Page 36 of Corrupting Camille

I know it before consciousness claws fully back into my bones. Before my eyes peel open, gritty and stinging, confronting harsh sunlight and brutal emptiness. Before my palm skates over the sheets beside me, cool, abandoned, devoid of the lush heat that should still be there.

Her absence is fucking physical. A gaping wound ripped open in the morning air.

I lie flat on my back, staring blankly at the ceiling, drawing slow, measured breaths that do nothing but embed her deeper into my lungs. Every inhale drags in more of her ghost, every exhale fails to release it. She’s smoke curled thick and heavy, stubbornly clinging to my ribs, my chest cavity, polluting me from the inside out.

And fuck if I don’t want it.

My hand reaches out again, blindly grasping at the space she left behind, empty air, cold silk, mocking the heat she burned into me. I grab the pillow where her head rested, crushing it roughly against my face.

Fuck.

Vanilla. Neroli. Her.

It’s torture. A cruel fucking tease of the woman I’d spent hours devouring, mind, body, every last shred of control she’d tried so desperately to hold onto. Her scent saturates the sheets like sin, burrowing into my skull, twisting around my nerves like barbed wire. I close my eyes and inhale deeper this time, punishing myself with the tormenting memory of how perfectly she’d unraveled beneath my hands. How beautifully she’d shattered while I held the pieces.

I finally drag myself upright, muscles protesting. They know this day is already ruined before it’s even started. I sit there, head bowed, jaw locked so tight my teeth ache, trying and failing to shove her out of my head. But the echoes are relentless.

Every fucking moan. Every frantic gasp. Every whispered, desperate please that shredded her pride into ribbons while I forced her submission.

She left, but she’s still here, haunting me.

I get up, bare feet hitting cold marble, muscles humming with restless energy and unresolved hunger. My morning routine happens on autopilot, espresso bitter enough to scrape my throat raw, protein tasteless and functional. Black slacks crisp and perfect, shirt custom-tailored. I go through each step mechanically, a puppet forced into motions that feels hollow, pointless.

Off.

She’s thrown something out of alignment, knocked me sideways in a way I don’t recognize, leaving me itchy andagitated beneath my own goddamn skin. I can’t shake the feeling, a nagging dissonance deep in my bones.

Restless, I step into the bathroom.

That’s when I see it.

Rosewood.

Her lipstick, smeared defiantly against my mirror.

A mark. A scar. A fucking act of war.

My chest goes still, like my heart forgets how to beat. The air thickens, heavy as oil, dragging around me in slow motion while heat surges through my veins like fire set loose. My eyes lock on that perfect smear of rosewood, burned into the glass like a mouth-shaped bullet.

She kissed my mirror.

She kissed my fucking mirror.

And now I can’t fucking breathe.

The heat that floods me is violent. Dark. Possessive in a way that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with need. The kind that doesn’t just pulse, it devours.

It shouldn’t matter.

But it does.

Because she knew I’d see it. That much is obvious. But what she didn’t know, couldn’t possibly know, is what it would trigger. What it would fucking unleash.

This isn’t a symbol.

It’s an ignition.

This feeling…I know it.