Coming Around Again by Billy London

Stella.”
    So very true, but she couldn’t let her barely
ex-husband touch her anywhere outside of the sanctity of marriage. God, the
things she’d let that man do to her sexually…
    “You shouldn’t,” she muttered while his index
finger traced the line of her lace Brazilian-cut knickers.
    “Nothing I haven’t done before,” he assured her,
parting her thighs with his hand and slipping his fingers beneath the edge of
her panties. She held her breath, waiting for him to cross that inevitable,
tantalising line.
    “Sleep, my sweet,” he whispered, his fingers simply braced against her
belly. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
     
    ***
     
    Bird song woke her. The lack of throbbing agony within her skull
surprised her. Niels huffing beside her made her sit up and immediately regret
moving so fast. The migraine hadn’t gone. It had been dormant. Waiting for her
to move before striking again.
    “Why are you moving?” Niels grumbled beside her.
    “To piss you off, naturally,” she threw at him.
    “You are the most unbelievably stubborn woman I have ever met.” He
leaned over her into a drawer and withdrew some more paracetamol. “Here.
There’s water on your side.”
    “Aren’t you efficient?”
    “I’m going to gag and blindfold you in a moment if you don’t stop
bitching,” he warned. Instead of being offended, arousal smoked its way through
her clearly deluded veins. Not answering, she took the medication and snuggled
beneath the duvet once more.
    When she woke again, her fever made her tremulous and halfway to
delirium. Niels simply washed her down with a soapy, cool flannel. Had she been
just five percent conscious of her surroundings, she’d have never coped with
the way he exposed her to the elements.
    “Does that feel better?” he asked, dressing her in a clean T-shirt once
he’d finished. How she stopped herself from slapping him when he paid far too
much attention to her cleanliness between the legs… God only knew. He had to be
touched to do that and survive.
    “Freezing.”
    He practically rolled her into the duvet and adjusted her next to him,
partially upright. Every so often, he’d wave a ginger-scented straw under her
nose and she’d take long gulps. It lulled Stella into sleep for a few hours.
When she creaked open her eyes again, the nausea abated and her skull stopped
auditioning for drummers. She heard the boys downstairs, giggling about
something.
    Struggling to sit up, she unravelled the duvet from her body and went in
search of toothpaste and a shower. Bed baths… Flaming Florence Nightingale
downstairs did his job too indelicately. Scrubbing her like a dirty pan.
    “What are you doing out of bed?” Nurse Strøm asked lightly.
    “Having a shower. Now where’s the shampoo?”
    He made a face of exasperation and opened a cabinet to the left of the
large sink. “Here. New toothbrush. And paste. If you want mouthwash, you’ll
just have to borrow mine. Or use the kids’.”
    Stella turned over the shampoo bottle. “When did you start using this?”
    “Since you told me how harmful parabens and sulfates are to children. I
can follow orders. Unlike some…”
    Stella stared at him pointedly. “You don’t have to stand there and
watch.”
    “I watched you give birth and I still had sex with you after. You taking
a shower is low on the shock factor scale.”
    She took an unsteady step towards him, ready to start pummelling where
words couldn’t compensate, and Niels caught her. “You’re so stubborn. Look,
have your shower, but I’m getting in with you.”
    “Keep your damn clothes on,” she commanded, waving a shaking finger
under his nose. He gently pushed her hand aside and lifted the T-shirt from her
body, then stripped the knickers from her thighs. After wrapping a hefty arm
around her naked waist, he carried her into the large glass shower cubicle and
turned on the water. She shrieked at the immediate cold, and the noise died
away under the power and warmth