The good feeling.

Clara's POV 

"Oh fuck… fuck, fuck, fuck"

The word left my mouth before I'd fully registered what I'd done. I was on my feet in the same motion, stumbling back a step, one hand flying to my lips like I could push the last thirty seconds back inside.

"I'm sorry." My voice came out strangled. "I'm so sorry, I…. that was completely…. I shouldn't have done that, I don't know what came over me…I need to go, I'm going to go…."

"Clara…."

"I'm sorry." I grabbed my bag from the bleacher seat and I walked or rather ran down the bleacher steps and across the court and through the side door and out into the car park, the light hitting me like an accusation, my heels loud and ridiculous on the tarmac as I fumbled in my bag for my keys.

"Clara, hey…wait up."

His hand closed around my wrist, it was gentle, nothing like Joe's grip this morning.

"Hey." Cameron stepped around to face me, ducking his head slightly to find my eyes. "Chill. Talk to me. What just happened?"

I laughed, it was a horrible, fractured sound. "What happened is that I just humiliated myself in a community centre gymnasium and now I'd like to get in my car and drive into the ocean, thank you…"

"Clara." His voice was so steady. So infuriatingly, beautifully steady. "Look at me."

I looked at him. That was my first mistake.

"He was right," I said. The words came out before I could stop them, carried on the same wave of adrenaline and shame that had gotten me out of the building. "He said I was unattractive, that I can't keep a man. That there's something wrong with me and he's right, isn't he? Because I just threw myself at someone I barely know ...."

My voice broke.

I pressed my hand over my mouth, my shoulders were shaking. I hated it. I hated all of it, the crying, the shaking, the way this day had taken me apart piece by piece since seven this morning and kept finding new pieces to dismantle.

"Clara." Cameron's voice had changed, still steady, but with something underneath it now, something with heat in it. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that I….that I'm not…"

"Stop." He said it quietly but with a firmness that made me actually stop. He waited until I was looking at him properly. 

Then he said:

"You are the most beautiful woman I have seen in a very long time. And I want you to hear me when I say that because I am not a man who says things he doesn't mean."

I stared at him.

"From the moment you sat down at that table last night…." He paused, choosing his words. "It took every bit of willpower I had not to reach across that table and touch you. I walked you to your car and you have no idea how close I came to not letting you leave." He shook his head. "So I don't know who has been telling you that you're not beautiful. But that asshole is a liar, and a fool, and you should stop letting their voice live in your head."

The car park was very quiet.

"Really," I said. It wasn't quite a question.

"Really." No hesitation. Not even a breath of it.

"Then why did you hesitate?" I asked. "When I tried to kiss you. You pulled back."

Something moved across his face. He looked away briefly, then back.

"Because you're married, Clara." He said it carefully, like a man who had been reminding himself of this fact with some regularity. "And I…. I can't be the reason someone's marriage ends. I can't be that. Regardless of what I want."

I looked down at my left hand.

The ring sat there, platinum, expensive, chosen by a jeweller Joe had sent his assistant to brief. I had never once been consulted on it. I had put it on four years ago in a ceremony where Joe had looked at his watch twice during the vows, and I had worn it every day since like a fact I had agreed to live inside.

"I am," I said slowly, "as good as a widow. Or a divorcee. Pick whichever one fits." I looked up at him. "My husband has not touched me in two years, Cameron. Two years. He asked for a divorce this morning. He brings other women into our home and tells me I should be grateful he keeps me at all. I cannot remember…." My throat tightened. I pushed through it. "I cannot remember what it feels like to be held by someone who actually wants to hold me."

The afternoon light sat warm on Cameron's face. His expression was open and undone and fierce all at once.

I reached down, worked the ring off my finger, and turned to drop it onto the back seat of my car through the window I'd left cracked.

It landed on the leather with a small, definitive sound.

I turned back to him.

"Please," I said quietly and without shame. "Cameron, make me feel like a woman. Please, just… remind me. I need to remember."

He looked at me for a long moment, searching, serious, making sure. Then something in him settled, and he reached past me and opened the passenger door.

"Get in," he said softly.

He came around to the back side and folded himself into the seat beside me and pulled the door shut and for a moment we just sat in the warm, enclosed quiet of the car and looked at each other.

Then he reached up and cupped my face in both hands and kissed me.

His mouth was warm and sure and when I made a small sound against it, his hands tightened fractionally in my hair and I felt it everywhere, a deep, resonant heat that started in my chest and moved through me like something I'd forgotten I was capable of.

I kissed him back with everything I'd been storing in the dark for two years.

He made a low sound in his throat and pulled me closer.

His hands moved from my face, slowly, tracing the line of my jaw, the curve of my neck, coming to rest at my waist. He was warm through the fabric of my top, radiating the particular heat of someone who had spent the last hour moving, alive, and physically. I pressed my palms flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat, faster than his composure let on.

"You're shaking," he murmured against my mouth.

"I'm sorry." I apologise for it.

“Don't do that, Clara. Don't ever apologize for being yourself.”

He drew back just enough to look at me and whatever he found there satisfied him because he kissed me again, softer this time, and his hands slid under the hem of my top and spread warm against my waist, my ribcage, learning the shape of me with a slow and thorough patience that made my breath go unsteady.

"Tell me if you want to stop," he said quietly, against my jaw.

"Don't stop," I said. "Please don't stop."

He unclasped my bra through my top with a deftness that might have made me laugh under different circumstances, and his hands moved to cup my breast and I inhaled sharply and tipped my head back against the headrest.

He pushed my top up and lowered his head and his mouth closed over me soft at first, then with a deliberate, drawing heat that sent a sound out of my throat that I had no memory of making before. He was thorough and attentive and entirely focused, and with every breath I felt the coiled, years-long tension in my body begin to release strand by strand, like something long knotted finally being worked loose by patient hands.

I threaded my fingers into his hair.

"Cameron…"

"I've got you, beautiful," he said. 

“You’re shaking,” he whispered against my lips. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

“It’s not,” I managed, my voice barely above a breath. “It’s… it’s been so long.”

He kissed me again, slower this time while his hand moved higher. He cupped my breast fully, his thumb circling my nipple through the thin fabric until it peaked, hard and aching under his touch. I arched into him without meaning to, a soft whimper slipping out before I could stop it.

“God, Clara,” he breathed, his voice wrecked and raw. “You’re so hot.”

His hand left my breast, slid down my stomach, over the button of my jeans. He paused there, forehead resting against mine, breathing hard.

“Can I touch you here?” he asked, voice like gravel. “Please.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Please.”

He popped the button, dragged the zipper down with torturous slowness. Then his hand slipped inside, past elastic, past damp cotton until his fingers found my pussy.

It was slick, swollen and wet.

I jolted at the first brush of his fingertips over my clit, it was too much after so long without a man. He stilled immediately.

“Easy,” he murmured, kissing my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “I’ve got you.”

He circled slowly, feather-light at first, learning me. Watching my face like every hitch of my breath, every flutter of my lashes, was something he needed to memorize. When I rocked my hips up into his hand, he pressed firmer, sliding two fingers along my folds, coating them in my wetness before easing inside me.

“Look at me,” he said again, voice thick. “I want to see you when you come.”