This Other Country Read Free Page B

dreams, and they turned on like a switch in my head after I watched you burn in the fire. Perhaps that says more than words.”
    Ben lifted up and cupped his face. “Didn’t watch me burn. I’m right here, Nik.”
    Nikolas nodded and wrapped his arms around Ben, kissing his shoulder, pressing his face into the crook of Ben’s warm neck. He never talked about the time he thought he’d lost Ben, because this is what always happened when he tried. He swallowed and raised his eyes, biting his lip for control.
    With the intuitive knowledge of Nikolas Ben apparently had, he didn’t try to comfort him or get him to talk more, he just slid back and took him in. Nikolas gasped. Ben sat up, dug his fingers painfully into his hard stomach and began to ride him. Nikolas arched, nightmares of losing Ben forgotten in the extreme pleasure of having him here in the bed with him. He twisted, rolled them, re-entered, lifting Ben’s thigh and gaining better access. He felt a trickle of moisture on his cheek, a residue of the grief he couldn’t articulate and pressed his face to Ben’s chest, hearing the heartbeat as he jerked, bringing his thrusts in time with that steady, strong and reassuring sound.
    Ben held Nikolas’s hair, running his fingers through it, tugging it for encouragement when he needed more, and then they were coming together. Nikolas lifted up slightly off Ben’s belly, allowing Ben’s cock to jettison freely over their chests while he groaned as he unloaded deep into Ben’s body.
    When he was done, he lay heavily on the soaked, hot body beneath him. Ben’s fingers still played restlessly with his hair until with another pull Ben urged, “Let’s go home tomorrow—wait there until we hear from Kate.”
    Nikolas nodded. When he was embedded in Ben’s body, soaked with his juices, he’d agree to just about anything Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen wanted.

CHAPTER THREE
    Home was a glass edifice of architectural wonder nestled incongruously into a sunlit Devon valley on the southern slopes of Dartmoor. An old manor house, dating back in sections to Tudor times, had once stood on the land, which had been granted to Ben’s family by William the Conqueror. Ben, a newcomer in the family welcomed by incest, intrigue, and murder, had naturally not been all that keen on rebuilding the old house when it had been destroyed in a fire. Nikolas, however, had seen the destruction as an opportunity for a new start for both of them. Or, if he had to be totally honest with himself—which he wasn’t all that often—a chance to make a statement about his relationship with Ben without actually having to come out and say anything at all. Until death parts us had lost some of its allure as an expression of binding commitment when he’d believed Ben to actually be dead. He preferred this declaration of light and life and all the things he’d thought he’d lost, Ben being both his light and his life.
    So, with a little help from his impressively well-connected acquaintances, Nikolas had commissioned a unique house, which appeared to float from the very granite of the tor it was anchored to, like an exhalation of the rock itself. It was designed in two halves, and a swim lane joined them into a whole. This, Nikolas knew, was something particularly unusual for an English house, but as he pointed out to Ben, he wasn’t English. He wasn’t restrained by an Englishman’s worst trait: a puritan distrust of anything luxurious. Also, obviously, he was a billionaire, so he wasn’t curtailed in most other ways either. He wanted a swim lane so he had one built. The rear wing, the one emerging from the tor, was their private area: bedroom, bathroom, Nikolas’s study and Ben’s gym. The front wing was much larger and was used both to run Nikolas’s charitable foundation ANGEL and for their friends to have accommodation whenever they wanted. Its central hub was a vast kitchen and dining area, which for two men who couldn’t cook often seemed