Love is a Stranger (33 page)

“You weren’t even born, little baby. Besides, you would not have liked me. No one did.”

Ben chuckled. “And you are remembering what you know about ten-year-old me, yeah? I think we’d have got along just fine.”

“Perhaps. A wild boy on the moors, living rough…perhaps we have
always
been soul mates.” He gave Ben a shy glance to see how this was taken, and when he wasn’t rejected or laughed at, added with a smile, “I planned to reach England once, in my sail boat, but I didn’t want to leave my horse—he was essential to my invasion plans. I tried to persuade him to climb in, too, but the process took so long, and was so unsuccessful that I was caught. Without the horse, I would’ve made it, of course. I had a map and everything.”

“I thought Nikolas was always your crew.”

Nik pursed his lips, sadly. “Nika was afraid of the sea beyond the islands. He wouldn’t come. But in my mind, he was always there—the beautiful one everyone would love and say how clever he was to make such a journey.”

“He wasn’t in the car to France either, was he?”

Nikolas gave an evil chuckle. “Actually, he was. I kidnapped him and tied him to the seat. He cried the whole way.”

Ben came and sat on the bridge with him. “I would’ve come with you.”

Nikolas began to laugh. “I would’ve had to fight you for the driver’s seat, I think.”

“We’d have made it far further than France before they caught us.”

“Ben and Aleksey’s most excellent adventure.”

“But you did love him…? You sacrificed so much for him.”

Nikolas was quiet for a while, watching the water slowly rising up the dark peat walls. “I thought it was love then. Now I know better.” He looked up and pulled Ben into a kiss, running his hands through the dark strands of his hair. “Lie back. I’m not drunk now.”

He wasn’t. Ben lay back in the warm evening sun, skin pleasantly scorched from his day, and closed his eyes as Nikolas caressed his hard cock with his lips, took it into his mouth and then further down his throat. Ben cried out, scrabbling on the old lichen-covered stone as a deep groin ache began. Very tentatively, he put a hand incredibly lightly on Nikolas’s head. Nikolas stilled and came up, staring at Ben, his lips swollen, pouting and irresistibly kissable. Ben snagged his fingers into the long, blond hair. “Just us here, Nik, and I won’t hurt you.”

Nikolas licked his lips, seemed hesitant for a moment then returned to Ben’s blood-darkened cock. Ben left his hand in Nikolas’s hair, careful not to put any pressure on, just lightly scraping and massaging the scalp with his nails. Finally, rising need carried him up and over the edge. He arched, trying not to hold Nikolas’s head down, and came in milky spurt after milky spurt, each lapped up and swallowed.

The effort had clearly taken a lot out of Nikolas. He lay back with a soft
fuck
of pain. Ben lay still for some time, his cock soft on his shorts. He wanted to do something for Nikolas, but the other man just shook his head. Ben looked down and cursed. A few stitches had pulled out, tearing skin, and an ooze of reddish, clear liquid was trickling down Nikolas’s thigh. “I’m okay, Ben. It was worth it. Help me in though. I want to sleep. Tomorrow I will fuck you until you cry for mercy. You will see.”

“Tomorrow, you’re staying in bed. Orders.”

“Do not give me—”

Ben chuckled. Clearly the old Nikolas wasn’t entirely banished. “Shut the fuck up, soldier, and keep limping.”

§§§

When Nikolas woke the next time, he’d slept an entire eight hours of healing sleep, and he was clearly feeling a lot better. He limped down to find Ben and actually asked what they had to eat and wanted to get out in the fresh air. They went to the pool, which was almost full now; the original stream would soon cascade over the top of the bridge. Nikolas sat on the bank, throwing sticks for Radulf to swim for. He was an impressive swimmer, and his mongrel-wolfhound-lurcher-Heinz-variety origins became blurred, so he resembled nothing more than a large otter paddling about. Except possibly for the stick sticking out either side of his muzzle.

The lines of pain and stress had faded from Nikolas’s face. His office pallor had darkened into a golden tan, and his hair had lightened with chunks of gold in the fringe that now fell constantly in his eyes, and which he swept from his face in a boyish gesture whenever it annoyed him. He had refused the pain meds and seemed very content watching Ben mess around with his dam. Contentment swelled visibly to joy when, with a lazy, deceptively innocent stretch, Ben pulled off his T-shirt and continued to build shirtless. Five minutes later, Ben stood and surveyed the deep, black pool. “I think I’m done.” He released the button on his shorts, and they slipped off his slim hips and fell to his ankles. Commando, he stood in the bright sun a little way from Nikolas then slowly walked down into the water. It came to his shoulders. He pushed off strongly and duck-dived under.

From the top, the pool was black, the colour of the peat suspended in it. But, from below, as Ben knew from experience, it was a totally different world. Shafts of sunlight filtered down, illuminating the rocks and pebbles, which glowed with green algae; and the quartz caught in the grit at the bottom twinkled like diamonds. He twisted around and held onto a rock, watching Radulf swimming from below, then turned and swam back towards the bank where everything he wanted was sitting. He wondered how many other people were lucky enough to have an entire universe of need satisfied by one blond-haired man. Ben broke the surface, coming slowly out of the water. Despite the cold of the pool, thinking about Nikolas had sent his blood south, and his cock was long and thick, not fully risen yet, but independent, twitching away from his thighs, defying gravity. He walked slowly up to Nikolas and stood over him, the cold drips of water falling on the upturned face. Nikolas lay back and very carefully eased his shorts down over his bandaged leg. He held out his hand and Ben took it. “Fuck me, Benjamin.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m going to make love to you.” He braced himself over Nikolas, lifting one thigh carefully. They kept their gazes locked as Ben used his water-cool fingers to open Nikolas up. Nikolas arched, and his cock began to swell. It was shockingly pale pink now against his hard, tanned abdomen. Ben added another finger. Nikolas flung an arm over his eyes. Ben pulled it away. “I want to see your face—being made love to.” He leaned up and kissed him, sharing tongues and spit. Then Ben’s fingers found the place that made Nikolas seize Ben’s head, made his eyes go wide and his body tense up like a drum. Ben murmured something meaningless and began to kiss around his face, over his eyes, his neck, his ears. He kept working his finger over the gland, pressing on it, grazing Nikolas’s cock with his other hand, skimming the tip with his thumb, using light strokes to drive Nikolas wild. Then, very slowly, he withdrew his fingers and replaced them, inch by slow inch, with his still cool, pre-cum slick cock. When he was fully embedded, he lifted his mouth from Nikolas’s ear and gazed down at the familiar face beneath him. “I’m inside your body.”

Nikolas creased his forehead fractionally in puzzlement, not used to conversations at such a time. “Yes, you are.”

“Inside
you
, Aleksey. Aleksey Mikkelsen.”

“Aleksey Mikkelsen died when he was seventeen years old, Ben. I killed him to survive. I told you that you couldn’t resurrect the dead however much life you have running through your veins.”

“And I’m telling you now that you’re wrong, Aleksey. Close your eyes.” He helped by pressing them gently closed with his fingers. “What can you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure you can—listen. Hear the rooks? They’ve been here with us all day. Hear the stream? There—a skylark. Now, open your eyes. What can you see?”

“You.”

“And I’m not a ghost, Lyosha. What can you feel?”

“You. Inside.”

Ben began to move, making sure he hit the now very tender gland with his cock. “Yeah. Me. No ghosts here. I won’t let them come anymore. We took that boat to England with our map and your horse. We stole a car and made it all the way through France and then we just kept going. That’s
our
reality. You never went to Russia with Sergei. None of that happened. You are Aleksey Mikkelsen if you want to be. Anything else you remember was just a dream, a nightmare. You grew up Aleksey Mikkelsen—magnificent, beautiful, and totally
mine
. Do you feel it?” Nikolas nodded. Ben kissed him and Nikolas rose to the kiss.

Ben’s body began to tense. He sped up, concentrating on the pleasure for both of them. Between thrusts, he managed to say, “You use Aleksey Primakov and all his skill and knowledge to save your life. You abuse him and fuck him over, because you
own
him. But you are now Aleksey Mikkelsen reborn, and you know what all birth needs?” Nikolas began to shake his head, then got it as Ben cried out and filled him, jet after jet of semen deep into his newly risen body. With the exquisite delight of Ben’s orgasm, Nikolas came too, the first time in many days of extreme pain and stress. It was clearly utterly cathartic, and when it was over, Nik lay dazed as if he could hear the rooks and the skylark and the stream just as clearly as Ben.

At that moment, Nikolas Mikkelsen looked like a man who’d have heard anything Ben Rider wanted him to hear.

Ben wanted to lie down on Nikolas and fall asleep, but he pulled out and rolled carefully to one side on his back. He chuckled. Nikolas turned his head questioningly. “I can’t keep it straight in my head. We talk about Nikolas but you’re Nikolas to me. You’re Aleksey—but not in my mind. So…I was thinking, maybe a whole new name then, not Aleksey or Nikolas…”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Dick.”

“Fuck. Off.
Ben
.”

“
Gaylord
.”

Nikolas chuckled but said, “Nikolas is still good. I’ve become used to it over the years. Despite what you say, the name Aleksey carries with it many bad memories for me. I hear…men saying it; not ghosts, just bad memories. Trial, prison—you understand? Nikolas is always ten in my eyes and always beautiful.”

Ben turned and propped himself on one elbow. “Leg okay?”

“Leg okay.”

“You maybe think you could cope with the pool?”

Nikolas nodded, and Ben helped him limp into the cold water. When he was waist-deep, his eyes closed to the pain in his wounds, Ben slid a hand around his hips and slipped a finger into the heat of him. Nikolas’s eyes shot open. Ben grinned and kissed him, fingering him gently. Nikolas eyed the black water extremely warily. “Are there not creatures that can swim up your—?”

“That’s the Amazon, moron. This is Dartmoor. Hello?”

“Hmm.” Suddenly, something brushed hard against Nikolas’s backside. He jumped and swore, high-pitched—it could almost have been described as…a girly scream.

Radulf had finally brought him back a stick.

Ben was still giggling when they were dressed and heating some rations over a small fire on the bank. Nikolas was studiously ignoring him, pretending to examine his stitches. Eventually, Ben brought a tin of hot soup over with a spoon and sat down alongside him. They shared it, watching hypnotised as the pool finally reached maximum capacity and the stream flowed once more, only now over the blocked-up bridge and cascading down the small, two-foot drop to the other side. They both laughed. “Benjamin Falls.”

“Then it’s Lake Aleksey.”

“It’s a very small lake.”

“Nah, I reckon Aleksey was the kinda guy who saw everything big—all possibility.”

“Lake Aleksey. We should name the house. Is there a good word in English for strange, parallel universe house that exists outside real life?”

Ben looked across at him. “You feel it, too?”

“Ben, I always felt it. It drew me here when I needed somewhere safe.
Spirit of you
drew me here.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “We are so gay.”

Nikolas lay back, laughing. “Tomorrow you take the stitches out then we play gay for real.”

“It’s too early. Few more days.”

Nikolas’s hand came to his thigh. “The real world is still out there, Ben. Gregory hasn’t gone away. We have to face it sometime.”

“You’re not strong enough yet.” He played his trump card. “You’d be a liability, hold me back.”