Nikolas pouted. “It’s not easy to do. It takes years of practice and a particular skill to get to my level of denial, Benjamin. I’m not sure you’re ready for it.”
Ben tapped him on his nose. “I have a superb role model.”
Nikolas nodded thoughtfully. “This is true. You’ve parked in a very dangerous place. Thoughtless of you. You’ve already cost me one expensive vehicle; perhaps we could move?”
Ben pulled back out and they carried on in the dark.
After a while, Ben put Radio 1 on.
Nikolas turned it to Radio 4 and listened to a debate about the visit of the Russian president. There had been a protest at the Russian embassy by a gay and lesbian rights group.
The protesters were being interviewed.
He turned it back to Radio 1.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Both working on the theory of denial being the better part of valour, they didn’t discuss the event that had caused Ben’s loss of memory at all, but they individually thought about it and both knew it had sparked a number of interesting changes in their relationship.
Nikolas had already seen the differences in Ben with him forgetting ten years—that he’d shed ten years of care and worry along with his table manners. What he hadn’t appreciated was that Ben had seen something similar in him.
Ben had been shocked to discover how much he’d reined Nikolas in, tried to normalise him over the years he’d known him. Most people, he knew, would say this was a good thing: that Nikolas definitely needed leashing. But he’d seen a side of Nikolas over the last week he’d not seen before. Nikolas hadn’t been reset to a previous version; this Nikolas had been entirely himself—as if he’d allowed Ben to see him as he was in the privacy of his own mind.
It had been like a holiday from the people they pretended to be to ease their way through the minefields of each other’s lives. After all, what do you say to a man who confused rape and abuse with love? Ben had no idea, so they’d never discussed Nikolas’s childhood other than the basic fact that it had happened.
Nikolas had never told Ben what his father had made him do—what his father’s friends, invited along for the fun, had made him do. Why? What could Ben do about it if he told him? So they never talked about it.
Ben had never told Nikolas the terrible thoughts that haunted him after a night in a bathroom in Denmark, the thought he wasn’t the man everyone saw, ex-Special-Forces-expert Ben Rider, but that he was merely a ghost of a man walking around in a borrowed body he wished he could return for his own—less beautiful, less perfect, ruined.
What reply would Nikolas make to this? Ben didn’t want to find out so he’d never told him.
But Ben had enjoyed something of an epiphany upon his return from forgetting. He realised now in some tiny part of himself he’d always blamed Nikolas Mikkelsen for what he’d become—dependent? Needy.
Infantile?
He’d always held Nikolas responsible for seducing him and making him what he was. But it had only taken him three days of being with Nikolas, not knowing who this blond man was, for him to thrust Nikolas against a stable wall and take him down to the ground to possess him from the inside. He accepted now, therefore, he was what he was by choice, through a passion for Nikolas nothing—not even total loss of memory—could alter. He realised for the first time that the belief in his own inferiority, dependency, had been nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophesy. He’d believed Nikolas had caused everything to happen between them, so he’d allowed Nikolas to run everything between them—to have all the power. It had just been easier—the way things had always been between them.
For the first time, he saw this didn’t have to be. Nikolas was free to walk any time he wanted. He clearly didn’t want to. Ben, therefore, saw no reason to return to the subservient version of himself he’d been before he’d lost his memory.
No reason at all.
Nikolas Mikkelsen wasn’t going anywhere.
§ § §
Nikolas got the message things were changing fairly loud and clear when he returned from fetching Radulf from Barton Combe. At first, he thought it was an odd trick of the light on a glass house as there appeared to be a huge tree in his immaculate living space.
As he drove down he realised there
was
a huge tree in the house.
Ben had cut a blue spruce from the grounds and dragged it in. A fourteen-foot blue spruce. He’d propped it up against the glass and tied it to one of the steel rafters. “I’ll buy a stand this afternoon.”
Nikolas nodded.
“When I buy all the other decorations.”
§ § §
It was one of the disadvantages of owning a large house, Ben quickly discovered, that there were a lot of rooms to decorate once you got going. Nikolas could have told him this, had he been consulted, for he’d lived in a very large house for ten years, which his ex-wife had filled every Christmas with vast swaths of tasteful greenery, candles and artful ribbons in a subtle off-white (she’d told him it was called Antique White but it looked more like Piss-on-Ice White to him). She’d employed a firm from London, and the result was always exquisite. Upon reflection, Nikolas decided he preferred Ben’s style. It was haphazard, to be sure, but it was exuberant and enthusiastic—and Ben did it all himself the following afternoon while Nikolas was out riding.
All Nikolas was required to do was to come and admire it—the tinsel, the lights, the life-size illuminated reindeer…the fake snow sprayed on his beautiful floor to ceiling windows. He professed a pleasure and delight he didn’t wholly feel, until he went to their bedroom to change. Walking toward his swim lane, which joined the main house to their private area, he saw Ben had bought and lit hundreds of floating candles and launched them onto the still water. Each one was reflected in the glass surrounding the pool, and the light was thrown back by the December darkness. It was one of the most beautiful things he could remember seeing for a long time. Except for one thing. He went to find Ben Rider-Mikkelsen, so he could admire fully and truthfully the only beauty he needed and one he’d taken for granted for far too long.
Ben was in the billiard room with handfuls of tinsel yet to be used, pondering. Nikolas ignored this, didn’t ask, and went up and pressed himself against Ben. It was one of the distinct advantages, he reckoned, of having sex with men that their bodies were so hard and angular, and invited being thrust against. He still remembered what it felt like to embrace the softer kind of body. It hadn’t come with the frisson of danger this did. Males of any species didn’t fuck lightly. It was a dangerous occupation, and grinding now against this hard killer held a delight—“Ben, put the tinsel down, please.”
He ran his hands up under Ben’s T-shirt, loving the feel of his ridged abs. Nikolas began to manoeuvre Ben toward the table, his intent clear. Ben suddenly twisted to one side, an evil smirk quickly whipped away when he faced Nikolas. “This must be just like our first time. Is it?”
Nikolas frowned. “You don’t remember? I thought you had all your mem—”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? I don’t know what I can’t remember…It’s still mixed up. See,” he snagged Nikolas’s belt and tugged him a little closer, “I remember being invited in for a game of billiards and actually being worried I didn’t know how to play. But apparently I seduced a happily married man. It’s so confusing. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Hmm. That is a worrying memory loss. What are you going to do about it?”
“I thought I’d try jogging some of those memories back. Bend over the table.”
“But—”
§ § §
Ben pushed Nikolas into the position he wanted and forced himself hard against Nikolas’s backside. It was an uncomfortable way to lie; he knew this well enough. “I’m trying to see if this feels right. Happily married man bent over…well, I haven’t got one of those, you’ll have to do…and me unzipping behind him. Hmm. Yes, this might be right. Let’s just lower…” He pulled Nikolas’s jeans and shorts down just enough to expose what he wanted. Then he smacked him hard. “Happily married man should be fighting back a bit? He’s being seduced!”
Nikolas snorted. “I’m beginning to understand your lack of success with women.” He dutifully put up some resistance however. Nikolas never did anything by halves and fighting back took on a whole new meaning when he wanted it to. He swung around, caught Ben’s waist and propelled him to the ground. Ben would have scrambled out from under and got away, but Nikolas seized his belt and Ben cursed, falling back to the floor. Nikolas was on him, lying heavy, pinning Ben’s wrists down.
Ben shook his head. “Now we’re reverting to the version I’m confused about. No happily married men present at all, and me not seducing anyone—me, in fact, being fucked by the man I thought was sizing me up for a job.”
“I’m not surprised you’re confused then. Pity there’s no one you can consult to tell you the truth of that encounter.”
Ben flipped them, forcing Nikolas’s wrists down, using his superior weight. “I don’t need anyone to tell me anything. I’ve decided my gut instinct works pretty well.”
“What does it tell you?”
Ben sank totally onto Nikolas’s body and kissed him, pulling his lower lip into his mouth, teasing it with his teeth before releasing it. “It tells me neither of us had to do any seducing whatsoever. That we both knew what was going happen when you asked me if I played billiards.”
“I think your memory is improving.”
They kissed for a while, but they both knew what they really wanted and that the kissing was only a prelude to this, which was an imperative now. Ben felt consumed with need for Nikolas, a desire to be inside him beyond his power to deny.
Without any effort at all, Ben could switch in his mind from seeing the Nikolas he’d known and loved for eight years, to seeing a new and very strange boss who sent daggers of lust into his groin just looking at him. It was incredibly exhilarating to have his passion for Nikolas confirmed. It wasn’t an aberration, because it had happened again, and Ben knew it would happen over and over, however many times they met as strangers.
Nikolas began to reverse their positions as they kissed, working them so he was on top, but Ben shook his head. Very slowly, with deliberate intent, he turned Nikolas face to the floor, half lying on him to hold him down but leaving all his beautiful rounded flesh available to be explored, conquered. Forced hard into the carpet, Nikolas groaned at the delicious friction, and the sound took Ben down to a place where all he could hear was roaring passion in his ears, a rush of adrenaline, and then the incredible tight grip of ecstasy as his cock forced its way past resistance.
He pulled out and felt it all over again…and again and again—his whole body consumed by the sensation, blind, deaf, just great waves of building intensity in his balls and cock, and his own backside now aching to be filled as well, throbbing with emptiness, which drove him on to the place that awaited him at the end of the climb.
He was totally insensible to Nikolas’s pleasure.
He didn’t need to think about anyone else, be something he wasn’t, or constantly please someone else.
Nikolas was free to walk anytime he wanted. He didn’t want to.
Nikolas Mikkelsen wasn’t going anywhere, and Ben exploited the power he now knew he had.
His need was urgent. He was desperate to come, thumping in, shifting angle, lifting hot flesh higher, holding it spread, kneeling to it and panting, and then finally he was there, flooding, light behind his eyes, and wave after wave of pure bliss washing down his spine and out into the needy, tight receptacle that met him pulse for pulse.
§ § §
Nikolas dosed off. He didn’t blame himself too much when consciousness returned. After all, it had been a long few days. Also, he was very comfortable, despite lying face first on the carpet with something very heavy on his back. The weight was apparently asleep, if the slow, deep breathing was anything to go by. Ben deserved his sleep, too.
There was something in Nikolas’s mouth, and he tried, unsuccessfully and silently, to spit it out. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence after sex, unpleasant, but to be expected. Easing his arm up without disturbing his sleeping burden, he removed the object.
Tinsel.
Huh.
That was new.
He smiled. It grew into a chuckle, which he repressed and turned into a stretch of deep happiness. Such undiluted pleasure hadn’t been destined to be his lot in life. He’d long resigned himself to the struggle, the hardship, the agony of being who he was. And then Ben Rider had come along.
What random circumstances brought people together.
How many twists of fate had put a man called Aleksey Primakov in the right place to take a phone call from the PM?
“One-upmanship with the bloody Americans…They’ve got torture protocols—yes, isn’t that amusingly ironic—I want some, too. Go to Hereford.”
The last thing Nikolas had wanted to do was watch some SAS soldiers being put through resistance to interrogation training. He hadn’t wanted to go to some ghastly town in Wales and then, worse, be driven out to the bleakest and most unpleasant place he’d seen since leaving Afghanistan—Sennybridge. Also in Wales, he was informed by his annoyingly cheerful driver.
Perhaps that day God had been taking a break from making Nikolas’s life miserable. Perhaps he’d actually decided to cut him some slack. However it had happened, his path had then crossed that of Ben Rider’s. Despite a few hiccups along the way—resistance and denial on his part—they’d not been uncrossed since that day. Tangled together. Literally. Lying beneath Ben, surrounded by the cast-off decorations, weak winter sun illuminating their naked bodies, Nikolas felt more one man than two, as if Ben’s returning memory had cemented closed the last little gap between them in their old relationship. He knew Ben felt something of this, too.
Ben moved with a new confidence, a more relaxed and easy-in-his-skin contentment.
It probably had something to do with the ridiculous pronouncement
he’d
been forced to make in Burnley. Ben seemed inappropriately delighted by him having to say the G word. And cock, come to that.