John Wiltshire - [More Heat Than the Sun 07]

by Enduring Night [MLR MM] (epub)

  It occurred to Ben that Nikolas wouldn’t experience this disorientation as badly, because he’d spent his life playing at being different people, nothing sure or certain. But Ben’s worldview was more prosaic and this had shaken it. They had not crossed the rocks. So how had they ended up on the other side? He was determined to go back and explore the route to the next beach on his own—possibly when there was no danger of fog descending. He allowed that caveat, which he told himself was only his natural pragmatism and nothing to do with tales of insane cannibals.

  Because it had also occurred to Ben that if no one had missed them, who had whispered to James Lancaster, “Ben, where are you?”

  Suddenly, a vast fist of wind punched at the window. Within seconds, the view disappeared behind a swirl of snow and the darkness became absolute. The storm, apparently, had arrived.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Although he missed his husky and sleigh trip to the glacier, Ben couldn’t say the exchange was unwelcome.

  A violent storm, no internet, no phone signal. Open fire, Nikolas. It was fairly obvious what they would spend the afternoon doing. They pulled pillows and covers from the bed and threw them down on the rug in front of the flames. Illuminated only by their soft glow, the room was everything the outside wasn’t—warm, inviting, flickering with life.

  They made some pretence of reading, but Ben could tell Nikolas’s mind wasn’t on his book. Which was good. Ben liked Nikolas’s attention to be on the subjects it should be. But it was also fun to make Nikolas Mikkelsen work a little for what he wanted. Consequently, Ben stopped a roving hand, which had found a gap between his waistband and shirt and asked, while ostensibly focused on an interesting page of his own book, “If you could only have one part of me ever again, what bit would you choose?”

  Nikolas groaned and turned on his belly, mirroring Ben’s position, lying alongside him. “One bit? How would that work? Would it be cut off? Cut out?”

  “Gross. No. I’d be…in some kind of armoured bodysuit, with access only through one section.”

  “Would you be able to breathe?”

  “Of course.”

  “So your mouth would be a freebie.”

  “No, I’d have an internal air system. Unless it was the mouth you chose, of course.”

  “I’m not currently thinking mouth, as nothing but absolute drivel ever seems to come out of it.”

  “That’s not what you said last night.”

  “Ack. So this bodysuit. How would you piss? Shit?”

  “Oh, God, it’s not a bodysuit then. I’m wired up, and if you ever touch a part other than the one you’ve chosen you get electrocuted. How’s that?”

  “Much more credible. Can I please get back to my—?”

  “Choose!”

  “You just want me to say…words I do not like saying.”

  Ben snorted. “I’ll allow you to point.”

  Nikolas sighed and dropped his head theatrically. The wind suddenly did one of its attempts to get into the room with them, making the glass shudder. Nikolas lifted his gaze, studying it.

  “Don’t worry. This place has stood up to worse storms, Nils said.”

  “I wasn’t worried. I was calculating how long it would last. If I have to choose, then I want to base my choice on relevant and current data.” Nikolas slid a hand up onto Ben’s back. “I need to conduct a proper scientific examination, take notes—give scores.”

  Ben hissed his pleasure, arching into Nik’s touch.

  Nikolas murmured, “That noise gets a point to start with.”

  He flipped Ben onto his back and undid his shirt buttons, more quickly than he had the previous night, more driven. As soon as Ben’s smooth, strong chest was exposed, Nikolas bent his head to a nipple and bit lightly, licking and sucking until it rose red and flushed. “Hmm. Two for that colour.” He shifted to the other nipple, levering himself over to reach it, his warmth enveloping Ben. Ben unbuttoned Nikolas’s shirt and pulled it off, bare skin to bare skin. “Another two for good ideas.” Nikolas finished with Ben’s chest and travelled lower, trailing his tongue to Ben’s waistband, where he stopped. Nikolas chuckled and came back up, seizing Ben’s mouth, opening wide and kissing, one leg now bent over Ben, grinding into him, making him bone-hard and ready. Nikolas eased his lips from Ben’s. “I’m not scoring that kiss yet. It might just win and ruin my experiment.”

  Ben smiled, took a firm hold of Nikolas’s head and encouraged him lower again. He had a fairly good idea what Nikolas would eventually choose and needed him to decide quickly now—experimentation or not.

  Nikolas went down obediently. He freed Ben. Rigid, swollen and tight, Ben’s cock ricocheted onto his taut abdomen. Nikolas took his time, exploring, examining, awarding marks. Almost purple with heated blood, veined, pink-tipped, it scored a ten, apparently. Ben murmured, pleased, but Nikolas replied, with some difficultly given his tongue was busy, that Ben didn’t know his rating system yet. Ben reckoned even if ten wasn’t a good score, what Nikolas was doing was accolade enough. He seemed to match the pulse, the need to release with each lick. The tip of Nikolas’s tongue against the tip of his cock made Ben’s groin tighten. He tried to lever further into the warm mouth, but Nikolas said he needed to remain impartial—for now.

  He moved on.

  He knelt over Ben’s legs, pulling his jeans off slowly, working them around shoes and socks and removing them too. Soon, Ben lay with only his open shirt, his long lean body entirely on view and ready for inspection, the tanned brown perfection broken only by the darkness at his groin, the wiry hair, his cock. Nikolas shook his head and rolled Ben once more. Ben heard a grunt of pleasure and Nikolas murmured, “Ten as well.” Then he straddled Ben’s thighs and parted him with strong hands, and his score went up. Exponentially.

  Ben arched once more.

  Spread, held wide open, admired, rated, he was beyond caring now about his game. He simply wanted something inside him.

  He heard a zip, a rustle of clothing, and then Nikolas was in.

  Ben was lost to the sensation. He knew what Nikolas would always choose—he’d always known it. It was how their relationship had begun. The desire for this. There was nothing equal to the sensation of being inside another man, and not the obvious physical one of orgasm. It was the sharing of power. It was the wrongness. The defiance and transgression, and making this choice to be different. It was primal, being male without restraint. It was freedom.

  He was Nikolas’s freedom. Possibly the first and only time Nikolas had found someone to be entirely himself with, and he’d found it deep inside Ben’s body.

  Freedom and life lived without restraint.

  It didn’t get any better than this.

  Ben suddenly wriggled away and stood up, pulling a slightly dazed Nikolas to his feet. It was always so good standing. He leant on the back of the armchair and Nikolas came behind him, hands around his chest, rubbing up and down as he re-entered. Interrupted, it nevertheless took them no time at all to get back to where they’d been. The wind howled and flung itself at them. Nikolas actually laughed, spread his legs a little wider and thrust in and up, and Ben went with it, surging his powerful core muscles to the waves of intense pleasure within. He wished he could see them as another might, six feet four, lean as whipcord, anatomical perfection meeting superb physique and finding in this meeting the meaning of everything they were.

  Nikolas was coming.

  Ben touched his own cock. It was all he needed, and they finished together, panting, sweating, muscles cramping as they wrung out the last moments of release.

  When Nikolas pulled out, Ben felt bereft. He grinned and put his arm back, holding Nikolas close to his back for a moment.

  “I think I’ve answered my own question.”

  Nikolas slapped Ben’s backside, a sticky, damp, slap. “Not at all. I am still adding scores.”

  They went to shower and then Nikolas insisted they had to try the sauna.

  Ben didn’t like saunas much, de
spite the fact that they had one in their bathroom at home. They seemed unnatural things to him and he disliked the smell. Nikolas thrived on them, being Scandinavian. He stretched out on his belly, his head on folded arms, watching Ben in the low light. Ben couldn’t sit comfortably, so he was forced to lie on his stomach too, much to Nikolas’s amusement.

  “I have decided.”

  Ben turned his head, lazy with heat and orgasm, the tension of the morning quite gone.

  “You don’t really need to tell me. I can still feel you inside.”

  Nikolas smiled, equally relaxed. “Then you would be wrong, min skat. I would choose your heart. You are the only person who has ever loved me, and that would be hard to replace.” Ben was about to make an equally intense declaration back until Nikolas added with a smirk, “All other body parts are easily available to billionaires, I have discovered.”

  Outraged, Ben swung out and hit him, which only provoked the reaction Nikolas apparently wanted anyway. Ben pulled Nikolas to his feet and bent him over the bench. It was so hot his head swam getting up so quickly. Maybe it was because all his blood had gone south.

  There was one advantage to a sauna, even he had to admit. Dripping with sweat, he entered Nikolas as if he’d oiled him up first, ramming home, heaving him up to standing and crushing him close with strong arms. “Can you find that anywhere else?”

  Nikolas shrugged. “In the dark one feels much like another.”

  Ben fastened his teeth onto Nikolas’s neck. In the past, Nikolas would have forbidden Ben to bite him there, mark him so visibly, but he had apparently learnt his lesson that forbidding Ben to do anything tended to make him do it more. Nikolas tried to negotiate. He apologised. Both attempts were ruined by insincerity, so Ben bit him. He bit so hard that Nikolas winced, cried out and jerked away, hand to his neck, complaining. Ben only seized Nikolas again, sat down and dragged him onto his lap—onto his cock. It was awkward, hard to do what was needed until Nikolas got his knees on either side of Ben on the bench, and then it was phenomenally good for both of them. Nikolas forgot his fury, the pain of the bite, and threw his head back. Ben gripped Nikolas’s cock, working it for him and once more they came as one, Nikolas splattering onto Ben’s sweat-streaked chest, the spill running in rivulets to catch like pearls in the folds of his skin.

  Ben tipped back against the higher bench, stretching his arms, panting.

  Nikolas stood carefully, supporting himself on the wall.

  They gave each other wry smiles.

  The wound was forgotten until Nikolas saw himself in the mirror in the bathroom. Ben never bothered too much about Nikolas’s disapprobation, but ever since the Jackson Keane incident he’d tried not to take Nikolas’s unswerving loyalty for granted either. The night he had spent at Tim’s apartment, believing Nikolas had cheated on him, was the worst night of his life, and he’d had some very bad nights over the course of thirty plus years in many varied ways. Consequently, he gave Nikolas more sympathy than he normally would and allowed him to grumble undisturbed about rabies while they dressed for dinner.

  The storm continued unabated. It was even more evident in the dining room as it faced directly into the wind, whereas their bedroom was on one side of the large cabin looking across the beach.

  Conversation was subdued. Laughing or talking in the face of such a force of nature would have been like making a joke during the bear attack on the Hagglund—unthinkable. They endured, flinching at the gusts, glancing nervously at the windows, the roof.

  Ben and Nikolas found themselves sitting across the table from Mattie Mayberry and her husband. Burnside had been booked on the same husky experience as Ben, and they commiserated with each other for a moment on missing this and naturally began to speak about the ferocity of the storm.

  “I guess you guys haven’t been bored.” Matt smirked, as if guessing very well what they’d spent the afternoon doing. And then he made his insinuation obvious by adding, “Mattie won’t give it up during the day. Says it’s not Christian, don’t you, hon? Christian? Don’t reckon that asshat Jesus ever had to endure this frickin’ darkness all day, what’d’ya say, Al?”

  Nikolas rose, pushing his uneaten food away. “Tea?”

  Ben nodded. It was about as rude as Nikolas ever allowed himself to be to a stranger, but Ben reckoned the censure would be lost on the American. He was debating how to turn the conversation swiftly away from anyone’s sex life, particularly his own, when the man suddenly asked, “Hey, you guys coming to the movie tonight? It’s some documentary shit about polar night.”

  Mattie Mayberry then spoke for the first time. Her voice was soft and melodic and promised something very special if you listened attentively. She kept her eyes lowered and murmured, “I don’t think it’s a documentary, sweetie. I think you’re mixing it up with—”

  “Who knows more about fucking movies, me or you?”

  Ben’s brows rose in surprise at his tone, and to diffuse the situation and Mattie’s obvious discomfort at being so publicly shot down, he murmured to her enquiringly, “Movie?”

  Mattie replied quickly, “30 Days of Night.”

  Ben glanced between them and began to chuckle. “Seriously? They’re showing us 30 Days of Night?”

  Mattie gave him a tiny, complicit smile until she winced and apparently didn’t know what to touch first, her plastered nose or the sore on her lip, which had begun to bleed a little.

  Matt Burnside was flicking his gaze between his wife and Ben, and suddenly exclaimed, “You’re the guy in that gladiator series—something Wars. The one who killed himself. Shot himself in the head. I read about it.”

  Ben was about to deny this when he heard what the guy had said. He frowned deeply, trying to untangle it. He saw Mattie give a small shake of her head, her silent, “Please, don’t. Just let it go,” unmistakable. So, yes, he was Ollie Whitestone…who’d killed himself. Life was full of wonders, apparently.

  He related this small joke to Nikolas later in the big TV room. Nikolas had recovered his equanimity, mainly because he’d forgone tea for alcohol, and his only comment was, “Good, we are both dead people then.”

  It wasn’t exactly the response Ben had been going for, but the film was beginning. Nikolas also apparently thought the show was a documentary about winter in the arctic. He seemed puzzled for a while, then slightly alarmed. Ben could have told him that if he ever stayed awake when they watched movies together he would have recognised this one only too well. It was one of Ben’s favourites after all. But he had to agree—it was a slightly unfortunate choice for people trapped by a storm in the polar night.

  Everyone was sombre when the credits began.

  §§§

  In the back of the hotel, in the windowless TV room, they’d been isolated from the storm’s fury.

  Now, making their way to their rooms, it seemed as if the wind had lost its patience at being kept outside—that it was seeking them out individually to punish.

  For the first time, standing by the window in their bedroom, Ben began to feel the need to see the sun again. It was nothing to do with vampires, not even particularly related to the odd events of the morning; it was more a sense of needing something. He missed his running, and he missed natural light. He was a creature of habit, he knew, and accepted this. Nikolas had once called him a force of nature. If he was, he was being unnaturally restrained.

  “I think my biological clock is ticking.”

  Nikolas, pulling off his shirt, shied away from the kiss he’d been about to attempt. “What the fuck?”

  Nikolas rarely swore, so Ben turned sharply, his brows furrowed until he heard what he’d said. Nikolas mumbled that he was a moron. Ben swatted at him, and they got into a very pleasant argument about getting Ben pregnant. Nikolas, after his initial shock, seemed more than happy to help in the endeavour. Their afternoon’s fun had taken its toll however, and they both admitted defeat after one short round. But Ben had been distracted from thinking about sunlight, which was enoug
h, and fell asleep twisted around Nikolas’s strong body, parts of him throbbing, just like a tiny, oddly positioned clock.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ben woke to the delightful sensation of being in a warm bed with a storm raging outside.

  He could hear Nikolas breathing deeply behind him, felt the mattress depress a little as he changed position, the soft, distinct breathing now sending cool puffs onto his shoulder. He debated between drifting back to sleep for a while or continuing the fun they’d been having the night before, before they’d both wilted. He let his mind drift down his naked body. He could feel the sheet pooled at his feet, his entire length stretched out and on display. The ache had gone. Good. His cock was hard. Even better. Going back to sleep clearly wasn’t on the agenda.

  Just as he was summoning the will to wake fully and put a hand back to see if Nikolas’s cock was ready to join the party, fingers landed lightly on his erection and stroked right along its smooth hardness before withdrawing. He was about to seize the fingers, press them on, make the hesitant foray a great deal more pleasurable, when he heard a noise in the bathroom, opened his eyes, and saw Nikolas standing naked at the mirror, inspecting the bruise on his neck.

  A cold wash of horror prickled up Ben’s spine so forcibly it created a fluttering in his heart.

  He stopped breathing.

  He tried to silence the strong pulse of blood in his ears that deafened him.

  He needed to listen.

  No, he needed to turn. He needed to be a man who wasn’t afraid of anything in this life. But he couldn’t. He was entirely frozen in place—sleep paralysis from fear.

  He could still hear the quiet in and out current behind him, but now it seemed infused with gleeful menace, as if the owner of the breaths knew very well Ben was not breathing in order to listen to him. The puff of exhaled air on his shoulder made Ben’s skin crawl and his whole body clenched with dread at the thought of another touch of that hand.