between us, fragile and heavy at the same time.Aurelio didn't flinch, didn't look away or reach for his coffee to buy time the way most people would. He just held my gaze, steady and patient, like he'd been expecting this.Like he'd been waiting for me to get here.I swallowed hard and pushed forward before I lost my nerve."Isn't that how it's supposed to be?" My voice was quieter now, smaller. "You should have gone back to your wife. That would have been... that would have been the best thing to do."Something shifted in his expression, not anger, not defensiveness, something closer to curiosity."If I had left," he said slowly, carefully, "would you have felt better?"The question landed like a punch I hadn't seen coming.Would I have felt better?I opened my mouth, but words weren't said because the honest answer was no, and we both knew it. But admitting that felt like handing him something I couldn't take back."I didn't have

AURELIOThe silence stretched.Keisha let it.She was good at that, I realized, at holding space the way a prosecutor holds a pause beforedelivering the charge that dismantles everything, patient and deliberate, her eyes fixed onmy face with the kind of attention that strips a man down to his component parts.And still my mouth did not move.Not because I was hiding something, not because the answer was buried underneathevasion or careful calculation.But because when I reached for it, really reached, the way you reach for something you arecertain is there, my hand had closed around nothing but air and the faint, unsettlingrecognition that I had never once stopped to ask myself the question she was asking menow.Keisha's expression shifted.It moved from expectation to something quieter, something that looked almost like grief, andthen, before I could find the ground beneath my feet, she made a sound low in her throat.A scoff.Short and precise as a period at the end o