Arousal, when it came, was an inconvenience—a wrench in the routine and a distraction. It was a heavy blanket weighing her down in the night, it was the drag of honey into lungs. It was never bound to anyone. Not a face, not a body, not the promise of a touch—never the promise of a touch. It rose and fell with the same unpredictability of a fever caught outside the house, the same disembodied mystery—who had it been? Who was it that coughed, passed this on?
