“Nik…”
“No.I’m not having this conversation.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.We nee—”
“No, Ben, we don’t need to do anything.”He held up his hand, his face set.“No.Don’t speak to me of this again.”
It was a very quiet drive back to the glass house.Ben wasn’t allowed to speak about what they needed to do, but he wasn’t apparently prepared to talk about anything else.Ben’s silence didn’t bother Nikolas one bit.He chatted amiably to Radulf.He often got more sense out of the dumb, blind dog than he did most humans anyway.
* * *
As soon as they arrived home, Ben took himself off to a private spot and called Tim again.He informed his friend of Nikolas’s unhelpful response to their plan.Tim insisted they should do it anyway.Ben agreed, although it made him feel bad to go behind Nikolas’s back.
***
Chapter Four
Kate came down to the house two days later.She’d been reading the transcripts from sessions of gay men in crisis since she’d hacked Doctor Wood’s computer, so she wasn’t in the best of moods.
She sighed as she came into the kitchen.“Where is he?”
“Riding.He’ll be back soon.What’ve you got?”
“The ideal couple.Have you talked him around yet?”
Ben shook his head.“I haven’t mentioned it again.I thought it was best to wait till you had something.Is it going to work?”
“I’ll wait till he’s here, save me going through it twice.Thanks.”She took her tea to the table and sat sipping it thoughtfully as she looked around the vast, impressive kitchen.She smiled privately and glanced at Ben.He brought his tea to the table and pushed over a plate of biscuits.She nibbled the edge of one.The atmosphere was a little awkward.A few years ago they’d have been ripping each other’s clothes off, not drinking tea and thinking of something to say.She remembered Ben Rider’s body extremely well.It wasn’t something you forgot.She remembered waking up alongside him, awed at his beauty,jealousof his beauty, which seemed to take no effort to maintain.
Although Kate had once told Ben she’d always known he was gay, she’d lied.She’d not sensed anything from him to hint at this, except perhaps a cold remoteness when they made love, which she’d put down to his job—a sense he was going through the motions rather than connecting.Sometimes, in quiet moments, she compared herself to Nikolas Mikkelsen, trying to assess how and why Ben had decided he preferred that body to hers, that person to her.She couldn’t begin to imagine living with her boss.None of them working in ANGEL could.None of them knew how Ben put up with him.They all revered him, respected him, obeyed him, worked for him, but they all—even Squeezy who wanted to fuck him—admitted Nikolas unnerved them, exhausted them, and confused them.Ben seemed to float over the tumultuous ocean storms of Nikolas’s presence like a tranquil cloud, entirely unaffected.Which to a casual observer might appear as if the things Nikolas did and said didn’t affect Ben, which of course wasn’t true.
She sometimes wondered what would happen to Ben if Nikolas cheated on him.
Then they’d all see the truth of the relationship: Ben wasn’t the cloud floating above the storm; he was the decreasing pressure causing it, and thus the storm was a manifestation of him.He kept Nikolas Mikkelsen bound to him, and controlled every which way he raged.Kate didn’t relish seeing the storm unleashed, set free to roam on its own and decide its own shape and power.She shivered, trying to cast aside gloomy thoughts.But she couldn’t shake the impression made upon her by the men she’d studied as they poured forth their despair.
“Are you out, Ben?”
Ben choked a little on his biscuit (his fourth).“What the fuck?”
“No, seriously.Do you and Sir Nikolas go out as a gay couple?”Ben was now by the kettle, back to her, finding something that urgently had to be done on the counter.“I guess you haven’t had families to come out to…Do you…?”
Ben looked as if he’d never been so glad to hear Nikolas return.
Nikolas nodded to Kate, clearly surprised to see her, ignored Ben and sat down at the table with an expectant fold of his arms.“Well?He’s returned.That’s why you’re here, no?”
She gestured to Ben and he sat down in the spare chair.She saw Nikolas flick his eyes to Ben for a moment, frown slightly as if he sensed something wrong, and then, although she couldn’t see this or confirm it, she knew without a doubt he’d slid his foot over, for Ben glanced at him with a small smile of reassurance.She pouted a little as she pulled the info she wanted from her briefcase along with her laptop.She didn’t remember having that silent communication with Ben at all.She remembered trips to a motorcycle showroom.She remembered the sex.She remembered a few dates to violent movies.
Nikolas raised his brows at Kate in expectation.She shook her head.“He’s still missing.”
“Idiot.Well, he’ll come back when he’s worked it out of his system.I’m going for a swim.”Before he could rise, Ben put a hand on his arm.
“Nik, there’s something wrong about all this.You know that.”
“I know no such thing.”
“We need to speak with the people running this course.”
“So?Do it.Call them.”
