? ? ?
Diwa’sbedroom was on the second floor, at the back of the house overlooking the garden. Colin stood in the doorway while Diwa moved round the room turning on lamps and pulling the curtains shut with more fuss than the task required. The bed was a wide low platform in dark wood, made up in white linen, and there were too many pillows on it for any reasonable person. Diwa threw three of them onto the floor without explanation.
“Bathroom’s through there.” Diwa nodded at the en-suite. “Get the spare toothbrush from the cabinet. Then there’s towels on the rail. Use whatever you want.”
Colin went through. Diwa heard the tap run, and the sound of brushing teeth. He came back out in the T-shirt Diwa had left folded on the edge of the bathtub for him. It was an old Stanford one that was a faded maroon from too many washings over the years. It was too big in the shoulders for Colin, and the hem came down past his hips and down his thighs.
Colin tugged at the hem. “I look a right state.”
He didn’t at all. Without the work jacket and the bag, Colin was just…Colin. With his bare legs, bare feet on the carpet, and his hair still mussed from pulling the T-shirt over his head. He looked rumpled and soft, and everything in Diwa’s hindbrain narrowed to the following imperatives: keep this man warm, keep him fed, keep him here with you.
“It suits you,” Diwa said.
“It’s down to my knees.”
“Yeah.”
Diwa propped himself up against the headboard with the duvet pulled to his waist. He’d put on a clean T-shirt and his sleep shorts, and had been rearranging the pillows for Colin while he’d been in the bathroom. “Which side of the bed do you want?” Diwa asked.
“I’ll take the one by the door.”
Diwa shifted across without being asked, and Colin pulled the duvet back and sat on the edge of the mattress. He stayed there for a moment, feet on the carpet, hands in his lap. Then he swung his legs up and lay down on his back like he was submitting himself to an MRI.
He reached across and found the hem of the Stanford T-shirt where it had rucked up above Colin’s knee. He smoothed it down over his thigh, then he turned the bedside lamp down to its lowest setting. The room went amber. Through the curtains, Ledbury Road was quiet, the occasional sweep of headlights tracking across the ceiling.
They lay side by side, a foot of white linen between them.
“You all right?” Diwa kept his voice low.
“Mm.”
“You can have more of the duvet. I run hot. I’m basically a space heater.” He pushed a gathered handful of it towards Colin’s side. “There’s a fan on the nightstand if you need it. And the window opens from the top, if you want air. The handle’s the brass one on the left. It’s stiff, but if you give it a proper —”
“Diwa.”
“Yeah.”
“Shut up.”
Diwa shut up. Beside him, Colin’s breathing hadn’t settled. Diwa rolled onto his side, facing Colin, and put his hand on the mattress between them, palm up. He didn’t reach for him. He just left it there, the way you’d leave a door open. A minute passed, then Colin’s hand moved across the sheet, and found Diwa’s.
Chapter Fourteen
Colinwoke up warm, with a body pressed against his own. At some point in the night he’d crossed the foot of white linen between him and Diwa, migrating across the mattress until his chest was flush against Diwa’s spine and his knees were tucked up behind Diwa’s thighs. His hand moved up under the hem of Diwa’s T-shirt and was resting flat against his stomach, palm to warm skin. The Stanford shirt Colin was wearing had ridden up past his hips and the duvet was pooled somewhere around their calves.
His cock was hard enough that he could feel his own pulse in it.
Diwa was still asleep. His breathing came in long, slow draws. Every few seconds he made a small snuffling noise through his nose. Colin pressed his mouth against the back of Diwa’s shoulder to keep from smiling, and breathed him in. The warm green smell of the alpha’s skin was everywhere, even on Colin’s own skin where he’d spent the night pressed up against him.
He let his thumb move, very slowly, against the skin of Diwa’s stomach. The muscle underneath was firm and smooth. He drew his hand sideways, following the dip of Diwa’s waist, and brought it down along his forearm where it lay on the mattress in front of him. The skin there was golden brown, quite a few shades deeper than Colin’s own, and fine dark hair lay flat along the muscle. Colin ran his fingers down the length of it, from elbow to wrist, and watched the hair rise under his touch.
Diwa’s breathing changed. His body shifted against Colin’s, a slow stretch that started in his shoulders and worked down through his spine. His head turned on the pillow, his eyes rested on Colin’s face, and the dimples arrived before he’d even finished waking up.
His smile drove the breath clean out of Colin’s chest.
“Morning,” Diwa said, rough-voiced and warm, and his hand rested against Colin’s thigh under the rucked-up hem of the Stanford shirt. It didn’t go higher. His palm settled against Colin’s bare skin and smoothed the fabric down over his leg in an absentminded stroke, then smoothed it down again. “What’ve you got on today?”
“Mrs Montford’s bathroom grout at eleven. Then a latch to fix up in Bermondsey.”
