A Dish Served Cold
"Is this 'im? Is this the one what's made such a bleeding pest of himself?"
"No Nan" Molly giggled "Charles is me friend, well, actually he's sort of me boyfriend and I wouldn't be bringing a bleeding stalker home to meet you all, would I?"
"More's the pity, I'm sure me and your mum could sort 'im out" Nan leaned up against the doorframe and looked Charles up and down "Mind you, I'm pretty sure he don't need to be a bit of a creep to get the girls to notice 'im, I'll bet he has to beat them off with a stick"
"Nan, stop it you're embarrassing him"
"How? I only said he didn't look like a pervert, what's embarrassing about that?"
Charles snorted a laugh and looked down at his feet as he tried hard to control the blush that was starting to creep up his neck, he had a feeling that embarrassing people was a sort of hobby with Molly's Nan, but also that, if necessary, she'd fight tooth and nail to protect her granddaughter. It was almost worth setting her on Molly's stalker and standing back to watch the fireworks and fun.
-OG-
"What do you mean I'm your sort of boyfriend?"
They were in the car going back down the M4 as Charles breathed a sigh of relief that his trial by relative was over for one day. Her mum had been very kind to him, making him really welcome and quite obviously trying to make up for the astringent commenting that was coming from her grandmother, commenting that Molly simply ignored as though she was so used to it that she didn't notice it anymore, but Charles thought how much he'd hate to get on the wrong side of her Nan, he had a feeling that it would be a very uncomfortable place to be. There had been no sign of Molly's dad, he'd apparently been doing the hair of the dog in the local, and her younger brothers and sisters had been sprawled in front of the television, the distraction of new games already forgotten in favour of some Disney film, so that they'd barely looked up to acknowledge him. Molly had promised to phone and Facebook and to make sure that she visited and he'd promised to ferry her backwards and forwards whenever he could, none of which had stopped her getting a bit tearful as they'd left and set off for Bath.
She didn't answer the question, just looked at him and smiled, then put her hand on his thigh so that he'd immediately put his left hand over it and held it there, driving down the motorway holding onto the steering wheel with just his right hand.
"Oi, both hands on the wheel" she laughed and picked up his hand and put it back on the wheel as he looked at her and winked "and both bleeding eyes on the road as well"
"Well, stop distracting me then"
"Okay" she took her hand away from his leg, so that he promptly took his hand off the wheel again picked up her hand and put it back on his leg, a lot further up his thigh than before, saying that that wasn't what he'd meant.
The closer they got to Bath the quieter Molly got, she still hadn't seen his parents since the day she'd vanished from Royal Crescent and was filled with a mixture of longing to see them again because she'd got very fond of them, coupled with a shed load of guilt that she'd behaved so thoughtlessly in not letting them know that she was okay. She took a deep breath knowing that she had to face it eventually but was hanging back slightly behind Charles as they went in through the front door. It turned out to be a totally wasted exercise as Mrs. J appeared as soon as she heard his key in the lock and pushed him aside to throw her arms round Molly and sweep her up in a hug while telling her that she should probably give her a good hiding, so that Charles laughed and said that his mother's bark was always, always worse than her bite, which was just as well.
Molly tried to thank Mr. J for his help in arranging for Clive to sort things out for her but he refused to listen, just waved a hand dismissively in the air above his head and walked off when she'd started. He insisted that he didn't know what the 'flipping heck' she was talking about and how about she put the kettle on and made him a cuppa just like old times, because there was no-one else in the house who knew how to make his tea as well as she did and that all coffee freaks make disgusting tea, so that she got the giggles at the well-remembered outraged expression on Mrs. J's face.
-OG-
Charles stood behind her and put his arms round her, resting his chin on top of her head and then trying to push her hair to one side off the back of her neck so that he could nuzzle her and cupping her breasts through her 'T-shirt.
"Mmm, nice tits"
"Oi stop it, where's your mum?" Standing by the sink in the kitchen wasn't the most private place he could have chosen and Molly had visions of Mrs. J appearing in the doorway any second, but despite telling him to stop she was leaning back against him "Where am I supposed to be sleeping?"
"Where do you want to sleep?"
"Thanks that's really bleeding helpful"
He turned her round and put his hands onto her shoulders, smiled down into her eyes, and asked her if she wanted to use her old room because if that was what she wanted then it was fine with him. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her mouth gently saying that he needed her not to worry or to feel that she had to do anything she wasn't happy with, or sleep anywhere she didn't want to, then burst into laughter at the expression on her face and said that although he meant every word he'd said about wanting her to be happy, of course he wanted her to sleep with him, he loved her.
"Yeah, and it would serve you bloody right if I took notice of all that bollocks you just come out with and went and slept in me old room"
"I know, but you don't really want to, do you?" He ran his thumb over her bottom lip and smiled into her eyes as she gazed up at him biting her bottom lip, half considering doing exactly that to teach him a lesson "Anyway I have some stuff to talk to you about because you need to decide how badly you want to teach this arsehole a lesson" He smiled again "It really is up to you, we don't have to do anything if you don't want to"
"What we gonna do?"
"Well, the first thing we're going to do is get ourselves invited to the Regimental New Year party"
"What bleeding party and how the fuck are we gonna do that?"
"Well, it's in the Officer's Mess, so it'll be me that gets myself invited and sorry, but I think it might be best if you are down as my 'plus one' because we don't want to give him a heads up do we? Now, are you going to listen?"
It took a fair amount of time for Charles to outline his plan for revenge, some of which he had already implemented, and Molly couldn't help echoing his smile of triumph, knowing that if it worked as well as it should there would be one bloke who'd be very sorry he'd ever targeted her.
"What happens if it don't work?"
"We go to plan B"
"What's that?"
"I take the little turd outside and beat the shit out of him"
"Oh"
-OG-
She sat on the side of his bed and started to laugh at her vivid mental picture of Charles taking her tormentor by the collar and hoicking him outside, a sort of cartoon of his feet being way off the ground because Charles was at least a foot taller and would have absolutely no trouble at all beating the little bastard to a pulp. If it hadn't been for the fact that it would be something that would get him in deep hot water, she almost wished it could happen, because although she hated violence there was something very satisfying in visualising the little creep pouring with blood and in physical pain after everything he'd put her through. Charles began to laugh as well, either he was reading her mind or, far more likely, because he was finding her laughter incredibly infectious and was happy to hear her sounding so happy. His arm shot out and he pulled her on top of him so that she could feel his laughter making his chest shake. As she lay there on top of him the mood between them began to change and he stopped laughing as he rolled her onto her back and started kissing her, gently at first and then as he had done the first time she'd been in this bed with him and when they'd been together in her bed during their afternoon exercise in frustration. She could feel him getting hard against her thigh as she looked up into his eyes, which were all pupil, and then closed her own eyes as he started to slip her 'T' shirt off, undoing her bra and throwing it towards the bottom of the bed. She ran her hands across his chest, tracing the muscles under his shirt, and feeling his sharp intake of breath as she pulled it over his head, then put her hand down and touched him through his jeans, hearing him groan and feeling him quicken as she touched him, and loving what she was doing to his breathing.
She put her hand down and unbuttoned his jeans then wrapped her legs round him and wriggled around trying to push them down with her feet, so that he put his hands down and pushed them off, taking his boxer shorts with them, leaving him naked except for his socks. She laughed as he tried to push them off with his feet and then gave up and sat up for a second to pull them off and chuck them somewhere at the bottom of the bed with her bra.
"You need to take your jeans off" he muttered and let go of the wrists that he'd circled with one hand in order to hold her arms above her head while he'd kissed her from her neck down to her breasts and then back up to her face without touching her nipples, making her body arch up towards him with her need for him to stop teasing. As she pushed her jeans down and hooked her hands into the elastic at the lace top of her knickers he put his hand on hers and stopped her "Leave me something to take off"
"Condom?" She had this feeling that maybe he'd forgotten as they rolled around on his bed, not being able to get enough of each other as they tried to make up for lost time and that they were getting very close to being completely carried away, or at least she was.
"Yep, in a second, I promise, in a second"
"No ….. now. Where are they anyway?"
He went from still to fast and hard and deep in one stroke as she squeezed him tighter with her arms, her legs, her everything and then after a few minutes screwed her eyes shut and went into freefall, pulsing around him and feeling that everything was right, that she was where she was meant to be.
Afterwards he rolled off her slightly, worried about crushing her, and dotted little kisses on her face as her luminous eyes looked up at him and their mingled sweat dried on their bodies. Molly picked up the packet of condoms to put them back on the bedside table.
"How long have you had these? You know they have a 'use by' don't you?"
"We'd better use them then hadn't we?"
-OG-
The boutique in Bath was the most expensive shop she'd ever been in, none of the dresses had price tags on them so that they had to find an assistant to help, which reminded Molly that Nan always used to say that if you have to ask some bugger what it costs, you can't bleeding afford it. And she definitely couldn't afford anything in this place. Charles had offered to come shopping with her to help her choose, but Mrs. J had been adamant in her insistence that she wanted to go and that she'd be much better at picking than he would and that he could just pay for it, which made Molly feel very uncomfortable. She didn't want him to pay for her dress and she didn't want to let Mrs. J pick something that was horrendously expensive or, if she was being entirely honest, more to her taste than Molly's, but that was before she found out how much the bloody things cost.
The beaded spaghetti straps and close fitting empire line bodice, low cut and fitting her like a glove, together with the ivory chiffon skirt which alternatively clung and swirled around her legs made her feel more beautiful than she could ever have imagined, even though she was trying it on with her tatty and well-worn converse and would, as Mrs J kept saying, need killer heeled sandals to carry it off. None of that detracted from the fact that she couldn't even begin to afford it.
Mrs. J took absolutely no notice of her protests that she couldn't possibly buy it, as she did what Nan would call 'cocking a deaf 'n' so that Molly ended up carrying posh looking bags with a dress layered in a box with reams of tissue paper and a pair of beaded strappy sandals to match, and a huge feeling of guilt that they'd just spent so much money on something that was just for her wear to a bleeding party.
She'd modelled it for Charles as soon as they'd got home and had gone into apology mode, explaining that it was his mum who'd insisted and who just wouldn't listen. Charles had stood and stared at her in the dress, speechless with his eyes glittering and his cheeks slightly flushed as he'd bitten his bottom lip then smirked at her twirling in front of him, the chiffon fluttering round her legs as she did.
"Stop saying you're sorry, it was worth every single penny, you look beautiful"
"Thank you"
"I'm so proud of you and I can't wait to walk in there and have every bloke in the place wish they were me"
"You're biased"
"No I'm not, now take it off and hang it up before it gets all creased up, but leave the shoes on"
"Pervert"
-OG-
Sam's arrival put a stop to whatever his father had in mind and he took Maggie's reappearance with different coloured hair and a new name completely in his stride, as if it was an everyday occurrence. He flung his arms round her and demanded to know where she'd been and if she'd bought him a present back and whether she was staying so that Molly had bent down and tried to explain that she couldn't stay, that she was just there for a few days, that she lived in Weston now and that she had a job there.
"Why?" Sam wailed "Why do you have to live in Weston, why can't you live here anymore?"
"That is a really good question" Charles spoke before Molly could think of an answer for Sam "Why can't you?"
"Don't start, you know why" Molly gave him a fleeting smile then bit her bottom lip "I can't live here off your parents, I need a job"
"What do you want to do? Have you thought what you're going to do when all this is over I mean, are you going to join up again, go back to being a medic or do you want to do something else?"
"I dunno, will they let me go back do you think, seeing as how?"
"I'm sure they will, you haven't done anything wrong have you and you've got a Military Cross, so why not if that's what you want to do?" He raised his eyebrows at her "They'll probably welcome you back with open arms"
Molly hadn't dared to think about what was going to come next, she couldn't carry on living in that grotty little room in Weston, or at least she didn't want to. Matt had vacated his room and gone home to live the day before Christmas Eve, apparently his homophobic dad had had a change of heart, so that she was going to have a new housemate sooner rather than later and she would be very lucky to have someone as lovely as Matt to share with again. Her job with Norm could hardly be called a career, so she couldn't stop there forever, but so much was going to depend on what happened on New Year's Eve and how effective the steps Charles had already taken turned out to be.
-OG-
Author's notes: Thanks for your reviews and I hope that you enjoy this, which is the penultimate chapter of the story, the last chapter will show that revenge can be very sweet.