This Other Country (27 page)

They stilled. Ben pulled away. Nikolas winced. “I didn’t mean to say that. It’s too much for you to—”

“Rider-Mikkelsen? What do you…? I…? For real?”

Nikolas nodded.

Ben glanced back toward the TV room and pouted a little. He twitched his nose, clearly thinking. Ben wasn’t stupid—despite Nikolas trying to convince him for the last eight years that he was—and Nikolas had the distinct impression Ben had now worked out for himself what had upset him about the recent scene on the couch.

Ben glanced over. “That’s not who I feel I am. Sorry. I’m just Ben Rider. You get that, yeah?”

Nikolas nodded again. The power of speech had utterly deserted him.

“But I guess I could try…?”

They took the wine in and the Chinese still in its cartons, as Ben declared he may be suddenly gay and about to cuddle with a man (the c word being snarled with such derision Nikolas had to laugh), but he wasn’t fucking eating Chinese takeaway off china plates—the Queen’s or not. That was just bollocks.

They lay together eating and drinking wine, and watching a mindless movie with lots of unnecessary explosions and unlikely recoveries from major head traumas, and Nikolas couldn’t say he was unhappy despite his earlier terrible epiphany. Sometimes the appearance of something was almost as good as its presence.

Almost.

§ § §

Although they didn’t go to bed until four a.m. due to their very late rising, Ben was still not tired. He was a creature of habit, and his body didn’t take well to this complete change to his normal routines. He hadn’t run for days; he was eating unusual food; he was in a strange house. And he’d just been
inside
an unfamiliar man. Change to his normal routines indeed.

After tossing and turning for some time, he crept quietly from the bed, which had been pristine upon their return from the tea room, something which had made him frown in wonderment but hadn’t even elicited a flicker of acknowledgment from his boss—Nikolas, he must remember to call him Nikolas—and went to the kitchen. Chinese food was all very well, but it often made you hungrier after you’d eaten it. He sat at the kitchen table alongside the snoring dog with a mug of tea and some biscuits, and listened to the empty house. It was unnerving sitting in a lit kitchen with a glass roof. He felt like a target on a remote missile launcher in some crazy video game. He got up and turned the lights off, which was much better.

What the fuck?

He felt as if he’d been on a spinning fairground ride—enjoying the exhilaration while it lasted, but now he had a moment off the ride, so to speak, or not, when he remembered what he’d been doing half an hour before…he was dizzy, sick.

What the fuck?

Had he always had this desire for another man’s cock, lurking under the surface of his normal life? Sure, he’d always liked
sex
, although the army left soldiers fewer outlets for normal relationships than other men; more one-night stands, more prostitutes…But Ben had rarely been interested with that lifestyle either. He’d always told himself he respected his body too much for casual sex, one night stands—that he wanted more…Had that just been an excuse for not admitting he wanted…men? Did he? He hadn’t noticed himself eyeing up other men since this great revelation with Nikolas Mikkelsen. But he hadn’t met that many—the barber who’d cut his hair, the boy in the Chinese shop…not much to bring in a verdict one way or the other. Squeezy? Fucking hell.

What did he think now, in this peaceful kitchen bathed in moonlight, when he thought about the man he’d left sleeping alongside him?

A stab in his groin.

A swelling.

A tingle in his spine.

That’s what he thought!

He smiled a small feral smirk of lust and wanted to go back and wake Nikolas Mikkelsen.

What the fuck?

Again.

He sighed and went to put his mug in the sink. Who’d come and washed the tea things? Who’d taken all the sheets and the mattress and returned it all to a pristine state? How had the bathroom looked as if no one ever used it? Who took care of the fucking horses? Didn’t horses need mucking in or something? What was this place, where everything was so beautiful and gleamed in moonlight? For one tiny, embarrassing moment, which he knew he would always remember with a deep cringe of horror, he wondered if instead of losing his memory, he’d actually died and gone to heaven.

Strange heaven though…in some ways.

He saw a flicker of light on the counter.

Nikolas’s phone. Unread texts.

Somehow, Ben knew without even knowing who he was or who Nikolas was that he wouldn’t be allowed to read Nikolas’s texts. It was just the way things were between them. This much had been made clear in the three days he’d spent with this strange, challenging man.

He picked it up and thumbed read.

Nikolas wasn’t to know he knew he shouldn’t do this.

Apparently he was Ben
Rider-Mikkelsen
. Wasn’t it up to him how he interpreted that?

There was one message. It was from a woman called Emilia. It read:
mke sure Ben does NOT find out about our plans for Xmas. Will be with u on 22
nd
Still working on your present. xxxxxxxxxxxx Love u more than u love me Emilia
.


And there it was.

The thing that had sent his memory spiralling into the ether. Emilia.

Nikolas and Emilia.

Don’t tell Ben.

I love you.

He’d been right. He shouldn’t have read Nikolas’s texts.

He didn’t love Nikolas Mikkelsen, of course, but this still stung like hell. It hurt for the Ben he’d been, the one who’d found out about this betrayal. He was rubbing the scar on his wrist and suddenly glanced down. He hadn’t asked—what would he have said? Did I try to kill myself? It was unthinkable. But now, maybe not so impossible…But had this scar been connected to his memory loss? Had this come first? Find out about Emilia…the wrist…memory loss…

What the fuck
took on a whole new meaning.

§ § §

Nikolas woke when his phone hit him and broke, the back falling off and the battery clattering out on the bed. It hit him on his nose and cheekbone, which was unfortunate, as he’d suffered injury there before and they were both sensitive. He sat up and got punched, which sent him off the bed onto the floor. Being who he was, it was the last hit Ben got in, for Nikolas was then up and on him and had him pinned to the wall before Ben’s fury could inflict more damage. “What the fuck, Ben!”

§ § §

“Who’s Emilia? You bastard!
You
did this to me! I found out about Emilia and that’s why I’m like this, isn’t it?”

Nikolas’s eyes widened. He bit his lip. He began to tremble slightly.

Ben thought he was seeing fear. Remorse? Then he realised the shaking was amusement!

Ben began to struggle, and he was very strong, and Nikolas would have had to hurt him to keep him pinned to the wall, and it’s hard to harm someone when you’re laughing. Instead, Nikolas backed off quickly to the illusion of safety on the other side of the bed.

When Ben began to advance again, Nikolas jumped onto the bed and was over and out along the walkway before Ben could process just how fast the powerful man could move. He caught him up halfway along the swim lane, tackled him, and they fell into the cool, blue water. Nikolas couldn’t swim and laugh either, so he propelled himself out like a cork shooting under pressure from a bottle, and ran dripping and slopping through the kitchen and out the front door into the cold moonlight. Ben came after him and almost had him down on the grass, but Nikolas was too quick and dodged, disappearing behind a huge rhododendron. Nikolas knew the grounds; Ben didn’t.

“Come here! You fuck!”

“I didn’t want to tell you in your fragile state. She’s a model. I couldn’t help myself.”

The disembodied voice was coming from somewhere to his right, and he made his way cautiously through the trees.

“Are you jealous, Benjamin?” Nikolas dropped on him from a tree, pushed him face first into the mud and ran off, naked, in the direction of the tor.

Ben swore and threw a rock at him, which connected with a satisfactory thud and an “Ow!” of annoyance. Ben, also naked, took after the fleeing figure. There was a path under the flying buttresses of the rear part of the house. There was a stream, an old bridge and a pond. Nikolas was squatting on the far side of the pond, white in the moonlight. As Ben watched, he seemed to…disappear. He was spreading fucking mud on himself! Ben slithered across the slippery bridge. Nikolas had shifted into the bracken and was silent. Ben looked at the boggy peat and at his own naked body glowing pale in the unearthly light. He copied Nikolas and went, darkened and muddy, into the dense bracken of the tor. Stealthily, he began to crawl up.

Obviously, Nikolas Mikkelsen knew this place very well. The bastard had probably climbed it with him before. Ben didn’t know it, but…did. He had a kind of innate sense of where he was and where he was going. The smell of the bracken at night was incredibly familiar. Even the play of moon shadows stirred something good in his heart. He heard a faint sound and knew someone was cursing that telltale noise and trying to stay silent. He didn’t give away his location. Shape, shadow, silhouette, texture, spacing, movement: it wasn’t rocket science—the things that gave position away. He could see the top of the tor a few metres away now and decided to go for it. He’d have a full arc of vision then across the hillside. He’d be able to spot the bastard.

He made a dash for it. Something caught his ankle, and he fell heavily, grunting in pain as his knee hit a rock. He was trampled, his hair ruffled, and Nikolas disappeared up the rocks to the top of the tor.

Ben couldn’t risk an attempt on the summit now. The cheating bastard had the high ground. “I wish I had my cigarettes with me. How inconvenient.”

Once again the disembodied voice drifted out in the darkness.

Ben considered his options.

He didn’t have many. One occurred to him. It was slightly beneath him, but then he was standing buck-naked on a tor on Dartmoor in the middle of the night covered in mud, chasing a man he’d recently fucked up the arse. He wasn’t in any position to take the moral high ground. He began to climb, got about halfway up a cold granite face and slipped. He made a lot of noise as he fell, tumbling to the moorland grass below the rocks. He lay still.

“Ben?”

He could hear the cogs of the man’s mind grinding. Was it a trick? Would
his
Ben Rider-Mikkelsen have done this—the Ben that Nikolas had destroyed with lies? Ben heard a slithering down the rocks, bare feet, naked skin on granite, and then a soft thud alongside him. “Ben?”

Nikolas wasn’t coming close.

“I know you’re fooling, Ben. You’re too good to have fallen climbing there. You’ve climbed this tor thousands of times before.”

Pathetic
.

“Ben. This isn’t funny anymore. I’m not coming over there to check you. I’m not stupid.”

Yeah, you are, and you will. Eventually
.

“Ben! I mean it! Stop it! This is really dumb.”

Almost there…

“All right! I’ll tell you about Emilia. She’s a lap dancer. I think you’d really like her if you actually met her.”

“What!” Ben turned, about to spring to his feet.

Nikolas crowed in triumph and shot back up the tor.

This time Ben had him in sight. The bastard couldn’t launch a surprise attack from the top. He scrabbled after the fleeing figure and they reached the smooth crown at the same time.

Ben lunged and brought Nikolas down. They were both completely winded, Nikolas from laughing and Ben from fury. He began to punch into Nikolas’s kidneys, holding him down by sheer weight and anger. Nikolas tried to speak through the sniggering and the pain. “She’s Russian, Ben, so she gives me things you never could. I’m so sorry…oh, God, stop. Please.”

Ben stilled for a moment. “Russian? Emilia
was
in Russia. I was in Russia. Emilia was the princess in the mist with the hair like fire.
I remember Emilia
. She was just a kid…She…” He looked down at Nikolas’s sparkling eyes and hit him again, just because he could. He lay alongside him on his back in the moonlight, cold, naked and wet. “You utter bastard.”

“Ack, you needed the exercise. You’re getting fat. What did she say before you broke my phone?” Nikolas prodded gingerly over his nose as he spoke.

Ben was too busy trying to sort memories to reply. A girl. Trees. A river. Snow that made him happy. And that was the memory that then became crystal clear—the two of them making love in the snow. “Oh.” He turned his head. He’d chased a stranger up this tor, but beside him now was Nikolas—still indistinct, distant, as if seeing him from the wrong end of a telescope, but Nikolas, nevertheless. The man he’d lain with somewhere in the snow and kissed until his lips had been swollen from the rub of stubble. He
remembered
how he felt about that man. He wasn’t
feeling
it now, but he remembered it, and that was overwhelming.

He grabbed Nikolas and began to kiss him again, wanting that swell and friction on his lips. Nikolas tasted of peat and cold air.

He tasted of desire.

Ben mouthed into the kiss, “I remember you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Guilt was a very easy emotion to provoke in Ben Rider-Mikkelsen. Nikolas made a huge fuss about his phone, whilst secretly glad it was broken so he could update it with the latest model. He was incredibly touched later that day, however, when Ben appeared with the old phone mended. Nikolas had never owned anything stuck together with electrical tape before. It was rather novel. If he tapped the phone a few times first it actually worked. Ben claimed Harry Black could fix anything: he’d used it once or twice on his bike. That had led to a deep frown and a hesitant, “Do I still have my Suzuki? I guess not. Ten years. Fuck.”

Nikolas smiled. He liked giving Ben Rider-Mikkelsen pleasure—he liked annoying him more, but giving pleasure was good as well. “Have you not been in the garage?”