He twisted his neck around to regard her. ‘An angel donkey?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So, what costume are you going to wear to capture the essence of Angel Donkey?’ He ignored the savage Ben-poke to his thigh. Molly’s face had fallen at the question.
‘Miss Wilson said I have to be interrupting it. Mary gets to wear a blue dress and the kings get to wear velvet robes and crowns, but she doesn’t have any donkey stuff, so I have to be really clever and interrupt a donkey.’
A general air of puzzlement fell in the car. They forded the stream and began to climb up the lane towards The Keep.
‘Well, I think we can buy a donkey costume, and you can add some wings if you like, so you don’t have tointerpretanything.’
‘Papa! He couldn’tfly, or Jesus wouldn’t have had towalkon water! Donkey could have just flown him! But I think he might have had a halo of gold tinsel.’
Even Miles was laughing at Molly’s earnest enthusiasm for this scheme as they drove up to the house. It was only beginning to snow here, being further south and more sheltered than on the high moors. But the heavy flakes were settling quickly, a slight wind blowing small drifts against the glass. It was getting dark already, although it was barely three. Ben gave him a quick glance, a great deal being shared silently between them about what could be done on cold, dark evenings, and then announced cheerfully, ‘Who wants to make some toast by the fire and watch a film?’
When they were all settled, grandmothers and nannies informed of where everyone was, one dog walked, the other sensible one waiting for his share of toast in the warmth by the fire, and one kitten fetched, Ben announced to no one in particular, but aimed directly at him with a private lip twitch of glee, ‘I’m going to the gym for a bit. Just shout if anything…comes up.’ And with that, he sauntered away.
‘Why are you laughing, Papa? Can you make my toast for me? Mine went black.’
The snowstorm increased in power, a complete whiteout, which even Ben, when he’d finished his workout, wasn’t tempted to venture out in. Babushka had gone to sit with Enid for the evening, and Aleksey sent the two bodyguards who were on duty to check on them. Squeezy called from the farmhouse and laughingly exclaimed they were snowed in. They could all hear Tim’s slightly more anxious voice in the background wondering if they had enough food laid in to survive. Squeezy explained he wasn’t worried about starving because he could always gut and eat Tim.
This prompted Ben to go and start cooking something for them all. After a few minutes, seeing that the other three were engrossed in the movie, Aleksey followed him. He went up behind Ben, who was heating some oil on the stove, and tightly wrapped his arms around him. ‘You are in serious trouble, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen.’
‘Uh-huh, I got that I might be—in fact, I reckonyou’vebeen thinking about punishing me all day… So, what do you have in mind,AlekseyRider-Mikkelsen?’ The push back Ben gave, the pressure of his firm buttocks, did nothing to help the serious tone Aleksey was attempting to maintain.
‘What do you think would be appropriate? I always value your input on such things, as you know.’ He slid one hand down into the front of Ben’s jeans, cupping the enticing mixture of hardness and softness he discovered there.
Ben slapped his arm with the spatula and extricated himself from the hold.
Aleksey grabbed the tool away from him and examined it. ‘Well, this gives me an idea.’
‘Yeah, you can flip the pancakes. Good idea.’
* * *
After they’d eaten, Emilia and Miles wanted to ensure their respective grandmothers were surviving the storm, and Ben took Molly and the cat with them, tempting her to return to Sarah with promises of a walk along the path in the dark. It was still snowing heavily, and he was wet when he returned, his skin cold to the touch. But it didn’t stay that way for long. They locked the door, and Ben pulled him by the hand into the warm living room where they turned out all the lights, leaving only flickering, dancing shadows from the fire. Lying down in front of its warmth they were invisible to the rest of the world, the snow falling outside the great windows adding a sense of dislocation from reality as they undressed, kissing, touching, stroking, rolling and rising to kiss once more, then touch again familiar skin that welcomed fingers or tongue.
Aleksey wondered as he licked slowly down Ben’s back, into the dip of his waist and up the perfectly shaped cleft of his buttocks whether this was really much of a punishment. Ben wasn’t behaving as a man being chastised should. Although the deep moan could be taken as pain, he supposed. He spread Ben a little with his fingers, admiring the sight in the soft, almost liquid light. Ben smelt of soap from his shower. His muscles in his backside flexed ashepushed his fingers deeper. Then he could wait no longer and mounted Ben, entering him with a shiver of intense pleasure. After his otherworldly moment in the snow at the school, this did not seem possible. He had so much more than he had ever imagined he could, and yet, for all that, he still had this—the fundamental thing he had always wanted from this man. That need never altered, despite how much their lives evolved around them. In many ways, all the new additions to their world only added piquancy and intensity to this act of lovemaking that he had not actually been looking for when all of this had begun. You could not want what you did not know existed.
But now they made love with their bodies as they lived their lives: with total commitment to the other that neither now questioned.
They allowed the fire to die down, just lying beside one another, listening to the crackle from the last log, enveloped in the warmth of their bodies and the scents from their skin. Ben, on his stomach, head resting on his folded arms, murmured sleepily,
‘What are you doing?’
Aleksey chuckled softly. ‘I’m marking rabbit tracks from here…’ He trailed his finger through drying spills from the small of Ben’s back up one smooth, tanned cheek. ‘…to here. Don’t move. You’ll ruin my map.’
‘I don’t recall that on the headland.’
‘No, it’s a sinkhole that’s just appeared.’ He drew his finger away and back to Ben’s spine and began to trace over each knob, murmuring as he went, ‘Kittiwake, Dead Bitch Well, Guillemot...’ Ben’s shoulder blade twitched under the tickling stroke of his fingertip. ‘There, you are entirely mapped.’
‘And owned?’
He laid his cheek down on Ben’s back, smiling. ‘Oh, you’ve always been that,min skat. Did you not know? You are my most precious possession.’
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
