Conscious Decisions of the Heart Read online

  “Me, let you? Since when did you need my permission to do anything?”

  “Since forever. You’re spinning now. Why are you spinning?” He frowned. “I don’t feel―” Ben grabbed his arm and forcibly pulled him from the bed. He was just in time. Head held over the toilet bowl, Nikolas discovered he was hardly Russian at all.

  When it was over, it began again. Ben had never seen anyone so sick. He was quite impressed. He reckoned Nikolas might regret the not-eating thing in the morning.

  He was right. Nikolas had been shot, starved, raped, beaten, and tortured, but nothing had prepared him for the hangover he woke to. He managed to crawl out of bed at midday, and then only as far as the bathroom, where he spent another half hour retching.

  When he made it to the living room and sat down at the table, even the coffee Ben put in front of him sent him back to the bathroom. He finally managed to stay at the table and drink some water in the middle of the afternoon, and even then his voice was a husky croak, and his hands were shaking.

  Ben slid into the chair opposite. Nikolas tried to look at him, but his bloodshot eyes seemed too heavy to hold up. He put his head down on folded arms and groaned. Ben ran his fingers through his blond strands. “You’re getting absolutely no sympathy from me, by the way.”

  “Did I…do anything? Say anything? I don’t remember.”

  “You admitted you slept with him, Nik.”

  Nikolas jerked his head up then winced and held his temples. He frowned. “Then I was lying. Why did I lie? Why would I sleep with him when I have you? That makes no sense. Oh.” He put his head back down. “You’re being funny. I’m highly amused.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  Unbelievably, Nikolas managed to make his odd gesture of dismissal, despite hardly being able to lift his hand without groaning. “We’ve come to our agreement.” He stood up very deliberately and headed back toward the bathroom. “But I will tell you later.”

  He’d still not fully recovered the next day and kept a very low profile, lying on the sofa, pretending to read. Ben kept him topped up with coffee and some light food and left him to his misery. He had work to do.

  He’d revised his initial plan to take out Gregory’s security men. He hadn’t been in the best of moods at the time, but now in the light of day, and basking in Nikolas’s apparent faithfulness, he’d decided it was only Gregory who needed to go. Therefore, an attack on the house was probably unnecessary. Also, he’d now discovered through Squeezy’s observations of the Russian’s comings and goings that Gregory was driven every day into Chelsea, same time, one driver. Ben’s bike was still in pieces in a burnt-out kitchen; he needed new wheels.

  He therefore did something very uncharacteristic; he fired up Nikolas’s laptop. He put in a search, and then, without warning, utterly defenceless, he fell in love. It hit him like a punch to his solar plexus; it took his breath away. Nikolas was in the kitchen on the phone, talking in Russian, yet again. He could hear traffic noises faintly from below. Radulf was chewing on something. He swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment to see if it was still real. It was. He sensed Nikolas come into the room but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen, even for him.

  Nikolas came and stood behind him, hand on his shoulder. “We need to talk.”

  Ben just nodded.

  “Why are you on my computer?”

  “Because I don’t have one.”

  “Huh. What’s that?”

  “It’s a Ducati.”

  “Uh.”

  Ben turned, his eyes wide. “Just uh? Look at it!”

  Nikolas frowned but dutifully did as Ben asked. Ben stood, went to the window, came back, sat down. “It’s called…the Monster Diesel.”

  “I’ve been able to read English for many years. So?”

  “That’s me, Nik. That was my name—my nickname in the Regiment. And see…it’s described as military urban chic. It’s my bike. It’s me.” He added in an awed voice, “It’s fate.”

  Nikolas laughed. “You’re military urban chic now, hmm?” He kissed the top of Ben’s head. “Buy it. It’s your birthday next week. I remembered.”

  Ben turned. “Seriously. Just like that?”

  Nikolas seemed very slightly shifty. “It might cheer you up. When I tell you what I need to tell you. Come.” He sat down on the sofa and patted the space next to him.

  “I’m okay here. Just tell me, yeah?”

  Nikolas sighed and stretched out his legs. Ben noticed a slight wince but decided it was a play for sympathy so he ignored it. “Gregory has cancer.” Nikolas glanced up to see how this was received and added quickly, “I believe him. I’ve seen the doctor’s reports—The Royal Marsden in Chelsea. It’s why he’s in London in the first place. Lung cancer, which has now―I’ve no idea how you say this in English, but it means spread? Anyway, it’s done that thing. It’s now in his―I don’t know English for this either. I’m sorry.” He put a hand to the side of his neck. “Here, but not the throat?”

  “Lymph nodes?”

  “Thank you. It’s in his liver, too. He’s smoked since he was a boy, and Russian cigarettes were very dangerous then. Toxic. So…” He glanced up again. “Please, come here, sit down beside me?”

  Ben did as he was asked. So far, he hadn’t heard any actual bad news, but he loved Nikolas enough not to let this thought show. “So, he has, he says, only a few months.” He tipped his head to one side, regarding Ben. It was a heart-breaking gesture, and Ben suddenly felt some sympathy for Gregory who’d lost this and would never have it again. On that sense of his own good fortune, he cupped Nikolas behind the neck and pulled him closer, their foreheads resting together.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Nikolas nodded then pulled back slightly. “He’s very bitter, I think. Not resigned at all to his fate.” He shrugged. “It didn’t help, therefore, when he saw my picture in the paper and realised I’d decided my own fate. And then to see me again at the restaurant with…everything I have now. Very bitter.”

  “This is the part I’m not going to like, isn’t it?”

  Nikolas pouted a little. “He wants to return to Russia and die with dignity there at a time he chooses.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t want to die friendless and alone.”

  “He wants you to go to Russia with him?”

  “Yes. Now we’ve come to it. He wants me to travel with him to Russia and stay there until―To ensure he dies when and in the way he’d want.”

  Ben was silent for a moment then confessed quietly, “I can arrange for that to happen here. Today…tomorrow. He’ll die quickly and quietly.”

  Nikolas put a hand down to his leg, rubbing it unconsciously, and Ben reckoned it must have actually been hurting him, for his thoughts seemed far away. “I wouldn’t like that.”

  Ben made to rise, but Nikolas caught at his arm and drew him back. “I’ve been thinking a great deal about this, Benjamin. Will you hear me out?” Not giving him time to refuse, he continued, “You want a new me. You don’t want me to be Aleksey, even though all of this seems to pull me back to him. Well, don’t you think this is the right thing to do? Don’t you see what I’m trying to say? People like us…” He clenched his jaw and glanced at Ben, seeing his incomprehension. He tried again. “You and me, we won’t have families, children, people with us at the end. We’ll be always alone except for others like us—if we’re lucky.”

  “Jesus, Nik, what the fuck?”

  “He’s alone, Ben. He’s old and alone, and I don’t want to be like him one day.” He rose quickly with a wince when he put weight on his leg so suddenly. “Would you do this thing for me one day if I asked you? A few months, that’s all. Isn’t it the right thing to do? You tell me? I’m trying to be this new man you want me to be! I need your help to be him.” There was a catch in his voice. “I’m sorry.” He abruptly left the room, and Ben heard him slam something in the bedroom. Ben remembered Nikolas once telling him, “You take emotionally a
nd you don’t give back.” He didn’t much like himself at that moment.

  He rose and went into the bedroom. Nikolas was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the view of the park. Ben went up to him and enfolded him in his arms, pressing his face into the blond hair he loved so much. “Will you promise me one thing?”

  Nikolas didn’t respond, so Ben just continued anyway. “Promise me you’ll come back, and promise me you won’t sleep with him. Or with anyone, I guess. And that means what everyone means by that, yeah? Sleep, as in fuck, or anything to do with fucking—which includes kissing. Anywhere. And don’t start smoking again. And make sure you eat?”

  Nikolas chuckled. “That’s a great deal more than one thing, but I’d promise you anything you want, Ben. Take advantage of this moment.”

  Ben held him off. “The most important is that you come back.”

  Nikolas nodded. “I can’t live without a heart. Of course I’ll come back.”

  They kissed, a slow tease of teeth and lips and tongues until everything was hard and aching and ready. Undressing seemed to take forever and was incredibly erotic in the bright light of day where all that need was evident. They kissed as they lay upon the bed, slow now, taking their time so nothing was forgotten or done in so much haste it wasn’t important and special. It was like a first time should be. Ben wondered, as he carefully eased Nikolas open, whether this was the destination he’d always been working toward with this man, their first time.

  They took turns with each other, moving around the bed in a slow dance of warm skin, hard muscle, and soft, silky hair which snagged fingers and caught their spill and tangled to make them laugh. The afternoon passed as they dozed—in each other, on each other—and then woke again to start again, bodies becoming sensitised, then sore, but still they needed to feel skin rubbing, teeth biting, tongues licking, and always one part or other of their bodies joined.

  They were disturbed at last not by Ben’s hunger, although this had been somewhat on his mind for the final few hours, but by a tentative scratch at the door and a whine. Ben chuckled. “He wants in.”

  “I’d say he wants out.”

  “You take him.”

  “And whose dog is he?”

  “Yours?”

  Nikolas mumbled something in Danish then began to stir reluctantly. “Ours. Come, we’ll walk him together.”

  Ben felt a twist in his gut at the effort Nikolas was making. They threw on clothes and went down together in the elevator. If one of his friends saw him dishevelled and clearly well fucked, then they did. He couldn’t care anymore. If Nikolas was trying so hard to find the real man under all his layers of disguise, then so would he.

  They walked slowly along the paths of the park, Radulf off his lead, busy with his own concerns. Occasionally, their hands brushed, and Ben wondered whether either of them would ever progress far enough to be able to hold hands in public. Nikolas appeared to read his thoughts for he plunged his hands into the pockets of his jeans and gave Ben a small contrite smile. “There are many things to arrange before I leave.”

  Ben nodded glumly.

  “I don’t want you to stay at the apartment. Too much temptation for one so young.”

  Ben gave him a look. Nikolas amended with a smirk, “I have a new tenant. Exceptional references. Friend of my wife’s, actually.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Huh. Yes. Even better. Anyway, I couldn’t turn down an extra £33,000. I’m having it put into your account so you’ll have money while I’m away.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? That’s almost more money than I was making in the army.”

  Nikolas stopped and turned to him. “A week, Ben. That’s the weekly rental.”

  Ben paled. They continued walking. After a few minutes, Ben nudged him. “Don’t hurry back too fast then, ’k?”

  Nikolas laughed softly. “What else? The damage to the house will be repaired soon. Move back in there. I can’t vouch for the smell, but you shouldn’t set fire to people, it’s a hard smell to get out of the walls. We’ll buy you your bike before I go. I’d like to see you―” He stopped and took a breath.

  Ben slipped his hand into the back pocket of Nikolas’s jeans. Nikolas didn’t object. “I’ll be fine. Few months. It’ll be like when I was on an op, yeah? Only now it’s you gone and me waiting. I don’t want to ask, but when are you leaving?”

  “The day after tomorrow. It’s arranged.”

  “Will you be able to keep in touch?”

  “I think telephone communications have reached Russia, but I’ll check before I leave.”

  “Well, that’s that then.”

  Nikolas nodded. “If you need anything, Philipa would help you, despite all that’s happened. She’s genuinely fond of you. Keep in touch with Kate. But not too much touch, maybe. And…that’s understood between us, yes?” He turned, dislodging Ben’s hand. “Touch. We agree now. We don’t―I―Other people. Either of us.”

  Ben didn’t even look around to see if they were observed. He leant across and kissed Nik to silence him then said distinctly, “You don’t need to ask, Nik. Yes, we understand each other.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nikolas was gone before Ben really had time to process he was going.

  They bought the bike together.

  They tried to fit months into the hours they had remaining, and then a taxi came, and Nikolas left.

  Ben returned to the house and wheeled his new bike into the kitchen. He and Radulf sat looking at it for quite a while.

  Ben went upstairs but couldn’t face the empty bedroom with the empty bed.

  He didn’t want to stay in the house at all. He’d expected a sense of loss, of dislocation, but he’d never expected it to be this bad. He began to realise just how much of his life he’d subsumed under Nikolas’s. Other than a few clothes and now his new bike, he had nothing.

  He was entirely hollow.

  He walked from room to room. The bedroom Nikolas had been sleeping in made him smile weakly, remembering all the many ways Nik had thought up to punish him for his faithlessness. Nikolas could be surprisingly inventive when it came to punishments.

  With a sigh, he went into the office. Here the damage was the most extensive. He picked up some of the papers on the floor and put them back on the desk. One had been defaced. Ben smiled sadly. It was odd to think of Nikolas in the study, idly doodling on the newspaper. He wished he could understand what he’d written.

  There was nothing he wanted to take, so he returned to the kitchen. He was staring at Radulf, thinking, when he knew with utter certainty exactly what he wanted to do. He grinned at the dog. Radulf banged his tail on the ground. He liked the plan a lot, and he didn’t even know what it was yet.

  § § §

  Having money was something of a novelty to Ben. He’d always been reluctant to spend the insurance money he’d received from the fire at his cottage, but now that his account was to be topped up so extensively every week, he reckoned he was safe to splash out a little. He’d learnt some things being with Nikolas for four years, some of them not suitable to put into action in daylight (or on his own, come to that), but most had to do with confidence, with projecting to others you were something not as you really were. He thought he knew pretty well now who the man who called himself Nikolas Mikkelsen really was, and he’d seen how this man of contradiction and conflict turned himself into the Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen other people were allowed to see.

  He dressed in the last suit Nikolas had bought him, therefore, and one of the shirts he’d picked out for him. He shined his shoes just enough, but not too much, and then studied his face and hair. Usually, Nikolas made him shave and insisted on neat hair. But Ben had always suspected this was more because Nikolas wanted him admired—only not too much. He smiled, remembering Nikolas’s jealousy, which he’d tried so hard to hide for so many years. Ben had dragged Nikolas kicking and screaming out of the shadows. But then look where this’d got them. Separate
d. He pushed this thought to one side and tried not to dwell on it. He ruffled his hair as he liked it and decided not to shave. He grinned at himself. Perfect.

  When the taxi arrived, he left Radulf guarding his new bike in the kitchen, something Radulf took to immediately and with great conscientiousness. Clearly, he was military urban chic, as well. Ben gave the driver the address of the Mercedes Benz showroom in Chelsea. When he arrived, he took a deep breath and proceeded in—on his own. It was more terrifying than facing psychotic Chechens with automatic weapons.

  He knew which car he wanted. It was the one Nikolas had intended to buy to replace the Range Rover he’d…lost. As it was a very touchy subject between them, and had tended to make Nikolas start his odd mixed-language swearing whenever it had been mentioned, Ben hadn’t been able to question him too closely on why he’d decided on this vehicle and not another British one. But a Mercedes it had been, so Ben wandered up to the GL-class off-roader displayed in the showroom and stood there as if he belonged. Predictably, it wasn’t long before a salesman joined him. Ben absolutely loathed this kind of interaction. It was worse than buying a house. He felt such an overwhelming need for Nikolas he almost walked out, but something held him back. He took another deep breath and proceeded to spend money.