Talking Trouble

by Barbara Elsborg

  Even though it was what he’d suspected, his head filled with a red mist. “Did you go to the police?”

  “No. The game’s over.” She stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself.

  Lysander turned off the water and reached for the towel he’d used to carry her back from the reservoir. He wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her he’d never let anyone hurt her again, but he couldn’t promise that and the truth was, he was the one who was most likely to hurt her, though never with his fists. He wrapped the towel around his waist, then wrung the water out of his pants, shorts and shirt and rolled them up.

  Mollie sat on the bed with her back toward him, the towel still tight around her chest, pulling a comb through her hair.

  “Had he hit you before?” he asked.

  “No.”

  That was something.

  “Do you still love him?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  He sat beside her on the bed and took her hand. “You scared me half to death tonight. The water was so dark. I couldn’t find you.”

  She squeezed his fingers and turned to face him.

  “It was a stupid game,” he said. “The reservoir’s dangerous in daytime let alone at dusk.” He shuddered. “Christ. This could have turned out so badly.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “At least tell me you can swim.”

  She gave a short laugh. “Yep. But I really only like to swim in pools. Concrete under my feet and no barracudas, sharks or pufferfish.”

  He groaned. “It’s not funny.”

  “It happened so fast. I took one step and went down and kept going down. I think the coldness of the water locked my lungs and when I came to my senses I wasn’t sure which way was up. Then I sort of didn’t care. It was weird. I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t seem to muster the energy to do something about it. Then you grabbed me and saved me. You could have died too.”

  “You think we could just stand on the beach and watch? Well, Nikki did. But that was a good thing. If she’d gone in as well and hadn’t been a good swimmer, it would have given us someone else to rescue.”

  “It was really brave of you, of all three of you. It was my fault. I should have been more careful.”

  “We all made mistakes. I made a big one with you.” He wasn’t sure how he managed it, but he let go of her hand and stood. “I should have seen that you were different. I listened to you talk about my painting and for the first time in a long while I felt…something stir in a part of me I thought was long dead. I still want you in my bed, Mollie, but I know I’ve come on too strong. I showed you the side I wanted you to see but there’s more to me than that. You probably think I’m an egotistical prick and I am. I’m used to getting what I want, but I’ve learned a lesson. Where this goes is up to you.”

  He kissed her head and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. What the hell has come over me? He took his wet clothes to the laundry room and pushed them in the machine. When he turned, Nikki stood behind him, stark naked.

  “I can’t sleep.” She pouted. “Fuck me.”

  “I want you out of the house. You have until the end of the week.”

  Her mouth dropped open and he headed for the stairs, hoping she stayed stunned until he reached his room.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she yelled as she followed him.

  “I don’t think I could be clearer. Pack your stuff and leave.”

  “I’m not leaving. Why do you want me to go? That fucking wet leaf Mollie? She didn’t have to do it. I didn’t make her. You all went along with it.”

  I was an idiot.

  “She’s weak and pathetic. One of those women who let guys beat them up. Probably went back for more. Lysander! You owe me.”

  He crossed the landing and made for the last set of stairs.

  “Stop and talk to me, you bastard. What have I done? Not sucked you off often enough? Because I wouldn’t let you stick your cock in my arse, you fucking pervert?”

  He closed and bolted the door though he could still hear her screaming. And so, unfortunately, would everyone else.

  * * * *

  Mollie stripped out of her wet bra and pants, wincing at the wet mark she’d left on the bed, and threw them in the bottom of the shower. She could hear Nikki yelling and hear what Nikki was yelling. He thinks he doesn’t need Nikki anymore now he can have me? But if that was the case, why had he walked away? And if he was just a guy who wanted sex, he could have shut Nikki up with a few words.

  Her cheeks heated when she thought of what she’d asked him to do. She hadn’t really thought he would. But he’d been right, she’d also thought if he’d come, then he wouldn’t be able to fuck her. Not for a while anyway.

  There was something compulsive about Lysander, though she worried she was falling into the trap of behaving like one of those females who think bad boys will be different with them. But she’d sensed a vulnerability in him and that had touched something inside her. A shared secret, not a secret shared. She was curious why he didn’t want to be on his own in the house, why he’d let the garden go wild, why he was no longer married. What had happened to his wife? She could have Googled, but didn’t. If he wanted her to know, he’d have told her. She’d edged close to spilling some of her history tonight and that scared her.

  She put on pants and a T-shirt, cleaned her teeth and slipped into bed. So much for keeping her head down and relaxing.

  I nearly died.

  I helped Lysander jerk off.

  I kissed Flint.

  I don’t know what I want.

  * * * *

  Mollie was no less confused the next morning. She was making herself sick with anxiety and was pretty appalled by her behavior. No matter what excuses she came up with to explain why she was fooling around with two guys, she had no idea what to do about it.

  What a mess you’re in, Mollie girl.

  Flint was waiting on the dam in his running shorts with his hood up and his hands in his pockets.

  “Mor…ning, Moll…ee,” he said as she’d reached him.

  She cried out in delight, and threw her arms around him. “Morning, Flint.”

  Oh shit, let him go.

  She pulled back abruptly and tugged the strip of stickers out of her pocket that she’d intended to use later. She peeled off the top one and stuck a smiley yellow face on his chest.

  “Very good,” she said.

  “Ve…good,” he repeated, rubbed the sticker down and grinned.

  Pleasure surged in her chest. She’d worried he’d think they were childish and she knew this was serious, but learning was so much easier if it was fun.

  “Which way?” she asked and pointed in both directions.

  “Winch…whinch…which way. R…rr…rint.” He sagged.

  “Right.” She gestured right. “Left.” Then left.

  “Right,” he repeated.

  “Yes!”

  “Right, right, right.”

  Mollie took an exaggerated stride with her right then left foot and got him to copy her and say the words until they reached the end of the dam. Then they ran until they came to the first card she’d fastened up.

  Mollie pulled him to a halt and pointed. “Tree.”

  She watched him struggle to form the word in his head. “Tr…ent.” He made a sound of disgust. “Tr…ee. Tree.”

  She nodded. “Tree.”

  “Tree.” He beamed at her and won another sticker.

  The first dozen trees they passed, she made him say it again and for twig, stone, bush, blackberry, path and the others she’d labeled. He started to call out the words himself and she could hear the joy in his voice when she confirmed he had it right. She taught him others she hadn’t written down—sky, dog, goose, swan, ant and she could hear him getting increasingly better at pronouncing and remembering them.

  When they reached a spot where they could walk into the trees, Molli
e tugged him off the path and up the slope. They sat side by side on a flat boulder and she took a slip of paper from her pocket, peeled off another sticker and pressed it on his cheek.

  “Well done,” she said.

  He pushed his hood down and smiled at her. Oh God, he is so good-looking. A smilier version of Lysander, except it was mistake to think of Lysander because her stomach went straight into a freefall of guilt.

  She opened her mouth and he put a finger on her lips. He took a deep breath and began to sing, haltingly at first, then more confidently. A Beautiful World by Take That. Mollie’s eyes widened in surprise.

  She had a lump in her throat by the time he’d finished. He had a fantastic voice.

  “Can time sing not sp…spill…spit.” He scowled.

  She thought he was saying he could sing but not speak.

  “Hey, tiny steps,” she said. She frantically tried to think of something to sing with him. Her head was full of stuff she did with the kids.

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round,” she sang and did the mime, and he sniggered. “Oh, I’ve got one. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.” She touched the parts of her body as she sang the words and Flint joined in.

  “Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.” But he touched her face, her body as he sang and her heart missed a beat.

  After the rhyme was done, he moved his fingers back to her cheek. “Moll…ee…eyes. Moll…ee…nose. Moll…ee…ears. Moll…ee…mouth.”

  He stared into her face and she stared back. She wanted and didn’t want him to kiss her. Wanted because desire hummed in her veins like a thousand bees. Didn’t want because guilt buzzed alongside it like a thousand wasps. She was not the type to string two guys along at the same time. She’d never done that but she could feel herself sliding into a hole and had no idea how to stop herself falling.

  When he leaned toward her she could have moved away but she didn’t. He brushed his lips over hers then pulled back and looked into her eyes. His hesitation undid her, the vulnerable look in his eyes broke her heart. He wasn’t acting. She knew this couldn’t go anywhere, but then it couldn’t with Lysander either. She was incapable of turning away from the man in front of her.

  Mollie ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his mouth. Their mouths were the only point where they touched. He nibbled her upper lip, sucked at her lower, and the world dissolved around her.

  “Moll…ee, Moll…ee, Moll…ee,” he said her name over and over as his lips caressed hers.

  This was like drowning. She couldn’t breathe. Where their hands spread on the rock, their fingers touched, and when he slid just the tip of his middle finger over hers, it was enough to make her moan. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and his slow, sensual exploratory glides made her tingle. As their kiss deepened, their fingers threaded together until their hands were clenched tight. Mollie trailed her tongue over his teeth and around the inside of his cheeks while he groaned into her mouth.

  Then somehow they were lying on the boulder, pressed against each other, legs entangled, tongues twisting together, kissing until the ache in Mollie’s belly forced her to rock against him. She could feel the hardness of his cock beneath his running shorts and the breath caught in her throat as the muscles between her legs began to tighten and release.

  He pulled his head back, sucked in air, and stared into her eyes. “Moll…ee.”

  She lost the battle with her conscience, caught up in a swell of lust so powerful, she forgot where they were. Her nipples hardened as he pulled her closer, rubbing his erection against the junction of her thighs, and she wanted the material between them gone. Oh God, I’ve lost my mind. He let her hand go but only so he could wrap his arm around her to hold her closer. She put her arm around him, held him and they lay plastered together, still kissing.

  Could you die from being kissed? Her heart hammered in her chest, battered against her ribs. Mouths open, mouths closed, they kept kissing. When they needed to breathe, they kissed cheeks, noses, ears, necks, and wherever Flint’s lips touched her skin, Mollie caught fire. She licked around his jaw and down the column of his throat, felt his Adam’s apple shift under her mouth, and shuddered with longing.

  It was impossible to keep still. All she felt was desperation for more—more kisses, more touches, more rocking against her. She didn’t remember ever feeling so…possessed with need, so lightheaded with lust. She was cautious, she’d never gone to bed with a guy on the first date. She knew now she’d never met the right guy. Her need to come swamped everything, even her guilt. When she felt Flint’s hand sliding between their bodies, dipping inside the waistband of her shorts, she clutched him more fiercely, kissed him more ravenously.

  One touch of her clit and she unraveled, shuddering against him as the world turned black, then brilliant white. His finger slid in her cream, caressing the swollen nub of flesh, and she cried out, clinging to him as if he were the only thing that could keep her from dissolving to nothing.

  Flint kissed her cheek, sat up and pulled his cock out of his shorts. He turned away from her, closed his eyes and began to jerk off. Mollie sat behind him, wrapped her arms around him and put her fingers over his. His shoulders shook as he moved his hand faster then he was coming, cum spurting from his cock, splattering the rock as he panted.

  He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles where she held his dick and turned to look at her.

  “Head, shoulders, co…ck and toes, cock and toes,” he sang.

  Mollie laughed. She let him go and before he could put himself to rights, she stuck a ‘Good Boy’ sticker on his cock.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They saw the speech therapist’s car ahead of them as they ran down the track toward Flint’s house.

  “Mollie, come.” Flint took her hand.

  “I need to shower.”

  “P…peas…please.”

  She gave in and went with him. There were more dirty looks from Brigid and Andy, but Joe smiled at her. He smiled even harder when he listened to Flint sing.

  “That’s fantastic,” he said. “I love the stickers.”

  He pointed to Flint’s chest and Flint looked at Mollie and winked, which made her cheeks burn. Joe took a handful of cards from his bag and placed them around the room on various objects. He encouraged Flint to repeat the words after him and tested him. Flint kept getting them wrong and Mollie watched disappointment creep through him, sending him back into his shell.

  “Stu…stooped…stu…pid.” He clenched his fists.

  “No, you’re not.” She tried to unpeel his fingers and when she couldn’t, she lifted his hand to her mouth and licked his knuckles. Flint’s lips twitched in a smile.

  “The bad news is he has to do this for hour after hour,” Joe said. “Keep practicing, speaking the words, writing them out, reading them. The good news is that I can already see he’s going to be fine.” He put a couple of children’s books on the table, ones that Mollie recognized. “Start with reading The Gruffalo and work up to War and Peace.”

  She laughed, Flint’s gaze snapped to her and she squeezed his unclenched fingers.

  “Right, I’m going to mime that,” she said.

  War involved a lot of imaginary sword play, gun fire and death. Peace wasn’t quite so easy, because lying flat on her back with her hands pressed together in prayer had Flint poking her. She began to think he knew the title of the book perfectly well but was too amused to let her stop. But when Flint finally said the words, “War and Peace,” she thought it had all been worth it to see the pleasure on his face.

  Joe had Flint speak in front of a mirror so he could watch his lips and tongue as he formed the words. Every technique Joe tried, Mollie noted. Variety would help stop Flint getting depressed.

  “He’ll have difficulty understanding any conversation involving more than one person,” Joe said. “He has to concentrate hard on retaining all these new words and multitasking is a huge challenge.�
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  The time passed quickly but Joe seemed pleased with Flint’s progress. Mollie was astounded at how fast Flint was improving. The sounds he made were becoming more and more intelligible.

  “Don’t assume he can’t understand what you’re saying,” Joe told her. “That’s likely to come back quicker than his speech. He’s one of the lucky ones. I had someone who had a stroke in her early forties who took a year before she could count to three.”

  They’d just listened to Flint count to twenty, and it sounded as if he could have kept going.

  Joe packed his bag. “One thing worth trying at the start of the day or particularly if he gets anxious is a German system called Samonas.” He handed Mollie a CD. “It uses the sounds of nature and music to stimulate the nerve cells in the brain.”

  “Like whale sounds?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Or birdsong, waves ebbing and flowing, rainstorms, things like that. As well as stimulation, the sounds also instill calmness, which helps sufferers think more clearly. Classical music works in a similar vein. But whatever else you do, you need to keep positive and encourage him. You’re already doing that and I can’t underestimate how essential it is. He might be famous but he needs a friend. You see what’s happened as we’ve started talking and he doesn’t understand? He feels excluded.”

  Mollie didn’t need to look at Flint to know he’d slipped inside himself again.

  After Joe had left, Flint took his wallet from his pocket and offered it to her. “Help…Flint.”

  She pushed his hand away, though it had crossed her mind that if she took money, she’d be setting a different basis for their relationship. Then he wrapped his fingers around Mollie’s, looked at her with a heavy-lidded gaze, and her heart lurched. Who am I kidding?

  “Help Flint,” he repeated. “Not Beat. Moll…ee help.”

  “Yes, I’ll help you.” How could she say otherwise?

  His face lit up in a smile, his eyes brightening. “Moll…ee house. Coffee.” He looked straight into her eyes.

  Shit. “Coffee here.”