Death's Ink Black Shadow Read online

  Nikolas slipped away from the grasp and returned to his fun below.

  He dragged it out for a very long time, but eventually he seemed unable to deny himself any longer. He knelt and pulled Ben higher onto his lap, forcing his strong thighs back. With a sigh of possession, he buried himself in Ben, deep, right up to the hilt, and Ben suffered no pain from the intrusion. He’d been more than ready to take Nikolas’s cock, and there was nothing but a throb of anticipation at what was to come.

  Slowly at first, Nikolas began to move inside him. Long strokes, driven deep, gave way to short stabs at Ben’s ring, a pull out and re-entry, and the entire time Nikolas mixed it up and kept Ben dangling, waiting, begging. It was the entreating that did it for both of them. Ben rarely demeaned himself by pleading for anything, but he did this once and on top of the shocks and the pain they’d given each other, it seemed to swell Nikolas more, perhaps made him realise how powerful he was, how much Ben needed him—if he’d needed this confirmation of something he should have known so well already.

  Ben wasn’t faking it either. He found himself saying incredible things, which he’d never thought to hear himself utter—how he wanted Nik’s spill deep inside him, how only Nikolas could fill him and give him a sense of himself. But it was this last confession that undid him. As the words eased out on the exquisite delight of Nikolas once more pulling out and then opening him up and entering again, Ben’s throat seized up, a deep sob emerged, and before he could stop himself, he flung his arms across his face for privacy, and the pleasure was buried under a desolate confusion at who he was.

  Nikolas faltered. Ben felt him withdraw, but then he took him in another way. Nikolas’s arms came around him, dragging him into a tight spoon, just holding him as the humiliating sobs wracked his body. He didn’t even know what he was crying for. Once he’d started, he was distraught for that—for the fact that he was so unlike himself, so unmanned by everything in his life that he didn’t know who he had become any more.

  It was only when he heard an agonised whisper, “Please don’t, Ben, you’re killing me,” that he turned, forcing himself to calmness, to find Nikolas’s stressed and worn face creased with anguish.

  Ben hiccupped a chuckle. Nikolas caught the incredulity and disdain for their weakness and snorted a little too, and then they couldn’t stop.

  As Ben had noted only recently, Nikolas rarely gave way to this emotion. When he did he was usually laughing at Ben, not with him, so this was something new yet again. Ben reckoned it was a great deal better than crying together, which they’d been embarrassingly on the verge of, so he kissed Nikolas through their amusement and told him he was a pillock, a wassock and a wanker, which only made Nikolas laugh more with incomprehension and return the favour in Danish, proving to Ben yet again that there were many dubious terms of affection in that language he did not yet understand.

  Unbelievable to Ben, they had now been in bed for a few hours and neither had come yet. He slid onto Nikolas, lying heavy on his lean belly, feeling the occasional rumble of laughter still. He stared down into Nikolas’s eyes and brushed his fringe away, noting again the grey that had started to speckle the blond. He brushed his finger once more over the bruising marring the unbearably beautiful features. How had he thought he hated this man? He’d always believed that nothing Nikolas ever did to him would stop him from loving him or drive him away—that Nikolas could murder him and his ghost would come back beseeching Nikolas to kill him again. He knew now this wasn’t true. He’d always thought in violent terms—Nikolas maiming him, executing him. He’d never been a person who thought about love or matters of the heart. He hadn’t had much of a heart until he’d fallen in love with Nikolas Mikkelsen. That catchall forgiveness, Ben realised now, didn’t extend to Nikolas cheating on him.

  It was a simple discovery but a profound one at the same time. If Ben had ever thought about Nikolas with someone else, it had been in hypothetical terms. It wasn’t theoretical now. He’d suffered an instant, debilitating, almost lethal pain thinking Nikolas was sharing his body with another man. Not love—Ben hadn’t for one moment thought Nikolas was having a loving relationship with Jackson Keane. He’d known it was just sex. But that had almost destroyed him. Why? Even though Tim occasionally professed annoyance that Squeezy was happy with their open relationship, they both saw and fucked other people. Although, when Ben thought about it, Squeezy’s intervention in the bedroom in Devon had seemed to be as much about Tim as it had been about him, despite the fact that Squeezy had apparently been put on Ben-guard duty by Nikolas…

  But imagining Nikolas…his mouth for example. Ben put his finger to the beautifully shaped lips, dragging the lower one down a little and experiencing a surge of possessiveness about Nikolas’s body that was greater than the one he felt for his own. Which didn’t make a lick of sense as far as he could tell. “What were you thinking when you undressed Jackson?”

  Once more, Nikolas attempted one of his Ben-outmanoeuvring expressions but then clearly read the disbelieving, “Seriously?” in the look Ben gave him back, so he admitted, “You probably don’t want to know.”

  Ben raised his brows, but before he could challenge this irritating assertion, Nikolas added hastily, “In that it’s embarrassing. For me. I was thinking I pay him too much. He was wearing more expensive shorts than I do. Stop laughing at me. They retail at over a hundred pounds each…stop it!”

  Ben leant in and kissed him for such a good answer. “I’ll buy some for you.”

  Nikolas held him off a little. “You? Buy something for me?”

  Ben frowned. “I—” He didn’t. He rarely got Nikolas anything. What did you get someone who had more money than God and who bought for himself whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it? And who was so picky that if something wasn’t entirely how he liked it, he returned it…

  Nikolas rolled them suddenly so they were lying side by side once more. He propped his head up on his hand and said deceptively casually, “There is something you could buy for me, if you were in an expansive mood. I have been thinking about it over the last few days.”

  Ben mirrored Nikolas, supporting himself on one hand, his other playing with Nikolas’s nipple idly until Nikolas snagged his fingers. “I was thinking you could buy me a ring.”

  Ben raised his eyes. He was fairly certain he’d heard that wrong. Surely Nikolas only meant a cock—“Not that kind of ring, Ben. A—” Nikolas tapped the ring finger on his left hand with his thumb “—kind of ring.”

  Ben opened his mouth but discovered yet again the annoying inability to actually speak. Nikolas smiled. “I didn’t do what I did lightly. I needed for you to distance yourself from me, and it was the only thing I could think of. If you remember, you proved yourself more than willing and able to defeat me in every other way.” If his gaze travelled to the bed rail to which he’d been handcuffed for over two weeks while Ben had broken his spirit and his defences, then it was a very small flick of movement. “But I miscalculated badly—not just the effect it would have on you either. I have committed more betrayal in my life than you can imagine. I’ve betrayed everyone I have ever met except you and then I did. So after you left—”

  “After I hit you.”

  “Yes, after you hit me, I was—it is hard to explain in English. I wish you spoke Russian.”

  “Say it in Danish.”

  “Ack. I have never told you this, but my Danish is not all that good. I know a child’s language. I cannot express these things of our hearts with that vocabulary. I need to use Russian. But what I mean to say is that I was entirely lost. I didn’t want you to believe what was happening at the same time as believe it and go. I wanted you to see it for the fiction it was. And that led me on to thinking that I want the truth between us to be more visible. I want to do something I never thought I would. Because it is an anathema to me—to be so visible and marked and…owned.” He risked a glance to Ben’s face. “I want to be marked and owned by you. So, buy me a ring, Benjamin Rider-Mik
kelsen, and if you do, I will wear it.” He frowned then added, “But maybe I should help you choose…Now you are laughing at me again. It is really annoying—” Ben silenced him with a kiss.

  He was so entirely overwhelmed by what Nikolas had just admitted and offered to do that all he could do was kiss him. Words were utterly impossible. Nikolas still didn’t even hold hands in public. Now, he’d said he was willing to wear a ring that marked him as owned—that branded him as belonging.

  Ben had never once in their relationship even considered such a gesture, but now that Nikolas had volunteered to do it, he saw it had been the token he’d wanted most. Nikolas was clever like that. Nothing could have made Ben’s spirits recover so quickly. He’d gone from despair to elation in a few hours. Nikolas clearly preferred Ben euphoric too, and they both swiftly revived to the hard kissing and Ben grinding his cock into Nikolas’s.

  Nikolas swiftly pushed Ben onto his back and rose above him, considering him as he inserted a finger. Ben groaned. Without speaking, he knew they both needed this rough and emotionless now, to regain some sense of themselves as men, escaping the sentiment they’d spilled and shared for a while in the purely physical. Nik didn’t waste too much time just using his finger and soon replaced it with a hardness that took Ben where he needed to go. They kept their eyes open, fastened on each other, and if the emotional bond they’d just strengthened made the fucking better, neither acknowledged it. Ben just enjoyed it hovering there in each clench of his balls, each glorious wave of pleasure as Nikolas hit the spot inside him that made him pant and clench his jaw on the intensity of the feeling. This was about being male and revelling in body and strength and muscle.

  When Ben was at the peak, just before the fall, he suddenly rolled Nikolas onto his back and straddled him, the delay at the crest postponing release just as he’d wanted. He rode Nikolas now, forcing the erection inside him to do its job and find the sweet spot for him. He hung his head. Nikolas’s fingers snagged into his hair and forced him on deeper. Nikolas lifted his hips, thrusting into Ben’s grinding. Sweat poured off Ben now, dripping down onto Nikolas beneath, making him slippery, heat rising inexorably where their flesh touched.

  Nikolas suddenly swore and pushed Ben off, flipping him onto his belly again, dragging him up onto his hands and knees, spreading him wide and surging back into him, and that was all it took. Ben shouted out that he was coming and then he was filled, flooded with warmth as his own dick jettisoned into the sheets, great shots of cum propelled on shudders of ecstasy.

  Nikolas groaned as he wrung himself dry inside Ben. Ben collapsed. Nikolas went with him, and they lay soaked and drained, still joined upon the damp sheets.

  Ben stretched out his arms. Nikolas laid his along them and joined their hands, weaving his long, slim, elegant digits between Ben’s stronger workman’s ones, and Ben knew without a shadow of a doubt that Nikolas was picturing, as he was, how those beautiful fingers would look with their new ring.

  It was not a thought that had occurred to Ben before, but as he drifted into sleep with Nikolas lying asleep on his back, Nikolas’s cock still embedded deep inside him, thinking about a ring and how it would look, Ben wondered if the thing he and Nikolas actually had most in common, the glue that held their relationship together so well, was in fact their complete and utter shallowness.

  Only a few hours ago, he’d been almost suicidal.

  Now, he was entirely surrendered to happiness.

  He gave Nikolas’s fingers a squeeze, felt a shift in the sleeping figure in response and let himself float away on an overwhelming sense of peace.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Steven came into their lives.

  Nikolas told Ben that he would treat his son as another aberration—that Steven could be like Ben—an exception to the contamination of being connected to Aleksey Primakov.

  Nikolas agreed that he would put the offer of the alternate book to him.

  He still refused to tell Steven that he was Aleksey, claiming that it would provoke far too much complication in all their lives, and Ben had to concede that he was probably right in this. It pained him to admit it, but he didn’t want Aleksey resurrected any more than Nikolas did. Now that he had Nikolas back and one hundred percent his, he actually just wanted Steven to disappear. He knew it was selfish and not worthy of him, and so he didn’t say this to anyone. When Steven became a regular fixture in their house over the coming weeks, he made an effort not to let his new feelings about the man show. He tried to be…gracious? Accommodating?

  Steven, however, was still obsessed with the idea of discovering his father’s past, and Ben couldn’t blame him for this. To an outsider looking in, imprisonment in a gulag and then life in Spetsnaz and Russian military intelligence seemed glamorous and exciting. To Ben, living with the husk of the man who’d survived those experiences, knowing the physical and emotional toll Nikolas’s life had taken upon him, things were not so simple. He didn’t want Aleksey’s history explored any more than Nikolas did.

  Ben was at something of a loss, therefore, when Steven didn’t seem at all interested in writing the ANGEL book. Ben still thought it was a brilliant idea—who wouldn’t want to be paid an extravagant amount of money to travel around the world first class and play the visiting hero, recording how lives had been transformed by the power of Nikolas’s money? And goodwill, of course. Ben occasionally forgot to remember that it wasn’t just cash Nikolas was willing to invest…

  Steven wasn’t just fixated on writing a book about his father now either. He’d also expanded his proposal to include his uncle—to make it a study in contrasts: how one brother by a quirk of fate had taken one road, but the other had mapped such a different route.

  Despite appreciating the effort Nikolas was making, after the blip and the insanity of Jackson Keane, Ben couldn’t understand why he was being so accommodating to these ideas. Ben had tortured and killed two men to protect Nikolas’s secrets. In fact, as he sat watching the blond-haired men at the kitchen table, he reflected somewhat bitterly that he’d executed them in this very room…not in the same chairs—those had been replaced. Fire. Smell…

  So it was a little irritating now to see Nikolas almost encouraging Steven. Sure, he was doing this in a very Nikolas way—lots of smoking and drinking and empty promises that never actually got fulfilled, but it kept Steven coming back.

  Ben decided he’d had enough one morning when he wandered naked into the kitchen to find Nikolas and Steven already at the table with their vodka.

  Ben was not an exhibitionist. It wasn’t in his nature. But it was his kitchen and his boyfriend, so there was a slight hesitation before he turned with a mumbled apology and headed back upstairs.

  He heard Nikolas jogging up the stairs after him—which was unusual: Nikolas didn’t usually do fast movement unless something was chasing him. He looked up when Nikolas came in and repeated, “Sorry.”

  Nikolas chuckled. “Better that than I walk in naked on your daughter one day.”

  Ben nodded gloomily.

  Nikolas sat down alongside him and took up one of Ben’s hands, playing idly with his fingers.

  Ben sighed. “I told him I was your boyfriend, so he does know. I’m sorry about that too, I guess.”

  “I know. He has had another idea for the book because of that.”

  “Oh, bloody hell.”

  “Hmm. He wants to explore how one twin can be gay and the other not.”

  “What? He thinks…wait.” Ben frowned, trying to puzzle it out himself. “He thinks his father wasn’t gay?”

  “Isn’t it amusing.”

  Ben was glad Nikolas hadn’t made that a question so he didn’t have to reply with the obvious. Instead, he asked one of his own—also self-evident, he thought. “What are you going to do?”

  Nikolas quirked his lips, but it was a bitter smile. “I’m doing it now. Get dressed maybe? As much as I like…” He waved at Ben’s most blatant naked part, which had been joining in the conversation
gradually as he teased Ben’s fingers. Ben glanced toward the door then slumped, dejected. Houseguests were ruining his fun.

  Almost as if he’d been reading Ben’s mind, Nikolas said casually, “I have invited a friend to stay for a while, by the way. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Ben’s brows rose. He wasn’t aware Nikolas had any friends. “From Russia?”

  Nikolas shook his head. “An American. I met him last year while I was stalking a very beautiful film star.”

  Ben grinned and ruffled Nik’s hair. “Saving his life.”

  Nikolas winced. He didn’t like being reminded of his actions in Louisiana. Ben knew exactly what Nikolas was thinking so he added hesitantly, “Can I say something without you shooting me down?”

  Nikolas actually rolled his eyes, which was the first time Ben had seen that expression, and he laughed in delight that Nikolas could still surprise him. “What? Say it…”

  “I’ve been thinking about pizza.”

  Nikolas frowned. “I thought you were on your ridiculous no-carbs diet again because the idiot called you fat.”

  This was a low blow on Nikolas’s part as Ben had taken Squeezy’s joke while they were running together to heart, despite it being only that—a joke. And Ben noticed it was only ludicrous not to eat carbohydrates when he did so. But it nicely led into what he wanted to discuss with Nikolas anyway, so he let the blatant hypocrisy go. He rose swiftly and pulled on some jeans because his erection was distracting him as well now. When he sat back down, Nikolas had a glint of amusement in his eye, which disappeared when Ben said, “I’ve been thinking about Ollie and how he died.”

  Nikolas pursed his lips for a moment before stilling his face to neutral. He had allowed two people to be murdered on the assumption they’d killed the actor, Oliver Whitestone. His faith in their complicity in the attacks on Ben had been almost solely based on his belief in this earlier murder—which he apparently now thought they had been entirely innocent of. Ben took Nikolas’s hand now, and for the first time noticed that he was wearing a bracelet—a leather band plaited between hammered metal discs. “Where did you get this?”