The Bruise_Black Sky (17 page)

“I checked with the helicopter company and no one rented a chopper for private use the day these were taken, but apparently many station owners have helicopters and microlights.”

“It’s possible he was dropped off by boat.”

“Did you see a boat?”

“No, and I would have, but he could have been dropped off, the boat could have gone back down the lake and then returned for him.”

“Possible,” was Nikolas’s only sceptical comment.

When they reached the plateau they knew they’d found the spot where the pictures had been taken. Through the scope it was eerily easy to see the shore where Ben had stood that first day.

“I thought I was hearing the mountains calling to me.”

Nikolas made a circle with his fingers, peering through it. “Whilst all the time you were sensing a telephoto lens on you.”

They swept away some of the snow and sat side by side, enjoying the body heat. “It’s possible the threat and the photographer here are not directly linked, Ben. It’s a theory I’ve got Kate working on.”

“What do you mean?”

“It occurred to me that someone could have photographed you and put the pictures up somewhere on a photo-sharing site. Whoever sent the threat saw them and used them. It’s possible seeing them triggered the need to repeat what he’d been doing with Oliver.”

“Someone just happened to be over here on this inaccessible mountain range with a camera with a telephoto lens?”

“No. They were stalking you in a different way. Peter Cameron’s assistant told me it happened a great deal when they shot a film here before—locals selling photographs of the stars. One of the men I have guarding the road says he and his uncle regularly hunt across these mountains—they aren’t inaccessible at all. You simply have to know the trails.”

“Why would someone make a death threat, anyway? I can understand someone getting obsessed with a celebrity, but how can that turn into this? I just don’t understand it.”

“
I have an obsession with the unattainable. I have to eliminate what I cannot attain.
”

“Huh?”

“It’s what a killer once said. He stalked and shot an actress. He claimed to love her, but when he saw her in bed in a scene from a show she was in, he went to her apartment and shot her. Because
he
couldn’t have her.”

“Fucking hell.”

“I would say the unattainable just about sums you up nicely, Ben.”

“Except to you.”

“Hmm?”

Ben sighed. “Nikolas…”

Nikolas turned from his deep study of the lake and the distances and the possible threats to Ben, and saw Ben’s expression. He smiled and took him down into the icy whiteness. It wasn’t the first time they’d made love in the snow, but at the end of two weeks’ abstinence, it was like a first time in many ways.

Nikolas wouldn’t like to admit to anyone that Ben’s new celebrity status added something to the pleasure of fucking him, because he got a great deal of enjoyment out of that already. But it was there, nonetheless—that frisson of excitement that he
did
get to have the unattainable. That millions of people might come to worship Ben, follow him, want him, but only he got to slowly part Ben and enter him, only he got to see Ben’s face screwed up with concentration as he was about to come, only he got to see Ben’s warm semen shooting out and melting the snow. And only he got to have Ben inside his body. The
unattainable
was all his. It
was
enough to kill for.
He
understood such divergent passion very well.

When they’d both had their turns, they took a break, entwined, lying on Ben’s clothes and with Nikolas’s over them, not much, but just enough. Nikolas was working his way slowly down his conveniently attainable one, kissing into places no one else was allowed. When he reached Ben’s waist, he paused. “You are too thin.”

Ben nodded absentmindedly, staring up into the vastness of the New Zealand sky. “Don’t stop.”

“There’s also the other kind of stalker psychology…” Nikolas heard Ben curse in frustration and carried on his slow progress to where they both wanted his mouth to be, at the same time as murmuring, “Kill a celebrity because you are in love with another who threatens them in some way.”

“That can’t apply here. Everyone loved Ollie, and I’m not threatening anyone. Keep going.”

“Don’t be so naive. For each one of these people who succeeds there are hundreds left by the wayside who didn’t get roles.”

“You think someone else was to play Yoshi in the
Wars
, but Oliver took his role? And they don’t want me doing
this
because they now want to play him? That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, not much.” Nikolas had to be silent then for Ben was not small and taking him in took application. He wanted to focus on the taste and feel of Ben’s cock in his mouth anyway. No one else got to do this either, so he enjoyed imagining the envy and fury he would provoke. Especially when Ben hardened, swelling as he licked and played, arched and moaned for him, and then came, fast release shooting in the crystal-clear air, Ben groaning and pulling his hair, and the snow melting around them under the dome of blue.

Nikolas sat up and regarded Ben, trying to see him as others might. He trailed his finger through the mess on Ben’s stomach, making the snowmelt and semen glisten in the valleys of his ridged abs.

Ben rose up suddenly and seized him in a fierce, possessive hug. “I only left you because I love you. I’m so fucking dumb.”

Nikolas hugged him back, breathing in the warm scent of his skin in the sharp, cold air. “And I don’t tell you things because I love you, and then I don’t tell you I love you either. So I’m even more—fucking dumb—as you so eloquently say.”

Any reply Ben might have made was lost as the distinctive buzz of the light helicopter came over the lake towards them. They dressed hurriedly.

Before he could begin to descend off the little ridge they’d nested in, Ben caught Nikolas’s sleeve. “Thank you, by the way. I haven’t said that yet. I was jealous that I couldn’t dance with you in public—have everyone see what we were. I was, I don’t know, thinking about some kind of proposal, I guess. That’s why Kristina hit me so hard. She just came out of nowhere and claimed that relationship with you when it meant nothing, and I
couldn’t
when it meant everything. But I’m such an idiot—I forgot. I genuinely forgot that I don’t need that kind of shit from you. I have
this
.” At Nikolas’s puzzled frown, he clarified, “I have the fact that you nearly killed yourself to get to me. You stepped off that bus without a single mask in place, and I think I saw the real you for the first time.”

Nikolas was still mulling over this when they landed back in Paradise. He’d been unshaven, exhausted, starving, and wearing vomit-soaked clothes he’d rinsed out in an airplane basin and then been sitting in wet for sixteen hours.

He could only agree with Ben, therefore—Ben was an idiot.

§§§

Although they were unable to admit to their more intimate acquaintance, they were still forced to constantly be in each other’s company. This gave Ben the unexpected but very welcome opportunity to see Nikolas through other people’s eyes for once. It wasn’t something he often got to do. Their friends didn’t discuss Nik with him much, as Nikolas was their boss, and they knew how Ben felt about him. Because Yuri Bronislav was Ben’s bodyguard, Ben became the recipient of much gossip and speculation about the Russian. Ben’s makeup assistant had tried to chat him up. She was very, very pretty and vivacious. She said she’d been left feeling as if she’d tried to seduce an alien wearing human skin. The alien had been…curious…interest piqued, but she’d felt no emotional connection at all. Her disaster hadn’t put her off, however. She wanted him even more now. It was a challenge. She was changing strategy, she said…did Ben have any ideas…seeing as he was around the guy a lot? Ben didn’t, as he’d never had to seduce Nikolas. Usually he was recovering from Nikolas’s endless craving for him.

This led to an interesting development for Ben. Both he and Nik were well aware that they came at this relationship slightly differently. Nikolas was the one who had the constant sharp edge of lust for Ben and would seize him at random moments of the day, needing sex to relieve the stimulation of just watching him, being around him. Ben’s desire for Nikolas was more softened by romantic yearning…love. His passion for Nikolas was constant, but he was almost as happy to curl on the sofa with him, or have him in the kitchen while he cooked, as he was to tumble into bed with him…
almost
. This is the way they had been from the very beginning when they’d met in hotel rooms for sex, Ben always wanting more—even before he’d actually put these confused thoughts into words.

But now, seeing Nikolas through these other eyes added a stab of hunger for Nikolas’s body that wouldn’t wait for romantic moments to be assuaged. Perhaps because he was missing his day-to-day life with Nikolas, he returned to his more carnal need for the man. It didn’t help that the makeup assistant enlisted her friends to help with her campaign, and they discussed strategy around Ben as he was in the chair or on set when they hovered around him, tweaking and plucking. The object of this intense scrutiny was always there, of course, just off to one side, monitoring
him
, so he had the opportunity to observe Nikolas whilst the women dissected him and his strange fervency. It was fascinating for Ben. Why
was
all of Nikolas’s focus on him and not on them? Why? Ben began to see and appreciate the true depths of Nikolas’s feelings for him. Because, of course, Nikolas could have had any of these women anytime he wanted—but rather than all of the beautiful, clever, successful people in the world he could have, Nikolas only wanted him.

For the first time in a long time, Ben seized Nikolas at odd, inappropriate moments, desperate because they were never alone for more than a few minutes. But occasionally, Ben would wander into an empty makeup trailer or catering tent, and Nikolas would be with him, and Ben would grab him and kiss him fiercely, all his hunger and longing rising until they could hardly breathe and had to break apart to pant before seizing one another again and exploring hard and fast with tongue and lips, until they heard someone approaching and separated, readjusting clothing, not making eye contact.

At last, Ben snapped. He mentioned one morning to Peter Cameron that he thought he’d heard someone messing around outside his trailer that night—it was probably nothing, and he could see no damage this morning.

Peter Cameron immediately said that Yuri should stay with him at night…they could put a camp bed into the sitting area for him. Even asleep, his presence would be a deterrent. Ben resisted the suggestion and said in a sotto voice that it would be really awkward. Peter insisted.

Bronislav said he didn’t mind.

So Nikolas was installed into Ben’s trailer for the last few days in Paradise.

They made it so for themselves.

They had to be relatively circumspect in their activities, as it was alarming how much a trailer rocked to urgent thrusting, but long, slow sliding in and out and finding spots that made them shudder and moan into the pillow was just as good, and they kissed and stroked and spoke quietly long into the night, which is what Ben had really been missing when he’d stalked Nikolas like a predator.

When someone commented that Yuri Bronislav looked tired in the mornings after nights of guarding Ben, they all took it as another sign of just how dedicated he was. Ben could have attested to this by the ache in his body and the superb numbness of being totally sated again. Guarding him thoroughly did indeed require dedication.

CHAPTER TWENTY

They were leaving Paradise. They had all the footage they wanted of Oliver’s final visit home before his death. Peter Cameron now wanted to film Oliver’s first break into acting as a teen in a popular Kiwi soap, but none of this involved Ben. They had a local actor selected to play seventeen-year-old Oliver Whitestone and the whole company was moving to Wellington for a week before flying to the States.

Ben, therefore, had some downtime. Peter suggested that he keep Bronislav with him. He agreed with Peter that the bodyguard being with him constantly was a very good idea.

It was even better when the bodyguard reminded him that he owned property in New Zealand.

The only trouble was deciding which one to go to.

Nik owned a vineyard in Central Otago, apparently. But as he explained patiently to Ben, he couldn’t just kick the family out, as they not only ran the business for him, but had done so for his grandfather before him. Ben suspected this generosity was more because Nik liked
drinking
wine, but was more than happy to let someone else grow it for him.

He admitted he had a large station near Queenstown, which, again, had long-standing tenants doing something with milk shares and yield that was incredibly profitable and enabled him to buy nice watches when he wanted them.

He
then
recalled slyly that he also possessed a number of houses scattered around the country from Auckland to Steward Island, some occupied fulltime, some as holiday rentals—cribs, as they were known.

One phone call to his Auckland agent and they were given very good news. His place in Wanaka was empty. Exceptionally good luck for them in the middle of the skiing season when it was usually booked well over four years ahead…The current occupier had suffered a heart-attack his first day of skiing and was in hospital in Dunedin before being transported home to Auckland. His wife was with him, of course.

Ben had to chuckle when he saw the
crib
. He’d imagined a kind of shack up in the hills. He should have known.

It was built along the lines of their house, in that it was mostly made of glass. It had panoramic views one-eighty degrees across the lake and the mountains and the tiny, exclusive township of Wanaka a couple of miles away. Nikolas had never seen it before, either, and he was just as interested to look around, until he apparently decided he preferred discovering Ben.

He told Ben to strip.