Talking Trouble

by Barbara Elsborg

  Leave. Now. Get up. Get out. Do it. Mollie slowly uncurled. A sharp pain flared in her wrist when she put her weight on it and she sucked back her cry. Cradling her arm against her body, she took a deep breath and winced at the ache in her ribs and pain in her stomach. She could see bloody grazes on her arms and legs, red scrapes where she’d been dragged over the carpet. And she still couldn’t believe that he’d hit her.

  “We’re done,” she said.

  He looked at her then. “No we’re not.”

  She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Yes, we are. This is it for us. You beat me up. You’re a cop, Lewin. What the hell were you thinking?”

  His face changed then into one she didn’t know, one that scared her even more before he blanked it with an expression of anguished contrition.

  “I’m sorry, angel. Christ. I don’t know what came over me.”

  As she began to push to her feet, he scuttled to her, dragged her into his arms and held her tight. Pain flared, but panic was stronger.

  “I’ll never do that again,” he whispered, brushing his lips over her face. “Tell me you’re not going to leave me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was like I couldn’t see you. I’m so stressed. Jesus, Mollie, you mean the world to me. I need you so much. You can’t leave me. You can’t. I won’t let you.”

  Chapter Three

  Lysander remained unmoved by Isla’s tears. He wouldn’t have put it past her to have squirted something in her eyes before she burst into his studio. Even if there hadn’t already been a long enough list of things about her that annoyed him—the length of time it took him to get her off, the mess she left in the kitchen, her unattractive pout—storming in unannounced when he was painting was the straw that broke this particular artist’s back.

  “You have until seven.” Lysander wondered what damage she might do in an hour. “I want you gone by the time I come downstairs.”

  “I thought you’d change your mind,” she wailed.

  “Why would you think that?” He was genuinely curious.

  Isla tossed her long blonde mane over her shoulder and—pouted. “You fucked me yesterday.”

  “So?”

  She faltered as she paced across the room. “Didn’t it mean anything?”

  “It was sex. I enjoyed it. You seemed to.”

  She stared at him. “You are such a bastard.”

  “You’re absolutely right. Now fuck off and move your stuff out. I’m busy.”

  The slap on the face he’d sort of expected—her hand ruining his painting, he hadn’t. Bitch.

  “Oops.” Her tears all gone, she slammed the door hard as she left.

  Lysander turned to his work in progress and sighed. He was annoyed, but not furious. It took a lot to make him furious. But if she was still in her room in an hour’s time, she’d see a side of him he didn’t often let out.

  What a fucking mistake she’d been. Nikki’s first selection to share the house and her last. He was marginally less bored with Nikki than he was with Isla. But he was still painting Nikki and until he’d done with her she’d stay. For the time being it would just be the four of them sharing—him, Nikki, Jean-Paul and Aden. It was Jean-Paul’s turn to find someone else.

  He lifted the wet canvas from the easel, set it against the wall and took a fresh one from those leaning by the door. Knowing that once he started he’d lose track of time, he set his alarm on his phone for sixty minutes.

  After he’d taken another look at the photograph he was working from, he wondered if Isla had inadvertently helped him out. Maybe a different angle would give the painting the poignancy it needed.

  Lysander swallowed hard. This was the first time he’d been asked to paint a dead child. He was doing it as a favor for his agent. The child, a girl, was his agent’s niece, who’d died of meningitis four months ago, aged five. Poor little kid. Lysander picked up his brush and began again.

  He became so engrossed, it was a moment or two before he registered the sound coming from his phone. An hour already? He switched the alarm off, stood back and looked at what he’d done and knew he liked it better. There was a greater sense of movement in the piece, more life. He wanted people who looked at the painting to feel the child was in the room with them.

  After wiping the excess paint from his brushes with a cloth, he squeezed the bristles from the ferrule outward, being careful not to pull too hard. He went through the ritual of cleaning, rinse and repeat until no color seeped out, then molded the heads into the correct form and wrapped them in tissue. As the paper dried, it would pull the bristles into the right shape.

  Once his station was tidy, he cleaned himself at the sink, washing his hands and face. He’d managed not to spatter too much on his pants and shirt so he didn’t need to strip. He made his way down from the attic hoping he’d find Isla gone.

  Aden and Jean-Paul were cooking in the kitchen, Jean-Paul with one hand deep in the back of Aden’s pants. Aden was a quiet, controlled guy, but when he cooked, he made it look like an expressive art. Precision chopping, electric fast slicing, he banged pans around and flipped the contents as if he did it every day for a living. He was an actuary, an expert in risk management, using mathematical skills to help measure the probability and risk of future events. It was one of the reasons Lysander had invited him to live in the house. He felt sorry for a guy who had to earn his living doing that, but Aden seemed well balanced and happy and never brought his work home with him. Lysander liked him.

  “Do you make all women cry?” Aden asked.

  Lysander’s lips twitched. “I seem to have the knack. Tell me she’s gone.”

  “Yep,” said Jean-Paul. “With a waddle and a quack and a flurry of eiderdown.”

  Lysander and Aden laughed.

  “She left a couple of minutes ago,” Aden said. “Her keys are over there on the counter. Nikki’s driving her to Colne. Some relative there she’s going to stay with. Nikki’s taking her clubbing to cheer her up and said she’d be back tomorrow.”

  Lysander sniffed the contents of the pan simmering on the stove. “Made enough to share?”

  “Yep, there’s plenty.”

  Lysander poured himself a glass of wine from the open bottle on the table and took a swallow. “So has she completely wrecked the room? Do I have to spend tomorrow painting that and not little Marcie Spedding?”

  “I don’t know,” Jean-Paul said as he washed his hands. “Maybe we better look in case the shower’s still running or something.”

  They left Aden cooking and walked down the corridor to the only bedroom on the ground floor. Aden and Jean-Paul had rooms on the next floor, though they’d rearranged the furniture so that they slept in one and used the other as a dressing room. Nikki’s bedroom was at the end of the landing and Lysander’s on the upper level next to his studio.

  Jean-Paul opened the door of the room formerly occupied by Isla and gasped. “Shit. How did you guess?”

  Lysander’s jaw tensed as he took in the extent of her displeasure. Isla had used a thick black marker to write over the walls. Wanker, fucker and bastard seemed to be the most popular words, along with cunt, shit-eater, pervert, dickhead and arsehole.

  “What a bitch,” Jean-Paul said.

  Nothing else appeared to be damaged, but the bathroom was a mess.

  “Isla was not a good selection,” Lysander said. “Your turn next. A guy please.” Maybe he’d be the one to stop Lysander thinking of the man he’d lost.

  “Okay.”

  On the way back to the kitchen, Lysander’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since that morning. When he was painting, he tended to forget. Painting helped him forget a lot of things. Aden put a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese in front of him and Jean-Paul pushed the grated Parmesan across the table.

  “She’s wrecked the walls,” Jean-Paul said. “Scrawled all over them with a marker pen.”

  “Disappointingly unoriginal choice of words,” said Lysander.

  Aden brought the other bowl
s over and he and Jean-Paul sat opposite Lysander.

  “At least it’s something that can be put right,” Aden said.

  “She also ruined the painting I was doing of the kid who died.”

  Jean-Paul groaned.

  “I think the new one will be better and at least she’s gone. Legally, I probably couldn’t chuck her out just like that. I don’t think the courts would see it as giving reasonable notice.”

  “Well, she’s gone so it doesn’t matter,” Aden said.

  “Do you need me to bring emulsion paint back tomorrow?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “I have some in the garage. I’ll sort it out. Just look for a replacement.”

  “Another female?” Aden asked.

  “No, a guy,” Jean-Paul said. “We’re far less trouble.”

  Lysander and Aden both laughed. Jean-Paul worked for an estate agent and was always getting into some sort of scrape.

  “Fine.” Jean-Paul pretended to be insulted.

  “Tell Lysander what happened to you today,” Aden said.

  “We have this house on the books that belongs to a couple who’re getting divorced. The woman’s still living there and doesn’t want to move. My boss, Sandra, had warned me she might not be cooperative, but when I got there, she opened the door stark naked and refused to put clothes on. I waited on the street to waylay the couple interested in the house, told them she was a naturist and to ignore her. Not easy. She’s a big woman, big…breasts. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t want to make an offer. Sandra has another three viewings lined up for tomorrow and insists I do them.”

  Lysander was content to sit and eat and listen to the pair of them chatter. Aden had been living in the house longer than Jean-Paul, but Lysander had known when Aden brought the guy home, a six foot, blond-haired, blue-eyed clone of Aden, that it meant Aden would no longer come to his bed.

  “Are you okay?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “Why?” Lysander asked.

  “You’re quieter than usual.”

  “I’m fine.” Lysander pushed to his feet and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Idiot,” he heard Aden say. “He isn’t going to open up. Stop pestering him.”

  Lysander sighed and headed down the hallway and out of the back door. He’d decided not to wait until tomorrow to deal with the room. He switched on the light in the garage, threaded his way through the junk stacked in there and pulled open the doors on the storage cupboard. He lifted the paint tins one by one, checking the weight, trying to estimate if there was enough.

  There wasn’t. He ended up mixing lemon sorbet with calico parchment, and got a color that resembled cat sick. Not that he’d ever had a cat, let alone one that vomited. He stirred white in, which helped. Then more yellow. He remembered being intrigued as a child by manufacturers’ color charts and the variety of names they gave their paint. He’d taken samples of all of them from the do-it-yourself store and spent hours arranging, rearranging and cutting them before he made a picture of the house and garden. His father had framed it and hung it in his office. It had stayed there for years.

  He unearthed a new brush, roller and tray from the top of the cupboard and carried them back to the house along with a stool to stand on and an old curtain to protect the floor. The thought made him smile. The floor of his studio was more paint than wood.

  When he pushed open the door of the bedroom, Aden and Jean-Paul were already in there, scrubbing at the writing with white pads.

  “Emulsion’s not going to cover it,” Jean-Paul said. “These eraser things are taking it off. They can get rid of almost anything. I wish I could hand them out when I go to look at houses. I feel like saying—just clean the fucking place. How can they expect to attract buyers when the light switches are grimy, the doors are covered in fingerprints and the sinks don’t even shine anymore?”

  Aden laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” Jean-Paul said.

  “No, you are, Mr. Domestic.” Aden tried to rub his groin with the sponge and Jean-Paul squirmed away.

  Lysander moved the chest of drawers a few feet from the wall and covered a stretch of floor with the curtain.

  Jean-Paul rubbed more furiously at the word wanker. “I don’t get how Isla could let her bathroom get into that state.”

  “You could eat off the floor in ours,” Aden said. “I frequently do.” He mock-leered at Jean-Paul, who laughed.

  By the time the pair went upstairs, the bathroom was spotless thanks to Jean-Paul, and Lysander had used a roller on the walls while Aden did the edges with a brush. Fortunately, it didn’t look as though a second coat was needed. He heard Jean-Paul and Aden laughing in the room above and felt a pang of envy. He often listened to them fucking while he lay in bed. The sound of two horny guys enthusiastically humping tended to encourage his hand south.

  He thought about the lodger Jean-Paul would find and hoped he’d prove a better distraction than Isla. Lysander was surprised it had taken her as long as it had to realize that he was bisexual. He hadn’t hidden the fact that he was into men as well. Her screaming fit last night when he’d told her she had to leave had almost deafened him. He suspected that the extreme reaction had been more down to the realization that fucking her hadn’t made him her devoted slave.

  The rhythmic banging from the room above dragged an image into his mind of Jean-Paul on his knees on the bed, Aden thrusting into him from behind. The image morphed into another where he fucked Aden while he fucked Jean-Paul. Lust curled in his gut. Was that Jean-Paul whimpering? Fuck. Lysander’s throat thickened. He finished the painting, wrapped everything—brush, roller, tray and almost empty paint tin—into the curtain and took it out to the bin. He figured that the damage he’d do to the environment by washing everything negated the point of it.

  He checked the doors were locked before he went upstairs, but instead of heading straight for his room, he paused on the first floor.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Aden gasped the word over and over.

  Lysander slid his hand inside his pants and adjusted his cock. He wasn’t sure if he was in the mood for them or not. It had been months since the three of them had been in bed together. Lysander was too alpha to play a permanent third wheel. But how was he supposed to sleep with this racket going on?

  He banged on the door.

  “What?” Aden shouted.

  “Is this going to go on all night?”

  “Depends,” Aden replied.

  “On what?” Lysander asked.

  “Whether you join us or not,” Jean-Paul called.

  Lysander chuckled and pushed open the door. They were fully clothed, sitting side by side on the bed, leaning against the bedhead, banging it against the wall, and Lysander’s chuckle slid into a laugh.

  “I wanted to give up before we made a dent,” Aden said. “But Jean-Paul reckons you need distracting tonight.”

  “I’m desperate now,” Jean-Paul said. “All that banging and no real action.”

  “Last one to get naked goes on the bottom,” Aden said and flung himself onto Jean-Paul, knocking him flat.

  “Not fair.” Jean-Paul struggled, but couldn’t get free.

  Lysander shrugged out of his shoes, pants and shirt. He’d not bothered with shorts that morning. His cock was already hard and when he took over from Aden and pinned Jean-Paul down while Aden stripped, his dick went even harder.

  “That’s fucking cheating.” Jean-Paul still struggled to get free, but when Lysander leaned over and nuzzled his neck, all the fight went out of him and he groaned.

  “Don’t ever take up wrestling,” Aden said with a laugh. “One lick of your neck and you’re a puddle.”

  Aden joined Lysander on the bed and between them they slowly stripped Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul groaned as Lysander let Aden’s cock run through his fingers.

  “Put your hands on the bedhead, Jean-Paul,” Lysander said.

  He obediently reached back and wrapped his fingers around two of the wooden struts. Lysander and Aden slid down t
he bed and faced each other over Jean-Paul’s cock.

  “After you,” Aden said.

  “No, after you.” Lysander smiled.

  “I insist.” Aden grinned.

  “No, I insist.” Lysander blew onto the tip of Jean-Paul’s dick.

  “But you’re our guest,” Aden said.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Jean-Paul yelled. “Someone blow me or I’ll go and get the hoover.”

  “You just earned yourself another ten minutes for that,” Lysander said.

  He brushed his lips over Jean-Paul’s hip. They took turns licking his rather beautiful cock. Long, straight and uncut, it was a work of art. A jigsaw of blue veins, the head a dark crown weeping pearl after pearl from the delicate slit that winked like a tiny eye.

  Lysander had drawn Jean-Paul’s cock a couple of times and given the finished version to Aden, who’d bought a frame and hung it on the wall as a surprise. Jean-Paul had freaked out and made him take it down on the off chance that his parents might unexpectedly visit. They’d done that twice so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect them to do it again. They were okay with Jean-Paul being gay, but Lysander could see that coming face to face with a two foot image of their son’s genitals might be too much.

  Lysander cupped Aden’s jaw, his fingers stroking the flat planes of his cheeks as Aden sucked Jean-Paul’s cock. He could feel Jean-Paul moving inside Aden’s mouth and the sensation made his balls tingle. A mixture of grunts and unintelligible words spilled from Jean-Paul’s lips as they played with him, his hips shifting restlessly as Aden nibbled up his length. When Aden pressed his tongue into the slit, the rest of Jean-Paul went as stiff as his dick.

  Then it was Lysander’s turn and he could taste not just Jean-Paul but Aden too as he licked and laved the length of Jean-Paul’s shaft. Aden had his mouth around Jean-Paul’s balls, lapping at the skin in long, slow slurps. When he pulled Jean-Paul’s balls into his mouth, the guy’s cock surged in Lysander’s mouth.