Death's Ink Black Shadow (15 page)

Ben gave him a sour look and pulled on a clean shirt.

Molly, now dressed in some baby jeans and a sweater, began to cry.

Nikolas gave Ben an accusatory frown. “What have you been doing all this time? Have you not fed her yet?”

Ben was tempted to reply, “
I haven’t fed myself yet
,” but it was beneath him. He’d discovered the bottles in another bag whilst he’d been desperately rummaging for the nappies, and so produced one and the heater, which, Reginald Armstrong had informed him, worked off the car lighter. He assembled it all and collapsed gratefully into his seat. Molly’s wails got louder.

Nikolas checked his watch. “We’ve been here over an hour, Benjamin. You are very remiss.”

Ben curled his lip but kept silent.

Finally the machine’s light went off, and he thrust the bottle at Molly. To his intense relief, she took it and held it herself. He sank back, exhausted, in his seat but glanced at Nikolas to see a small grin of amusement whipped away. “What? It’s not funny, Nik.
Stop it
! I didn’t sign up for any of this.”

“I suspect no man truly does. Babies are the inevitable outcome of what we do sign up for.” Ben slumped and tried to appear even more starved than he was for a little sympathy. “Besides, between the two of us, I think we can cope with one baby?”

Ben groaned.
You should never tempt fate.

§ § §

Help came from an unexpected source later.

Just when it was needed most.

They hadn’t even unpacked the car before Molly had been sick again. This time over herself and her space-age-complex car seat, which they’d left slimy on the gravel whilst they’d carried her in, dripping, at arm’s length—Ben volunteered by Nikolas for this duty as, he’d pointed out quite reasonably, his coat cost over a thousand pounds but Molly Rose had come free.

Ben was too busy to untangle Nikolas and his various annoying pronouncements and took Molly to her assigned bedroom then laid her on the large guest bed.

By the time he was finished, he had more washing to sort than he and Nikolas made in a week.

But then he remembered they had a laundry service…

He rummaged for his phone and made a call. Nazi wealth? Mentally abrading himself for hypocrisy, he went to the kitchen. He desperately needed food.

He was just about to take the first bite of his hastily thrown together sandwich when they both heard a thump and then a wail of distress.

They could both move very fast on occasion.

Molly had rolled off the bed and was screaming on the floor.

Ben forever blessed Nikolas that when something serious happened he made no recrimination at all. Ben didn’t need it. He was berating himself mentally, “
You just left her on the bed? You just left her lying on the bed?
”

Fortunately, it was modern, sleek and low, and she’d only taken a tiny tumble onto the carpet—shocked but not hurt.

Nikolas tried the tactic he used to distract her father—he gave her a present. But Molly was made of sterner stuff and refused to even contemplate the little red car on wheels she could push along with her feet.

She’d fallen off the bed!

The screeching was beginning to be worrying in a house made almost entirely of glass. Ben glanced uneasily at the ceiling. They heard a noise at the front door and then a voice calling for Nikolas.

Ben looked at Nikolas. Nikolas returned the mute appeal, and at the same time they said, “Babushka,” as if that word summoned a god and not just a sturdy midwife from Siberia.

Babushka took Molly from Ben as if finding them with a howling baby was a normal everyday occurrence. She shushed and swung, rocked and checked, and pronounced Molly was only hungry.

Ben’s eyes widened with derision. She didn’t know the
meaning
of the word!

Ulyana Ivanovna took Molly off toward the kitchen, muttering to her in Russian, Ben was sure, about the inadequacies of men in general and the two of them in particular. Ben felt an arm slide around his waist, and Nikolas kissed into his hair. “She’s okay, Ben. No harm done. She’s tough, like her father.”

“I don’t cry when you push me out of bed.”

Nikolas laughed. “That is because I am usually tumbling out after you so we can fuck on the floor.”

Ben nodded at the truth of this.

Nikolas tightened his grip around Ben’s waist, kissing down his neck, which Ben tipped accommodatingly to one side.

“Someone knew you would be a good father. Kate registered you as Molly’s father—on the birth certificate.”

Ben twisted around in Nikolas’s arms, holding him off. “Jennifer said Kate didn’t even tell them who the father was.”

“Perhaps she planned to once they were over the shock. However, she forged your declaration of parentage so she could put you down. Peyton has tracked the paperwork for me. I think she intended to tell you about Molly. In fact, I’m sure she did.”

Ben ventured hesitantly, “You think she was going to try and…win me away? From you?”

“I think I may have misjudged Kate—a habit I seem to be getting into with people—she registered you as Rider-Mikkelsen.”

“My God.”

“Yes, that is what I thought. She recognised your…”

Ben smirked at the characteristic trailing off. He loved making Nikolas say things like this out loud. “Go on…”

“Your…”

“Relationship?”

Nikolas smiled and kissed Ben. “Yes, your relationship with me.”

“Wow.”

Nikolas frowned. “You get the significance of this, yes?”

“Duh, of course. What significance?”

“Molly is Molly Rose
Rider-Mikkelsen
. That’s also
her
name.” He patted Ben’s backside, hard, as he always did, and followed the sounds of animated Russian to the kitchen.

Ben thought about this for a moment longer.

Molly Rose Rider-Mikkelsen.

Half his.
Half Nikolas’s
.

And they’d once thought a shared scar could bond them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Once they’d realised that
midwife
meant someone who knew a little bit about babies, Ben and Nikolas relaxed into the fact that they could enjoy Molly Rose on their terms. Which meant watching her tear around the tiled floor in her new red convertible, taking her to see the horses, giving her a walk in her back-carrier on Dartmoor, but then the rest of the time—the feeding, changing, getting to bed, general twenty-four-hour care—they could ignore and thus carry on with their own concerns.

As Nikolas pointed out to Ben, they were doing Ulyana Ivanovna a favour leaving her to do all the mundane tasks—she was old and lonely. She was feeling underutilized, missing her home and her friends…

Ben had never heard her say any of this and thought about the very spry fifty year old and all the new hobbies she’d adopted since retiring under Nikolas’s sheltering wing of wealth, but didn’t mention this. He was entirely in accord with Nikolas—Molly was best when she was fed, clean, happy, and handed over for a few minutes of fun.

He even acquiesced with a very happy heart to Babushka’s suggestion that Molly come to the cottage with her for the night. Ben glanced at Nikolas and saw exactly the expression of relief he wanted to see. Neither of them did early mornings, and if they did, they did them inside each other…or coming over each other…

By eleven o’clock that night, therefore, they were entwined on the sofa, watching a movie, and feeling that everything was very right with the world indeed. It was particularly annoying for Ben, therefore, that Nikolas’s phone rang halfway through the film, and he mouthed
Peyton
as he extricated himself and went to the kitchen for privacy.

Ben wasn’t as inclined to allow Nikolas his own space these days as he’d once been, not after the Jackson Keane debacle, so he followed him and made a big show of putting the kettle on and listening in.

Nikolas started to give him a sour look but suddenly appeared to hear something in the call that took all his attention. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and clicked off.

“What?”

Ben’s question brought Nikolas mentally back into the room, but he still appeared uncharacteristically distracted. He nodded to an offer of tea and sat at the table. “Peyton has discovered where Stefan has been living.”

Ben put two mugs of tea on the table and sat across from him. “Was it a big secret?”

Nikolas shrugged. “No, I suppose not. But I was curious to follow his path from Russia—how he got here, what he does.”

“And?”

“He is living in London in a house that is owned by his grandfather.”

“Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

Nikolas looked up from watching the teabag floating in the brown liquid. “His grandfather Anatoly.”

“Oh.” Ben remembered. Anatoly. Sergei Primakov’s friend. “You arrested him.”

“I should have fucking killed him.” Nikolas rose so swiftly the tea slopped out onto the table. He ignored the mess and went toward their private rooms at the back of the house. Ben knew what he was going to do—swim. Nikolas always relieved his stress by swimming.

Ben fetched a cloth and wiped absentmindedly at the spill as he relived once more the anger he’d experienced on Nikolas’s behalf, knowing he’d been used as a pawn to further Sergei’s political standing, traded around amongst his closest friends and allies. He thought about Molly Rose, her fragile beauty and perfection, and felt an enormous surge of protectiveness toward her that up to then he’d only ever had for Nikolas.

Ben went toward the swim lane as he heard the splash of a dive and slid down the wall, wrapping his arms around his knees. He often kept Nikolas company as he did his lengths. He found it as relaxing to follow the perfect, deceptively lazy, repetitive motions as Nikolas did making them. The swim lane was made entirely of glass, illuminated under the water by blue lights. Nikolas’s expert strokes barely made a splash, but when he tumbled-turned at each end the ripples rolled like blue ink toward Ben, reminding him of surf.

After an hour, Nikolas was done, and he propelled himself from the end of the lane, his shoulders wide, flared, his legs long and lean. He held out his hand for Ben, clearly well aware that he’d been watched, and led him to the bedroom.

Nikolas’s skin was cool.

The exercise had turned the anger and resentment of his painful past into a maw of need. Ben knew this mood only too well. Nikolas needed to dominate and take and thus regain the sense of himself that memories of Sergei always stole from him. At these times, he could be cruel and vicious, and Ben would be left bleeding and more bruised than with their usual games of dominance. He sensed something of this in Nikolas now. Perhaps it was tied up with Molly Rose being with them, Nikolas feeling a sense of unmanning by the baby’s presence.

Ben had experienced something of this and was only too willing to meet Nikolas halfway.

Nikolas shoved Ben to his knees and pressed Ben’s face to his wet swimsuit. It was dark in the bedroom, well past midnight, and all Ben’s senses coalesced to a broad area of damp fabric with something hard and urgent beneath. He bit into the hardness through the cotton, and Nikolas arched back with a hiss of anticipation. When Ben tugged the shorts lower, Nikolas’s cock sprang free. Nikolas didn’t wait for Ben to admire him, or take his time savouring the pleasure to come—he forced him on, surged into him, made him gag, but didn’t appear to care. Ben allowed the transgression for a while, allowed Nikolas to claim and use this throat, rub his cock hard through his clenched lips, but then he pulled off and rose to his feet, propelling Nikolas back onto the bed.

At the same time, he dropped his jeans, kicking them off and crawled over Nikolas, finding his mouth.

Nikolas didn’t want to kiss. He turned his face away and pushed Ben over onto his back, snatching at his naked thighs, his intent evident in the hard, closed-off look upon his face.

Ben sighed inwardly. He knew that expression. Nikolas wasn’t here with him; he was lost to bitter memories and playing out old hurts of which
he
had no part.

Nikolas rammed into him. Ben bowed and cried out, a genuine and loud shout of pain at the sudden intrusion. He expected Nikolas to wait, to ease into the fucking gently until they were together in the pleasure, but he didn’t. He knelt up and dragged Ben higher for better access and used him.

Again, Ben allowed it.

He didn’t have to. He had a choice. He was stronger than Nikolas even when Nikolas was in this mood, but he acquiesced.

Nikolas worked him as if he were in a porn film—hard, mechanical, and with little passion or connection.

It was that which made Ben end it. It wasn’t good for Nikolas to sink so far back into the past. This was the man Ben had first known, only he’d not understood the provenance of the remoteness at the time. He’d always wondered how Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen could fuck him with such disinterest—never kissing, never wanting to work up to the hard, vicious sex they enjoyed. Now, after all these years living with the man, Ben knew and understood. Nikolas was distant when he was like this because he wasn’t actually there. Nikolas didn’t exist. A broken, bitter man called Aleksey Primakov did, and when Ben was being used like this, he was fucking with Aleksey not Nikolas.

He lunged to one side, escaping the hard thrusts and then brought Nikolas down onto the bed, forcing him to kiss, which Nikolas did, but with a distracted air, as if it was too much bother. Ben lay on him, heavy, the unmovable object which Nikolas battled with his irresistible force. But the matched effort finally squeezed a chuckle out of Nikolas, and then Ben physically felt the switch occur—Aleksey leaving the body and Nikolas coming back to a sense of himself. He felt a deep sigh from beneath him and kissed Nikolas again, and this time it was more than welcomed. Nikolas opened his mouth wide, his tongue finding Ben’s, and Ben could feel the smile on Nikolas’s face, the way his body so hard and taut and tense a moment before was now languid and responsive. He slid a hand between them and rewarded Nikolas by stroking him, squeezing his cock and pulling and twisting his balls gently as their tongues danced and played.