“Piss off.”
“And you did it all without the years of therapy I had to go through.”
Colin’s hand came up and covered Diwa’s mouth. Diwa’s eyes creased into a smile above his fingers. The alpha laughed against his palm and pulled Colin’s hand away from his face, even as he kept hold of his fingers.
“Will you let me buy the frame?” Diwa asked. “Because we’ll both be using it, and I intend to fuck you very thoroughly on it. Frequently. And I’d like something solid underneath us when I do.”
Colin scowled at him, picked his bag up off the doorstep, and pushed past him into the house. “Yeah, all right. Now shut the door and order us something to eat. I’m starving.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Diwahad bought the light therapy lamp the week he’d flown in from Manila, when he hadn’t slept for nine days and his housekeeper had Googled circadian disruption and put a printout on his pillow. Since then he’d used it every morning without fail, and the results had been nothing short ofamazing.
He woke up easier. His afternoon slumps had vanished. Colin, who’d come in from a job last night, fallen asleep on the sofa before nine and woken at six this morning still looking like he’d been run over, was getting twenty minutes whether he liked it or not.
He pulled it down off the shelf now and carried it through to the conservatory.
“Right.” He set it on the side table, plugged it into the wall, and angled it towards the wicker chair where he wanted Colin. “Sit.”
Colin, who was holding a mug of tea that Diwa had pressed into his hands to keep him sitting still, frowned at the lamp. “What’s that, then?”
“A light therapy lamp. It has an output of ten thousand lux. It mimics natural sunlight, which your body needs about twenty minutes of in the morning to regulate melatonin and serotonin. Given the absolutely tragic state of British weather in March, you’re not getting any of it.” Diwa patted the back of the chair. “Sit, sit. You’re going to feel amazing in about fifteen minutes.”
“I feel fine right now.”
“You’ve yawned three times in the last five minutes. Sit down, Colin.”
Colin sat. He held the mug with both hands and looked up at Diwa, resigned to his fate.
Diwa crouched down in front of the chair, took the mug out of Colin’s hands despite Colin’s disgruntled protest, and set it on the side table next to the lamp. He pushed Colin’s hair back off his forehead, smoothing the silver at his temples with his thumb, and tipped Colin’s chin up a fraction so the light caught his face square-on.
“Close your eyes if it’s too bright.”
“It’s fucking blinding, Diwa.”
“That’s how you know it’s working. The photoreceptors at the back of your eye have to register the wavelength, that’s the whole point. You don’t have to stare at it, just keep it in your peripheral vision. Twenty minutes, max. You’re going to feel like a brand-new man.”
“You’re making this out like it’ll be better than your cock.”
Diwa’s hand stilled in Colin’s hair. He looked down at the man sitting in his conservatory chair, squinting against ten thousand lux of artificial Norwegian summer, holding entirely still under his palm, and felt a hot jab of affection in his chest.
“Well,” he said, “no, Colin. Obviously not. Nothing in this house is better than my cock.” He smoothed Colin’s hair back again, because his hand wanted a job. “But it’ll perk you up. Like a couple of shots of espresso. Without the gut rot.”
“Mm.”
“Give me twenty minutes, Colin.”
Diwa kissed the top of Colin’s head and went to fetch his book from the kitchen, so he could sit beside him while Colin’s photoreceptors did whatever they were going to do. The conservatory was warm. Colin had settled deeper into the wicker chair with his eyes half-shut against the glare.
Diwa was lowering himself into the chair opposite when his mobile buzzed against his thigh. He let the line connect without checking the screen, because he’d been lulled into a good mood by the presence of his omega, and said, “Hello?”
“Diwa.”
It was Kuya Maki. Five years older than Diwa, four inches taller, and the eldest of all the cousins, which in the de la Vega family was less a position of seniority than a permanent appointment as judge, jury, and enforcer of their grandmother’s will.
Diwa’s spine straightened against the chair. His free hand found his thigh and gripped hard as he composed himself. “Kuya.” The honorific for ‘older brother’ came out automatically, his voice dropping half a register and shedding ten years in the process. He sounded, even to his own ears, like the fourteen-year-old who used to hide Maki’s flip-flops under the sofa in Antipolo and then deny it with wide eyes while Maki stood over him with his arms folded. The tactic had worked precisely once. “How are things?”
Maki didn’t answer the question, because Maki had never in his life allowed a mission of his to be derailed by pleasantries.“Lola Joy’s ninetieth is on October fourteenth. We’re throwing a party in Manila Shangri-La. You’re coming.”
