Expectations have consequences…

June 11th 2018

Molly and Charles

"You're insatiable" He lifted her off him gently and she curled into his side with her head under his chin as he put his arms round her.

"I know …and I know what it means" She lifted her head and smirked at him, then went on "Are you moaning?"

"No, no, no, no, God no, no you can seduce me any time you like and anywhere you like" he thought for a second, then added "Within reason of course"

"Oh, bugger, you are a spoilsport, I thought I'd go for a parade ground next time"

"Yeah, that'd be funny if I thought you were joking!"

She had come into the bathroom where he was looking into the shaving mirror wearing a towel loosely knotted round his hips and had pressed the length of her naked body onto his back while undoing his towel, putting her arms round his waist and running her index fingers down the inside edge of each hip bone, with the inevitable consequences that they had ended up back in bed. She was trying very hard to distract him from getting ready to leave the hotel, she didn't want to go to Bath.

"So, when did you get so insatiable then? I never noticed signs of it when we were in Afghan, mores the pity!"

"You wouldn't play with me in Afghan so how would youknow? and anyway I would have been too worried about getting pregnant back then, with bloody good reason as it turns out" She smirked at him, and then thought for a minute " I was so bleeding miserable when I first got home, so sick and manky that I was sure I was never gonna want to go to bed with any bloke ever again, even you, and I couldn't imagine why anyone in their right mind would want to do this more than once. Then, one day I woke up feeling good, not just better, but really good and I looked in the mirror and I realised I looked good as well, I had these great tits, much bigger than before…"

"I noticed" he interrupted with a smirk on his face

"Shut up….. anyway I had always wanted bigger tits and I had this smooth baby bump appearing, quite small, but definitely there and getting bigger every day and I was suddenly really excited. I had this baby in there and I was proud of it and I wanted everybody to notice. I wanted to wear clingy clothes and show it off and…"

"I would have been excited if I'd known"

"Liar"

"Well I would have been when I stopped panicking" he laughed so she decided to ignore him and carry on trying to explain.

"Then I began to feel really sexy all the time, I wanted to know what it would feel like to have someone's hands run over my bump…"

"Mine, I hope"

"I haven't wanted to go to bed with anyone apart from you since we first met in Afghan, so, why would I start wanting to now? Although, now I come to think about it, it's a good job you came and found me when you did….."

He became aware that her fingers were making circles on his muscles as her hand was wandering down towards his groin, so he grabbed her hand and took it up to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

"We have to get ready to check out of here otherwise we have to pay for another day, so stop trying to check my recovery time and stop trying to distract me. We not only have to pay the bill here but the underground car park as well and the car has been there for nearly 24 hours. And the Congestion Charge and don't forget the posh food from room service… and I've got a new daughter to support not to mention her mum so we can't afford another day here. We can go home and you can seduce me there for free"

"Which car park?"

"Sloane Square"

"Oh, shit we'd better go!"

Molly

We've been to Nan's so I could pick up some clothes and stuff, but Nan wasn't in so Charlie couldn't meet her which was a shame, so now we're on our way to Bath. His face was a picture when he got the bill from the car park and he added it to the bill from the hotel. He kept saying things like 'God, you're expensive' and 'I could have bought a new car for that' and I was laughing so much that I couldn't speak. When I could speak again I told him to stop exaggerating and said 'I was worth it wasn't I?' He said he didn't know at the moment and would tell me when he'd recovered from the shock! So I slapped him, pillock! After a bit he asked how the hell Londoners' manage to pay those prices and I pointed out that Londoners' don't stay there or use the car park, they get the tube and go home. Places like that are for foreigners and posh boys up from places like Bath, which shut him up.

I asked him what his mum and dad had said when he told them he was bringing him a pregnant floosy and that I bet his mum weren't exactly thrilled, and bless him, he got all worried and said that he had told me over and over that they were going to love me, and that I wasn't a floosy. I didn't keep on about it, but I bet any money you like that's what his mum thinks. He said that we needed to talk about what we were going to tell people about the tour and New Year's Eve and that, so I said he could say anything he liked as long as he didn't tell them it was all my idea. Cheeky bastard said "Oh, you want me to lie then?" so I told him to be very, very careful what he said about New Year's Eve or he might be sorry, which set him off on the apologising again until I pointed out that I meant what I said last night about being scared he wasn't gonna let me join in! I had to tell him to watch the road cos he turned his head to look at me and said how much he loves me and how he doesn't ever want to be without me again, which was nice, I have a feeling I'm gonna need as much nice as I can get over the next couple of days.

Charles

Molly keeps laughing at my shock over the cost of parking a car overnight in Central London, let alone the price of a hotel room, but Jesus I am out of touch, but, as she keeps saying, Belgravia was never going to the same price as a Travelodge so I need to get over it! I must shut up about it now, I don't want her to think she isn't worth it to me, if it makes her happy I don't give a shit what it cost. I know that the closer we get to Bath, the more she is worrying about what my parents will make of her, she seems to have got hold of the idea that my mother won't be thrilled to see her and will think she is some kind of trollop, I have no idea where that has come from as it is complete rubbish, well I hope it is anyway. I spoke to my mum this morning and now that Molly has planted a seed in my brain I am beginning to wonder whether it was my imagination or not or was she a bit frosty and hostile when she asked about Mol. Surely not, my mum should know, if anyone does, just how miserable I was without her and how happy I am going to be to be back with her again. The baby is a bit difficult to explain away, simply because she was conceived on tour, but then she is going to be a bit difficult to explain away to all sorts of people, not least Beck and the rest of the army hierarchy. It's going to need some very careful thought and some very creative lying, which I won't let Molly anywhere near as she is a terrible liar! So transparent that she might just as well have a sign on her head saying 'I'm lying, don't believe a word I say'. It's going to be a bit difficult to explain Molly and the baby to Sam as well, the baby more than Mol. I am going to look an enormous hypocrite when, in a few year's time, I start telling Sam to be careful and to always practise safe sex, he's only got to say "You didn't" hasn't he? I think I'll leave worrying about that to another day, hopefully It will be a while before I have to!

Molly has nodded off and she looks just like a kid, sometimes when she is asleep, she looks so young that I worry that people will think I am a cradle snatcher. She is probably exhausted because we didn't get much sleep last night. Apart from the obvious making up for lost time, which we did a great deal of, we talked a lot about what happened in the past and I think I understood what happened after I got out of hospital and we talked about what happened on New Year's Eve. She said she knew what I was trying to do with Izzy and I asked her if it had worked, she said that of course it did, she had wanted to scream at Izzy to leave me alone because I was hers, and that she had had every intention of kissing me and probably more when she came to my quarters, because she had just realised that she still loved me. She told me that the thing that had upset her the most when I turned into some sort of caveman was that she had been scared I wasn't going let her join in. I don't believe her but I love her to bits for saying that. I am never going to let anyone hurt her.

Penny and Bill James

"Did you hear all that? What the hell does he think he is playing at now?" Penny James was banging cups down on tray without looking where they were landing "Hasn't he been through enough in the last couple of years without starting all this up again? And he says she is pregnant and that it's his, but how can it be? he only got back from tour yesterday and apparently she's six months pregnant so the sums don't add up at all!"

"Calm down while we've still got some cups in one piece Penny" Bill James took the last cup out of his wife's hand, "I presume this is Charles we are talking about" his wife nodded fighting back the tears that were threatening to start flowing "So start what up all over again? And who's pregnant?"

"Do you remember when he got back from Afghanistan, when he was injured?"

"How could I forget?

She started to tell him about Charles' constantly asking after Molly, full of anxiety about her. Whenever he was awake, which wasn't often as he was in an induced coma a lot of the time, but when he was brought round the first thing he asked each time was "Where's Molly? Is she okay? So his mother had formed a very strong opinion that there was more going on between them than CO and medic and that she had somehow been involved in the shooting. As Charles began to recover she knew that this Molly had visited, Rebecca had seen her there, and that they had texted and phoned each other while he was in the hospital and she knew without a doubt, and without being told, that her son was deeply involved with this girl. She knew the girl was a medic who had saved his life, and was sure that a heady mix of misplaced hero worship and natural gratitude mixed with the rebound from Rebecca and the vulnerability of a severely injured man whose life was about to be turned upside down if he had to leave his first love, the army, had led to some sort of relationship between Charles and this girl, who was, according to Rebecca, very small and very pretty. Charles had seemed to be very happy when he left hospital and then suddenly he wasn't. Penny never found out what went wrong but she knew it had something to do with this girl who had vanished from his conversation and he was worryingly morose and miserable, drinking too much, snapping at everyone and being thoroughly unpleasant to be around. He had slowly got back to normal, but was even more closed up and detached than before his last tour, then, suddenly, apparently she was back.

"There is no way I am going to stand by and let this happen again. Every time she has been involved in his life it has ended badly and I can't bear the thought of him being hurt all over again"

"Sorry love, but I don't think you can do anything about it and I don't think you should try. He's a grown man, he's nearly 33 for heaven's sake, he's old enough to make his own decisions…..and mistakes if that is what it is and it's got nothing to do with us. In any case we don't even know it it's the same girl yet"

Charles

Need to wait for a minute or two before we go in because I have just woken Molly up and she is all sleepy and rumpled, God, she looks sexy when she's rumpled, mind you I remember that from Afghan, and she is wearing a hell of a lot less now than she used to wear there. I am not sure now why I made such a big deal of coming here today, yes, I want to see mum and dad, and to see Sam tomorrow, but we could have easily spent another day in that hotel enjoying our sort of 'honeymoon' and feeding our baby posh food from room service. We have only got 3 days before I have to be back in barracks so why was I hell bent on wasting more than one with other people when it could have just been us? Maybe we can stay over somewhere on Thursday night? Molly has an ante-natal check on Friday and she says I can't go with her because it is all about heartburn and piles, but I want to go anyway. We may have to fight about it! I have to report to Bulford at 16.00 on Friday and I haven't got a clue what is going to happen after that, we are going to have to make some plans.

"Mum, Dad, this is Molly, Molly these are my parent, Penny and Bill James"

Authors notes: Maybe the story wasn't quite finished after all. Thanks for all your lovely reviews, there is a bit more of this to come so let me know what you think and if there is anything you would like to see included.