Colin shifted on the bed and the heat rose up the inside of his thighs.
No.
He set his jaw and stared at the ceiling, at the patch where the paint had bubbled the winter the upstairs flat’s pipe had burst, and he thought about the council’s repair line and the hold music he’d had to listen to for an hour and a half. The woman on the other end kept sayingbear with mein the same long-suffering tone of every other council worker Colin had ever come across.
His cock twitched against the cotton of his pants.
Colin closed his eyes. Behind them, instead of the ceiling, was Diwa de la Vega’s dimpled smile. The heat in his stomach curled tighter. Banked like a fire someone had been feeding all evening without him noticing.
He pressed his thighs together. The pressure of his own skin against his own skin sent a hot pulse through him that travelled straight to his cock. He squeezed harder, and that only madethings worse. His thighs were slick already, sliding against each other.
He bit down on his bottom lip and sat up.
His chest of drawers stood against the wall opposite the bed. Colin crossed the floorboards. The bottom drawer stuck on the runner the way it always did, so he had to lift it to get it past the warp. Inside, under a folded jumper he didn’t wear, was a cardboard box.
It contained the vibrator that had been a prescription from his omega therapist. She had handed it over casually at the end of a session along with a leaflet about pelvic floor exercises.
Colin took it out now. It sat in his palm, lighter than it looked, a pale lavender silicone shot through with tiny flecks of glitter that caught the streetlight coming through the window. The shaft was slim, barely thicker than two of his fingers. The tip tapered to something rounded and soft, and there was nothing on it that suggested an alpha’s anatomy. It had no flare or ridge, and looked nothing like a cock.
That had been the whole point.
He’d spent the better part of a session holding it, at Aileen’s careful suggestion. Turning it over in his lap. Letting the silicone warm to his skin. She’d shown him the button on the base, and he’d switched it on at the lowest setting, and the small persistent buzz had vibrated up his wrist while she talked him through what it might feel like to use, and what it might feel like not to want to.
Some omegas never reach for it,she’d said.Some omegas reach for it every heat. Both scenarios are fine. The point is that you have it.
Colin closed his fingers round it now, and the silicone gave under his grip the way Aileen had said it would.
He padded back to the bed. Halfway there he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and pushed them downhis thighs, stepping out of them without breaking his stride. His skin felt too tight. The air through the cracked window was cooler than the rest of the flat, and he could feel it on the slick already cooling on the inside of his legs.
The bed was still warm where he’d been lying. Colin lay down on his back, the vibrator in one hand, and listened to the radiator clank. Somewhere two flats over, someone’s telly was on too loud.
He thumbed the button on the base. The buzz started up against his palm, low and steady.
He’d reached for it twice in the year since she’d given it to him. Both times had felt clinical, like flossing. He’d lain on his side with the lights on and taken his time, easing it in slow. Afterwards he’d washed it, put it back in the box, and gone to sleep.
Tonight his thighs were already wet. He spread his legs against the warm sheet and felt the slick come coursing down his thigh. The smell of his own arousal rose off him, faintly sweet. He breathed through his nose and let it settle.
He thumbed the button down a notch. The buzz softened. Bringing the silicone to the inside of his thigh first, he ran it up the slick there. The feel of the vibration against his sensitised skin sent a low pulse through his belly, and his eyes shut.
The toy moved higher and circled his arse, not pushing in yet, just letting the buzz do its work. His hips lifted off the sheet and he drew a breath in through his teeth.
The smell of Diwa came back to him. It surfaced out of Colin’s own memory, warm, and clean, like someone who’d spent the morning out in the sun. His body responded before his head caught up. A fresh wash of slick spilled out of him, and his cock, half-hard against his belly, twitched and rose the rest of the way.
Colin’s eyes opened.
He looked at the bubbled patch of paint on the ceiling and listened as the radiator clanked again. He pressed the toy a little harder against himself and tried to bring himself back to the room, to the scent of his own slick, to the buzzing of the vibrator, to the simple physical fact of his body wanting to be touched. He breathed in evenly through his nose.
The smell of Diwa rolled back over him on the inhale.
His teeth clenched. Underneath him, his hips were trying to move on their own, working the toy in slow circles where he was wet. His free hand had fisted in the sheet. The heat in his belly was waiting on him.
He’d come, he realised. It would only take another minute. He’d get himself off, and the alpha he’d spent forty minutes with that morning would be the thing that did it. Tomorrow he’d wake up and he’d know.
That was a problem, because the toy wasn’t forthat.
The toy had been given to him with the idea that his body could be a place he explored on his own, not a place anyone else got into, even if it was only through the imaginings in his head.
He thumbed the button off.
