Now Diwa’s hand worked him slowly. His thumb dragged across the head of Colin’s cock on every upstroke, smearing the soap and precome together until the slide of his palm was frictionless, and Colin’s hips rolled forward into his grip in shallow thrusts.
“Good?” Diwa murmured against his ear.
Colin’s answer was the hand that reached back and gripped Diwa’s thigh, fingers digging in, pulling the alpha’s hips flush against his arse. Diwa’s cock pressed into the cleft of him, thick and hard, and the heat of it against his slick-wet skin made Colin’s breath catch. Diwa didn’t push inside. He just held himself there, grinding against him while his hand kept its rhythm on Colin’s cock.
He came with his forehead against the wet tile and Diwa’s arm braced across his chest, the orgasm moving through him, leaving his thighs shaking and unable to stand under his own strength so that he had to lean his weight fully against the alpha behind him. Diwa held him through it, his mouth pressed to the junction of Colin’s neck and shoulder, both of them breathing hard under the warm spray of the water.
This was the reality of his life now. He was the kind of person who took a shower in a first class aeroplane suite, with an alpha who washed his hair, made him come, and held him upright afterwards like it was the most natural sequence of events in the world. This was a man who kept putting food on his plate before he’d finished what was already there.
He could never have envisioned this future for himself when he was a boy in a care home with two new-borns in plastic cots. For years he’d been scrubbing other people’s bathrooms at seven in the morning so his sons could have school shoes that fit. Just a few months ago he’d been lying awake in his flat, overheating, blaming the radiator, and dreading the onset of another unserviced heat…
He turned in Diwa’s arms. The water hit his back, and Diwa’s face was right there, wet and close, his dark eyes soft with affection. Colin put his hand on the side of Diwa’s face, his thumb against the cheekbone, and kissed him under the spray.
“Right,” he said, against Diwa’s mouth. “I could do with another glass of that champagne.”
? ? ?
Thefreshness from the aeroplane shower lasted about thirty minutes.
He’d stepped off the jet bridge feeling nearly human; showered, moisturised with whatever Diwa had rubbed into him, his hair still damp at the nape. The air-conditioned tunnel from the plane to the terminal had been fine. Passport control had been fine, partly because Diwa’s name on the booking had conjured a woman in a pressed uniform who’d escorted them past a queue of two hundred people and through a door marked DIPLOMATIC AND VIP.
Then the terminal doors opened, and the Philippines hit him in the face.
The heat was a physical thing. It didn’t build or creep into place; it landed on him as a wet wall of air that plastered his shirt to his back before he’d taken three steps. His lungs, used to the British weather, tried to process air that was closer to steam than oxygen, and came up short. The sweat arrived immediately and everywhere; under his arms, pooling at the base of his spine where Diwa’s hand had been resting since they’d cleared baggage claim.
By the time they were outside, the shower might as well have happened to someone else. His linen shirt was dark across the shoulders and sticking to his chest, and his hair had gone flat. The film of sweat on his palms made his grip on his carry-on handle slippery.
The arrivals area was a crush of bodies and trolleys. A horn blared, then another. The noise reminded Colin of Barking Road on a Saturday, except it was twenty times hotter, louder, and all the shouting was in a language he couldn’t follow.
He tightened his grip on his bag and stayed close to Diwa’s shoulder.
Then Diwa let out a loud yell. The sound came out of him with a force that jerked Colin sideways, because Diwa’s hand was still on his arm and had clamped down hard enough to bruise. “Kuya!”
Colin recognised the word: older brother.
Diwa was already pulling him forward through the crowd, his carry-on banging against his hip, navigating the crush the way only someone who’d grown up in it could. He stopped in front of an alpha who was taller than Diwa by several inches, broader across the shoulders, with the same jaw and the same dark eyes set in a face that was ten years further along.
Diwa let go of Colin’s arm and threw both of his around his brother’s neck. Lakan caught him, one hand clapping around the back of Diwa’s head. He said something in Tagalog that made Diwa pull back and grin so wide his dimples could have held rainwater. The woman beside Lakan, gorgeous and wearing a flowy pink sundress, got the same treatment, Diwa gathering her into a hug that lifted her onto her toes. Sonya, Colin’s brain supplied, from something Diwa had told him on the plane. His sister-in-law.
Diwa turned back to Colin with both hands outstretched, his face lit up, and pushed him forward like a man presenting a prize marrow at a village fête.
A hand closed around the strap of Colin’s carry-on and yanked.
Colin’s weight shifted, his grip locked, and his shoulder dropped to anchor the bag against his side. The strap bit intohis palm. He didn’t think about it; the years he’d spent on night buses and moving through dodgy council estates had wired the response in, and whoever was on the other end of the tug was going to need considerably more force than that.
“No no no —” Lakan’s laugh cut through the noise, warm and easy. He put his hand on Colin’s shoulder. “That’s Deng. He’s our driver. Please, please, give him your luggage. He’ll take care of it for you.”
Colin looked at the man attached to the other end of his carry-on. He was uniformed, in a short-sleeved button-down, smiling patiently at Colin, who released the strap.
Then Lakan pulled him in. The hug was comprehensive. Lakan had the wingspan for it, and he used every inch, wrapping Colin up with ease. He smelled of cologne and warm cotton, and his palm came up and pressed flat between Colin’s shoulder blades in a gesture so like Diwa’s that Colin’s chest went tight.
Lakan pulled back, held Colin at arm’s length, and looked him over with frank appraisal. His eyebrows drew together. “You are very sweaty,” he said, with genuine concern. “Very red.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. “I am.”
“We need to get you somewhere with air conditioning,” Lakan said, and his hand landed on Colin’s shoulder blade with the same easy pressure Diwa used, steering him through the crowd towards a black Mercedes SUV parked in the loading bay with its hazards on.
Lakan talked as they walked. His voice carried the same warm register as Diwa’s but sat lower, steadier, and he pitched it close to Colin’s ear to cut through the noise of the arrivals area. “So tonight is just immediate family. Mama, Papa, Mutya and her husband Jun, the kids. My wife Sonya you’ve just met.” He sidestepped a trolley without breaking stride. “Tomorrow is the cousins, which is…well. Tomorrow is a lot. Kuya Maki runs theschedule. He’ll have a printed itinerary, Colin, I’m warning you now. There’s going to be karaoke.”
