‘—shhh.’ Ben turned his head suddenly, so his lips were right against his cold ear. ‘I came out to give you your first present—I can’t wait any longer.’ The husky whisper made Aleksey swallow with an immediate stab of need, a swelling of lust which seemed the perfect accompaniment to the starlit night, the muffled singing and the sense of anticipation and excitement of the holiday. Ben, lips pressed to his neck, began light kisses and bites, and Aleksey tipped his head to give him more access. ‘God, you smell so good.’ Suddenly, Ben pushed quickly to his feet and croaked, ‘Do not move from that spot. I mean it. I’ll do bedtime. I want you sitting there when I get back.’
Aleksey wasn’t going anywhere.
It must have been the quickest Molly had ever been put to bed, which was impressive given her newest quirk, because Ben was back before Aleksey had finished the wine or had time to enjoy another cigarette. He stood over him and held out a hand. ‘Come.’ Aleksey rose, summoned by his own familiar command, now copied by Ben in a low, urgent voice.
Ben led him deep into the woods. The moon had just appeared above the canopy, achingly full, but many of the trees were evergreens, so under their full coverage the darkness swallowed them. They were kissing as he pushed Ben against a tree, his hands roaming down, pressing and squeezing through the old jeans, but Ben objected to this tree, and seized his hand, dragging him further along the path. When they were far enough away, he grabbed Ben around the waist and, laughing, wrestled him once more to a broad trunk, where they mashed their faces together, teeth clashing, hardness below inflamed by grinding. But once more, Ben disentangled them and with real urgency now dragged him along. ‘Come on!’
‘For fuck’s sake, this is far enough, Ben.’
‘No. Move.’
‘No! Stop.’
‘Shhh. Voices carry.’ They had come to the walled garden and, relentless, Ben towed him along. Aleksey suddenly got that Ben wanted them to make it to the lake, and he saw some sense in this for afterwards, so he sped up, but his tow ignored that route and continued dragging him towards Ben’s Bottom. As this was exactly where Aleksey was planning to explore thoroughly he didn’t need to see the alternate version and had begun some more strenuous objection to the enforced route march when they emerged into the clearing of Kittiwake.
Aleksey pulled up sharply. He could see the sea. He should not be able to see the sea, as Kittiwake sat in the woods on the northern coastline above a rocky shore. Suddenly the whole area was flooded with light, and he whirled around. Ben had turned the cottage lights on, and Aleksey was now brightly illuminated because the whole front of the little beach house had been removed and replaced with glass. His eyebrows shot up. Ben was leaning against an open bi-fold door. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘What have you—?’ He coughed and tried again. ‘What have you done?’
Before Ben could reply, Aleksey went into this building he no longer recognised. Instead of the warren of small, separate rooms upstairs and down, the cottage was a shell, just a cube, with a spiral staircase to a mezzanine created by a platform across the back wall. The space had bleached wooden floorboards and whitewashed rough stone walls and contained a cream-coloured couch with cushions in contrasting shades of blue and green, a wood burner in the old fireplace, and over to one side, a few kitchen units. The loft contained just a bed—pure white. From that, or from the couch, was now an unbroken view of the ocean to the north where the waves broke relentlessly on the rocky shore. He went back out, well aware that Ben was watching him with amusement. Someone had cut the trees down to create the view, and there was a large pile of fresh logs stacked to one side. He returned to the house and stood upon the bare boards. It was like being back in Denmark: the simplicity, the clean lines, the dramatic touches of colour.
He swallowed deeply, unable to say a thing. Ben pressed in close behind him, propping his chin on his shoulder. ‘Do you like it? It’s just for us.’
Aleksey got that Ben was saying a lot in this simple statement. Ben was making manifest his promise that whatever happened with the familyhecame first. No—theycame first. And now Ben had given him this. It was as if Ben had plucked the perfect design for this house fromhishead and done it for him. Suddenly, he slumped in Ben’s arms and sighed, completely shamed with just how dumb and slow he really was. ‘My builders. You stole them.’
Ben snorted. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘But I am—how did you do all this? In such a short time?’
Ben laughed openly. ‘I have discovered the secret to employing builders: I sent them to an island with no phone coverage. You have no idea how much they were able to get done. You need to thank Harry tomorrow. He managed them here for me.’ He disentangled himself, turned and twiddled a switch, and the lights dimmed to just soft ambient background illumination. Aleksey leaned around him and turned them off completely.
Their urgency in the woods had entirely gone. It had turned into a languid desire to make their lovemaking last for hours. Ben lit the fire which had been laid with exceptionally dry sticks so it flared into life quickly. He stood in front of the gentle flickering for a moment and then began to unbutton his shirt. Aleksey sank into the couch to watch. They were occupying a new space, forging a new life amidst so many changes, yet one thing never altered between them. He desired Ben Rider-Mikkelsen. And despite what he had told himself in the early years, this desire had never been just for Ben’s body, regardless of how perfect that alignment of muscle, skin and bone was. He had always wanted what lay beneath and beyond the physical—once to own that man bodyandsoul, but now to be owned by him. But this new sense of ownership came with no fear of eventual loss, no frantic desperation that if Ben knew this, or heard about that, or discovered any of what he still knew so little about, that he would just walk away. Ben had staked his ground and he was going nowhere. Aleksey had never known such complete peace to just let it all go and be himself with someone—to love someone this fiercely and not be rejected from fear of such intensity. Ben Rider-Mikkelsen had always been his equal—for ferocity and love, and so here they both were.
He rose suddenly from the couch and, laughing, swung Ben around, finishing the slow unbuttoning for him by ripping the shirt from his shoulders. Ben stepped out of his jeans and kicked them to one side and he was naked in the firelight. Aleksey gripped the powerfully formed hips, his thumbs stroking into the hollows and over the prominent bones. He felt Ben swell and rise against him and took his erection in one fist, beginning to pump and squeeze him as they kissed.
Ben eased his lips away and began to undress him, one button at a time, groaning softly as he lifted his hips into the pleasure of being worked below. Eventually they were both naked, Ben a dark golden statue of hewn muscle and bone, he paler, starker. Raw power beside tamed savagery, they were well matched. Always had been. As they eased to the floor, hands roaming, kisses became painful as stubble rasped and scraped. Ben then began to trail his tongue lower, into the corded hollows of Aleksey’s throat, down over his savagely sharp collarbone and lower still. Aleksey spread his arms on the bleached wooden floorboards, feeling every inch of the slow exploration, closing his eyes to the anticipation of Ben’s tongue reaching where he desperately wanted it to be. From the very first, this was the thing he loved the most, and when Ben took his rigid shaft into his mouth and then opened his throat to it, he came with a cry of shock and pleasure that turned into a moan of bliss as Ben swallowed around him, still licking and eating and working his root with his fist to bring him back to life.
With his other hand, Ben lifted one lean thigh, spread him, exposed him and then entered him, and it did not seem to Aleksey that he had any more pleasure to find until Ben was deep within him and discovered it for him. He hit the spot, hit it again, rose higher and pushed deeper, and his muscles rippled as he braced upon him, firelight turning his sweat-coated flesh into a flickering, moving powerhouse of thrust and withdrawal, deep penetration and hovering tease, until he could prolong it for them no longer, and Aleksey knew by the scrunch of Ben’s face that he was about to come. He let himself go once more, unable to stifle a cry of pleasure at the second spasm of relief that hit him at exactly the same time as he felt Ben’s warmth flooding within.
Ben stayed braced over him as he wrung the last few shudders of pleasure from his own orgasm, but then sank slowly onto him, crushing him to the floor in a boneless pool of sweat of semen, the evocative scents of which rose with the heat from the fire to mingle and mix with the smell of sanded pine and fresh paint.
He began to laugh and found it hard to stop, even when Ben lazily muffled him with one damp palm. But it was funny. He was lying on the floor being fucked at Christmas—something that was depressingly familiar to him from past festivities—and he had just realised that he had never, in his entire life, been happier. He didn’t care about poking fate either. He didn’t give a fuck about the gods of chaos and chance, or what they might think about such hubris—they could piss someone else off for a change. It was the Christmas holidays, he was leaking another man’s spunk, and yet he felt as if he were floating above his own body looking down, and all that he could see was Ben Rider-Mikkelsen covering him, obliterating him, protecting him. Loving him.
He ruffled Ben’s hair and, thinking about half-centuries, mumbled, ‘Shall we try the bed?’
Ben snorted softly against his chest but removed his gag. Then he just stretched lazily and got more comfortable. Aleksey wondered whether they had good chiropractors on St Mary’s. He turned his head a little, just to test that he still had some motor function in the neck, but then, startled, poked Ben in the ribs. ‘Look!’
Ben grunted but dutifully turned his head, but at the sight that greeted him suddenly bounced to standing. With an apologetic grimace at the look of horror onhisface, he graciously heaved him up as well, and they stood gazing out at the incredible scene beyond the glass. The swollen moon was due north, low in the sky as if it were about to descend into the sea, and streaking across the ink-black glossy water, a single line of glittering moonlight stretched like a finger pointing straight at them. Almost without their own volition, they went outside, the Scilly night not especially cold, despite being December. The scent from night-flowering sub-tropical plants was intoxicating. When they walked to the edge of the clearing, they too were bathed in the ethereal light of the moon. Ben took his hand and with no words needed, they made their way carefully over the rocks, and then with a shout jumped together into the ocean. They broke the perfect line of light as they plunged beneath the water, but as it scattered above them, Aleksey looked up and for a moment felt as if he were in a monochromatic kaleidoscope, fractals of silver breaking into patterns around him. Gasping, he surfaced, Ben already up, floating on his back, sculling on the swell.
Aleksey regarded him for a moment: the repetitive, thoughtless action of his hands above the darkness beneath… ‘Come.’ He grabbed Ben’s arm and began to tow him back towards the rocks. He climbed up and urged Ben to follow. Quickly. Only when Ben had his second foot out of the water, did he relax, but he deflected the obvious question with, ‘I don’t suppose this excellent Christmas surprise has any food included with it?’
Ben grinned, his teeth a white flash in the dark.
He had indeed prepared a meal, and there was more wine, and so they collected what they wanted and navigated the iron spiral stairs to the loft. This was also made of bleached wooden boards and was supported on huge steels which had been left bare, enhancing the raw Scandinavian feel of the little cottage. From the bed, they had an unbroken view of the ocean, for the top half of the glass frontage, above the bi-fold door, was one single pane of glass, and the loft had not been built at the same height as the removed ceiling, but higher, for the ceiling of the old bedrooms had been removed as well, exposing the bare beams beneath the roof. As they settled crossed-legged and naked against the back wall, Aleksey glanced up. ‘Harry said he wanted to attempt thatch.’
‘Yeah, he told me. But we didn’t have time to organise it. Maybe when the weather is better so the roof can come off.’
He grinned and laid a free hand on Ben’s cold thigh, stroking his thumb on the salty skin. Then he put his arm around Ben’s neck and pulled his head closer for a kiss. ‘Snow and now Christmas, Ben. Snow and Christmas.’
