Death's Ink Black Shadow (17 page)

It was good to know.

§ § §

As soon as it was light, Nikolas told Ben he was going to ride to the place where the mystery intruder had entered and left the grounds, then up to a high place where he could scan around with binos.

Ben went down to Ulyana Ivanovna’s cottage and retrieved Molly Rose to bring her up to the main house. He brought Ulyana Ivanovna too, although he didn’t mention their intruder of the previous night, only asking her casually if Molly had slept well or whether she’d been disturbed by the sound of foxes he and Nikolas had heard. She had not. Good babies, Ulyana Ivanovna informed Ben with her loud Ben-Russian voice and suitable miming, those who are well fed and are clean and comfortable, sleep through the night.

Ben felt duly chastened. He popped Molly Rose into her little car, and they watched delightedly as she scooted immediately to Radulf. The dog was blind, but he wasn’t stupid apparently and had learnt the day before to keep his tail well out of the way of the wheels, but his attempts to move it, and hers to then catch it entertained them all until Nikolas returned. He shook his head at Ben and took the offered plate of bacon and eggs without complaint—a sure sign to Ben that he was more worried than he let on.

By morning tea, they’d both relaxed. Fears of the night just that—things of shadows and dreams that morning light dissipated.

Ulyana Ivanovna returned to her own concerns, leaving Molly with them. She was chasing Radulf around the kitchen in her car, which as she couldn’t steer or change direction wasn’t taxing his ability to evade her too much. Nikolas put his newspaper down and regarded Ben for a while. Ben could sense the scrutiny over the pistol he was cleaning. He hadn’t stripped, cleaned, and reassembled a gun for some time, and he was pleased how much like an old friend the cool metal felt.

“Let’s go and check around again.”

Ben looked up. He’d been expecting something else to be the outcome of the intense focus. Without Molly’s presence, it probably would have been. He shrugged. “There was nothing to see.”

“Nevertheless. It’s light now. We should look again.”

Ben never needed more than one prompt to do something physical, even if it wasn’t horizontal as he’d hoped, so in a minute or two they were strolling over the gravel toward the lawns.

Nikolas frowned.

Ben stopped and twitched his nose, and at the same time, they asked, “Have we forgotten something?”

Suddenly, Nikolas groaned, “
Molly
.”

Ben replied, “
The gate is open
!”

He’d nipped back to the bedroom to put the gun away before leaving. He’d left the gate to the swim lane open, thinking,
what harm can it do, we’re going out.

He ran
.

Nikolas wasn’t far behind.

They crashed into the kitchen.

Molly was gleefully banging her little car against Radulf who was lying patiently across the gap to the water. Ben swooped her up so fast he startled her, and she began to wail. He felt like crying, too. “I’m
crap
at this!”

Nikolas lifted her from him and sat her down alongside the dog. The weeping stopped now that she had access to the elusive and much-desired tail. Nikolas ruffled Ben’s hair. “No harm done.”

“We’ve only had her twenty-four hours and she’s had a fall, almost been kidnapped, and nearly drowned!”

“Well, she takes after her father then! Come on, we’ll
all
go.”

He picked the baby up, clicked for Radulf, and strode back through the door to the sunshine outside. By the time Ben, still sulking and berating himself, caught up to them, Nikolas was kneeling next to Radulf and scrubbing him around his ears, talking to him in Russian.

“You can thank him in English and Danish as well.”

Nikolas rose, switched Molly Rose to his other arm and began to walk across the lawns. “I wasn’t thanking him. I was telling him that I believe him to be a complete fraud—that I believe he can see perfectly well.”

Ben regarded the dog with a frown. “He bumps into a lot of things for a dog that can see.”

“He has merely learnt his deceptions from a master.”

Ben wasn’t too sure that Nikolas wasn’t right about this.

How had the dog seen the baby heading toward the pool? How had he known to lie across the doorway?

That the dog might be cleverer than his two owners was a thought too far, however, so Ben repressed it.

Distracted, he suddenly realised they were heading away from the woods. “The intruder didn’t come over here. Why are we going this way?”

“I know.” Nikolas handed the baby over. “She’s very heavy. Too fat, like her father.”

Ben took her, a stab of guilt washing over him once more about what could have happened. “We’ll have to drain the swim lane until she’s older.”

“Yes, absolutely. I was thinking we should also remove all your exercise equipment in case a weight lands on her head.”

Even Ben occasionally got sarcasm so he didn’t pursue it. Nikolas was in a strange mood. He could tell.

Nikolas led them to the garage and paused by the heavy oak door, tossing the electronic opener in his hand. “I didn’t want you to get jealous of your daughter—that I buy her so many presents. And it is almost your birthday…”

Ben frowned and came closer.

Nikolas pressed the button and the door rumbled up.

Ben’s mouth fell open slightly.

Parked next to their Mercedes was a convertible. He didn’t need Nikolas to tell him it was a Maserati GranTurismo Sport. What man wouldn’t know that? It was matte black, matching their Merc, but unlike that, which had a black leather interior, this one had midnight-blue leather. Ben swallowed deeply as Nikolas pointed out casually, “You have to put fuel in this one, of course. It didn’t come in a shuffle-along model, although I did ask.”

Ben handed Molly back over. He wasn’t really listening to the bullshit. Or thinking about the baby, come to that. He’d had the same click in his head as when he’d first seen his Ducati on the net. His bike. Monster Diesel. Love. First sight.

He’d been looking at this
exact
car in his car magazine only last week…

He put his hand on the paintwork, just where the curled lip of wheel arch declared its disdain for mankind, and felt the world grey out. “Take Molly to Babushka.”

“But—”

“Nikolas. Take the baby to Ulyana Ivanovna.”

§ § §

Sometime later, which passed as only rushing of air in Ben’s ears and a sense of being outside the real world, he heard footsteps and sensed Nikolas at his side. Keys were pressed into his hand. “Shall we try it out? Where would you like to go?”

Ben spun around and grabbed Nikolas, propelling him against the wall. “There’s only one place I’m going right now. Come here.” Ben seized Nikolas’s face, kissing him, mouthing over his eyes and cheekbones, “Thank you,” and “I love you,” until it became just a blurred tangle of words, and Nikolas was laughing and kissing him back and then they were on the floor.

It was a first for the garage. They’d made love in the stables, on the tennis court once or twice, occasionally even in Ulyana Ivanovna’s house before she’d moved in, when they were visiting the build, but never here on the concrete floor. It was incredibly uncomfortable, so they stood once more, grinning, holding jeans until they could press against the wall again, and then Ben sank deeply into Nikolas. He wondered if he should have offered himself as tribute, thanks for his present, but knew Nikolas would get as much pleasure from being taken hard as he would from the taking. He certainly seemed to be enjoying it, but then he had his eyes fastened onto the new car, as did Ben, when he could tear his gaze away from his favourite human view.

Ben began thrusting with long strokes which he knew drove Nikolas wild. Nikolas asked Ben if he liked the matte paint, panting to get the final word out. Ben hissed that he did, and the blue leather and…everything, but especially Nikolas, but also the 4.7-litre V8 engine, which brought a chuckle of amused understanding, and then there was no breath for more because Ben felt his balls tightening and rising and he squeezed Nikolas’s hips hard—their signal that he was coming. Nikolas spread some more and with loud cries they were coming together in a glorious shared, heightened ecstasy, which Ben was entirely certain was due to the beautiful car they were almost close enough to touch.
His
beautiful car. The one
Nikolas
had bought for
him
.

With a V8 engine.

He suddenly withdrew his softening cock from Nikolas and slapped him on his naked backside. “Keys?”

Nikolas put his hands on his knees, his eyes closed, breathing deeply.

Ben struggled his jeans back up and did the same for Nikolas, ignoring his protests—it was an inevitable downside of fucking outside, and Nikolas would just have to grin and bear it. Ben did flick a worried glance to his new midnight-blue leather interior, however, and tossed a jacket over the seat for his passenger.

He hopped over the door into the driver’s seat. He’d always wanted to do that and didn’t feel at all dumb—which Nikolas mumbled that he definitely looked.

§ § §

They took the car up onto Dartmoor.

At one point, they passed the entrance to the massive, oppressive Napoleonic prison and caught a glimpse of themselves in the mirror which was there to enable the guard post to have a one-eighty view of approaching vehicles.

They only snorted delightedly at their own vanity. Nikolas had bought them both Maserati sunglasses.

Ben glanced over. He saw a new Nikolas. Something he had only too recently denied ever being possible. Perhaps new code had, for once, been assimilated and real change had occurred.

Ben saw a billionaire. He saw a relaxed, wealthy playboy with nothing better to do than buy extravagant toys for his boyfriend.

It was something of a revelation.

It was also revealing that for the first time, Ben was more than happy to be with a billionaire who bought him such presents. There was no guilt, no shadow on his landscape at all. They were wealthy, they were beautiful, and they were together. On the return trip, when they were both bloodied and bruised, Ben recalled that moment of unadulterated happiness in Princetown and wished he’d not been quite so buoyed up on Nikolas’s perfections—wished he’d remembered that the mighty can fall extremely quickly.

But the car wasn’t damaged.

That was all that really counted.

They’d both been…arrogant. Uncharacteristically so. Drunk, possibly, on themselves, on their
perfection
, on love.

They’d stopped, ostensibly because Nikolas wanted a turn at driving, but as they’d passed a pub only a few miles back, Ben had realised at the same time that he was starving so he had swung around and pulled up with a loud, unintentional skid on the gravel in front.

As they’d gone in through the doorway, they’d both had to duck, which had made them laugh, because when Nikolas had warned Ben, he’d mangled the word, his accent turning duck into something else, an invitation, and Ben had replied by catching him around the neck and knuckle-rubbing his hair then murmuring too loud, “Standing or bent over the bar?”

They’d forgotten.

Isolated in their own little world, intoxicated with love, Ben had genuinely forgotten that men didn’t get to touch one another in public; men didn’t get to announce to the world that they were in love with another man.

Perhaps it was just the designer jeans, their aura of wealth and privilege and, of course, the two hundred thousand pound car sitting outside in the sunshine. Snarling disdain.

Two men rose from a large huddle around a pub table and told them to fuck off—that this wasn’t a pub for fags. Go to Plymouth if they wanted to fucking kiss men. A good number of the group were wearing polo shirts with Ivybridge Rugby Club embroidered on the breast pocket.

Nikolas was frowning at the kissing comment, and Ben knew he was about to ask where in Plymouth, as if it had been a genuine tip that he wanted to explore. Ben also knew that Nikolas didn’t take well to being called a fag. It had happened once before, with disastrous consequences to the men who’d made that foolish mistake. He stepped in front and put his arm across Nikolas’s chest, planning to be conciliatory. Nikolas began taking off his million-dollar watch. That wasn’t a good sign in Ben’s book either. One or two of the others, in what appeared to be an entire Rugby team, were rising to their feet, but they were staring out of the window. One made a comment about the car—it was an incredibly impressed, awed comment, from a true petrol head, but Ben feared it would be followed up by going out to
see
the car. That was the problem with convertibles. Hard to lock.

No one put a greasy fingerprint on his new present from Nikolas. No one sat on his midnight-blue leather seats either. He took his arm off Nikolas’s chest, wondered if Peyton Garic would find it funny and conceded, “Have
in them
.”

Nikolas clearly didn’t get the reference to his own mangled English, or the joke, but he got the permission. He seized the one who’d insulted them by the shirtfront and hauled him up close and personal. “What do fags do?”

The man’s eyes were wide with panic. He obviously knew the answer to this bizarre and unexpected question, but he had a dozen friends behind him. They were
rugby players
.
No one
took on a man with twelve boozed-up rugby friends backing him up and asked them facetious questions. Nikolas smiled nicely and answered for him, “They fuck up men.”

After that it was a blur of fists meeting bone, broken furniture, shouting, and blood. Ben didn’t want to lose a tooth, and he definitely didn’t want Nikolas killing anyone. Given those codicils, he was fairly unconcerned how things would go.

They’d rarely fought back-to-back like this together. Nikolas was hardly into public brawling. He would one day be the Queen of England’s ex-husband. He had been a Russian general—still was, as generals don’t retire. Except that he was dead, of course. He’d pointed this out to Ben one day, grumbling about not receiving his pension.