“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.
