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Ben looked relieved. “Yeah,yes. I was just thinking that. Thanks.”
Aleksey stared around for a moment. He twitched his nose.
“I will call someone.”
He heard a snort from behind and then felt Ben standing close. The other man leant around and murmured, “That’s a kettle. Would you like me to make it?”
With one of his most dismissive waves for permission, Aleksey took a seat at the table, and then had the distinct pleasure of watching Ben searching cupboards, finding milk and choosing mugs.
And he realised he wasn’t even being ironic. He could have sat there and let the afternoon and evening slide away from him. The weekend. Possibly the rest of his entire life, just watching Benjamin Rider making tea. It wasn’t only his absolutely perfect body, or his rare exquisite beauty, it was an awareness that something inside himself responded to this young man. And this reaction wasn’t only sexual either.
Aleksey had enough self-awareness to recognise that he now wanted something different than he usually did from other men.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know himself well enough to actually work out what that was. Yet.
More study, therefore, was required.
Aleksey grinned inwardly and went back to work.
Ben brought two mugs of tea to the table, but he didn’t look happy as he blew on his to cool it. He stared down at the brown liquid sadly, but then sighed quietly and took a sip.
“Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no. I needed this. Ta.” Ben went back to his contemplation of his mug.
When he started fidgeting with the edge of Aleksey’s newspaper, which lay discarded from earlier, Aleksey asked with some asperity, “Do you wish to ask me something? Perhaps about the job?”
Ben flicked him a guilty look. “I was going to ask if you had something to eat. I’m starving. Just a biscuit, maybe? I never have tea without a bikkie.”
Starving?
He’d eaten more for lunch than Aleksey had all week.
Fortunately, it was one thing he did know the location of. Blue-blooded English dogs, he had discovered, were as fond of human biscuits as Russian ones had been. He produced a tin of Duchy shortbread, chuckling inwardly at the significance. It had been Philipa’s latest present from her lover.He’dimproved on this pathetic gift giving by buying her an entire tea set from the exquisite Royal Copenhagen collection to eat them on.
Now happily wading his way through the tin, Ben was silent for a while, until he asked, “How many people do you have in the Department working for you? Are they all ex-Special Forces? Do any of them know me? Was I recommended?”
Aleksey was quite surprised that Ben was actually thinking about the job. He hadn’t been. However, he snapped his focus back from the dubious pleasure of watching Ben dunking his biscuit in the brown liquid, and replied casually, “No. Most come from other intelligence services or with particular skills, such as IT.”
Ben nodded.
“Why me then?”
Why him indeed? Aleksey would have quite liked to have consulted Ben on this. Whatisit about you?
So he did.
“What qualities do you have, Benjamin, that you think might interest me?”
No wonder he’d become a general.
Ben leant back in his seat and regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m good at reading people.”
Aleksey nearly spluttered his drink. He didn’t think Benjamin Rider was very good at this skill at all, or they’d be doing something very different over this table.
“That is a useful quality, I agree. Do you—?”
“I think there’s more to this job offer than you’ve admitted, sir.”
