Death's Ink Black Shadow (13 page)

The kettle noise ceased. Ben began to make the tea, his back once more to the strange man. “So, how did you meet Nikolas?”

“Who?”

Ben twisted around, teabag on spoon. “Nikolas? Big? Blond? Scars?”

“Oh, man, you mean
Hummer
. Sure, Hummer and I are old friends. We’re fucking tight, man. Solve crimes, bust ass. Hummer’s m’ main man. So…you call the dude Nikolas? Weird fucking name for a bodyguard.”

Ben nodded sagely, having absolutely no idea what the big man was talking about. “So,
Hummer
…you know him because…?”

“Oh, man, he thought I’d sent you a death threat. Tracked me down. Awesome. No one tracks The Mountain down.”

Ben’s brows rose. He couldn’t have picked a better name for the vast mountain of flesh in front of him, but thought it odd that Peyton would highlight his most obvious physical feature this way. Before Ben could comment one way or the other, Peyton beamed and nodded. “I was GregorClegane before I was BenRider. Got that first, too. Fucking awesome game, man. Moral ambiguity. Don’t y’ just love it?”

Ben sipped his tea, noncommittally. He foresaw many such confusing conversations and had already decided not to ask.

Peyton peered curiously at the mug of tea Ben had given him and murmured, “Huh. Hot—and…cold milk?” before adding more confidently, “So, Hummer’s out…killing people?”

At that moment, Ben heard the front door open, and he slid further back into the depths of the kitchen to watch the interesting reunion.

Peyton Garic didn’t appear to recognise Nikolas at first. Nikolas had been to an opening of a new art gallery and was wearing one of his hand-tailored suits. He’d also recently had a haircut (where Ben suspected he may have left the grey). Nik smiled at Peyton and briefly punched his shoulder, which seemed to delight the huge man. “Awesome undercover look, man. What you working on?”

Nikolas narrowed his eyes secretively, and Peyton tapped his nose. Ben groaned. Nikolas had found a new playmate.

Nikolas glanced at Ben. “Ben, meet the new and improved Kate.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Peyton was installed into one of the spare bedrooms. Literally. Nikolas told him he had an unlimited budget to set it up how he needed. Peyton stood eyeing the room. “They do pizza in this little country of yours?”

Nikolas told him to have
in it
, and left. Ben frowned and glanced at Peyton. Peyton winked, and Ben recovered from his shock and dismay at finding this odd guest on his doorstep. He gave Peyton a small complicit smirk. Anyone who also found Nikolas’s English occasionally extremely odd and amusing, and dared laugh at him, endeared himself immediately to Ben.

He found Nikolas in the office, shredding things. The shredder had been used a lot recently, and Ben suspected much of the information that could have been used in Steven’s proposed book was lying in tiny fragments in the bin. He watched Nikolas for a while and then asked the obvious. “Why him?”

Nikolas shrugged. “I like him. I trust him.”

Ben pondered this for a while. “You like him?”

“I felt he would be a welcome change to…everyone else.”

There was a lot true about this, when Ben considered the rest of their team, but something seemed fairly self-evident, so he pointed it out. “A
woman
would have been that.”

Nikolas made his familiar dismissive gesture, apparently unconcerned.

Ben picked at a thread on his jeans. “No Mollys from Peyton though.”

Nikolas then glanced over, seemingly surprised at the sagaciousness of Ben’s comment. But he ducked his head briefly, acknowledging its truth. Then after a pause while more thoughtful shredding went on, he conceded, “No more Jackson Keanes either.”

Ben grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. You might be tempted…”

Nikolas looked serious. “You are as fat as I ever want to fuck, Benjamin.”

Ben took the bait. He couldn’t help himself. It was a sensitive subject, and he hadn’t had any sugar for a week. He was feeling angsty and not in the mood to be teased. He caught Nikolas around the waist, propelling him to the floor. He tried to get a punch in, but Nikolas was too quick and rolled away under the desk, coming to his feet on the other side. He winced and rubbed his elbow where it had smacked into the floorboards. Ben narrowed his eyes. “Old man.”

It was a fair fight then, this being something Nikolas was equally touchy about. He sprang over the desk on one hand and tackled Ben into the filing cabinet. Ben grunted as a handle caught him in the back, and Nikolas took the opportunity to pinch his waist—apparently checking for fat. Ben didn’t have anything to squeeze, so it ended up being a painful dig in the ribs, and Ben gasped and retaliated by seizing Nikolas’s hair and making a very pointed comment about dye.

Nikolas began to chuckle, but suppressed it, and grabbed Ben’s cock through his jeans. It was a standoff then, and they both clearly knew it. If Ben moved, Nikolas tightened his hold. It was only when Ben murmured quietly in Danish, “We have an audience,” that Nikolas relented and held it more gently, beginning to stroke him instead.

“Radulf can’t see. It’s amusing and instructive for him to listen, however. Make that noise you always do when I do this.”

Ben bit his lip, trying not to laugh. “Not the dog…”

Nikolas jerked his head around to find Peyton Garic leaning in the doorway, holding his phone as if waiting for a good opportunity to take a video.

Peyton waved his hand and said cheerfully, “Said you’d stopped stripping, Hummer. Seemed kinda a waste to me given the…So this is awesome, man. I’ve kinda had to stop that shit—sex—ya know? Well, with other people. Issues, dude. But always happy to watch.”

Nikolas peeled away from Ben and scratched his face. Ben turned to the cabinet and tried to find something interesting to look at. He heard the huge man sigh with disappointment that his live entertainment was over and then manoeuvre away down to his new room. Nikolas leant his back against Ben’s and conceded thoughtfully, “I may have made another error.”

§ § §

Once Peyton was established in his command centre with vast monitors, a network of cables snaking all over the floor, and various boxes blinking and whirring, they saw very little of him. Every so often the doorbell would ring with some takeaway, and Ben did the honours of jogging up to mission control with the boxes. He whispered worriedly to Nikolas one evening after returning to the sofa, “What will he do when we are in Devon? He’ll starve.”

Nikolas repressed a very obvious smirk and patted Ben’s head patronisingly. “It’s a temporary measure. I am acquiring more suitable office space for him—on the ground floor.”

Ben glanced up to the floor above them. “What does he actually do?”

Nikolas tapped his nose in a repeat of Peyton’s gesture, which earned him a taking down. This time Ben sprung up to lock the door to the sitting room before returning to the sofa and his prisoner. For a captive, Nikolas was being surprisingly lax in his attempts to escape. Unless lying provocatively and unbuttoning his shirt was a prelude to a dash to freedom.

Ben helped the escape bid, if it was one, by pulling the shirt up over Nikolas’s head until his chest was bare, his powerful arms stretched up, and then he twisted it around, binding Nikolas’s wrists above him. Holding them with one hand, Ben mouthed into Nikolas’s armpit, then licked slowly up the cool inside of pale muscle to the bound wrist. Nikolas arched a little in pleasure, grinding his hips up to meet Ben’s. Their cocks connected and they both groaned at the same time. Ben transferred his mouth to Nikolas’s lips, kissing him deeply, exploring with his tongue places he knew very well already.

When Ben knew Nikolas was close to needing more, he eased off and appealed huskily, “I want to watch you strip.”

Freeing his arms, Nikolas began his usual protest—that he didn’t like being used, that he had good cause not to put on shows with his body—but Ben had heard it all before. “You stripped for Jackson.”

He saw with amusement the quick outrage in Nikolas’s eyes and added, “That’s what I pictured, anyway. That’s what I kept thinking.”

“Hmm. Did you see the expression on his face when you asked if he’d fucked me? I think it ruled out any sexual connection between us at all—
ever
.”

“Tell me the truth.” Ben managed to keep a straight face at this ridiculous request. “You picture me and Kate sometimes. I know you do.”

Nikolas clenched his jaw and added sulkily, “Sometimes.” Then his eyes wrinkled a little at some private joke, and he added quickly, “But just
her
, actually. She was very attractive.” Ben knew he was only being teased and distracted, but he hit Nikolas’s shoulder anyway. It wouldn’t be fun between them unless they were suitably black and blue the next morning. Nikolas caught his wrist and held it fast before Ben could follow up with an attack on the ribs, then kissed him swiftly. “Molly will be exceptionally beautiful, I think, with such parents.”

Ben sagged. “
Parent
. That sounds worse than father. Bloody hell. I’ll have to do the school run…chat to mothers at the school gate.”

“Oh, I think you’ll cope, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen. I can’t see any school-gate mothers being unwilling to befriend you. I might get jealous.”

“You’re not going to strip, are you?”

“No.”

Ben sighed and played with Nikolas’s nipple. Nikolas folded his arms behind his head. “You are unpleasantly heavy. How is your diet going?”

Ben twisted his nipple, getting a satisfactory wince of pain in response.

Then he ducked down and sucked it for a while, Nikolas holding the back of Ben’s head, running his fingers through his dark hair. After a while, he heard a soft murmur, “Strip me, Ben. Make me your plaything that way.”

Ben let out a small, “Yess,” of delight and slid lower on the lean body. He took the leather of Nikolas’s belt between his fingers and eased the tongue out of the buckle. He could feel the insistent hardness below, feel it moving and responding to his touch, seeking him out and rising. Nikolas’s zip came down with an anticipatory light metallic hiss that heralded release and relief. Ben closed his eyes to savour the moment and then he eased the material down the supine figure until all was exposed to his greedy gaze.

Ben pressed his mouth to the hollow of Nikolas’s hip, his tongue tracing a pattern on the pale skin. Nikolas swore and tried to pull Ben’s head closer to a more obvious target for licking, but Ben only nuzzled lightly into the wiry blond hair at the base of the tempting cock and then moved lower, all promise and pretence in his suppressed laughter.

Nikolas appeared to resign himself to a long wait.

His hand hesitated.

Ben waited incredulously.

Nikolas gave in and took himself in hand, something he almost never did when Ben was present. Ben groaned in delight at the erotic spectacle. So obsessed with being the centre of Nikolas’s intimate desires, Ben rarely had to consider that Nikolas was in fact the centre of his own sexual identity—that he owned his own body and its responses.

Ben slid up to lie alongside the arousing sight, watching with fascination as Nikolas pulled and twisted his cock. The grip was harder, the working more furious than Ben ever did it for him, and he wondered what Nikolas was thinking, what images he was conjuring that needed such violence to release. Ben suffered a stab of jealousy for a moment until Nikolas’s free hand sought him out and fastened onto his face, turning his gaze. Nikolas was staring at
him
.

Now, Ben knew with complete certainty that he was the only subject of Nikolas’s thoughts—his face, perhaps his muscular, strong body. He rolled off the sofa and stood alongside Nikolas, who remained lying down, regarding him through lust-blown, unfocused eyes.

Very slowly, Ben began to unbutton his jeans, which were hanging unusually low, dragged down by the recent activity on the narrow couch. Dark pubic hair became visible, and he witnessed Nikolas’s eyes focus suddenly, like a cat’s seeing a flick of moment that piqued its interest. Nikolas’s movement reduced to a holding pattern as his concentration moved from the taut v-line of Ben’s abdomen to the hint of what lay beneath the soft material.

Ben released the last button and the jeans fell of their own accord, nothing to hold them up on his zero-fat body. He was commando and so displayed himself to Nikolas in all his glory. He knew he was anatomical perfection. Showing this off for Nikolas wasn’t vanity.

Ben began to stroke his cock.

Nikolas picked the pace up again, their beating hands now in a matching rhythm.

Over a decade of sharing their bodies and now they’d found something new.

Ben wanted to fall upon the challenging arrangement of flesh and bone beneath him, wanted to be merged as one, as they always were, but he couldn’t deny that this was fun, too. It was so simple. It was just being male and revelling in cock. The thought made his lips quirk, and he saw an answering smile on Nikolas’s lips. Why hadn’t they done this before? He sped up a little more, knew he was coming but didn’t bother to align this with Nikolas, didn’t need to make sure he was coming, too. They were separate men jerking off. Simple.

He came over Nikolas’s face, which he hadn’t meant to, but once begun, he gloried in it and began to laugh as the white shots splattered onto Nikolas’s cheekbones, rained down onto his lips and finally hit his eyes, which Nikolas had to close. In the privacy of his own mind, Nikolas appeared to find the conclusion he needed, and Ben stared, hungry with desire, as Nikolas erupted over his hand, the spill apparently helped by the deathlike grip Nikolas had on Ben’s thigh, up high, in the hollow of his hip. Ben was glad Nikolas had needed that joining of flesh to finish.

It gave him a good idea.

Before Nikolas could even open his eyes, while he was still in the downtime after ejaculation, Ben dragged him off the sofa and entered him. It was a messy tangle of half-mast clothes, trapped legs and a soft cock, but he managed to be inside enough to harden on the pleasure, and then Nikolas helped by wriggling out of the rest of his clothes, undressing Ben, even while they remained joined.