There wasn’t much Ben could say to that. It spoke of betrayals and a life lived and sacrificed for other people who didn’t return those favours of sacrifice and love. Nikolas’s idea of love might be twisted and dark to some people’s view, but Ben understood it. It was why he was here now.
Ben stopped feeding the dog and caught his gaze. “You don’t get it, do you? Why would I not be here? Nothing has changed, Nik. I didn’t know anything about you before and I don’t know anything about you now. This thing…” He was never a great talker, not clever with words as Nikolas was, and he found it very hard to express what he wanted now. “This thing between us isn’t about that. It’s…” He frowned deeply, sensing the dark eyes upon him, waiting. “It’s like this house, Nik, yeah? I don’t know why I feel like I do when I’m here, but I feel at home, at peace, safe. And that’s how I feel with you, at home.”
“Hardly peaceful and safe, I would have thought.” There was a hint of teasing in his voice.
Ben acknowledged it ruefully. “No, not safe, but, hey, not looking for safe in my life. Wouldn’t have joined the army or the Regiment if I wanted safe.”
“So, I’m like an old, empty house? I’m immensely flattered, Benjamin.” Then he cocked his eyebrow. “But I do have a big chimney…”
Ben gave him a look. “You can drop the wise fatherly act, Aleksey. Jesus, all this time I thought you were so above me with your university degrees and your Royal Family crap…You’re no better than me. You’re a soldier, down and dirty in the mud and shit. Hell, you’re not even a sir.”
Nikolas huffed and appeared slightly affronted. Then he laughed delightedly, the first genuine sound Ben had heard from him in too long. “Arrogant child! I’m still far above—You just hit me! I’m seriously injured, and you hit me!” Ben caught his arms, pinning them above his head then straddled his waist, very careful not to actually set his weight down. He leant forward instead. Nikolas was still laughing. “I surrender. You’ve taken unfair advantage.” Ben still didn’t let him up but caught at his face instead and grazed their lips together. He pulled away fractionally, came back and used his tongue to seek entry. Nikolas granted it and they kissed hungrily until Nikolas groaned. “Stop, you will need more, and I’m—”
Ben silenced him with more kissing until he mouthed into Nikolas’s lips, “I have all I need right here, right now.”
Nikolas put his hands up and held Ben’s face. “I once told you that I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever said I love you to—which is true—but I’ve been thinking while I’ve been lying here today that maybe I always said it to the wrong people. I should have said it to you a long time ago, Benjamin, because I do—I love you.”
Completely overwhelmed by the import of Nikolas finally saying those three words, Ben rolled off silently. He clicked to the dog and pretended to be rearranging Radulf’s bandana to keep his gaze averted from Nikolas. He felt a hand on his back, just a touch, but it was enough to pull himself together and be steady enough to ask, “What are we going to do? When you’ve recovered.”
“I’ve been thinking about that as well. I’ve had a very thoughtful afternoon.” Nikolas sat up, staring at his leg. “Another week, and I will be healed enough. Then we must decide. We could, it is possible, disappear.” He suddenly darted a quick glace at Ben. “Should I be saying we or I?”
Ben gave him such a derisive glare that Nikolas turned away, but he was smiling with more genuine pleasure than Ben had seen on that beautiful face since he’d appeared, a dark shadow in the bedroom, only two nights ago.
Ben tapped Nik’s uninjured thigh to bring him back to the moment. “They’ll have traced all the accounts by now.”
“Of course. Those in this name. I have had many other names, and I have many other accounts.” He saw Ben’s questioning look and shrugged. “My—our—grandfather was Godtfred Mikkelsen? You have never heard of…? He was an industrialist, and at one time was named as one of the top ten wealthiest Danes—he was a billionaire, Ben. When he died and with his only daughter dead, Nika and I were his only living relatives. When Nika died on that balcony—huh, I died, I suppose I should say—I inherited…my own money. Hmm…that is an interesting thought I had never considered before. Perhaps I am neither Nikolas nor Aleksey but both of them now. Anyway, my point being I have it all. All the…” He lay down and closed his eyes.
Ben waited patiently for him to continue and when he didn’t, glanced over to see Nikolas had drifted off to sleep mid sentence. Ben smiled and turned on his side, his head propped up on his elbow, watching Nikolas sleep. He had an interesting new game now, tracing the things he was discovering in this familiar yet now wholly unfamiliar face. He couldn’t think now why he’d seen this man as a cool, remote diplomat. He was usually a very good judge of character—his job had demanded that he be. But he’d shaken hands with Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen over a desk in an impressive office in Whitehall and he’d never really questioned the mask that Nikolas had worn. He had been literally swept off his feet, of course. He hadn’t really been thinking about Nikolas with his brain since he’d met him. Always so overwhelmed with his passion for the man’s body, he’d never really thought about the person inside.
Or was that the exact opposite of the truth? Was that the opposite of what had happened? Perhaps, he alone, of all the people Nikolas—Aleksey—was fooling, had seen the truth right there at that first handshake. He’d seen Aleksey lurking beneath the aloof exterior, and he’d fallen for Aleksey not diplomat Nikolas. It was an amusing thought and Ben smiled as he traced the prominent cheekbones with a blade of grass. He’d seen the soldier, the warrior, the liar, the cheat, the murderer, the assassin, the torturer—he’d seen the beautiful boy with a spark of life too bright for any child to contain.
“What was I saying?” Ben jumped as Nikolas’s eyes snapped open, and he continued as if he’d merely closed his eyes for a moment to think. “Accounts. Why are you laughing? So, you see, money will never be a problem for us. We could disappear, as I said. Why is my head hurting?” Ben began to rub Nikolas’s temple with his thumb. Nikolas closed his eyes to the pleasure. “So we run. Find some out-of-the-way place and live out a life of comfortable debauchery.”
“You’ve got my vote, and I haven’t even heard the other plans.”
“Well, to be honest, I hadn’t thought much further than that. I believe I became sidetracked thinking about you, or rather thinking about debauching you. Is debauching a real word? I must improve my English. We could fight them, of course. This is a purely personal vendetta rather than an institutional one. The men in the house worked for Gregory Malenkov. He was an old colleague. Friend, I suppose.”
“Yeah, the one I tortured and set alight was very friendly at the end. Gregory sends his regards, by the way.”
“I had already assumed these bullets were his way of saying hello. So, one down and―”
“Two down.”
He shrugged. “The world is full of Chechens for hire.” He spat.
Ben gave him a tiny eye roll, the internal politics of Zaslon going above his head. “I’m still voting for the debauching option.”
“Hmm, I agree. But then we would have to live our lives waiting, constantly expecting to be found. It’s not a good way to live, trust me, I know. My head still hurts.” He pulled Ben down to lie on his chest, as if that would help his headache, and added, “There is a third viable option. After all, they are only men, and men only want one thing.”
“Blowjobs?”
Nikolas chuckled. “Well, you could offer that. Gregory would certainly enjoy it. I meant money.”
“Buy your freedom?”
“Yes. Why not? Money is very powerful. I’ve bought freedom before.”
“You think they’d keep their agreement? Leave you alone?”
“That would be the great gamble.”
“There’s one more option.”
Nikolas pulled Ben’s head up with a questioning look.
“You become Aleksey again.”
Nikolas was silent for a long time then said to clarify, “I die again.”
“They believed you were dead for ten years, and you almost got away with it for good.”
“Another accidental death wouldn’t be believed. There are only so many balconies one can fall off.”
“I wasn’t talking about an accident. I was thinking along the lines of murder.”
“Let them think they’ve killed me?”
“Not exactly.” Ben faced him more squarely. “I was thinking of killing you myself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
When Ben had fully outlined his plan, Nikolas had to agree it had merit. By now, Gregory and his thugs would know who Ben was and what he was capable of—the two dead men he’d left in the kitchen had been a small clue. They would know of his relationship with Aleksey, and that he was now looking for him, too. It was entirely possible that, given the way they viewed the world, they would find a spurned, lied to, bitter ex-boyfriend murder scenario entirely probable. After all, as Ben pointed out, Nikolas had kind of expected that, too. Nikolas agreed to think about it, and he appeared to be doing that for some time until with a sigh, he said, “So, you find me and…kill me, and then I live a lie again for the rest of my life. And this time I couldn’t even be Nikolas Mikkelsen.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes. A good English word: fuck.”
They sat in the sun, and Ben produced some beers he’d stashed in his pack. Nik argued that as he was on painkillers and antibiotics he might as well drink, too. Ben didn’t have the heart to say no to him, and this was a trait, he could see now, that hadn’t served him so well over the years; saying no more often to Nikolas might be a very good thing to practise.
After his second beer Nikolas came up with a solution that combined all the options. They invite Gregory to a meet on the promise of a payoff, kill him and then themselves in a vast, total-extinction-level event. He thought it was quite funny, so Ben cut him off the beer. But by this time, Nikolas had cheered up considerably and had decided to give Ben what Ben had pointed out men always want. Ben certainly did, and as he informed Nikolas, he’d been hard since waking to those first words hello Benjamin; and as Nik tried to inform him around his laughter and the cock in his mouth, he didn’t need his leg to give blowjobs. Apparently, this was too funny to cope with, and he passed out once more—still laughing, Ben’s cock abandoned.
§§§
When Nikolas woke, finding life slightly less funny, Ben made him eat a can of soup. Nikolas took it grumpily, rubbing his temples. “Why are you wet? You’re very wet.”
“Because I’ve been busy. Want to come see?”
Nikolas nodded, and Ben levered him to his feet, snorting faintly at the chain of imaginative swearing that accompanied the move. Nikolas gave him a sheepish look when he was finally moving. “It hurts. I’m too old to be shot.”
“Lean on me.” Nikolas was not too proud to do as Ben suggested, and he limped heavily alongside Ben to the back of the house.
§§§
Ben had dammed the stream at the small clapper bridge. He’d made use of the natural shape of the land to create a deep pool from which water now couldn’t escape, and it was filling slowly. He expected Nikolas to be derisive or laugh at him, but the other man was fascinated and wanted to help, but had to content himself with sitting on the bridge, feet in the almost black water, giving unneeded directions. Seeing him sitting there, brown now from his hours in the sun, hair scrunched and over his eyes in the front, Ben could see a boy running wild on a beach on Aeroe before real life caught up to him. He straightened from his dam building. “I wish I’d known you—Aleksey—you know, on Aeroe…before.”
“You weren’t even born, little baby. Besides, you would not have liked me. No one did.”
Ben chuckled. “And you are remembering what you know about ten-year-old me, yeah? I think we’d have got along just fine.”
“Perhaps. A wild boy on the moors, living rough…perhaps we have always been soul mates.” He gave Ben a shy glance to see how this was taken, and when he wasn’t rejected or laughed at, added with a smile, “I planned to reach England once, in my sail boat, but I didn’t want to leave my horse—he was essential to my invasion plans. I tried to persuade him to climb in, too, but the process took so long, and was so unsuccessful that I was caught. Without the horse, I would’ve made it, of course. I had a map and everything.”
“I thought Nikolas was always your crew.”
Nik pursed his lips, sadly. “Nika was afraid of the sea beyond the islands. He wouldn’t come. But in my mind, he was always there—the beautiful one everyone would love and say how clever he was to make such a journey.”
“He wasn’t in the car to France either, was he?”
Nikolas gave an evil chuckle. “Actually, he was. I kidnapped him and tied him to the seat. He cried the whole way.”
Ben came and sat on the bridge with him. “I would’ve come with you.”
Nikolas began to laugh. “I would’ve had to fight you for the driver’s seat, I think.”
“We’d have made it far further than France before they caught us.”
“Ben and Aleksey’s most excellent adventure.”
“But you did love him…? You sacrificed so much for him.”
Nikolas was quiet for a while, watching the water slowly rising up the dark peat walls. “I thought it was love then. Now I know better.” He looked up and pulled Ben into a kiss, running his hands through the dark strands of his hair. “Lie back. I’m not drunk now.”
He wasn’t. Ben lay back in the warm evening sun, skin pleasantly scorched from his day, and closed his eyes as Nikolas caressed his hard cock with his lips, took it into his mouth and then further down his throat. Ben cried out, scrabbling on the old lichen-covered stone as a deep groin ache began. Very tentatively, he put a hand incredibly lightly on Nikolas’s head. Nikolas stilled and came up, staring at Ben, his lips swollen, pouting and irresistibly kissable. Ben snagged his fingers into the long, blond hair. “Just us here, Nik, and I won’t hurt you.”
Nikolas licked his lips, seemed hesitant for a moment then returned to Ben’s blood-darkened cock. Ben left his hand in Nikolas’s hair, careful not to put any pressure on, just lightly scraping and massaging the scalp with his nails. Finally, rising need carried him up and over the edge. He arched, trying not to hold Nikolas’s head down, and came in milky spurt after milky spurt, each lapped up and swallowed.
The effort had clearly taken a lot out of Nikolas. He lay back with a soft fuck of pain. Ben lay still for some time, his cock soft on his shorts. He wanted to do something for Nikolas, but the other man just shook his head. Ben looked down and cursed. A few stitches had pulled out, tearing skin, and an ooze of reddish, clear liquid was trickling down Nikolas’s thigh. “I’m okay, Ben. It was worth it. Help me in though. I want to sleep. Tomorrow I will fuck you until you cry for mercy. You will see.”
“Tomorrow, you’re staying in bed. Orders.”
“Do not give me—”
Ben chuckled. Clearly the old Nikolas wasn’t entirely banished. “Shut the fuck up, soldier, and keep limping.”
§§§
When Nikolas woke the next time, he’d slept an entire eight hours of healing sleep, and he was clearly feeling a lot better. He limped down to find Ben and actually asked what they had to eat and wanted to get out in the fresh air. They went to the pool, which was almost full now; the original stream would soon cascade over the top of the bridge. Nikolas sat on the bank, throwing sticks for Radulf to swim for. He was an impressive swimmer, and his mongrel-wolfhound-lurcher-Heinz-variety origins became blurred, so he resembled nothing more than a large otter paddling about. Except possibly for the stick sticking out either side of his muzzle.
The lines of pain and stress had faded from Nikolas’s face. His office pallor had darkened into a golden tan, and his hair had lightened with chunks of gold in the fringe that now fell constantly in his eyes, and which he swept f
rom his face in a boyish gesture whenever it annoyed him. He had refused the pain meds and seemed very content watching Ben mess around with his dam. Contentment swelled visibly to joy when, with a lazy, deceptively innocent stretch, Ben pulled off his T-shirt and continued to build shirtless. Five minutes later, Ben stood and surveyed the deep, black pool. “I think I’m done.” He released the button on his shorts, and they slipped off his slim hips and fell to his ankles. Commando, he stood in the bright sun a little way from Nikolas then slowly walked down into the water. It came to his shoulders. He pushed off strongly and duck-dived under.
From the top, the pool was black, the colour of the peat suspended in it. But, from below, as Ben knew from experience, it was a totally different world. Shafts of sunlight filtered down, illuminating the rocks and pebbles, which glowed with green algae; and the quartz caught in the grit at the bottom twinkled like diamonds. He twisted around and held onto a rock, watching Radulf swimming from below, then turned and swam back towards the bank where everything he wanted was sitting. He wondered how many other people were lucky enough to have an entire universe of need satisfied by one blond-haired man. Ben broke the surface, coming slowly out of the water. Despite the cold of the pool, thinking about Nikolas had sent his blood south, and his cock was long and thick, not fully risen yet, but independent, twitching away from his thighs, defying gravity. He walked slowly up to Nikolas and stood over him, the cold drips of water falling on the upturned face. Nikolas lay back and very carefully eased his shorts down over his bandaged leg. He held out his hand and Ben took it. “Fuck me, Benjamin.”
Love is a Stranger Page 24
