Love is a Stranger (11 page)

“Yes.”

Ben began to ease in and out in long strokes. “Well, I love you more than that. Sometimes.”

Nikolas closed his eyes and put one hand to Ben’s backside to pull him closer and deeper. “Thank you, Benjamin. That heartfelt sentiment is appreciated.”

“Call me Ben.”

“Call me Nikolas.”

“But, Nikolas, I’m going to be working for you.”

He felt Nikolas relax beneath him, saw the smile of relief and pleasure and then the smirk. “In that case, stop being insubordinate, and call me sir.”

PART II

CHAPTER TWELVE

It had been three weeks, but Ben still couldn’t get used to the sight of Nikolas in a ratty bathrobe, hair mussed, wearing glasses and smoking while he drank his first cup of tea at the kitchen table, reading the paper. He supposed it should be the other things that had changed in those three weeks that he ought to find more unsettling: not being employed by the British Secret Service; not living alone; living, in fact, with Nikolas in a strange limbo of not quite colleague, not quite equal—not quite sure what really. But it wasn’t any of these things; it was the bathrobe, the mussed hair, the glasses, and the smoking. Oh, and the smirk that usually accompanied all of these when Nikolas knew he was being watched. It was as if this Nikolas had been the real one all along, and the other—the elegant, urbane, cold, remote Nikolas—had been the illusion. Perhaps this was so, but Ben had known remote, untouchable Nikolas far longer than rumpled, endlessly beddable Nikolas, and he was having a hard time reconciling the two.

Ben usually sat very still and observed Nikolas during his breakfast of tea and nicotine, sitting on the edge of his chair as if Nikolas were about to metamorphose once more. When Nikolas had let the joke run long enough, when he’d extracted as much amusement from Ben’s discomfort as he could, he would rise, take him by the arm, and lead him back to bed. This really didn’t help Ben’s sense of utter dislocation. This Nikolas was warm, amusing, and inventive in bed. Ben was used to a hard fuck, a few words about work and nothing more being said until the next, snatched meeting. And yet
this
is what he’d wanted. This was exactly what he wanted, but he couldn’t allow himself to have it for some reason. He lay awake for hours after Nikolas fell asleep, watching him. He woke before him, watching him still. When Nikolas kissed him, hours of lazy, sensuous kissing, he was sometimes stiff and unresponsive. He knew Nikolas noticed, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, and he knew Nikolas never would.

So, yet again, it didn’t help his utter confusion when Nikolas did just that.

Over the inevitable tea and cigarette one morning, after Ben had lain awake most of the night staring at the mussed blond hair on the pillow next to him, Nikolas turned to the crossword, frowned, took a drag on the cigarette, and observed casually, “I am still here, by the way.”

Ben, so alert and tense he actually missed this, replied idiotically, “Wha—? Huh?”

Nikolas smirked. “I am here when we wake up next to each other. I am still here when we shower together. Amazingly, I am still here every time you watch me have my breakfast. I am not going anywhere, Ben. I give you my permission to relax.”

“Don’t call me Ben.”

Nikolas sighed. “You have been telling me to call you Ben for the four years we have known each other.”

Ben leant forward. “Exactly.” He poked his finger into Nikolas’s chest. “It’s weird and it’s freaky, because for four years you’ve called me Benjamin. You’re the only person who’s ever called me that except my mother, and for four years you’ve been—”

“What? Say it, Ben.”

“I don’t know…not…this!”

Nikolas leant back and took a deliberate drag on the cigarette and blew smoke in Ben’s face. “And you don’t like this new me?”

Ben put his head in his hands. “Christ. Christ on a stick. You are bloody fucking
perfect
like this. How can this be happening to me? I wanted you exactly like this, right now, even wearing that old damn T-shirt of mine…in every bloody fantasy…”

“You fantasise about T-shirts? How peculiar.”

“Stop making fun of me! See? This is what I mean!” He got up and leant right into Nikolas’s face. “The minute I relax into this and start to enjoy it, it’s going to go, isn’t it?”

Nikolas sighed and turned to stare out of the window. “I cannot promise you certainties, Ben. We have both lost many things.”

“But I’m going to lose
you
.” He’d said it at last. He swallowed deeply. “I’d never had you, see? Before. It was just something we did.”

“Sex?”

“Yes. Sex.”

“And now?”

Ben gave him a look. “It’s not just sex now, is it? It’s—I—I can’t lose you.”

Nikolas smiled. “Maybe I could wear a tag.”

“
Don’t
. It’s
not
funny.”

“It is a little, Benjamin. Even you must see that.”

“Even me. What does that mean?”

Nikolas raised an eyebrow, turned the page in the paper, and said cautiously, “I am not the only one who has changed, am I?”

“Huh?”

He glanced up then back to the paper. “No. I want to—as you would no doubt charmingly put it—get laid tonight, so I think I have said enough.”

The paper was removed. Nikolas sighed. “You were the cold one, Ben. Not me. I was…” He looked up as if for inspiration and apparently found it in the sunlight, continuing, “I was undercover as a bastard. You actually were one.”

Ben was speechless. Until he wasn’t. “Bollocks!”

“You saw me only when it suited you. You had other…lovers.”

Ben was so outraged he actually slammed his fist into the wall. “You
are
married! And you ordered me to fuck other people whenever it suited you!”

“I didn’t order you to move your lover into your cottage though, did I, Ben?”

“Wow. My God.”

Nikolas shrugged. “So, I have not really changed all that much, Benjamin. I believe I am very much what I once was.” He looked across the table. “Totally obsessed with you.”

Whatever Ben had been about to say—the cruel, possibly irrevocable things he’d been about to say—died on his tongue. He frowned. “No. You’re totally twisting the truth. That’s me. I mean…I loved you first…You…”

Nikolas began to laugh. “I made you say it. It has been three weeks, Ben. It has been bottled up in that amusingly muddled brain of yours for three weeks. Now it is out; you cannot take it back, and can I now please have some peace and quiet? You love me. I am still here, and I think the world will continue to turn.”

Ben was so thoroughly outmanoeuvred he sat for some time staring out into the tiny walled garden. After half an hour, he realised he hadn’t been watching Nikolas, but in that time the annoying man hadn’t disappeared. He’d not changed. He was still there with bed-mussed hair, an old T-shirt, and yet another cigarette. Ben leant across the table and removed it from Nikolas’s fingers. “Apparently, I love you, so you’re giving this up. As of today.”

§§§

The first time they had a client, Nikolas was more his old self. He was the perfect ambassador for the new office of dubious activities they were in the process of establishing. As they couldn’t advertise, word spread slowly about their services, but eventually, one Wednesday afternoon in early April, they sat in a restaurant awaiting their first client’s arrival. Nikolas wanted a cigarette so he was in a bad mood, but outwardly he was calm and detached. Ben was nervous about being involved in this phase of the operation. He preferred being told where to point his gun and what to shoot. Negotiating contracts was not his forte. “Do you think those men over there are sleeping together?”

“What?” Ben resisted the urge to look wildly around. “What the—?”

“It is a game. You have to guess if people in restaurants are secretly sleeping together. I think they are. Or, over there, that man and that woman…What do you think?”

Ben considered them. “No. He’s way too old for her.”

“It is a certainty then. Why else is she here with him?”

“Cynicism so becomes you. What about those two then?”

Nikolas smiled. “Definitely not. She has been staring at you.”

“Well, we’re staring at her, and we’re sleeping together.”

“Good point. I had not considered that. We might be the object of other people’s games. How intriguing.”

“You’re seriously weird sometimes.”

“Hush, child. That’s him. Try to be a little more professional.”

“I was going to be utterly silent.”

“Perfect.” Nikolas stood up and offered his hand. Introductions were made that meant nothing as no one gave their real name. The man took a picture from his pocket of a girl aged about ten. He slid it over to Nikolas who looked at it but didn’t pick it up. “You take her, and she’s delivered unharmed to my client. We have agreed a price, yes?” Nikolas nodded. Ben frowned and began to say something, but Nikolas kicked his ankle.

“We will deliver the girl as agreed when we see the money in our account.”

The man nodded. “I will consult with my client, and if we decide to go ahead, I will send you the girl’s address tonight and the money.”

Nik nodded again. The man stood to leave. He glanced at the photo. “Do you—?”

“No. Take it.”

They watched him walk away, and Nikolas picked him up again in the street and watched until he was out of sight. Ben waited as long as he could then let out the breath he’d been holding. “What was that all about?”

“Custody case. Very lucrative. Who knew how much a child could be worth to a father?”

“Jesus. You’re not serious. We’re not taking a child from her mother and—”

“Touchy subject for you, Ben, I know this. But you have done this and more in the past.”

“That was different.”

“How so?”

“Because that was…I worked for the government.”

Nik laughed. “You worked for me. You still work for me. Do you trust me?”

Ben sat back and studied the beautiful man before him. He didn’t really need to think about it. “Yes. Absolutely.” He saw some quick expression flick across Nikolas’s face and realised Nikolas had been the one with the doubt—doubt about Ben’s answer. Nikolas was more vulnerable than he’d realised. He pushed his foot against the other man’s, out of sight under the table. “You know what the biggest perk of being self-employed is?”

“The tax status?”

Ben shook his head despairingly. “No. The best perk is that you can take your boss to bed and fuck him for the whole afternoon. You ready to leave?”

Nikolas pouted. “There is another benefit, too.”

“What? Better than going home now and…”

Nikolas slid the menu closer. “Tax-deducible lunches in wildly expensive restaurants?”

Ben grinned and took the menu. “Excellent. Free food.”

Ben was surprised that Nikolas didn’t spend the rest of the meal enlightening him about the differences between tax deductible and free, but as Nikolas always paid for everything, he reckoned
his
view of their arrangement was more accurate—for him anyway. Nikolas didn’t seem to allow himself many pleasures—despite the freedom his release from the department had given him—but watching
him
eat, amazingly, appeared to be one of the few. That and the other activity they indulged in for the rest of the day.

Despite Nikolas’s admonition not to eat too much, Ben had, and he was consequently sleepy and in a good humour, for once willing to be played with and petted. What did it say about their relationship that Nikolas paid for him in restaurants and treated him like a plaything in bed? But as Nikolas appeared to have so few pleasures, Ben decided he was
owed
these indulgences. So, although Nikolas never spoke whilst he stroked and held, kissed and played, Ben knew he was delighting in the enjoyment of
his
body. Nikolas mapped Ben’s scars with his tongue, trailing it slowly from one to the other, joining the dots of Ben’s hard life.