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However, they both seemed to enjoy the times when they lazed on the bed, anticipating another round, not really caring one way or the other, content in their silent non-communication.
But this was not so easy, where they were now. No showers, no towels, no bed, come to that.
When they had both come, sticky now and replete, Ben had not lifted off him, which Aleksey had expected him to do fairly rapidly. Ben not liking anything effeminate, would, he assumed, extend to lying on another man with that man’s cock wet and softening inside him.
Not so, apparently.
Ben had not lifted his head, and Aleksey could actually hear the gears turning.
Ben was now trailing one finger up and down his ribs. This tickled and was therefore slightly irritating, but Aleksey wouldn’t have stopped Ben’s thoughtless touch for anything. Sometimes he used to enjoy his mother hitting him. At least she was noticing him.
Aleksey realised he was still hugging the other man close, so swiftly removed his arms and laid them slightly awkwardly at his sides.
Ben raised his head at that and regarded him.
Aleksey didn’t appreciate the scrutiny, not this close and not with his cock still where it was, and longed to obscure the piercing attention with smoke. Fortunately, as it was night and they only had a half-moon for illumination, the power Ben’s eyes had over him was not at full strength.
Aleksey made a twitching motion with his hips, as clear a message as if he’d saidget off me.
Ben narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, but obeyed and rolled to one side.
He then sat up, examining his apparently stinging face by patting it gingerly.
He glanced back and asked neutrally, “Can you swim?”
Aleksey quickly shook his head. He wasn’t even sure himself why he immediately and automatically lied about something so trivial, then remembered a hazing when he’d first joined the army.Can you swim? Yes. They’d made him prove it. All night. It was not one of his best memories. Did he actually have any good ones?
He sensed the temperature had dropped, and it wasn’t from remembering twelve hours in the Baltic Sea in February. The indistinct figure in the cold illumination nodded slowly, again as if something Aleksey was doing, ornotdoing he supposed, only confirmed something Ben had been previously thinking.
Then Ben stood gracefully, stretched to his full, incredibly impressive height, jogged down the steps to the pavilion and waded into the pond.
The moonlight shone on his naked skin. He trailed his fingers in the icy liquid as he moved. He was a water god, and as with the scent of Ben’s hair earlier, Aleksey tried to imprint this image, this whole moment, on his memory—the evocative scent of the night-flowering shrubs, the rough planks of the pavilion under his naked skin, the deep water parting for its returning deity, and the man he—
Ben dipped down then disappeared under the water.
Aleksey was left to ponder ripples in moonlight and wonder, if he were another man, how he would have finished that thought.
Sometimes, he reflected sourly, it might help in these speculations to know what Ben Rider was thinking.
He sure as hell wasn’t getting much insight from those rapidly dissipating circles.
* * *
Chapter 28
Four Months Before April
It was one of those rare mid-winter days when the English forget what their weather is like for the rest of the year, more than happy to live in a place where December is often nicer than August.
They watched Molly building what appeared to be an elaborate fortification in the sand. Ben reckoned she was designing her own fairy princess castle, having been thoroughly disappointed with the one she’d been brought to.
She had no tools, but was making impressive use of her hands and fingers, which, Ben knew from frequent tugging on his hair, were strong and agile. She had a wet blob with sticky-up bits, which he assumed was the main palace with watchtowers, a ditch, which he allowed could be a moat, and was now attempting to construct a drawbridge over this. Which wasn't easy with sand, as she was discovering.
He and Nik were sitting companionably together, if a little damp, on a rock in the shelter of the headland. Radulf was making friends with a small crab in a rock pool, and PB was snarling menacingly at a bird-watcher who had just arrived via the public access path to the beach and was stationed some distance away above the high-tide mark.
It was a particularly peaceful moment. Ben was fairly sure that had they been alone, without their small human companion, they'd have been reliving previous moments on this beach. As it was, their hands just brushed, a warm contact of familiar skin that was as much an erotic charge for Ben as kissing, or more, might have been. Occasionally, Nikolas's finger rose and stroked over Ben's knuckles, an apparently unconscious act on his behalf that made the hairs on the back of Ben's neck prickle with lust. He basked in a rare flash of sunshine, and the knowledge that Nikolas was his.
Life didn't get much better.
