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.”
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 enjoying 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.”