CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Nikolas wanted to sit outside in the sun and fresh air, so Ben helped him limp to the bench. He left him sitting there while he went to boil some water. He came back with another set of clean clothes, the water, and Nikolas’s shaving kit. “You want some help?” Nikolas shrugged. Ben shook his head. “Nope, gonna need more encouragement than that.”
Nikolas gave him a look that was so derisive and so familiar they both laughed, and that was even more familiar still. Ben bent down to begin the shave, but Nikolas caught him around the back of the neck and finished the kiss he’d begun earlier.
That was the most familiar of all.
While he was holding Nikolas’s face, running the razor over his stubble, Ben asked deceptively casually, “Why didn’t you just tell me, Nik?”
Nikolas was watching him carefully, the shaving forcing intimacy. “I didn’t know where to start. I tried once or twice but…” He shrugged and said a lot in that small gesture.
Ben wasn’t prepared to have to work this out, however; he wanted to hear it in words. He gave Nikolas the silent treatment for the rest of the shave, and apparently hearing plenty in this, Nikolas was forced to continue, “You can understand, Ben, that there are many aspects of my story I wouldn’t like to talk about. I didn’t want you to see me in that light. I shot my father, what sort of—?”
“Fucking hell. You’re lying again.” He sat back on his heels, the razor dangling soapy from his fingers. “Your brother shot your father!” He resumed the shaving and hissed under his breath, “What is wrong with you, Nik?”
Nikolas held his wrist still and lifted his fathomless, dark eyes to Ben’s. “Kate? I shall have to rethink her employment.” Ben eased his wrist away from the tight hold and continued the shave. He didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched uncomfortably once more. Finally, Nikolas snapped, “You want to know? All right, I’ll tell you. He had a place at Kobenhavns Universitet—university in Copenhagen…”
“Yeah, thanks for the translation. I’ve only been learning Danish for four months, so I missed that.”
Nikolas laughed at his stony words and expression, and Ben glanced up at him more, contritely. Nikolas ruffled his hair. “And we both know how well that has been going. I shall have to start teaching you. I taught…” He trailed off and swallowed, frowning. Ben suddenly felt an intense stab of pity for this man he’d been so furious with only a moment ago. Who was he to push Nikolas into these sad memories? He was about to tell him to forget it, to keep his secrets if they caused him so much pain to share, when Nikolas continued, “My father said he had to stay in Moscow and attend university there. Nika didn’t want to. Perhaps he feared our father was tiring of me. I was seventeen and not so amenable as I’d once been.”
Ben laid down the razor. “Nikolas knew? He knew what was going on between…?”
Nikolas shrugged.
“When did he find out? My God, did he know from the beginning?”
Nikolas frowned and tried to dismiss the import of the question with his familiar hand gesture, but Ben caught his wrist so he was forced to grind out, “Of course. I missed much school in the early days. And we did talk, you know.” He suddenly smiled and it was like a light shinning in a very dark place. “At school we could only speak to each other for almost a whole term as no one spoke Danish and we, of course, couldn’t speak Russian. It was funny. I made Nika swear at all the teachers in Danish…” He pouted and became silent, lost in memories.
Ben couldn’t think what to say. He squatted in front of Nikolas, silent, thoughtful, and began to unwrap the bandaging around his thigh. He needed some time to process the things Nikolas had told him. Nikolas’s fingers came to his hair and began to comb through the dark strands. The wounds were fearsome things on the pale flesh, and Nikolas was clearly in some pain. Ben breathed out slowly. There wasn’t much else he could do. “Okay, we’re going to try eating again—but something simple, yeah?”
Nikolas nodded, apparently glad to do anything to distract himself from the pain, even eat. He accepted a cheese sandwich without complaint. Ben glanced at him. “Where were you when he did it—shot him?”
Nikolas continued to chew his sandwich for a minute, probably thinking up a suitable lie. “I had had a disagreement with my father about the universities. I, too, wanted Nika to stay in Denmark. I was—” He waved his hand dismissively. “I couldn’t attend the party.”
“You were…?”
“Bleeding, Benjamin. I was bleeding too badly, but fortunately for us, this only added veracity—is that the right word, is that English? Yes, veracity. It added veracity to my confession. They believed he’d gone too far at last—beating me—and that I had retaliated—shooting him. See, as you would say, fate. God in heaven, I’m tired again. Why am I tired again?” He began to lie back on the bench, but Ben caught his arm.
“Come inside and sleep properly.”
Nikolas resisted. “No, I want to stay outside. I don’t like to sleep in there. Too many—I prefer the sun.”
Ben relented and let him lie down on the grass in the shade of a tree. Nikolas put an arm over his face and prepared to endure the pain. Ben left him alone for a couple of hours while he did some more admin and checked supplies, and then he woke him with a light meal of the rest of the fresh food. Nikolas turned slightly to favour his bad leg and propped himself up on one elbow. Bay lay down alongside him, feeding pieces of sausage to Radulf. Nikolas was watching him, a curious expression on his face. “So…Benjamin…you’ve taken advantage of my weakened state to make me talk too much about things I wouldn’t wish you to know, but you haven’t told me anything.” He glanced away for a moment. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
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.”