“I do.”
Stephen shot him a baleful glare. “No wonder my dad’s been putting on weight, if you feed him like this all the time. I think you’re trying to make him slow and docile so he can’t leave you.”
“Yup. That’s the tried and true method of control for Filipino mothers.”
“Daddy pulled that on me and Sander as well.” Stephen’s lip curled into a shaky smile. “You need to message me every day while you’re up there with him.” Stephen wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, his jaw set. “Every day, Diwa. I need to know he’s all right. I need to know what’s happening.” He glanced sideways at Diwa. “You probably think I’m some sort of daddy’s boy freak.”
“I think that the way you watch out for him really shows off what an amazing father he’s been to you, and that you love him exactly as much as he deserves to be loved,” Diwa said. “And I’m fucking terrified of ever crossing you because of that, Stephen. That’s a fact.”
Stephen’s mouth twitched. He reached for the Comté. “Good. You should be. Ryland’s a scientist, you know. He’s very clever, and he listens to a lot of true crime podcasts about unsolved murders. He’d do anything for me.”
Diwa nodded, reached for the board, and put three more pieces of Manchego on Stephen’s plate.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thecottage had underfloor heating, which Colin’s feet registered before the rest of him had finished taking in the entrance hall.
The kitchen was open-plan, all pale wood and matte black fixtures, with a fridge the size of a wardrobe and an Aga. Beyond it, a living space unfolded around a wood burner set into a wall of rough stone, flanked by two armchairs. Colin ran his hand along the back of one and felt up the butter-soft upholstery.
His eyebrows, which had been climbing steadily since he came through the front door, went up another notch when he found the bedroom.
The bed was vast. Emperor-sized, at least, dressed in heavy white linen that slipped between his fingers like water, its thread count was so high. Beside the bed, a low table held a ceramic tray arranged with small bottles in dark glass, unlabelled. Colin picked one up, uncapped it, and sniffed. The lube was sandalwood scented and slippery between his fingertips when he rubbed them together.
He set it down and moved through to the adjoining room.
The swing hung from a recessed steel beam in the ceiling. It was made of matte black webbing and padded leather, and suspended at hip height. It looked like a piece of Scandinavian sculpture. Colin crossed the room, gripped the overhead straps, and tested the give. It was satisfyingly solid, and the beam didn’t even creak under his weight. He turned, sat in it, bounced once, shifted his weight side to side, and bounced again harder.
In the doorway, Diwa swallowed audibly.
“It’s not — I didn’t specifically request that.” Diwa’s hand made a tight circular gesture at the swing, his neck flushing from the collar up. “It’s part of the cabin’s standard amenities. Everything in here comes with the booking. I didn’t pick any of this out, it just…they set it up in advance. I could have it removed, if you want.”
Colin swung gently, his feet off the ground, and watched Diwa unravel.
“Right.” He stood, crossed back to the master bedroom, and laid his palm flat against Diwa’s chest. The alpha’s heartbeat was going at a fair clip under his hand. “Let’s go to bed, Diwa. No swing for us today.”
Diwa hovered at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets. “So…what do you think?”
Colin threw himself backwards onto the mattress. The memory foam caught him without a sound, swallowing his shoulders and hips in one slow give, and he lay there for a moment appreciating the ceiling beams before reaching down to unbutton his trousers.
“S’nice,” he said, and shimmied them off his hips.
? ? ?
Diwafucked him slowly, with the curtains half-drawn and the afternoon light coming through in pale stripes across the bed. He covered Colin’s body with his own, chest to spine, his weight settling over Colin in a way that should have triggered every alarm his nervous system had ever wired into him. It didn’t. Diwa’s arms came round him, forearms braced on the mattress on either side of Colin’s ribs, and the circle of his arms; his bulk, and the steady press of his hips against Colin’s arse held Colin in place rather than pinned him. His face was in the linen, breathing hard, and Diwa’s mouth pressed against the nape of his neck and stayed there.
Afterwards, Diwa made him eat.
He’d brought food from London in a cool bag that he unpacked onto the kitchen counter. Tinapa, garlic rice in Tupperware, two packets of Tender Juicy hotdogs, a jar of achara, and four mangoes so ripe Colin could smell them from the bedroom doorway. The hotdogs went into the pan, the rice into the microwave, and Colin sat at the kitchen island in Diwa’s T-shirt and his boxers and ate until his plate was clean.
“Walk?” Diwa asked afterwards, already lacing his trainers.
They took the path that looped behind the cottage and out through a gate into open moorland. The ground was soft underfoot, heather and peat giving under Colin’s boots, and the air held the sharp mineral smell of recent rain. Diwa walked beside him with his hand finding Colin’s lower back every few minutes, adjusting, checking, as though Colin were something fragile he’d been entrusted with carrying across uneven ground.
Colin’s thighs were wet. Diwa had stopped wearing condoms weeks ago, and the feel of being filled was something that Colin now craved. He loved the feel of the alpha’s hips stuttering out of rhythm as he came, the hot pulse of his come warming him deep inside. The way Diwa’s body went on instinct and kept pressing forward in slow grinding thrusts long after he’d finished, milkinghimself empty because something older than thought was telling him to fill and to breed. Colin had lain under him and felt every pulse and thoughtyes. Now, walking through the heather with Diwa’s spend leaking warm down the inside of his thigh, he watched two red deer pick their way across the ridge above them, and there was total quiet in his head.
They came back to the cottage as the light was going. Colin’s calves ached from the peat-bog terrain, and his lower back was singing at him from the morning travels. But his hips moved loose and easy, from being thoroughly fucked. He sat on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots, which were a challenge to manage with his hands gone clumsy with tiredness.
The mattress gave under him when he lay back. He closed his eyes as the warm flush that had been sitting at the back of his neck since the walk home spread down through his chest.
