A/N: Penultimate chapter…thanks to everyone who has stuck with this fic, chewing their nails and glaring at me while very kindly continuing to read and review!

They stand, facing each other in the moonlight which is flooding the room through every window and door, and the silence between them is as charged as the air before a tropical storm. Richard thinks he has never seen her look more beautiful, but somehow severe, and out of reach, in her tailored suit. With hands that shake, he reaches out and carefully slides her jacket off her shoulders. Camille lets it fall to the floor, unheeded. Next, he raises one hand cautiously, as if to touch her hair, then halts midway, letting his arm drop back to his side, but the searching look in his eyes tells her that he is looking for the Camille he has known for the last year, the Camille who wears shorts and strappy tops to work, the Camille who kicks her bare feet up onto the edge of her desk, not this Parisienne vision of Camille, all couture and Christian Louboutin. Swiftly, she unbraids her hair, shaking it loose and running her fingers through the curly mass of hair which springs free. Richard's eyes are wide and dark with want as she pulls her sleeveless cream silk camisole free of the waistband of her slim black skirt, leaving it to hang free, and steps out of her heels with a heartfelt sigh of relief. She looks at him and asks, "Better?" He nods, struggling to force words out of his suddenly tight, dry throat, almost whispering, "Um, you could have kept the shoes on…" then his gaze drops to the floor in embarrassed contrition.

Camille rolls her eyes (Men! He's not so very different, then, she notes with interest) and turns her attention to what he is wearing. First, she very deliberately unbuttons his long-sleeved shirt, while he stands before her like a lamb before its shearer, trembling in delight at the inadvertent touches of her fingers against his skin as she works on the buttons. When she has finished this task, Camille next slides her hands inside his open shirt, slowly gliding them together from his navel up to his chest, before slipping around to his sides and running her fingers lightly down his ribcage as his body heaves and shudders beneath her touch, his hands clenched into fists as he fights for control. Playfully, she moves her hands back up to his shoulders, and he draws a ragged breath, eyes closed tight, as she drags her nails gently across his quivering back with a feathery movement. This is the most exquisite torment, Richard thinks, semi-coherently, and I never, ever, want it to stop. Ohhh…Camille!

Camille considers her next move very carefully. It's the only way, she decides. It's the only way to break through a lifetime's training of emotional reserve and physical shyness which borders on the ridiculous, like a character out of a particularly moral Victorian novel. Camille has always preferred the more realistic, sensual French writers' approach, with their portrayal of the infinite array of human behaviour, from the innocent to the erotic. She is deeply moved by how profoundly their simple skin-on-skin contact is affecting him. It's as if no one has ever touched him before…Camille feels physically ill at the idea of someone living without the warmth of human affection; casual hugs between friends, the sense of belonging which a lover's caress bestows, or the unconditional love of a parent's embrace. She feels, too, the coiled tension beneath her fingers, his muscles bunching as she barely brushes his skin with her fingertips…pattes d'araignée. Deep in her belly, a familiar ache is beginning to make its presence felt, but tonight she is willing to wait, even though she wants him so badly she can hardly think straight. Tonight, she is going to break him out of the prison of his own body, or die trying.

"I have an idea", she tells him, and his eyes flutter open at the sound of her voice. "Mmphm?" is all he can manage, as she takes his hand and tows him, unresisting, towards the bed. "Sit", she instructs him, and like a small child, he sits obediently, looking up at her. His face is trusting and open, his eyes shining with adoration and excitement. Camille hitches her skirt up slightly so she can kneel on the bed beside him, and the raw desire that washes across his face as she does so is almost enough to change her mind, but she schools herself to patience with the force of long habit where he is concerned. He has indicated his willingness to let her take the lead, recognising that in this, she is his superior…so she whispers, take off your shirt, and I'll show you, and with a flurry of movement, the garment hits the floor.

Camille's breath catches in her throat as she looks at Richard, his white skin silvered by moonlight, his green eyes gleaming like a cat's, and then she reaches towards him. With infinite care, she holds her hands just above his skin, near enough to feel the fine hairs beneath her fingertips, yet not quite touching him, and begins to move her hands over every inch of his exposed skin, tracing a trail of fire as she ghosts her hands across his body, leaving each tiny hair standing on end, and all his nerve endings alight with ecstasy. He moans in pleasure as she moves lower, breathing fast and deep at the extraordinary sensations Camille is creating within him; he reaches for her, but she wriggles away, telling him, "This is your turn," and then she is unbuckling his trousers, tugging them off, to continue her fingertip search of the skin of his flanks, his back, his legs, and his feet as he lies on his front, now wearing only his trunks.

Richard ceases to think, or to do anything other than to submit to the waves of pleasure washing over him as Camille's hands go where they will. He feels twenty years younger as she accepts him completely as he is, thinning hair, fish-belly paleness, little potbelly and all. For reasons he has yet to fathom, this glorious goddess appears to want him every bit as much as he so ardently wants her. And speaking of wanting…he heaves himself up onto one elbow and turns his torso to look at her, still dressed, kneeling beside him, smiling as she hovers her hands over the small of his back, triggering ever more urgent sensations, sensations that cannot be ignored much longer, if the tumult he is feeling is anything to go by. He hisses through his teeth as she moves her hands around to his soft stomach, now exposed in his new, semi-supine position. She'll be the end of me…ahhh…ahhhh…

He is familiar with his body's warning signs, if only in those dreams (dreams he has been having with increasing regularity ever since arriving on Saint-Marie, to his initial fear and consternation), but he has never been able to bring himself to do what all the other boys in his school used to talk about endlessly, boasting crudely about whose was bigger, whose was longer, whose went further…he had fled such scenes in horror, and hidden in the library. Once, when he was about twelve, he had with great trepidation crept to the back of the Biology stacks, and found a book on how babies were made; the things he had learned that day had haunted him for decades afterwards. It all seemed so, well, unlikely, not to mention unhygienic, and just plain strange, he had thought at the time, like sticking your finger into someone else's eye. Now, he feels that he would quite like to find out for himself. With Camille, and soon … very, very soon. He looks at her pleadingly, and she sits back, watching him for a moment - time to switch focus, she realises – and leans towards him.

Richard had intended to begin with a peck on the cheek (this being the only kiss he has had any kind of experience with), but Camille, sensing his uncertainty, moves first, taking his face between her hands and kissing him softly on the lips. His response is tentative at first, and then it is as if the mains switch is flipped inside him for the first time in his life, flooding his body with a whole new kind of sensation and excitement. Rolling over to embrace Camille, his arms encircle her tightly, and she can feel him trembling as she returns his kiss with passionate tenderness. Richard finally breaks off for air, but he doesn't release his hold around her waist. "I have wanted to do that from the first moment I saw you in the cells, wearing nothing but that old shirt and a bikini," he tells her delightedly, before resuming his attentions, hands sliding up her back as his lips meet hers and then their mouths open, deepening the kiss. For Camille, it's as if she is sixteen again, kissing a boy for the first time, so pure yet passionate is their connection. This time the embrace goes on until she becomes aware that parts of him are responding in ways that are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and this time, it is she who ends it. He groans in disappointment and she can see his eyes are glazing over with arousal. "I'd call that closure," she tells him as she sits up. He looks at her, rendered almost speechless by the most incredible five minutes of his life to date, and gives her his trademark crooked grin. "Really? I'd say it was more of a beginning".

Camille knows she can no longer resist the temptation which has built slowly over the last year. She feels as if she is nothing more than a bonfire piled high with dry tinder, and this kiss is the final spark which has sent the flame of her long-suppressed desire roaring through the kindling; she decides that she is going to do something she very much wants, after all. "My turn," she says…