Chapter Twenty-Six
Diwa woke with his teeth clenched, and his first conscious thought was that something had gone wrong with the cottage heating.
The bedroom was sweltering, the air pressing in against his skin on all sides.
His second thought arrived half a beat later and overrode the first entirely, because the smell hit him like a door swinging open into his face.
Colin’s scent had changed.
The green-sap sweetness that Diwa had been savouring for months, the one he’d chased into the collar of Colin’s cardigan on lonely weekday evenings, had thickened overnight into something that bypassed his brain entirely and landed in his chest. It was dense, and dark.
The overripe mango note he’d caught in the conservatory weeks ago, but concentrated now to a pitch that made his nostrils flare and his pulse kick hard against the base of his throat.
His cock was rigid in response, and every muscle in his body was pulled taut towards the man beside him.
They were still curled inside the nest. Colin’s back was curved towards Diwa, one arm clutching the bunched duvet against his chest. The fine hairs at his nape were damp, and the sheet beneath him was soaked through in a spreading patch that Diwa could feel under his own hip where their bodies overlapped.
Colin’s breathing came in short, shallow pulls.
Diwa’s hand came up to Colin’s shoulder. The skin under his palm was furnace-hot and slick with sweat, and the brief contact drew a full-body shudder out of Colin.
“Colin.” He kept his voice low. “I’m here.”
Colin’s hand came up and closed around his wrist. When he turned his head on the pillow, his eyes were open, but their usual sharp focus had softened at the edges.
“Morning,” Colin said. His voice was rough, stripped back.
“How far along are you?”
“Getting there.” Colin drew Diwa’s hand down from his shoulder, across his ribs, and pressed it flat against his stomach. The muscle underneath was trembling in fine, continuous waves. “Don’t make a fuss.”
“I’m not making a fuss.”
“You’re about to. I can hear you thinking.” Colin shifted his hips, and the wet sound of his body moving against the soaked linen carried in the quiet room. His thighs were glazed with slick. “Just…come here.”
Diwa moved behind him. His chest came to rest against Colin’s spine, his arm went around Colin’s ribs, and the omega’s scent closed over him until his vision narrowed to the back of Colin’s neck.
He pressed his mouth there and breathed in.
A voice in the back of his brain that was older than reason was telling him to bite down to stake his claim.
Colin reached back between them, closed around Diwa’s cock, and guided him in without preamble. The slide into him was effortless, Colin’s body was open, pulling him deeper with every clenching pulse. Diwa’s forehead dropped against Colin’s shoulder as the breath left him in one hard exhale.
His arm tightened around Colin’s chest, and he moved.
Colin’s body dictated the pace, his hips pressing back into each thrust, one hand white-knuckled around Diwa’s wrist, the other braced against the headboard.
They were urgent and graceless in their lovemaking, Colin’s breath leaving him in keening cries.
When Colin came, Diwa followed him over with his teeth sunk into his own lip and his knot already swelling. Colin pushed back onto his cock, grinding down until they were locked together, and Diwa held him through the pulsing aftermath with his face pressed into Colin’s hair.
Colin’s breathing slowed. His fingers loosened around Diwa’s wrist, and Diwa felt the moment the first wave of his heat released him, responding to the pheromones in his alpha’s come. There was a softening throughout his whole body, the tension running out of his shoulders.
“Water,” Colin said.
Diwa kissed the back of his neck. “Give me a minute. We’re still locked.”
“I know that. I can feel your cock in me, Diwa. I’m telling you what I’ll need when you can move.”
“Water. Got it. Anything else?”
“Toast. And stop grinning into my neck, I can feel that too.”
Diwa grinned harder, pressed his mouth to the soft skin of Colin’s neck, and waited for his body to let him go.
The knot released twenty minutes later, and Diwa slid out carefully, kissed Colin’s shoulder, and went to make his omega toast.
He brought it back with water, and a tea towel.
Colin ate two slices without sitting up, leaving crumbs in the sheets.
Diwa wiped his face and neck with the tea towel while Colin chewed, and Colin let him do it without comment, which was how Diwa knew the heat was still building.
The Colin who existed outside of this room would have taken the towel out of his hand and told him he wasn’t an infant.
By noon, Colin stopped using his words to communicate. The heat had taken over, narrowing his world to his alpha, and the next thing his body needed.
Colin’s hands replaced his speech. A fist in Diwa’s T-shirt pulled him down, and his fingers pressed into his hip to angle him.
Diwa learnt the new vocabulary in minutes: the heel of Colin’s hand against his shoulder meant harder; Colin’s thumb tracing his jaw meant slow down; the arch of his spine, his pelvis lifting off the mattress, meant more, more, more.
They moved through the cottage in stages.
They fucked on the kitchen counter, where Colin braced himself on his forearms while Diwa pressed into him from behind, one hand splayed over his stomach.
The living room floor, the sheepskin rug bunched under Colin’s knees, Diwa flat on his back beneath him while Colin rode him with his head thrown back and his hands gripping Diwa’s wrists against the floorboards.
The armchair by the wood burner, where Colin straddled his lap and ground down onto him, face buried in Diwa’s neck.
Each time, Diwa followed his omega’s lead.
In the late afternoon, Colin pulled him through to the adjoining room.
The swing’s matte black webbing and padded leather caught the last of the daylight.
Colin climbed into it without hesitation, his thighs settling into the stirrups, his hands gripping the suspension straps above his head.
The webbing took his weight and held him at exactly the right height, his arse at the edge of the seat, his legs spread wide.
Diwa stepped between his knees and manoeuvred the swing into position.
Colin looked wrecked. Slick ran from his hole down the backs of his thighs and dripped from the swing’s leather seat onto the floorboards beneath.
His cock lay hard and flushed against his stomach, leaking onto the trail of hair below his navel.
Sweat sheened his collarbones and the bracket of his ribs.
His head had tipped back against the headrest, and he watched Diwa through half-open eyes that burned for him.
He’d never had anything like this offered to him in his life.
Diwa gripped the straps, lined himself up, and pushed into the omega.
The swing gave, then returned, driving Colin back onto him, and Colin’s mouth fell open on a moan.
Diwa pulled back and the swing carried Colin away from him.
He drove forward and the swing brought Colin crashing back, taking him to the root.
The momentum did half the work, gravity and physics conspiring to slam them together with a force that neither of them could have managed on a flat surface.
Colin’s grip on the overhead straps went white-knuckled.
His thighs clamped around Diwa’s hips, his heels digging into the small of Diwa’s back, pulling him deeper with each swing.
The wet slap of skin on skin filled the room, obscene and rhythmic, and Colin’s head dropped forward until his forehead pressed against Diwa’s, his breath coming in hot bursts against Diwa’s mouth.
It took three more thrusts. Colin’s back bowed in the swing, every muscle in him going rigid at once, and he came hard between them. Slick flooded out of him around Diwa’s cock in a hot wet rush. Diwa’s hips stuttered and he was gone, emptying into Colin.
The swing rocked between them as they caught their breath, creaking on its beam.
Colin’s hands loosened on the straps. His head dropped sideways against Diwa’s shoulder, and his breathing slowed from ragged to deep and settled within seconds. Diwa gathered him up, lifting him out of the swing and carrying him back through to the bedroom, where the nest was waiting for them.
He laid Colin down in the wreckage of soft things, climbed in beside him, and pulled the duvet over both of them. Colin’s hand found his chest, and within a minute his breathing had evened out into sleep. Diwa lay in the dark and listened to his omega breathe.
He slept in snatches. Colin’s hand would find him in the dark, and Diwa would surface from whatever shallow rest he’d managed and be ready.
His body had stopped distinguishing between sleep and waking somewhere around the second day.
There was only Colin, and the intervals between Colin’s need for him.
Nothing in Diwa’s life had prepared him for this.
He’d had sex with plenty of omegas, but he’d never been inside a heat, never been the alpha an omega body was calling for.
Colin’s need came in waves that crashed without warning, pulling Diwa under before he’d finished catching his breath from the last time he surfaced.
His own instincts answered in kind, something deep and animal surging up to meet the omega’s demand.
He stopped trying to think his way through it and let his body do what it had been built for.
The swing became Colin’s preference by the second afternoon.
He loved having his weight suspended in the webbing, his legs wrapped around Diwa’s hips, nothing beneath him but air as Diwa drove into him.
He came harder in it than anywhere else, his whole body free to arch and clench without a surface pushing back.
The sounds he made on the swing would stay with Diwa for the rest of his natural life.
Between the waves, Colin went soft. He curled into Diwa’s chest with his face pressed against his collarbone and let himself be held, his fingers tracing idle patterns on Diwa’s skin.
Diwa’s brain went quiet during these stretches. The cycling through thoughts stopped, and everything narrowed down to three tasks: keeping his omega warm, fed and safe. He preferred these hours to the sex.
Colin started coming back to Diwa on the fourth morning. His eyes sharpened first, the soft-focus haze clearing until he was looking at Diwa rather than through him. Then the words returned, clipped and minimal.
“Tea.”
“On it.”
“Not the oolong.”
“You want the Barry’s. I know.”
The nest around them was wrecked. The sheets twisted into ropes, and the pillows flattened. Diwa’s jumper had migrated to the floor, and one of the throw cushions was in the en-suite for reasons neither of them could reconstruct.
On the fifth morning, Diwa woke to find Colin already awake beside him, lying on his back with his hands folded on his chest, looking up at the ceiling beams.
“Morning,” Diwa said.
“Morning.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been fucked raw for five days straight.”
Diwa’s eyebrows went up.
“In a good way,” Colin added.
“Aw.” Diwa’s mouth curved. “Do you need me to kiss the boo-boo better?”
“Yeah.” Colin shifted against the pillow. “I’ll show you where, after you bring me my tea.”
Diwa brought him tea and toast and sat on the edge of the mattress while Colin ate, propped up against the headboard. The light through the curtains was pale and grey, and rain tapped against the window.
Colin finished his toast, set the plate on the nightstand, and brushed his hands off on the duvet. He looked at Diwa for a long moment, his eyes steady and clear, and then shifted sideways until his shoulder was against Diwa’s arm.
“Thank you,” Colin said.
Diwa put his arm around him. Colin’s head pressed against the dip of his collarbone where it always ended up, and his breathing settled. Diwa pressed his mouth to the top of Colin’s head and stayed exactly where he was.