Addicted
~ Camilla
I didn’t expect him to move again. For a long, suspended heartbeat, Stephano just stood there across from me, breathing like a man holding himself together with sheer willpower. His eyes, those sharp, cold eyes that had once terrified me were soft. Open. Completely unguarded.
Then his voice came, low and hoarse, barely above a whisper:
“Camilla… I can’t change the way I treated you.”
A pause. His throat worked, like the words were knives going up.
“But I promise to spend the rest of my living existence apologizing… if you’ll have me.”
My gasp was audible. It was tually audible. It sounded like some ridiculous startled bird sound.
In my head, everything went completely blank and chaotic at the same time. A full system meltdown.
He… what?
What?
WHAT?
Stephano Maddens, my personal nightmare, the man who’d humiliated me, possessed me, torn my heart open and stomped on it with designer shoes, was offering himself to me?
Me?
The silence after his words stretched out like a chasm. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even blink properly.
I just stared at him.
One minute.
Then another.
He didn’t push. He didn’t demand. He didn’t get impatient and roll his eyes like the old Stephano would’ve. He simply stood there, letting me be stunned, letting the reality settle.
Then, slowly, almost cautiously, he took a step toward me. One stride. Then another.
Each one steady, deliberate, like he was approaching something fragile. It felt like I was something fragile. When he reached me, he lifted his hand. God, that hand. The same hand that had once grabbed me by the hips with bruising force… now hovered near my face like it was afraid of scaring me.
His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, feather-light.
“Can I?” he murmured.
Two blinks. My brain short-circuited so hard that my mouth forgot how to make sounds. I stared at him, blank as a malfunctioning robot, for what had to be thirty seconds. Maybe forty. Time was fake.
Everything was fake. Then, gently, like he was giving me time to run, he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine.
It wasn’t like before. Not rough. Not claiming. Not punishing or urgent or meant to prove anything.
It was soft, warm and careful.bHis lips moved against mine like a question he was terrified to ask. My knees almost buckled.
Something inside me, something I’d bolted behind iron doors and chained and padlocked and screamed at to shut up, bloomed painfully open. I raised my hand, almost without realizing it, and touched his jaw. His breath hitched when I did. The kind of breath hitch a man doesn’t fake. The kiss deepened, slowly, naturally, as if we both breathed at the same time and drifted closer. His mouth grew warmer, more searching, more alive. His fingers slid into my hair; not grabbing, not controlling, just holding, just feeling.
The room spun around me. Or my mind did. It was hard to tell. When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against mine, our breaths mingling in the barely-there space between us.
“Camilla…” he murmured, voice trembling in a way I couldn’t process. “I don’t want to just take from you anymore.”
I swallowed. Hard. My heart was beating louder than my thoughts. He cupped my cheeks gently, thumbs brushing my skin like he was memorizing every inch.
“I want to…” He exhaled shakily. “I want to make love to you.”
Everything in me misfired. My mind split into a hundred frantic, competing voices.
Make love?
MAKE LOVE?
This man has only ever fucked me against walls, over desks, in cold storage closets like I was some kind of…
No. No. No.
He didn’t say fuck.
He said make love.
My survival instincts were breakdancing. My logic was sobbing into a pillow. My heart was climbing onto a rooftop screaming into the night. Because “making love” and Stephano Maddens didn't belong in the same sentence, in the same dictionary, in the same universe.
He looked down at me, waiting, his thumb still brushing my cheek with that unbearable tenderness.
“You… you what?” I whispered, because apparently my brain needed clarification for things that should have been impossible.
“I want it to be different,” he said softly. “I want to be different with you.”
My lungs forgot their job. Different. God. That word hurt. It hurt because I wanted it. I wanted him to mean it. I wanted the fantasy of it, the softness of it, the impossibly gentle version of him he’d shown me in the last days.
And yet… My head was spiraling again, whipping between every memory:
His cold voice telling me to obey.
His hand clamped around my wrist.
His rough thrusts that stole my breath and dignity.
His mistress gloating while I stood there feeling like garbage.
His words that sliced through me like knives.
His lips on mine just now that was soft, tender and searching.
Contradictions. So many contradictions I felt physically nauseous. His hand slid down to my waist, gentle but steady. He rested his forehead against mine again, and whispered:
“If you’ll let me.”
Could I? Could I let him be soft? Could I trust softness from him? Could I risk wanting something more?
My lips parted, but no words came. He didn’t push for them. He simply wrapped an arm around me, pulled me slowly against his chest, and held me like I was something precious. Something irreplaceable. Something his hands were afraid of breaking.
My eyes burned. My throat tightened.
And then…He kissed me again.
It was slow, deep and full of something I wasn’t ready to name. My hands slid up his chest, my breath catching against his mouth. His lips traced my jaw, my cheek, my forehead, each one softer than the last.
Then he whisperedagainst my temple, like a vow…
“Let me love you tonight.”
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just held him tighter and the world gently, quietly, faded to black. And hell, the world didn’t just fade to black. It dissolved into the feel of his lips on my temple, the scent of his skin. It felt like clean linen and something deeper, uniquely him, filling my lungs. The words let me love you were not just sounds. STEPHANO MADDENS had actually said them.
He didn’t rush. His arms around me were a shelter, not a cage. When he finally moved, it was to pull back just enough to look at me. His eyes searched my face, reading the storm of doubt and desperate hope I knew was written there.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered, his voice gravel-rough with an emotion I’d never heard from him. “One word. Just one. And I stop. I swear to God, Camilla.”
I believed him. That was the most terrifying part. I believed the man who had never taken ‘no’ for an answer was now handing me the power to destroy this moment with a single syllable. My lips were numb. I couldn’t form the word, even if I’d wanted to. All I could do was shake my head, a tiny, desperate motion.
A shudder went through him. He closed his eyes for a second, as if receiving a blessing. Then, in one smooth, careful motion, he slid an arm under my knees and the other behind my back, and lifted me.
I gasped, my arms instinctively flying around his neck. He’d carried me before, hurried, possessive throws over his shoulder or against his chest. This was different. This was cradling. He held me as if I were made of glass and starlight. I felt like a woman, something infinitely precious. My head nestled against the solid warmth of his shoulder, and I could hear the rapid, heavy beat of his heart.
He didn’t speak as he carried me out of the living room through the hallway, and toward the grand staircase. My eyes were fixed on the line of his jaw, the faint shadow of stubble, the pulse jumping in his throat.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured, his voice a vibration against my temple.
“Aren’t you?” The words slipped out, small and raw.
A faint, breathless sound left his lips. It was almost a laugh, but too weighted with feeling. “Yes.”
The admission undid me further. Stephano Maddens, afraid.
He shouldered open the door to his bedroom, our bedroom, a place that had been a battlefield of silk and submission. The moon cast pale stripes across the vast bed through the slats of the blinds. He didn’t toss me onto it. He walked to the side and, with a gentleness that made my throat ache, lowered me until my back met the cool duvet. He followed me down, bracing his weight on his forearms, caging me but not crushing me.
We were nose to nose in the semi-darkness. His breath fanned my lips.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed, the admission ripped from him. “The other way… that’s a script I know. This… I’m flying blind, Camilla.”
The vulnerability was a weapon more powerful than any command. It disarmed every defense I had left. My hand came up to touch his face, my fingers tracing the arch of his brow, the curve of his ear. “Then don’t follow a script,” I whispered.
He let out a shaky breath and turned his head, pressing a kiss into my palm. The gesture was so tender it brought sharp tears to my eyes.
Then he kissed me. It was a slow, deep exploration. The kiss was very much like a conversation without words. His lips asked questions mine answered. Is this okay? Yes. What about this? Please. His tongue traced the seam of my lips, and I opened for him with a soft sigh, the taste of him was becoming my new addiction.