“I just think we deserve a really good meal together, is all I’m saying. Somewhere with a wine list. I’ll learn about wine. I’m more of an IPA guy, but I’ll learn about winefor you.”
“Fuck that,” Colin said. “The last bottle I had was a sangria from Aldi, mate.”
Diwa’s mouth opened to launch into what would likely be a passionate defence of natural wines, so Colin cut across him before he got there.
“Are you asking me out on a date, Diwa?”
Diwa’s eyes went shifty. Then he squared his shoulders, and forced direct eye contact with Colin across the marble. “Well…yeah,” he said. “Of course I am.”
Colin waited for the rest of his brain to catch up with the flare of hope rising in his chest and shut it down, because surely he’d just misunderstood Diwa, or Diwa was just talking shit, as usual. Jumping in with a response before he’d fully thought about what Colin had just asked him.
It didn’t.
“I kind of thought our nights in were already ‘dates’…I mean, notofficially, but it felt like we were getting there?” Diwa’s hand made a small circular gesture, as though he could wind the right words out of the air. “We cooked together. We fell asleeptogether on the sofa. You’ve been drooling on me, Colin. That’s verging on couple-y territory.”
“You thought that was dating?”
“I thought that wassomething.” Diwa’s composure held, just about. “So this is just the version where I take you somewhere nice and we make it all official. That’s all. That’s the only difference. I don’t care where we go. I just want to go there with you.”
Colin shook his head.
“Oh, you don’t want me, Diwa.”
He said it the same way he’d tell someone the bus was cancelled, just laying down the facts of it and letting it sit between them on the marble.
Diwa’s expression fell, going gradually, the way a house settles after you take the scaffolding down. The dimples vanished, then the brightness round his eyes.
“I’m forty,” Colin said. “I’ve got two grown sons who are only a couple of years younger than you. You could have absolutely anyone you want in this city, mate.” Colin shook his head, hoping this would dislodge the crazy voice in his head that was telling him that hewantedto take up this alpha’s offer. “Nah. You don’t want me.”
He was just being practical, the way he’d always been. The kindest thing he could do was to offer the lad an out, a gentle rejection. Young men like Diwa often didn’t know what they needed until they were forty themselves and looking back at the mess they’d made at twenty-eight.
Diwa came round the island. He moved without rushing, and stopped in front of Colin close enough that the smell of him came through warm and clean. His hand came up and settled at the back of Colin’s neck, large and steady, fingers curving round the nape.
Colin didn’t look up, but his forehead found Diwa’s chest anyway, resting against the soft grey cotton of his shirt.
“I want you so fucking much, Colin,” Diwa said quietly. His other hand came up to join the first, both of them closing warm around the base of Colin’s neck, and Colin shut his eyes and let himself be held.
Diwa’s lips pressed against the top of his head, soft and close-mouthed, barely there. “I want you,” he said, into Colin’s hair.
Colin’s hands stayed at his sides.
Diwa turned his head and kissed the side of Colin’s temple, where the silver was coming in. “I want you.” Then the other side, his mouth warm and dry against the skin above Colin’s ear.
Colin’s forehead stayed pressed against Diwa’s chest, his breath coming in through his nose in slow, measured pulls that he was using to keep himself from doing something stupid. Every inhale brought in more of the alpha scent, and every carefully timed exhale kept him from losing control of his own hands, which wanted to take a fistful of Diwa’s shirt and pull him closer.
He tipped his face up.
Diwa was looking down at him with those ridiculous dimples nowhere in sight. His expression was open and serious. He let Colin take his time, and held his gaze.
“I want you, too,” Colin admitted. His words felt clumsy as they escaped him. Then he rose up on his toes and pressed his mouth to Diwa’s in a closed-lipped kiss that was barely long enough to count as anything beyond a peck. He kept his hands at his sides, his fingers curled against his palms.
Diwa didn’t try for any more than that. His fingers tightened at Colin’s nape, drawing him in closer, and he let Colin pull back when he felt the need to.
Diwa’s thumb came to rest against the knob of bone at the top of Colin’s spine and traced a slow circle there, unhurried,as though they had all the time in the world to work on their kissing. “I’m taking that as a yes,” he said.
Colin looked away from him. Through the bay window, the garden was going dark at the edges, the last of the afternoon light catching the top of the fence where he’d replaced the post cap a fortnight ago.
He was still afraid. He had no idea where this was going, or whether his body would let him have Diwa when the time came. He had two grown sons who would need to be told, and a calendar on the back of his kitchen cupboard that no longer meant what it used to.
