CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nikolas drove once more, this time to a hotel he had booked on the edge of the moors. It was secluded, and theirs was not the only brand new Range Rover parked outside. When a liveried man came out to park the vehicle for them and another to take the dog to his appointed kennel for the night, Ben felt the same sense of bewilderment and dislocation he’d felt in the cemetery—discovering that everything he’d grown up believing was a lie—swell to almost unbearable proportions. Who the hell was Benjamin Rider? Nikolas hardly seemed to notice the men and took the wealth and privilege of the place in his stride—as he always did.
They didn’t make love that night, either; not through lack of desire on either side but through a shared need for some more profound connection. They just curled around each other, knee between thighs, Ben half-lying on Nikolas, head on chest, arm tight around waist, and emotionally exhausted, they fell asleep, entwined.
It was different when they woke. Ben opened his eyes with his face pressed into the rumpled, longish hair at the back of Nikolas’s head. He was achingly hard. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the familiar and deeply erotic smell of Nikolas’s shampoo, making his cock twitch and leak. He cupped one firm buttock then bit the back of Nikolas’s neck—hard. “Happy Birthday for yesterday.”
Ben then gave Nikolas the present he would have given him the day before had he not been a childish prick. He’d done this so many times before over the years of their relationship—slid into Nikolas’s body—but he’d never eased out again immediately and then used a finger to make Nikolas arch and cry out. He’d never made Nikolas writhe before. This was new. When he heard a moan that was as close to begging as Ben reckoned Nikolas would ever get, he slid back in up to the hilt, pausing to let Nikolas feel the full weight and size of his cock. Once more, he pulled out. Nikolas twisted around looking so unpolished, so lacking in his usual elegant detachment that Ben laughed, kissing him as he slid back in. He braced himself on one strong arm, held Nikolas’s head down and began to work him.
Four days without release for either of them and the sensation of being inside Nikolas’s body overwhelmed Ben. His entire body seemed to hover on the edge of an explosive orgasm. He changed the angle a little and knew the moment he’d got it just right. Nik’s shoulders lifted from the bed, his long, lean back a pale arc of need. Ben snagged his fingers into Nik’s hair and gripped him like reins and rode him hard. Sweat poured down his body making them slick. He held on, shifted position and knew Nikolas was close. Ignoring his own need to just release hard, he pulled Nikolas’s hips higher and began strokes so long and deep his balls slapped in a delightful rhythm against Nikolas’s hard flesh. Ben slid his hand around and took Nikolas’s aching need in his fist. It twitched once and then everything was spill and release and throb of pure pleasure inside and out. Ben lost track of where sensation came from. It was all bliss as they came together, one crashing orgasm fuelling the other and keeping it going until their bodies were utterly spent and drained. Ben fell on top of Nikolas with a grunt. Nikolas didn’t even manage that much small talk. He put a hand back to hold Ben in and passed back into sleep.
They dozed together in the early morning light until Ben’s rumbling stomach was actually vibrating between them. He heard a chuckle from somewhere deep in the body beneath him. “Go shower. I will order room service. Your abomination of congealed blood, I expect, is on the menu.”
Ben began to run light kisses down Nikolas’s back. “You order something as well. You’re too thin. Some European girl’s blouse breakfast.”
He could feel Nikolas’s frown of confusion, kissed him once more, then ripped their stuck skin apart and went into the bathroom for a long, blissful shower.
When he came out, Nik was sitting by the open balcony doors in a complimentary bathrobe, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Ben’s breakfast was magnificent. He realised he was almost faint with hunger so he occupied himself with refuelling. Nik was picking at a bowl of fruit. Ben huffed with derision but was too busy eating to comment more. When he was done, he leant back and regarded the man sitting opposite him. The first question seemed obvious. It was the others he wasn’t so sure about.
“How did you know all that about my mother and my dad?”
Nikolas glanced up. “I knew some of it from police reports which I saw when I wanted you for the department.”
“When you wanted me for the department? Seriously.”
Nikolas allowed himself a small smirk. “As you wish—when I wanted you. The rest I had Kate confirm for me over the last week. It was why I did not tell you that I had asked her to come work for us. I did not want her to tell you I was investigating this until I was sure—one way or the other.”
The second question was relatively obvious, too. “Why the hell would you want Kate to work with us? Given I almost married her once.”
Nikolas looked faintly annoyed at being questioned and pretended to be engrossed with pouring more coffee. Ben waited patiently. “Either your relationship with her was an aberration, or the aberration is us. I am not perfect, Ben; I chose to poke the sleeping tiger.”
“Poke the what with the…? I have no idea what you just said.”
Nikolas sighed. “It makes more sense in Rus— Danish. I wanted to test you. There, is that clear enough? Now stop asking me questions. I do not answer questions, as you well know.”
“You didn’t answer questions because I never asked any—not any that mattered anyway. Things have changed. You’ve changed them. Maybe you should stop poking tigers.”
Nikolas chuckled softly. “I’m thinking about poking something else soon, if for no other reason than to shut you up.”
The third question, he had a feeling, was going to put a distinct dampener on Nikolas’s mood, but he was going to ask it anyway. “Who else have you told you love, and why did you lose them?”
“That is enough, Ben. I am not prepared to be questioned like this.”
“Have you ever heard an English expression ‘be careful what you wish for’?”
“Of course. We have that expression in Danish, too.”
“Well, there you are, you know what it means. You wanted this. You wanted me to be more…I don’t know…in tune with you? Well, here I am. You can’t have it both ways. I want to know why you are so afraid to love.”
“I am afraid of nothing. It is you who has to shed emotional—”
“Are you trying that trick of turning this conversation back to me?”
“Is it working?”
Ben leant back. “Why don’t you like birthdays?”
“Enough! Stop this, Ben. Good God, the irony of this does not escape me. I have created a monster. Come to bed.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Please.”
The please was so unexpected Ben almost fell for the distraction. He rose and climbed onto the well-used sheets, but before he let Nikolas press him down, he twisted away, smiling at the grunt of annoyance. “One thing. I want to know one thing about your past that is true.”
Nikolas lay back, regarding the ceiling as if seeking divine help. His swollen cock lay leaking on his belly. “A monster child.”
“Stop being melodramatic. One thing—for now.”
“All right. What do you want to know?”
Ben remembered his last free question and how he had wasted it. He wanted to make this worthwhile. “Is Nikolas Mikkelsen your real name?” This seemed very important somehow in this game of identities. Nikolas hesitated. Ben clenched his jaw. “You’re going to lie to me.”
Nikolas pursed his lips. “If I say no you will only want to know my real name, and then you are no further forward, for I would not tell you. If I say yes you will not believe me. Ask something else.”
“Damn it! Will you tell me the truth if I do?”
“…Yes.”
“Promise me.”
“Yes! Jesus, Ben, this is not a tail I am wagging here. I need for you to turn over and shut up.”
“I will. Okay, then if you promise to…okay, okay…What question should I ask you? That’s my question. You tell me what the real question about you is.”
Nikolas held his gaze for a moment, calculation behind his dark eyes. Then he blinked and sat up, swinging his legs off the bed, back to Ben. “That is not fair.”
“No. It’s not. You’re not being fair to me. But most importantly, you’re not being fair to yourself. You wanted me to be here for you, but the thought of turning around and actually seeing me here in your real life terrifies you. So, answer my bloody question.”
Nikolas turned his head to look at him. “Then I think the question you should ask me is not if Nikolas Mikkelsen is my real name but who Nikolas Mikkelsen really was. There, you have had your one question, and now you cannot actually ask it.”
Ben left the bed and went to stand by the window, leaning on the wall, gazing out at the beautiful grounds. He felt Nik come up behind him and embrace him lightly, his straining need very evident in the hard press against Ben’s backside. “There is a fairytale in my country, Ben, a story about a young man who falls in love with a mysterious stranger who comes to his cottage one day. He is so entranced and dazzled by this stranger that he wants to tell everyone. When he does, they laugh at him, and that laughter reveals what really came to his door that day in the guise of the beautiful stranger—something grotesque and so damaged by its past that it had died inside a long time ago. What did he gain, Ben, in seeing the truth?”
Ben began to stroke his thumb over Nikolas’s hands, which were spread on his chest. “But that’s not where the story ends. He couldn’t get over loving the stranger. Although he could now see the monster, he remembered loving the man, and his love was so strong and so constant that the monster felt it as a real force, and one day he looked in a mirror, and he too saw the beautiful stranger—alive and vibrant. The end.”
Nikolas chuckled. “You totally made that up.”
Ben lifted up one of Nikolas’s hands and kissed it. “And you only know that because you made the first dumb part up.”
“That does not lessen its essential truth.”
“No, I guess not. So, this is it for us? This is as far as we go and as much as we can ever have?”
He felt Nikolas’s arms tighten around him and heard him swallow. Unexpectedly, Nikolas leant to Ben’s ear and said in a choked voice, “No. Don’t give up on me, Benjamin. I said I was afraid of nothing; well I lied as usual. You are right. I am terrified of losing you. You did not speak to me for three days, and I thought—I needed you to know—I need you to know how important you are to me. All of you and not just the parts I was planning to enjoy before you forced this unpleasant heart to heart upon me. Things may change for me very soon. I cannot—I am not—I’m sorry, Ben.”
Ben saw his options in front of him as clear as if they were laid out like skeins in a complex tapestry. He could insist on unravelling Nikolas, picking at him until there was nothing left, until there were no secrets between them; or he could accept the stranger, welcome him in and live the beautiful illusion.
He turned in Nikolas’s arms, broad chest to broad chest. “Well then I guess the moral of your dumb story is that if you find the perfect stranger at your door, don’t bloody well tell anyone.” He kissed Nikolas’s face, tasting salt, and felt that in those silent tears, Nikolas had revealed far more than questioning ever would. He placed his hands to Nikolas’s face and cupped the impossibly delineated cheekbones. “Come to bed, stranger. You’ve got the other half of your birthday present to open and enjoy.”