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.