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He’d been so confident Ben was going to comment on how fit he looked too, perhaps ask him how he kept his superb physique, being nothing more than ‘a desk’ as Ben still occasionally called civil servants. He’d been very pleased that Ben had noticed.
“...way too thin. You could do with a bit of work on…”
And just like that, Benjamin Rider had poked him in the ribs and had, apparently, tried topinch an inchthat obviously hadn’t been there.
That one moment, the grin, the transgression,hisoutrage, was probably the reason he remembered this particular conversation so well.
Because, of course, he’d started to slip.
He knew this.
His masks had begun to crumble on the extreme pleasure of being the one Ben Rider chose to have in his bed. He didn’t understand why such a man as Ben would want a man like him—there wasn’t anything really there to want.
He’d punished Ben for the insubordination. It was often how their sex went these days. The more he punished, the more Ben relaxed and got inventive in his cheek.
Sometimes, he even heard a chuckle from the wilful one and, more astonishingly, he responded in kind.
It was hard to keep up a fiction when sex began to more resemble play.
It rather put Ben’s most recent text to him in context.
I’m busy.
Go fuck yourself, it had meant, although Aleksey gave Ben credit for framing this more appropriately.
Ben never knew where he was with him.
He kept Ben confused and off balance, alternating attention and intimacy with cold disinterest, so was it any wonder Ben responded with the occasionalleave me alone.
Aleksey shook himself back to the matter in hand. One day, he mussed, he might entirely disappear into this endlessly present past and have to physically relive it all again.
That was an unfortunate thought.
“Come. It is time.”
A more than familiar figure in running shorts had just exited Ben’s lane and headed for the woods. Although they were some distance away and it was still dark, one glimpse of the man under the illumination of a street lamp had told Aleksey it was Ben, safely out of the way for at least an hour.
They were letting themselves in by the back garden gate, Usama easing it through its swing for silence, when the tiny garden suddenly flooded with light from the kitchen.
A naked man was standing in the window, rubbing his hands over dawn stubble and yawning whilst filling the kettle. He was startlingly clear and bright in strangely vivid illumination.
“Ah. This good very. Naked. No weapon. Easy.”
For the first time in many, many years, Aleksey was caught completely off guard and his inner life collided with his exterior sham one. He regarded the man and what this meant to him and heard a bitter stranger with his voice whisper passionately, “You fucking bastard.”
* * *
Chapter 40
Nine Years Ago
Aleksey let the water pound on his face for a long time. His back was raw, but the pain was welcome. After a while, he held the heels of his hands over his ears so the drumming on his skull was frantic and sounded like explosive tropical rain on a tin roof, an imminent cyclone of power. But this was Barton Combe; this was his bathroom, and the water pressure and temperature were English and thus both limited, and so he could not find the oblivion he sought.
He wanted to kill something. But equally he knew this desire was now nothing more than a vaunting expression in his head. A throwback to the days when killing things had made him powerful, safe. Clean. Now he didn’t actually want to kill anything at all. Not the pheasants that strutted resplendent in the fields around the house until they were slaughtered and hung limp in the family’s blood sheds; not the deer that were almost so tame they would feed from his hand if he snuck out for a secret cigarette before the servants stirred, but later in the day would bleed so profusely that their life force ran like rivers through the channels in the courtyards. He didn’t even want to see the fish flapping and gasping as they were hauled from their world to die long and agonising deaths in the bottoms of boxes, carted back for unseen hands to gut and clean. He took no part in any of it, but watched the killers leave—dogs barking, guns or rods ready—from the quiet of his study. He didn’t even eat meat, for fuck’s sake, and yet…
And yet.
Had he, for one moment, staring at the stranger naked in Ben’s kitchen, thought to put out his hand and still Usama? Say to him...wait an hour. That‘s thewrong man. Theright onewill be back.Ben Riderwill be back.
