“Of course, sir.” She made a note on her tablet. “And to drink, sir?”
“More of this.” Colin lifted the champagne flute. “Ta.”
She inclined her head and slid the partition shut behind her after Diwa provided his own order.
Diwa lifted his face out of Colin’s neck and grinned at him. “You comfy?”
Colin grunted.
“You can order anything off that menu, Colin. Any time. They’ll bring it through whenever you ask.”
Another grunt. Then, after a beat: “That’s only right, what with the price you paid.”
The cabin lights dimmed to a low amber. Somewhere beneath them the engines began to spool up, a slow building hum that travelled through the floor into the soles of Diwa’s feet.Colin’s free hand reached for his across the small gap between their seats and gripped tight. Diwa turned his palm up and laced their fingers together as the plane began to roll.
They gathered speed down the runway, the cabin shuddering faintly under them, and then the nose lifted and the whole plane left the ground in one long unhurried climb. Colin’s grip on Diwa tightened. A pocket of air bumped them sideways. The cabin gave a small lurch, and Colin let out a sound of distress.
He shifted in his seat, shoulder pressing into Diwa’s as his free hand fisted in the front of his shirt. Diwa kept his eyes on the cabin ceiling and his face very still. He hid his grin against the top of Colin’s head.
“Statistically,” he said, into the soft hair at Colin’s temple, “this is the safest part of the flight.”
“Mm.”
“Take-off only accounts for about fourteen per cent of fatal commercial incidents. Landing’s where it gets dicey; that’s forty-eight per cent. So you’ve got nothing to worry about for another twelve hours or so.”
Colin’s grip on his shirt tightened.
“And even then, the odds of anything actually happening to this plane are about one in eleven million. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning twice in the same year than be involved in a fatal plane crash.”
“Diwa.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you doing this on purpose?”
Diwa pressed his mouth to the top of Colin’s head and didn’t answer.
Chapter Thirty-One
Theshower had a rainwater head. Colin stood under it with his arms at his sides and let the water hit his face, because he’d run out of ways to process the fact that he was having a shower on an aeroplane. The cubicle was bigger than his entire bathroom in Barking, the tiles heated beneath his feet. There was a bench, and a row of dark glass bottles along a recessed shelf.
Diwa was behind him, crowded into the cubicle because he’d followed Colin in on the pretext of showing him how the temperature dial worked. His chest was warm against Colin’s back, the water streaming down both of them, and his hands were moving across Colin’s shoulders in slow, deliberate circles, working in some product that bore no resemblance to anything Colin had ever pulled off a shelf.
“What’s in this, then?” Colin asked, because whatever Diwa was rubbing into his shoulders smelled like a forest after rain and felt like someone had liquefied money.
“Hinoki wood oil. Yuzu. Some kind of botanical extract.” Diwa’s thumbs pressed into the knots at the base of Colin’s neck. “It’s a Japanese brand that does a whole sensory line.”
“A sensory line.”
“Mm-hm.” Diwa’s hands slid down the length of Colin’s arms, lathering as they went, his palms fitting over the muscle of Colin’s forearms with a grip that turned the wash into something more purposeful. “How’s the water pressure?”
“Better than the shower at my flat.”
Diwa’s laugh was warm against the back of his neck. His soapy hands came round Colin’s ribs, one palm flattening against his stomach while the other traced lower, following the crease of his hip down to his inner thigh. Colin’s head tipped back against Diwa’s shoulder as the alpha’s slick fingers found his cock, already half-hard from the proximity of skin and heat and Diwa’s scent amplified by the steam.
The first few hours of the flight had been rough. Every bump of turbulence had sent Colin’s stomach into the back of his throat, his hand finding the armrest or Diwa’s sleeve or, during one pocket of air that dropped them what felt like six feet, the front of Diwa’s shirt in a fist. He’d eaten his way through the five-course dinner. The champagne had helped, and the films more so.
By the time Diwa had suggested the shower, Colin’s body had stopped bracing for catastrophe and settled into the luxury of the suite.
