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When they finally separated for air, he felt entirely fragmented, as if the glue which held it all together—all the lies, the games, the identities—had not been strong enough to withstand the heat they created together.
This, he had not anticipated. Disordered, wild and yearning, he thought he would explode with the novelty of it all.
Ben, flushed and clearly very happy, remounted, gleefully suggesting another race.
They both knew they were only playing this time, men in entirely unknown territory seeking the familiar.
Aleksey let Ben win.
They were in an unexplored realm, after all.
Which was not an entirely reassuring thought.
Planning a future based on some spit-shared smirks seemed a risky proposal to Aleksey
But he was very good at building things from nothing, creating worlds in grains of sand. Good at buildingandplanning.
So, he would reach out a hand and…and what? Pull Ben into his darkness?
That was not what he wanted to do at all.
No, he would stretch out his hand and…and Ben might just pull him free.
As he fed his horse a treat, stroking its face, preparing to give another to Ben’s, Aleksey Primakov sincerely wished for the first time that he had not burned Ben’s cottage down, and, more importantly, that he had not murdered the man inside it. Nathan Stones.Nate.
This reckless act of hurt and revenge did not bode well, in his humble opinion, for whatever their future held.
* * *
Chapter 52
Nine Years Ago
All Aleksey’s tentative happiness came crashing down around his ears later that night.
The universe had a penchant for fucking him up, and always picked just the moment when he’d begun to hope things might change for the better. As a little boy who’d just freed himself and his brother from their mother’s unfortunate child-rearing skills, he’d actually been excited and optimistic to finally meet his absent father. As he often observed, irony was a bitch.
And it was a simple conversation, in some ways their first, that put the whole kiss situation in this new and unappealing light.
All through the interminable lunch, he’d been recalling every moment of that press of Ben’s cold lips to his. He’d kissed men before, obviously, but as far as he could recall, always for very different reasons than for those he’d kissed Ben. He genuinely could not remember a single kiss he had willingly initiated or received. When he was sober, that is. Drunk or stoned, things were obviously different. But then he drank to excess and used drugs expressly to escape being himself; so perhaps that didn’t count either. No, he was sure, Ben Rider was the first man he’d…and what was so special about a kiss? He’d literally opened Ben’s arse up with his fingers, thrust his cock inside him, and filled him with semen. Many times. His seed had coated Ben’s tongue, clung to his dark hair, splashed on his back, run out between his thighs. So how did pressing his lips to Ben’s eclipse any of that?
Because he knew those kisses changed everything.
And Ben clearly sensed this too. Aleksey could read that knowledge in Ben’s eyes. Hell, he could feel the power of the change across the table, a palpable sense of longing for connection that went beyond sex, beyond semen.
Every time he looked up, Ben was studying him. And they held these stares now, instead of glancing away as they habitually once would have.
As Philipa’s friends noisily sorted themselves out for the afternoon’s shoot, Aleksey watched Ben walk nonchalantly to the billiard room.
Their room.
Ben still got a kick out of having sex there.
When he’d monitored the last guest striding out into the sunshine, Aleksey allowed a sense of delicious anticipation envelop him. He followed Ben to their sanctuary, locking the door behind him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
Ben was perched on the table edge, idly tossing a ball in one hand.
He immediately focused his attention on Aleksey, and Aleksey felt as if he were staring into a mirror, his desire reflected back at him.
