Page 5 of The Gods of Chaos and Chance

And he wasn’t thinking aboutdetoxing on it, either.

* * *

Chapter Three

‘You are not a very loving boyfriend, Benjamin. I am subjected to silences, which you know I have cause to dislike. Ben thinking, in my experience, leads to very—’

‘I’m thinking about us.’

‘Oh.’ He smoked his cigarette for a while, not sure now that he wanted to pursue this conversation, but eventually had to ask, ‘Is that good or bad?’

Ben didn’t change his position, lying supine in the warm bed, head on folded arms, studying the night sky above them. ‘I thought you’d left me again.’

For one moment, Aleksey was going to snap back, ‘I wasn’t leaving you, I was running away,’ but realised in the nick of time that he’d gotten a bit mixed up, so didn’t say anything. Then he tossed into the growing silence between them, ‘But I took the dogs this time.’

At this, Ben rolled his head over to regard him.

Aleksey sighed, stubbed out his cigarette, and turned fully onto his side, head propped up on one hand. He idly stroked a finger over Ben’s chest, nipple to nipple and back, over and over. ‘Sometimes I do or say something so bad that it seems I should apologise until the end of time for it, but I actually don’t say sorry at all. I can’t think of words that would make what I’ve done better, and everything I try to frame in my mind only makes it worse, but—’ He glanced up into Ben’s face, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Does it help if I tell you honestly that I wasn’t leavingyou? I couldn’t have been, because you, the Ben you are in my heart and in my mind I suppose,myBen—I’d killed him with my lies. I thought Phillipa had told you—well, you know.’ He paused, now stroking Ben’s defined jaw with one nail, rasping his stubble. ‘I pictured a furious man on a bike, all his love for me destroyed, so not my Ben anymore. I left him, not you.’

Ben held the finger still. ‘And when I caught up to you? When I pleaded for you all day to come home? You could see that was just me.’

Aleksey tipped onto his back with a sigh. ‘Ah well, then I was just being stubborn.’ He lit another cigarette and into the pleasure of that murmured, ‘And you did try to kill me with that kni—Oh, God, stop! You’ll get burnt! Again! I am too…damaged…old? Ouch! Too ill…?’ It made no difference. He was in for some relentless tickling, which he knew with increasing horror would soon turn into pinching for a two-pound inch of fat, which was apparently now discoverable. But wrestling with Ben Rider-Mikkelsen in a warm bed under a canopy of Dartmoor stars was so much more than he deserved that Aleksey finally surrendered to the bliss of it all and let Ben win.

When Ben was inside him, taking his inevitable prize, easing gently in and out, Aleksey broke the habit of a lifetime for such moments and spoke. ‘I will never leave you again, Ben.’

Ben, jolted away from wherever he had gone in his mind, held still, his cock just stretching Aleksey and pulsing every so often as the blood thickened and lengthened it. He blinked, one long, slow, sensual closing of his eyes and nodded.

Aleksey raised his hand and cupped Ben’s cheek. Ben leaned into the hold. ‘Do I need to promise this,min skat? I will, if you ask me to. I will make this vow on anything you want. My life. Yours—the thing I hold most precious. I. Will. Never. Leave. You.’

Ben laid his own hand over Aleksey’s then bent down and kissed him, an intensely loving opening of his mouth to probe and demand return of tongue.

It seemed to be the only assurance he needed.

* * *

He was allowed out of bed the next day. Obviously, he could actually have gotten up any time he wanted. He wasn’t physically bedridden. He’d just strained the injury, gone too far, done too much, not followed anyone’s advice, and had suffered thetemporaryconsequences. The need to carry Radulf off a tor (when their slip had occurred), hadn’t helped, clearly, but neither he nor the old dog wanted this idiocy interrogated, so hadn’t admitted it to Ben.

But Aleksey had discovered that not only should you be careful what you wish for when it came to things like lack of attention, he had also learned, possibly for the first time, that life was actually easier when you gave in and did what your boyfriend told you to do.

Therefore, although he felt well enough to go for a ride to the cottage to see the renovations, when Ben said they’d drive, he demurred obediently.

He was concentrating on not limping, which left him little energy for arguing anyway. If he didn’t think about each step, he found himself swinging his bad leg slightly out to one side between each stride, which then gave him a sort of in-need-of-a-hip-replacement gait which infuriated him. It just wasn’t allowable, so he set his mind to the task of walking, and each step consequently became a masterful demonstration of the smart, the sharp and the straight.

It had crossed his mind one day, testing this weird new hip discovery, that during the traction on his leg, or possibly during the pinning of it, or even, he supposed, at the initial point of Ben Rider-Mikkelsen falling on it and snapping it in half, that it had somehow gotten shortened.Compressed. Just a tiny bit. Just enough to throw the other one out of its natural alignment. He had excessively long legs, being six foot four, and maybe the universe had decided that he’d strutted around god-like for long enough. Shave a couple of millimetres off and watch the fun.

Obviously, if he could go back two days, he wouldn’t have gone for the damn walk.

If he could unwind a few months he wouldn’t have gone for that walk either. But for more reasons than a broken leg.

Ben’s confession the previous night had almost broken his heart.

Limps were insignificant set against that.

You could not change your past mistakes. Who knew this better than he? But you made of them what you could. He was now a man joined at the slightly wonky hip with Ben Of The Same Name.

Everythingwas insignificant set against that.

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