“And the one in Hyde Park! The jogger. He slowed down, turned round, and came back for a second look. I had to actually body check him.”
“You barely touched him.”
“I absolutely body-checked that man, Colin, and he deserved it.” Diwa wasn’t above begging, and did his best to keep his voice level as he pleaded his case. “Come with me. You’ll be doing me a favour. I have forty cousins, and you’d be a good diversion from all the shit that’s gone down with my business.”
He’d gone too far. He could feel it in the way the sentence landed. He’d got much too close to the thing he’d been holding at arm’s length for weeks. Diwa had been putting on a good face around Colin. Except that he’d spent the four days after Ezra left sitting across from his legal team in his study while they went through the board’s decision line by line, looking for a crack, a procedural misstep, anything that might give him a foothold.
There was nothing. The board had done everything by the book. His lawyers had been very sorry, but they’d charged him eleven thousand pounds for the privilege of telling him that there was nothing that could be done about his ousting.
Colin had been there through all of it, making tea that appeared at Diwa’s elbow without being asked for, running him a bath when the meetings ran late. He’d sat beside him on the sofa in the evenings for hours, saying nothing while Diwa pecked away at his mobile, replying to emails.
“I need you there. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen my family since everything that happened with Orthos. And I’ll have to talkto my mother.” Diwa took a deep breath. “I can’t do that on my own, Colin. I don’t want to.”
Colin was quiet for a long moment. His fork rested on the edge of his plate, and his eyes stayed on the stripped pork bone in front of him. “I don’t like getting too hot, Diwa.”
Diwa’s hope rose, because that wasn’t a no. That was a logistical objection that meant Colin was gearing up towards a yes.
“You’ll be kept in the air-conditioned style to which you are accustomed, Colin. I swear. If it comes to it, I’ll have staff with woven palm-leaf fans following you round and fanning you wherever you go.”
Colin’s teeth caught his lower lip. “I reckon a two-quid fan from Temu would do the job just as well.”
“I’ll get you a hundred fans. A hundred people carrying them. A full entourage, Colin.”
Colin reached across the island, picked up a tiny piece of crackling from the tray, and put it in Diwa’s mouth to stop him talking. “How long’s the flight?”
Diwa swallowed the crackling. “Thirteen hours. Fourteen with the layover.”
“I’ll need to get a passport. And I’m not wearing shorts, Diwa. I don’t care how hot it is.”
“You’ve got amazing legs, Colin. I want you in a speedo.”
Colin looked at him with the flat stare of a man who had just been asked to film a sex tape. “Fuck off, Diwa.” But Diwa didn’t care, because that was ostensibly a ‘yes’.
Chapter Thirty
Thestewardess left them in the suite with a dazzling smile that Singapore Airlines probably ran her through a six-week training programme for, and Colin turned on Diwa before the partition had even finished sliding shut.
“How much did this cost, Diwa?”
Diwa had been hoping to get at least as far as the welcome champagne before this conversation started. He’d had a whole strategy mapped out: let the cabin ambience do the softening, let the hot towels and the slippers establish a baseline of luxury, and then, once Colin was settled and pliant and holding a glass of Dom Pérignon, introduce the cost as a fait accompli that wasn’t worth getting upset about.
“It’s a suite, Colin. It’s not a private jet.”
“How much, Diwa.”
Colin’s hands were moving across the desk built into the wall, his fingers trailing along the polished wood, assessing. He crossed the suite in three strides, lowered himself onto theedge of the made-up double bed, and bounced once, testing the mattress’s give.
Diwa’s brain, which had been primed over the course of seven months to respond to the sight of Colin against any horizontal surface, performed its usual catastrophic pivot. His omega was on a bed. A very expensive bed, in a very enclosed space, wearing a white linen shirt that Diwa had bought him, and the shirt was pulling nicely across his shoulders where he’d braced his hands behind him on the mattress.
It triggered an onset of fond Best of Shags memories. The kitchen counter at Ledbury Road. The sofa. The wall beside the bedroom door, where Colin had wrapped his legs around Diwa’s waist and let Diwa hold his full weight while he came with his head tipped back against the plaster.
“Diwa. The number.”
Diwa told him.
Colin let out a gusty exhale. “You’re mad.” He ran his palm flat across the linen. “You’re absolutely fucking mad.”
“It’s a thirteen-hour flight, Colin. You’ve never flown before. I wanted your first time to be—”
