Nikolas shrugged. “I do not give you compliments, as you know, but consider yourself complimented.” Ben smiled and leant back on the railing, casually crossing his ankles, stretching out his fabulous body, which was only enhanced by his tailored suit. They didn’t realise that they lost time just staring at each other until they heard a discreet cough, and the agent said, “The field is across the lane and comes with a new stable. Shall we view that now?” They walked in the sunshine across to the field, and Nikolas cast a cursory glance at it and nodded. They thanked the agent, said they’d be in touch and got back in the car. Ben was reluctant to leave. “This is okay, Nik.”
Nikolas shrugged. “If you like it, buy it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. We are not committed. If it bores us, we will move again.”
Ben turned to him. “How many houses have you lived in—in your whole life?”
Nikolas pursed his lips. “I have no idea. I have never thought about it.”
“Well?”
“Ben, why—?”
“Please.”
Nikolas sighed then appeared to be counting. “How long does a stay have to be to count?”
“I guess anything that wasn’t a holiday—anything over a month?”
There was a long silence. “Twenty, but some of those I do not remember but was told about or have seen photographs of.”
“Photographs? Of your childhood?” Ben usually found it hard to believe Nikolas had actually been a child, but to discover proof existed of this odd idea fascinated him. “Where are they? Do you have other houses now than the one in London?”
Nikolas nodded. “Of course. Just drive, Ben, please. Take the road to Barton Combe.”
Ben jerked his eyes to Nikolas. “Why?”
Nikolas stared resolutely out of the windscreen then replied grudgingly, “Philipa is in Scotland with the family. I want to take the opportunity to collect some of my belongings.”
Ben kept glancing over, sensing a familiar imploding mood as Nikolas plunged into whatever dark memories and thoughts he was burdened with. Ben tapped him on the thigh. “Can we take the billiard table?”
§§§
Ben hadn’t been to Nikolas’s house since New Year’s Eve, when he had killed men there. The place was much the same, despite the violent death that had visited it. It was quieter without the inevitable pack of dogs—and the terrorists—but much the same. He knew where Nikolas would want to go first and followed him, amused, to the stables. Ben had to work hard then not to be jealous of a horse, as Nik lavished far more endearments and attention on the dumb animal than he ever did on him. He decided to leave him to it and find something to eat. Breakfast seemed a very long time ago. As Philipa was gone for some weeks, most of the staff had been given holidays and only a skeleton crew remained to look after the horses and provide security for the house. Consequently, Ben was left in peace to make a raid on the fridge and larder.
He made a plate of interesting looking things and sat down at the table, thinking how his life had changed since the last time he’d sat there. When he’d eaten his fill, he made a sandwich for Nikolas and took it out to the stables. Nikolas wasn’t there. He wandered back into the house, searching the rooms, and eventually found him up in the bedroom Ben had briefly seen at New Year’s. Then it had been dark, and he’d only been able to glimpse a stark simplicity to the room that had told him it was Nikolas’s. Now the afternoon sun lit the room. Nikolas was leaning in the window, back to the door. Ben wasn’t sure whether to knock. His relationship with Nikolas was still so undefined that when it was taken out of the artificial environment they had created for themselves, it puzzled him what it actually was. Was he Nikolas’s chauffeur with fringe benefits? His employee—with the same benefits? He surely wasn’t his…boyfriend? He snorted faintly at this thought, which took away his dilemma about whether to knock when Nikolas said distinctly, “Give me a minute. I will come down presently.”
Ben heard something in the voice that made him hesitate. Nikolas was still very hard to read, even after all the things they had done together. He debated but then came further into the room, putting the sandwich down on the chest of drawers. He came up behind Nikolas and slid his arms around him, kissing the back of his neck, but Nikolas didn’t turn around. His body was rigid, his arms folded tightly over his chest as if he was barely holding himself together. Ben was afraid of what might happen if the hold slipped. Instead of trying to distract him with sex, which was so very tempting to do, he let him go and began to wander around the room, looking at the pictures he’d only seen faintly in moonlight a few months before. The pictures of a storm-swept beach were still captivating but painfully empty. Ben liked pictures with things in them.
The drawer alongside the bed had been pulled out and rifled through; things lay on the floor, some on the bed, some thrown carelessly into an open bag. Ben sat down, idly rummaging, waiting for Nikolas to want him again, and saw a photograph left behind at the bottom of the drawer. He pulled it out and his eyes went wide. It was a photograph of Nikolas in his teens—unmistakable; he hadn’t actually changed all that much. He had been caught at a table in a window bay, painting. It looked as if the photographer had suddenly called him and he’d turned, face open and innocent, grin as wide as the sun, poised with his right hand about to make a stroke to the painting he was completing, his left holding a shell. The photograph was in black and white and all the more exquisite for that—the kind of photograph that launched careers, made names, became iconic for the model or the photographer, or both. Ben made a small noise in the back of his throat. “This is so beautiful! How old were you?”
Nikolas turned, his expression glazed, as if he’d been miles away in some place only he could reach. He saw what Ben was holding. An expression flicked across his face that Ben couldn’t read, but he replied casually enough, “I was seventeen when that was taken. Give it to me. I forgot I had kept it.”
Holding the photo in his hands seemed more intimate than holding Nikolas’s cock in his mouth the previous night. It was the backward relationship thing again. He should have seen a picture of Nikolas as a boy long before the man bent him over a table and fucked him. He didn’t want to hand it over—he wanted to keep it. He hesitated, some deep-seated sense of wrongness about this whole situation pricking the nerves in the back of his neck. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Benjamin, give it to me!”
Ben stood up feeling irrational, stupid, even as he said it. “No. You’re going to tear it up, aren’t you?”
Almost before he had time to react, Nikolas crossed the space between them. But Ben was just that one fraction of a second faster, and he dodged, getting the photograph safety tucked in his shirt. Nikolas tried to pass off the attempt to grab the photo as something very casual and not to be thought about, for it was beneath him to protest more, but Ben wasn’t fooled for a second; for one minute he’d seen a killing rage in Nikolas’s eyes that he had never thought he’d see. He bit his lip. It was all so foolish—all for an innocent photo of a boy laughing to the camera. But, somehow, Ben felt the photograph represented far more than that. They were at something of an impasse now. He knew he’d angered Nikolas—and not one of the play arguments they both so enjoyed. This was for real. He wasn’t sure where he stood in this one. He ought to just hand the photo over—it wasn’t his, after all—but every instinct was telling him to keep it safe, that somehow Nikolas needed him to keep it safe, despite appearances.
Suddenly, Nikolas glanced around the room at the half-packed bags and the things flung on the bed. He didn’t look at Ben but said deceptively calmly, “This was a mistake. I discover I do not need any of this, after all.” With that, he walked out. Ben caught him up as he was climbing into the Range Rover.
“What about the horses?”
“I do not believe they will fit in the car. Get in. I have put in the address of the next house. We should view it, even it you are decided on buying the mill. I do not care much anymore.”
