Love is a Stranger

by John Wiltshire

  “Incredible.”

  “Surprised I knew what to do really.”

  “I do not recall you having any difficulty working it out.”

  “No, but then I’d had some weeks thinking about it.”

  Nikolas turned his head slowly, incredulity on his face. “You were thinking about…before that weekend? With…me?”

  Ben shrugged. “Come on. Have you seen yourself? That fucking interview in London? Asking all those questions in that bloody voice of yours? You say you fell—I almost took off. I was so hard I had to take my jacket off and lay it on my lap.”

  Nikolas laughed. “Good God. I remember that. For the rest of the interview, I was hoping you would take your shirt off as well.”

  They held each other’s gaze, and Ben said calmly, “It was fate, Nik, you know that. You can rationalise things as much as you like, but everything has led us to this place and to each other.”

  Nikolas turned his gaze to the house and the moors and then the rooks circling the enormous fir trees by the stream. “I do not believe in fate. We make our own destinies through sacrifice and pain.” He patted Ben’s thigh to soften his words and smiled. “But I do not deny that when I am with you, I am willing to be persuaded to your view of the world. Come. I have one day left to commit adultery with you. We should not waste the opportunity.”

  Ben chuckled. “We could stay here. Sort of camp out?”

  There was a snort of derision. “I am not that fond of you.”

  They drove away from the house, and when they finally came back out onto a proper road, it was like emerging from a dream. Ben actually glanced back anxiously. “What if we can’t find it again? What if it doesn’t—?”

  “If you are actually going to finish that sentence and say really exist, then can you get out of the car and walk home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  They drove south to the coast to a hotel Nikolas had heard of but never visited. It was on an island only accessible at low tide, and even then not by vehicle but by a huge sea tractor sent to the mainland to fetch and return guests. Built during the 1920s, the hotel was an iconic art deco masterpiece. It had recently undergone a full restoration and offered only the very best to the very rich. It was immensely elegant, the suites named for the tors on Dartmoor, which Ben reckoned was a nice touch. He had already named his tor behind the house Nik’s Knob, but hadn’t told him this yet.

  Nikolas didn’t even bother to book two rooms. He seemed more relaxed and at ease with himself than Ben had ever seen. He was even still dressed in the old jeans and Ben’s T-shirt he’d changed into at the house. Ben could never have imagined Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen being seen in public without his immaculate suits. Of course, his request for one room could have been down to the £700 per night price tag, but Ben gave him the benefit of the doubt and credited his boldness to the fact that this was the new and improved Nikolas emerging under his tutelage.

  The views from the suite were almost worth the £700—unbroken sea and the waves crashing onto the rocks below. The furnishings and elegant touches were also almost worth the price tag, too. The bed definitely was. Nikolas began undressing Ben as soon as the porter left their bags. Ben caught his wrists. “You do realise I haven’t eaten a proper meal since breakfast, yeah?”

  Nikolas quirked up his lips and freed his wrists. “Then I have an excellent suggestion what you can eat right now.”

  Ben looked down. “That doesn’t count as a proper meal. I’ve already explained that to you many times.”

  Nikolas grinned one of his very rare, wide-open smiles. “A practical demonstration is needed then. Clearly, I am a very slow learner.”

  Ben went to the room service menu. “Trust me, I’m so hungry you wouldn’t want my jaws around your pecker right now. I’m ordering real food, and you’re eating, too.”

  Nikolas seemed resigned to his fate, but as he went out onto the balcony to smoke, he said, “No meat. I do not eat meat.”

  Ben continued to snigger at this all through the order, which came to well over £200. They’d spent nearly a £1,000 already and neither of them had sat down yet. He decided he was very much in love with Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen and went out on the balcony to tell him so. Nikolas was leaning on the low wall that surrounded their balcony. The hotel was round, each balcony facing in its own direction and thus completely private. Only by hopping up on the wall and leaning out as far as he dared could Ben see a glimpse of the next suite’s balcony wall. He turned to comment on this to find Nikolas staring at him, pale. “Get down. Please.” Ben jumped off and sat on the wall instead. Nikolas swallowed and glanced at the rocks far below.

  “I didn’t know you were afraid of heights.”

  “Stupid child. I’m not. I was afraid you were going to fall. There is a huge difference.”

  “Jesus, Nik. You do remember I was in the SAS, yeah? Sometimes you treat me like—”

  “I treat you like…? Do finish what you were going to say. Oh, and remember the £700 room you are currently enjoying.” Nikolas came and sat next to him—proving that he wasn’t actually afraid of heights at all—and blew smoke in his face.

  “Ah, but I’d have laid you down and fucked you all night on the floor of the old house for free.”

  Nikolas could only laugh ruefully. Ben nodded wisely to emphasise the truth of his words. Nikolas was the one who enjoyed luxury. Ben’s only real indulgence was his bike. They sat looking at the view and waiting for the meal to arrive. After a few minutes, Nikolas said, slightly irritably, “You should take up smoking, Benjamin. Then perhaps you would stop giving me those evil looks.” He took a deep drag of his latest cigarette, seized Ben around the back of the neck, and kissed him, the smoke pouring out between them. Ben didn’t know whether to laugh or punch him. Fortunately, he was busy choking so didn’t have to decide. He flung his head back out of Nikolas’s grasp and in doing so lost his balance. He might have gone over backward if Nikolas hadn’t grabbed his arm. If he’d thought Nikolas had gone pale before, now he was almost deathly white. Ben glanced down at the fingers on his tanned arm and saw that Nikolas’s hand was shaking.

  “Hey, I’m okay. I wouldn’t have fallen. Freaky skills, remember?”

  Nikolas nodded, but he hardly seemed to be with Ben anymore. “My reactions seemed to have got quicker. Or maybe I wanted to catch you more.” Suddenly, he flinched. He turned quickly. Ben jumped, his nerves strung out by the almost fall.

  “What the fuck, Nik?”

  Nikolas smiled, but it clearly took him some effort. “Nothing. I thought I heard room service. Do not swear at me.” He got away with this obvious lie because right at that moment there was a discreet knock at the door. Ben went to get the food, leaving Nikolas to finish his cigarette.

  Ben couldn’t use his bluff to sleep in another room to force Nikolas to eat as they didn’t have one, but as they hadn’t had sex yet, he had an even more effective threat. It would have been a huge sacrifice on his part, but he was willing to make it. He was noble like that. Nikolas, therefore, ate—very grudgingly and painfully slowly, but everything he ate was healthy, so Ben was satisfied. He polished off a beef and ale pie with extra chips, Sharpham apple crumble and custard, and a plate of shortbread in the time it took Nikolas to eat a piece of salmon and an asparagus spear. Even then, Nikolas leant back complaining he’d eaten too much. Suddenly, he checked his watch. “It is low tide. Let us walk off the food on the beach.”

  The hotel had steps leading down to a private beach that at low tide stretched along most of the western side of the island. The sea had left the sand glistening and pristine in the early evening light. Nikolas kicked off his deck shoes and rolled up his jeans, and Ben couldn’t believe the transformation from the Nikolas he’d travelled down from London with only the day before. Somewhere between then and now, Nikolas had shed years of care. His fringe blew loose and long over his eyes. With hands thrust deep in the pockets of the old, worn jeans, sea washing around his ankles, he looked like the
boy in the photo once more. Ben came up behind him. “Can you swim?”

  Nikolas laughed. “I am Danish, Ben, or had you forgot? We are birthed in sea water, and it calls to us all our lives.”

  “Okay then, you Viking freak. See that buoy out there? Think you could beat me in a race around it and back?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Well?”

  Nikolas turned, frowning. “Seriously? You want to swim? Now?”

  “In the sea water that’s in your blood, apparently. Of course, if it’s too cold or too deep or too full of scary little crabs for you…”

  Nikolas pulled off his T-shirt.

  Ben did the same.

  “What do I get, Benjamin, when I inevitably win?”

  Ben laughed at the familiar line from a time that seemed longer ago than five months. “No way that’s going to happen. On a horse, I admit, you’re better than me. But look at us, mate. I’m gonna win.”

  Nikolas shrugged. “All right. What do you want if you win? Anything. It does not matter—as you will not.”

  “I take charge of the camera tonight and I get to photograph anything I want.”

  Nikolas shrugged. “As you wish.”

  Ben didn’t like the easy way Nikolas conceded this, and his total belief in his own physical superiority began to waver slightly. “And if you win?”

  “When I win.”

  “Whatever. Well?”

  Nikolas narrowed his eyes, considering. “I want to make this good…I get to smoke whenever I like and however much I like without you constantly nagging me.”

  “Hey, no fair—”

  “But you say I’m not going to win.”

  Ben nodded. “Okay. Agreed. Bastard. So, first one back to the beach?”

  They undid their jeans and slid them off, shorts followed. Then they turned and plunged naked into the waves. The water was freezing. Ben came up quickly and went into a long, powerful crawl. He glanced behind but couldn’t see Nikolas. Then he heard a splash ahead and whipped his head around to see a blond head emerging from beneath the choppy, grey sea at least a body’s length ahead of him. He swore, incredulous, but began to swim powerfully, his muscled body, sleek and very fit, cutting through the water effortlessly. But then he found himself missing the occasional breath as the sea became even rougher out of the lea of the land. He turned his shoulders too much when he needed to breathe. His army instructors had always screamed at him, “Keep your bloody head down, Mr bloody Rider.” He swallowed some water but ploughed on. The buoy was about twenty feet ahead. Stunned, he saw Nikolas had reached it already, and the bastard had stopped, one hand on it, waiting for him. Ben had almost caught him when he slipped from view under the water and emerged once more ahead of him, swimming back for the beach. He didn’t even seem to be making much effort. The density of Ben’s muscles was actually working against him now—as was the huge meal he’d just consumed. He was heavy in the water, his incredible physique wasted in the cloying medium. Nikolas, far leaner and lighter, cut through the water and didn’t even appear to breathe. He had the perfect stroke, slow and even with shoulders permanently horizontal to the water. He didn’t waste one ounce of effort. Ben had begun to breathe heavily now, but he knew he was stronger and fitter than Nikolas—and fucking twelve years younger. And a soldier! Nikolas was a diplomat, for Christ’s sake. He’d spent his life behind a sodding—

  Nikolas had won.

  He’d reached the beach and come out of the waves like a pale water god deigning to grace the mortal realm of air with his presence. He bent to his clothes and rummaged, and by the time Ben made it to the shore, he was sitting naked on the sand, smoking. He didn’t look at Ben but squinted and held out the cigarette, regarding it fondly, then took a long, long drag, filling his lungs. He blew the smoke toward Ben who was on his knees at the surf’s edge, panting. Ben hadn’t expected to lose. It had never occurred to him he would. If it had, he would never have taken the bet. Nikolas was watching him closely. He held up the cigarette one more time then stubbed it out in the wet sand, grinding it to nothing. “There, I have now given up for good.”

  Ben gaped at him in confusion. Nikolas shrugged negligently and stood. He walked to Ben and held out his hand. “Foolish child. I only enjoyed smoking…you, on the other hand,” he looked down at Ben, naked in the surf, his dark hair sticking up every which way from salt and wind and water, and huffed ruefully, “you, I adore.”

  Ben was in too much shock from hearing these words to do much more than stand as Nikolas dried him off with one of the T-shirts and dressed him. Nikolas seemed amused by Ben’s confusion so he added to it by commenting very seriously on Ben’s excellent swimming technique as they climbed back up to the hotel and their suite.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Something was different that night. The words had been said, and they changed everything. Ben wondered if Nikolas’s sometimes less than perfect use of English had led him to use that word: adore. But he knew it hadn’t. Nikolas had chosen that word very deliberately. It seemed to Ben there was much more to this word than was conveyed by merely love. He adored Nikolas but would never say this because it made him feel weak, slightly needy. Adoration was the emotion he most closely identified with power, they couldn’t be separated. He’d rarely admitted out loud that Nikolas held all the power in their relationship—the age, the intelligence, the money, the connections, the sophistication. But it was true and was acknowledged when Ben admitted to himself that he adored Nikolas. But now Nikolas had said it out loud to him. Adoration. It awed Ben when he realised what Nikolas was saying in that incredible declaration. The power was his. Nikolas was vulnerable and needy—needed him. All their relationship so far was based on Nikolas’s innate superiority and Ben’s awareness of it, chauffer with benefits. He’d thought it only that morning. But now, on the back of a declaration on a wind-swept beach, it had all changed.

  He undressed Nikolas reverently, easing the damp T-shirt off his shoulders, the jeans down salt-sticky legs. They were already both hard, both anticipating release. They kissed standing, their cocks squeezed together, duelling. Ben took them both in his fist, rubbing them together. They arched back with hisses of pleasure at the same time, then laughed and came back to kissing. Nik’s skin tasted like heaven, cold and salty. It needed licking, fingers in hair, pulling and tugging. Ben’s hand was slick now, pre-cum leaking from them both. He walked Nikolas to the bed and pressed him down, kissed him once more then turned him over. Nikolas lay sprawled on his stomach, one long, lean thigh bent up, everything exposed for Ben’s pleasure. He bent and tasted there, licking for a long time, revelling in the need and pleasure he could hear in Nikolas’s otherwise incoherent murmurs. When he was ready, he put his hands to Nikolas’s cheeks, easing him open more, then just rested his cockhead against the darker pink skin. One drop of pre-cum pulsed out and glistened on Nikolas’s puckered flesh. Ben groaned and pressed it in with his thumb. Nikolas rose up from the bed, a harsher expletive at last. “Benjamin. I will not break. Fuck me, for God’s sake.”

  Ben breathed out a long moan of complete surrender at that deliciously mangled fuck and pushed home, deep at the first stroke, holding himself up, his powerful body tense, almost animalistic over Nikolas’s lean one. For the first time, with the word adore spreading like heat through his body, Ben didn’t feel like a servant favouring his master. He knew then he’d never see their relationship in the same light again. For the first time, he knew where he stood with Nikolas. He was adored. He braced himself on the pale shoulders and began to dip and thrust, raise and lower. He edged Nikolas’s thigh higher, got better access, found that spot that makes every man cry out with disbelief that anything, that this, could be so good. Nikolas was no exception. Dipped at the waist, splayed, he put a hand back on Ben’s thigh, digging his fingers into Ben’s skin as he strained to find a language to express such pleasure.

  Ben bent lower over Nikolas’s back, breathing into his still sea-damp hair. “Come with me
.” He put his hands under Nikolas’s hips, lifting him higher, pulling him on more, and rode hard, eyes closed, concentrating on the pleasure for both of them, making sure they got there together. He felt himself coming, couldn’t delay any longer, slid his hands further underneath and found the slick hardness. Just a touch, and he was lost to his own shuddering orgasm, his fingers being coated as Nikolas arched then melted beneath him, languid and utterly spent. For a moment, Ben thought his heart was bursting. Then he realised they’d left the balcony doors open and the sound he heard was the surf of the tide incoming on the rocks below. It was incredibly soothing to listen to as his heart returned slowly to its normal rhythm. He rolled off Nikolas, groaning as his heated, wet prick hit the cool night air. He let it lie across his hip, twitching faintly and glistening in the moonlight. He had an idea and waited until he was sure Nikolas was asleep.

  Slipping stealthily from the bed, he rummaged in Nikolas’s bag until he found the phone. Sure, he’d lost the bet, but Nikolas had cheated by being a freaking Jörmungandr of Norse legend. He’d always thought Nikolas’s eyes were almost non-human in their beauty, and now he knew why. He climbed back into bed equally carefully and was about to start taking some interesting pictures when Nikolas simply took the phone from him and lay on it. “No photos.”