Ben pouted. “That’s not fair, considering—”
“Fair or not, no photos. I have managed to live as a peripheral member of your Royal Family for ten years and still avoid having my face in any newspaper or magazine. I’m not going to start now.”
“It wasn’t your face I was going to point it at.”
Nikolas turned his head to look at Ben sitting cross-legged beside him. “Seriously. You were going to take a photograph of my arse. You thought I would lie here and let you.”
“Well, are you?”
“No face?”
“No face.”
With a shrug, Nikolas tossed the phone back over and murmured, “I wonder if I could be recognised just as well from these photos.”
Ben was too busy enjoying himself to hear anything strange in this random thought. When he’d had enough fun and Nikolas was tired of being played with and probed, they lay side by side on the bed just enjoying being there, replete, watching the play of shadows and moonlight on their skin and listening to the hypnotic sound of the waves.
“Where did you learn to swim like that? I’ve known you four years and the closest you’ve come to water is a shower. When did you have time for sneaky swim training?”
“I used to swim a mile in the sea every morning before breakfast when I was growing up. I always won.” He smiled at some private memory.
“Who’d you race?”
His face closed down. “Oh, local village children.” This sounded false even to Ben who hadn’t learnt to swim until he’d been thrown in a lake at his first junior leader’s camp. He couldn’t imagine any village where children had time to swim like that before school every day.
Ben twisted to retrieve his jacket from the floor and pulled out the photo of Nikolas as a boy. Nikolas glanced over at it, then away, his face neutral. “Put it away, Ben, please. I have allowed you to keep it, but I do not like to see it.”
“Is this when you were swimming?”
“In the sea? No. I stopped that when I was ten. I lost the desire for it.”
Ben reluctantly put it back in his pocket. “We should get to sleep. Back to London tomorrow. Kate leaves at eight, so we should get back soon after. I don’t trust Radulf on his own.”
“Do you know what his name means?”
Ben turned his head, surprised. “It means something? In Danish?”
“Of course. It means wolf of the house. When I met him, I think he fooled me into seeing him as this benign hound guarding the humans in his care. I think he sees it more in terms of a home invasion.”
“Wolf of the house.”
“You are thinking very loudly again, Ben. That house may not be for sale.”
“It is. It’s—”
“Fate? You are very strange, Ben Rider. Have I ever mentioned that?”
Ben put a hand out and rested it on Nikolas’s belly. “Are you happy?”
Nikolas regarded him neutrally. “Happy?”
“Yes. It’s an emotion, Nikolas. It makes you grin—even at dumb-arse replies like that one!”
Nikolas huffed, but he seemed to be considering the question. “Some people do not have the capacity for happiness in them, I think.” Ben turned and lay on him, taking his chin in a firm grip. “That boy in the photograph was happy, Nik. What happened to you?”
Nikolas removed his hand. He smiled a grim kind of smile and then began to laugh. It was the saddest thing Ben had ever heard. He put his head down on Nikolas’s chest and was profoundly relieved when fingers began to play with his salt-tangled hair. The bitter laughter stopped, and eventually they both fell asleep to the sound of the soothing sea.
§§§
When Nikolas woke, Ben was still lying on him, awake and watching him closely. He saw Nikolas take in his surroundings: the bright sunlight streaming into the room, Ben’s body inches from him, their shared arousal throbbing between them. Then Nikolas smiled deeply and stretched with obvious, luxuriant pleasure before he became fully aware. Ben quirked up his lips and put his head back down on Nikolas’s chest. Some people just needed to be taught how to recognise happiness when it was theirs. Nikolas was learning.
Nikolas clearly had his own ideas what would make him happy. He rolled Ben off onto his back and slid lower in the bed. Ben groaned expectantly. This wasn’t something Nikolas would do very often, and it was a touchy subject between them. If Ben so much as brushed a hand to Nikolas’s head, Nikolas would stop immediately, but occasionally he wanted to, and it seemed this morning was one of those times. Ben lay propped up on folded arms, watching as Nikolas circled his thumb over his slick cockhead. Ben clenched his jaw, the need to hold Nikolas’s head and force him on almost overwhelming. He wondered if he’d get away with a light touch, just to Nikolas’s neck or hair, but decided against risking it. He was glad he resisted when Nikolas bent lower and licked a long swipe up the entire length of his hard shaft from root to tip and then pushed his tongue into the slit. He did it again and again, waves of pleasure pulsing out from Ben’s balls, which rose high and tight and expectant. He arched his back, his body a bow, his cock the arrow notched and ready to fly. This time when Nikolas’s tongue got to the top, he enveloped it with his mouth. Ben could hold on no longer. He jettisoned pulse after pulse of warm release into Nikolas’s mouth. Nikolas swallowed it all, holding the cockhead gently, almost reverently, until Ben sank boneless to the bed.
Nikolas came level with Ben’s face and stared at him for a while, then determinedly turned him over and took him, relieving his own need in a way far less gentle. Nikolas had no compunction holding Ben’s head down or pulling his hair. He seemed to know that there was nothing he could not do to the male body beneath him, that his male muscle wouldn’t overpower, his male strength not threaten, his male force not penetrate too far or too hard. In this, man upon man, he could release some pent-up fury that he otherwise kept contained, locked down, hidden. Sometimes, when being taken this forcibly, this hard, Ben wondered whether he was the release-valve enabling Nikolas to bear the escape he had made to this narrower world.
The sex was so primal it exhausted them both. They fell back asleep, Nikolas’s cock still deep inside Ben’s body, and Nikolas’s lean form draped over Ben’s more sculpted one. Falling asleep entwined, sticky and replete, was always good. Waking up the same way made Nikolas grumpy. He didn’t like being so debauched and didn’t like Ben laughing at him as he tore apart their sticky skin. He stomped off for a shower, leaving Ben to wander naked to the balcony. He stretched out on the wall, the stone almost burning his skin, topping up his very faded Afghan tan.
Nikolas came out of the shower and saw him. He hesitated, bit his lip but couldn’t seem to help saying, “Do not roll off.”
Ben chuckled. “Okay. I was going to, but thanks—I won’t now.”
When Nikolas came out onto the balcony, he was dressed in baggy, khaki cargo pants that were rolled up above his bare feet and an old T-shirt. He sat down and put his feet up on the table, crossing his ankles casually. “I am ordering breakfast. Or lunch, I suppose it is. Your usual dead animal selection?”
“You order some—”
“I am, Benjamin. Do not worry. Even I am hungry after swimming and sex most of the night.”
Ben smiled and turned his head to watch the sea. Presently, he turned over to roast his back, tempted to pretend to slip, but deciding it wouldn’t be all that funny if he actually did. When Nikolas heard the door, he chucked a towel over Ben’s backside and went to let in a smart young man pushing a room service trolley. The waiter didn’t seem bothered at all by the state of the room or that the occupant had a naked male model sunning himself on the balcony. Nikolas tipped the boy and wandered back out to eat. Somehow, overnight, Nikolas had been replaced by a replica—a chilled, comfortable-in-his-own-skin clone. Ben slid off the wall and came to eat, tying the towel around his waist. Even he didn’t want to see his cock when he was eating breakfast. And a superb breakfast it was. He picked up the menu to see what he was en
joying and began to laugh.
When Nikolas glanced up from his newspaper with a questioning look, Ben pointed to the booklet. “I’m having what your wife is probably having this weekend, Duchy organic sausage.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They took their time driving back to London, stopping if they wanted to, eating again in Windsor just before they joined the crawl of vehicles making their way back into the city ready for the working week. Ben couldn’t help feeling how immensely lucky he was. He had no plans for the week other than putting his bike back together and enjoying Nikolas’s body as often as he was allowed. Life was good.
Nikolas, he knew, would have a more troubling week.
§§§
Monday, Nikolas changed back into the Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen Ben had first met, dressing with immaculate perfection and retreating into himself. He returned from the lawyer’s offices calm but quiet. Ben made him a cup of tea. He was English; it’s what you did in times of crisis. He didn’t even think as he handed Nikolas a mug with a few oily fingerprints from his engine and with a teabag and spoon still in it. Nikolas looked at the offering and smiled for the first time that day. “Thank you, Benjamin. That is very thoughtful.”
“So? How did it go?”
“Good. I think. Amicable, as was required of me. I believe I made a statement to the effect that there were irreconcilable differences. As I did not write the statement, I could not decide if that meant that I was Danish or that I like to fuck men. It was rather surreal. We have had no differences at all for ten years. I believe we agreed on most everything about our arrangement.” He laughed suddenly. “We actually both agreed on you.”
“Me?”
“Hmm. She said one weekend that you were quite her favourite young man. I could only agree with her. Anyway, it is done. Should we celebrate? Food or sex? You decide—you seem to like both equally.”
The next day, there was a very small, clearly pre-prepared announcement in the quality press. If Nikolas saw it, he didn’t mention it. At the end of the week, however, in the supplement, there was a feature article from the society commentator entitled “The IT Girl Does IT Right” and a picture of Philipa with the caption: Lady Philipa in happier times with her favourite black lab, Bodger. The article went on to extol the virtues of amicable divorces. The photograph had been taken in Nikolas’s study at Barton Combe. Ben recognised the armchair Philipa was perched on—he’d been up close and personal with the leather once or twice. He also recognised the desk in the background; he’d been taken on that too. Most of all, he recognised the man sitting at the desk. Nikolas had been caught, almost certainly accidentally, in the background of the photograph. He had his head turned to the camera as if someone had just said something that annoyed him. He was writing, his hand poised over a chequebook. It was almost exactly the same pose as the photo Ben had of him at seventeen. Now, however, the face was neither young nor innocent, and he looked furious. Ben was pretty sure Nikolas was going to be furious again if he saw the article. He wondered if he should just hide it. It was possible Nikolas wouldn’t miss the supplement. He glanced at it again, debating.
And that’s when he saw it.
Everything that had been wrong and niggling at him just clicked into place. He sat heavily, a sense of utter dislocation washing over him. Then he flung himself up and sprinted to the bedroom, digging in a drawer. He pulled out the photo of the seventeen-year-old Nikolas and sat on the bed comparing the two pictures. Seventeen-year-old Nikolas was right handed. Forty-two-year-old Nikolas was left handed—Ben knew this very well; after all, he’d enjoyed Nikolas’s left hand many times. And then, with a foreshadowing of all the pain which he knew was coming his way, Ben heard an echo in his mind, “Then I think the question you should ask me is not if Nikolas Mikkelsen is my real name but who Nikolas Mikkelsen really was.” Whoever Nikolas was, he clearly wasn’t the boy in this photo. But they were identical, except for the right hand, left hand difference. Ben bit his lip. He knew what this meant—the boy in the photo must be Nikolas’s brother. His twin. So it begged the obvious question: why had Nikolas lied when Ben had found the photo? Why deny the existence of a brother? Why not say, with all honesty, “Oh, that’s my brother”? It didn’t make any sense.
He looked up and Nikolas was leaning in the doorway watching him. His expression was one of profound sadness.
He turned and walked away.
§§§
Ben found Nikolas in the kitchen, leaning on the counter, tossing treats to Radulf who was ignoring them and letting them skate over the tiled floor, as if being fed this way was demeaning them both. Ben sat down and laid out the photos on the table. Nikolas turned around, staring at him. “If you make me do this, Ben, then everything falls apart between us.”
“Bullshit. Stop being melodramatic.”
“Do you understand what I am saying? These things were never to be spoken of. If you make me tell you, it will be the end of everything.”
“Jesus. Sit down and just tell me, yeah?”
Nikolas sat and took the photo of the boy into his hands. “This is Aleksey, my brother. My twin brother, obviously. We were born in Russia on the coast near St Petersburg. Our father was a Russian diplomat; our mother was Danish. A pianist, actually. When Aleksey and I were born, she left our father and returned to her parents in Denmark. Their split was not amicable. We lived at my grandparents’ summer estates on Aeroe—which explains my distinct Danish accent…which you, of course, had not noticed. Anyway, when we were ten, my mother died, and we went to live with our father in Russia. We moved around a lot. He died when we were seventeen—just after that photograph was taken, actually. I had a place at the university in Copenhagen, so I returned to Denmark; Aleksey remained in Russia. He had grown fond of it, I believe. I joined the diplomatic service after my degree. I came to England ten years ago, and the rest you know.”
“And your brother?”
“He is dead. An accident.” He paused in his almost scripted, dry recital, as if unwilling to personalise the account at all, but then added reluctantly, “He fell off a balcony and was killed.”
“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry, no wonder—”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So why all the secrecy? Why didn’t you just tell me this was your brother to start with? Why let me go on thinking it was you? And why all the doom and gloom prophesy about telling me now?”
Nikolas flicked his eyes up to gauge how the next part of his story would be received. “Aleksey was a very troubled boy, Ben. We were completely different—and not just the left hand thing. From the earliest age he was the one no one could say no to. Nothing was too high or too far, no horse too powerful for him to ride, no ocean current too strong for him to swim.”
“You raced Aleksey?”
Nikolas smiled. “Yes. Every morning between the islands.”
“But you said you always won.”
Nikolas hesitated for a moment then shrugged. “I lied. I always lie, you know this. Aleksey won. He always won. He won everything. He could bear to lose at nothing. When we went to live with our father, they clashed. It was a difficult time. I would return to Denmark for holidays, but Aleksey stayed. Then when our father died, I returned to Denmark for good. I occasionally heard of Aleksey through my contacts in Russia. He had no control mechanisms, I think—the knowing when things are right or wrong. He could not or would not be told these things, and he did many terrible things before he died. Things I did not care to have come out, given my position. I had hoped his death had buried him and his story for good.”
“But what about you?”
“Me? I was not like Aleksey at all. I always preferred reading to running about. I was calm and in control of myself. He never was. He was like the ocean in a storm: beautiful in his fury. Everyone loved me. They feared Aleksey.”
“Did you?”
“No. But then Aleksey adored me. I was the younger twin. I think he thought of me as his pet. He treated me like his
sidekick in his own adventure film. If boats had to be stolen and sailed away, I was co-opted for crew. He stole a car once, and we made it to France. I think we were eight. But he took all the beatings too. I was an average student. He was brilliant. I studied the piano for hours; he hardly needed to and was always better than me. When we went to live in Russia, he was fluent within a few weeks. He had to teach me.” He gave a rueful huff. “Twins are not always born half of this and half of that. I think we were more one-third and two-thirds.” Suddenly he took a sharp breath. “Now. That is the whole story. I have things to do. Please leave me in peace for a while.”
Ben watched him leave. Whole story? He had heard nothing but lies, half-truths, and obscuration. He held the picture of the boy once more, studying the face in the light of all he had been told. The wistful expression spoke to him of joy and innocence, the boy painting a delicate shell. Ben knew what he was seeing—who he was seeing. Nikolas had told the truth the first time—when Ben had found the picture. The boy was Nikolas Mikkelsen, quiet, thoughtful, studious—but right-handed. And the left-handed man who had just left the room? Ben reckoned he’d just spent the last four years of his life falling in love with Aleksey Mikkelsen, who was now, it appeared, living the life of his twin brother…
Love is a Stranger Page 20
