Coming Around Again (19 page)

He smacked her sharply between the legs and she
choked his cock loose from her mouth, her body throbbing from the slap. “The
hell?” she asked.

“You’re not in control. It doesn’t hurt to let go.
And when you do…” He caught her by the waist and angled her over his lap. She
sank down onto his cock, as he allowed her to be lowered, her pussy slowly
giving way to him. Only half of him. She caught his gaze, mouth parted in
shock. He’d never fit.

The concern must have read clear in her eyes, and
his reassurance came swiftly. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be begging for all of it
soon.”

With a heavy arm around her waist, her knickers
tearing from the strain of her spread thighs, Niels eased her up and down his
length. He moaned with delight each time she sank a little deeper. Oh, he felt
good. Divine.

Suddenly he caught her by both buttocks and drove
into her, pressing until his balls were flush against her pussy. She’d never
felt as stretched as full as she did at that moment.

“Yes,” he whispered, lifting her and turning her
onto her back. With her skirt around her waist, her bra hanging from one arm,
and Niels’ trousers about his ankles, the wantonness of their situation only
intensified her need to be—as suggested—thoroughly and deeply fucked. Her
knickers cut into her flesh with the strain. Kindly, Niels removed the
offending garment, eased one leg over his shoulder and pressed the other to the
mattress.

“Watch,” he offered, letting his cock slide out of
her, her pussy parted to its limit… Between the valley of her breasts, reddened
from his teeth, she did watch him move within her, the latex of the condom
shining with her juices.

“So wet,” he breathed, his fingers tightening
around her thigh. “Now your pussy curves just for me…”

Slipping out of her altogether, he flipped her onto
her stomach and lifted her by the waist so she perched on her knees. She turned
and looked at him over her shoulder. “Come on,” she begged. “I’m close.”

“So soon?” he teased her, kicking his trousers off
completely. With his hands braced on her shoulders, he slammed into her,
stealing every single bit of oxygen from her lungs. “Spread your pretty little
pumpkin for me,” he commanded, breathing harshly, not stopping the speed and intensity
of his thrusts through his order. “Go on. Put your hands on your cheeks and
pull them apart. I want to look…”

Only his grip on her shoulders kept her upright
when she reached behind her and parted her buttocks for him. “Yes!” he hissed.
“Show me.”

It felt unnerving, submissive, and drenching in
arousal. She’d protected herself from any activity around her precious bottom.
But knowing his eyes were staring directly at her…how easy would it be for him
to slip from her pussy and press all that thickness into her arse…

She began to tremble and he caught her by the arms,
her breasts thrusting out in carbon-hard points. Her pussy began to leak before
she vocalised her orgasm.

“Yes, come,” he grunted, pounding faster against
her bottom, their flesh slapping together with such volume had Stella been not
coming so hard, she’d have felt embarrassed by it. “I can’t wait until I can
fuck you freely, fill you with all my come…”

The barest thread of sense stopped her from telling
him to rip off the condom and do. Just. That.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He drove into
her rapidly while she melted around his cock; melted into his touch, lost all
sensation in her bones and began to collapse into the pillows. “Stay,” he
ordered on a tight grunt before he groaned into her hair, his hips grinding
into hers erratically, as he claimed his release. He laid her with care to the
mattress. She pressed a hand to her forehead, struggling to breathe regularly.

Niels grinned at her. “You little sub!”

“I’m not little. I’m five feet ten inches tall.
Okay. Maybe… So what if I am?”

He got up and pulled the condom from his
semi-deflated dick. Deftly tying a knot in the latex, he dumped it in the bin
and opened his large oak panelled wardrobe. “I’ve been waiting,” he said,
silver-linked clamps swinging from his fingers, “for the right woman to use
these on.”

He opened the clamps and stalked toward her.
Nothing at that point in her life, had made her wetter…

***

The soreness of her nipples woke her up before
Niels did. Face down in the pillow, like she’d spent most of the night, with
her arse in the air, to be peppered with kisses, slaps and gripped as handles
for the riding he gave her…my God, the riding he gave her, she murmured in
response when he said her name.

“Good morning. How is your pumpkin?”

“Feels raw,” she admitted. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to seven. I’m sorry, I have a meeting in
an hour across the city.”

“No, I can get up…”

He pressed a kiss to her neck. “Stay. I love the
idea of you being in my bed.”

“I’ve got work.”

“What time?”

“I’m doing a late… It’s Thursday right? One to
nine?”

He smiled, stroking a hand over her spine. “I’ll be
back well before then. We can have brunch.”

“Okay. And get those clamps out of my sight. If you
ever want this to happen again, I need my nipples to heal.”

“Back in command, I see.” He kissed her neck again,
inhaling the sleep-warmed scent on her skin. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be back by
eleven.”

She rubbed sleep from the corner of her eye and
looked at him. Fully suited, his hair neatly combed with a parting on the left,
he looked every inch the competent and confident businessman. He could unzip
and just… Really quick…

“Don’t look at me like that,” he warned her. “If I
miss this meeting, I’ll be in trouble.”

“Then go,” she offered, lifting and waving an
imperious hand. “I’m just here sleeping.”

“You’re going to be a constant distraction in my
life, aren’t you?” The weariness in his voice made her press her lips together
to hide a grin.

“Might be,” she said, lifting her shoulder in a
careless shrug and turning her face back into the pillow.

Nice to know he felt just as affected as she did...

They sat at the surfline, the waves rushing underneath their bottoms.
Niels rested his arms on his drawn-up knees, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

They’d shared a busy day, topped with calling the boys, who were still
miffed their parents had abandoned them for a holiday. Again, rather than
talking, Niels arranged for them to drive a little further along the coast, to
snorkel with sea turtles, irritable with the human presence in their waters.
There’d been a moment, floating next to a huge turtle, trying to stay still to
not disturb the creature, when Niels waved at her underwater, and gave her the
peace sign, grinning around the tube in his mouth. She had to swim for air, or
choke on her laughter. He swam up next to her, lifted his mask and snorkel from
his mouth and kissed her.

Standing in the shallow waters, fish wriggling around them, Niels’
sun-warmed body pressed against hers, with salt water trickling over his lips
and between hers, Stella felt blazed with lust. With love. With everything in
her soul.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, a little moan
escaping her the moment he cupped a hand over her buttocks and pulled her
closer to him. If she hadn’t found out from prior experience how much seawater
hurt her nether regions, she’d have told him to swim them out further, into
deeper, quieter water to just do it. That kiss, every groan from him, each tiny
little nibble on her top lip, the drag of his tongue over the column of her
neck, leading back to her mouth, the grip of his hand on her arse… All of it
told her one simple thing. Her body knew what it wanted. Her heart knew. Why
she kept fighting it, God only knew.

He broke off the kiss, and sighed her name, with such longing, it
prickled at her eyes. “Now we really need to talk.”

She’d simply nodded. Once they’d dried off and accepted a taxi back to the
hotel, they simply sat by the shore, watching the waves, thinking of what to
say to bridge between the breakdown of their marriage to the start of something
different and familiar and new and known.

“We tried this,” she started, very aware that Niels remained stubbornly
silent. “And it didn’t work. And I accept that I did my part. But you didn’t
fight for me. For us. So all this effort now… I don’t know where it’s coming
from.”

“Yes you do,” he retorted. “You know exactly where it came from. The
moment you even showed you still cared, where was I?”

Trying to get into her knickers. She
waved a white flag and he sent her kisses. He offered friendship. His
attention. Advice. She spat fire at him and he waited patiently for her to
calm. Had he not fought for her or did she give up too easily?

“Why?”

Niels pressed his lips together and took a deep breath. “
Have you ever been poor, Stella? Scraping into the
sofa for pennies, not knowing where your next meal is coming from,
hiding-from-bailiffs poor?”

“What?”

“Dirt. Poor. Me. I was. My family.”

She’d known him nearly fifteen years and he never
once mentioned struggling growing up. “Oh my God,” she whispered in horror. “Oh
my God, Niels you never said! Never, ever, ever! You said you had a great
childhood.”

“I did. For the most part. I turned eleven and we
lost everything. Bad business deal. My parents both took on about three jobs
each to have enough for rent. I got through school with scholarships.” Stella
couldn’t take her hands from her mouth. Her husband had painted the most
glorious view of his past. Growing up near lakes and forestry. Fishing the old
fashioned way. How did he simply leave out poverty?

“Why do you think I work so hard?” he asked her
abruptly. “To never be that poor again. When the crash hit again, the company
was falling apart. Our shares dropped and we were haemorrhaging money.”

“You were travelling so much. I just thought you
were wrapped up in business.”

“I was scared.”

The scales fell from her eyes. She’d let him down.
All the resentment she felt, left alone with the twins, working so hard to keep
their family in a life to which they were accustomed… All that time, he
suffered alone.

“But if you had talked to me, you’d know that we
were fine.”

“The salon was fine,” he corrected her. “You don’t
remember we agreed a remortgage on the house to fund a project in Sweden?”

I would have covered that,
she thought.
I
did
cover that. Didn’t I?

Maybe, she’d have had to shuffle money around, sell
some shares elsewhere that had seriously lost value in any case, but they’d
have managed. “We’d have managed. If you told me. If you’d just trusted me…”

He shook his head, looking down at the wet sand
between his knees. “It was too much money. You don’t understand how ashamed I
felt that I’d put our family at risk of losing everything. The investor wanted
all his money back. And he started proceedings against the house.”

“But you went and just bought the house with our
savings!”

“Did you read everything?”

“Nope.”

“If you had, you’d know that house is in trust for
the boys. It’s not mine. It’s never been mine. It was a way to keep a roof over
our heads. And then, the investor tried another tactic. Going after the only
other named guarantor on the loan.”

“Me.”

“I spoke to several solicitors and the consensus
was… If I divorced you, it wouldn’t be an asset the investor could take.
Stella, most of this was in my financial information.”

“I told Eden, I didn’t care. Just to make sure I
kept the house. That’s all I was worried about.”

Suddenly, it all fit together and she knew the
moment he couldn’t and wouldn’t believe she would stand by him…

***

Two
months before divorce

Not pregnant.
Stella ran her hands through her hair in relief, then realised she’d touched
her hair with a pee-covered stick. Disgusting.

She’d been irritable and snappish for weeks.
Finally, she twigged. Late period, right after one of hers and Niels’
ships-passing-in-the-night, fly-by bangs. That night hadn’t been quick. Slow.
Repeated. Contraception-forgetting.

The next morning, she’d gone to work and he… for
some reason, tried to coax her to stay. He didn’t seem to understand the whole
world was in the midst of the worst financial crisis for a century, and she
needed to keep things moving. Make sure the boys could go to a quality school,
the mortgage could be paid on time, now that every mortgage lender was cracking
down on missed payments. Several houses in the street were repossessed by the
banks, waiting on auction sale. Spouses committing suicide over the stress. The
last thing, the very last thing she wanted to do was to stay at home when there
was money to be made. A family to support.

God forbid, they had another baby, or thank you,
Mr. Over-Potent, two babies to look after.
Only the two
. Or three, if
she counted Niels and his demands.

Thank you, God
, she breathed, putting the stick to the side of
the sink to wash her hands and splash much-needed cold water on her face. She
padded into the bedroom and slapped on some moisturiser.

Niels stalked into the room, his mobile clamped to
his ear. He spoke in rapid Finnish.
Why
come here and do that
, she thought irritably. He nodded to her,
acknowledging her presence and went into the bathroom.

Oh. Fuck. Pregnancy.
Test
.

He came out of the bathroom in thirty seconds, his
phone in one hand, the test in the other.

“What is this?”

“If you’re asking, either you need to see an
optician or a neurosurgeon.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “For just a
moment, why don’t you take that tone from your voice and talk to me as if
perhaps I am not one of your eight-year-old children?”

She paused to regain her composure. Maybe it was
the hormones from being close to a cycle, or perhaps it based on her frantic
mood swings around her husband. To be honest, he seemed to fly in, fuck her,
and fly out again. If he left money beside the bed, she’d perhaps feel a little
less used. At that moment? She felt nothing but anger. “I thought I was
pregnant. I’m not. There we are.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”

“Yeah. What else do you want? A round table
conference? You’re going to have to keep on foot in this country for longer
than five minutes for that to happen.”

“I have been here for weeks,” he ground out. “And
it didn’t occur to you to talk to me?”

“Why? This is a non-issue. We’re not pregnant.
Look, I even said
we
.”

He stared at her in shock. “You’re happy about
this.”

“We said only two. We’ve got two! We’ve no need for
any more. I mean, the inconvenience. I’d be out of work for years on end. The
boys wouldn’t understand for a second. And to be fair, you’re hardly here at
the moment, so what would I do? I’d be pregnant on my own.”

“
F
or
helvede
, Stella. The whole
world isn’t against you. You are surrounded by people who will support you. But
you want to suffer on your own. Pretend to everyone how strong and singular you
are. How well you cope on your own.”

“Don’t I? Tell me, Niels, what the hell would we do
with another baby? Or
two
more,
knowing you?” He shook his head at her, throwing the test into the bathroom
where it cracked in two and bounced on the marble floor.

“Why are you so angry?” she asked, into the shocked
silence. “We can’t afford a baby.”

“Financially or emotionally?” he asked bitterly.
“When did I become the enemy, Stella?”

“That’s a ridiculous thing to say…”

“Is it? Because either I’m one step above a
vibrator or I’m deliberately irritating the shit out of you. Just so you can
play mother. I am not one of your children. I am supposed to be your husband,
but for some reason, you don’t want a husband. You want a robot. Something that
fits in with what you want, when you want it.” He shook his head again. “Just…
do what you want to. What I think or what I feel or what I
need
is
irrelevant to you.”

Before she could answer, he left the bedroom. It
would be the last time they exchanged words before Niels told her their
marriage was over.

***

Stella pressed her face into her knees, trying to
stem the tidal wave of tears. The argument burned to the very marrow of her
bones, knowing that maybe, if she’d done one single thing differently that day…
It may have given Niels the hope to trust her. They could have weathered his
business failures together. She’d have understood. If she hadn’t, like he said,
treated him like one more child to tend to.

“I know why you didn’t talk to me. You were so
hurt. But I didn’t know how to comfort you. Or explain myself. And I didn’t
feel like you deserved it. I was so wrong.”

Niels caught her by the thigh and dragged her over
the sand into his arms. “Don’t cry.” His voice sounded as shaky as hers. She
looked up and saw his glasses were on top of his head and his eyes were
bloodshot and red. “I don’t know why... I have trouble trusting people. Even
you. So I allowed that to manifest. I was relieved you didn’t want to talk to
me. Because it meant I didn’t have to explain myself. And once the distance was
there… It was as if I couldn’t find you. The easiest thing was to let you go. I
thought. I tried. Half-arsed trying, yes, I know before you say.”

They sat quietly, and watched another couple pass
by them, hand-in-hand. Water rushed over their feet suddenly, bringing them
back. “Now what?” she asked.

“Now? Obviously I lied to myself. I haven’t lasted
a week without talking to you.”

“We seem to keep ending up in bed together.”

“Kitchen floor.”

“Or on the kitchen floor together.”

“Back yard…”

“You are losing momentum of conversation here.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his palm over her shoulder and
down her bicep. “My therapist helped me understand that I wanted you to show me
something. Anything, so I could going. Keep thinking that there’d be a point
where you’d forgive me and we’d be all right again.”

“God’s sake, man. Why would I be constantly cross
if I didn’t care? If I wasn’t broken-hearted. And desperate for you to change
your mind. Anything.”

“Because that’s how you’d been for the last year or
three of our marriage. I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I’d never be that
man. Listen to me,” he turned her towards him and he framed her face between
two slightly sandy palms. “I love you. I don’t know how to do anything else. I
never stopped loving you. Not for a single minute. We don’t have to get married
again. We don’t have to explain anything to our parents or friends. It’s none
of their fucking business. I don’t want to be apart from you anymore. You’re my
life
, Stella. You and the boys.” He touched his forehead to hers.