Chapter Thirty-Seven
Diwa was not brave enough to say I told you so to Colin Huxley.
He’d understood this about himself since the third week of their relationship, when he’d suggested Colin try a different brand of tea and received a look so flat and terminal that his survival instincts had filed the moment under never again and moved on.
So when Colin flinched getting out of bed, his shoulders pulling tight against the sheet as the linen dragged across his badly sunburned skin, Diwa kept his mouth shut.
When Colin hissed sitting down at breakfast, the wicker chair back pressing into the worst of the damage, Diwa said nothing.
When Colin stood under the outdoor shower with the water hitting his shoulders and made a sound that was technically a word but functionally a death rattle, Diwa fetched the aloe vera gel from the bathroom shelf and waited.
Colin sat on the edge of the bed with his back to Diwa, his shoulders glowing a shade of pink that would have suited a cocktail umbrella. The skin across his upper back had gone taut and shiny where the burn was deepest, the freckles he’d picked up over the last two days submerged under the flush.
Diwa squeezed a line of gel across his palm. It was cold, and when he pressed his hand flat between Colin’s shoulder blades, Colin’s spine went rigid.
“Cold.”
“It’s meant to be cold. That’s the point.
” Diwa worked the gel outward in slow circles, keeping his touch light where the skin was hottest. The flesh under his palms radiated heat like a pan left too long on a hob.
“The cooling sensation is the anti-inflammatory response. The polysaccharides in the aloe bind to the damaged skin cells and—”
“Diwa. Shut up.”
Diwa shut up. He kept his hands moving, spreading the gel across the width of Colin’s back in careful, even strokes, his thumbs tracking the edge of his shoulder blades where the burn gave way to paler skin that his shirt had covered.
Colin’s head dropped forward as the gel warmed and sank in, and Diwa leaned down and pressed his mouth to the side of Colin’s neck, just below his ear, where the skin was cool and untouched, smelling of soap and sleep.
Colin grunted. Diwa kissed him there again, slower, and went back to slathering him with the aloe.
He’d set big things in motion back in Manila, getting his team going on standing up a foundation for content moderation workers across the Global South, funded entirely from his own equity from Orthos Analytics, with his mother’s name on the advisory board and her network behind it.
It would cost him a significant chunk of his fortune, and he didn’t care.
He’d still be rich, and he’d still be with Colin, even if he lost $250 million.
Here, in their villa with its thatched roof and wooden shutters thrown wide to the morning, none of that could reach him. Here there was Colin, and aloe vera, and the need to make sure his omega’s shoulders didn’t peel too much.
Over the past two days, with nothing to do but eat and swim and take each other apart in the wide white bed, Diwa had watched the last of Colin’s tension unspool.
In Amanpulo he sprawled and ambled. He spent his days standing in the shallows with the water around his calves and looked at the horizon with no particular intention of doing anything.
He laughed more, too, a sound that arrived before Colin could catch it and came with a brightening of his whole face.
Diwa had heard it three times yesterday alone; twice at dinner, once in bed, and each time the pleasure of hearing it had hit him harder than the sex, which was saying something, because the sex on this island had been extraordinary.
Ryland had been right about his stats on vacation sex.
Colin’s hand came up and caught Diwa’s wrist where it rested on his shoulder. He didn’t pull it away. He just held it there, his rough fingers circling Diwa’s wrist, his thumb resting against his pulse point.
“You done?”
“Almost.” Diwa smoothed the last of the gel across the top of Colin’s left shoulder, where the burn was fiercest, and wiped his hands on the sheet. “You’re going to need another coat in a couple of hours. And you’re wearing a shirt today, Colin. One with long sleeves.”
“It’s thirty-five degrees.”
“And you’re the colour of a postbox. You’re wearing long sleeves.”
Colin turned his head just enough to look at Diwa over his shoulder. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m having coconut for breakfast again.”
“You can have twelve coconuts, Colin. You can have every coconut on this fucking island if that’s what you really want.”
The corner of Colin’s mouth lifted. He released Diwa’s wrist, stood up carefully to avoid pulling the skin across his back, and headed for the bathroom, his whole body broadcasting satisfaction he’d have denied under oath.
Diwa watched him go, wiped the aloe from his palms, and went to order the coconuts.
Breakfast came with a split coconut to drink, as promised, with papaya and eggs scrambled with tomatoes and spring onions. Colin cleared the plate, drank his coffee black, and wandered out onto the deck with his second coconut of the day while Diwa trailed after him with the sunscreen.
“Arms,” Diwa said.
“No.”
“Colin, your shoulders look like they’ve been sous-vided. Give me your arms.”
Colin held out one arm without turning around, the coconut still in his other hand, and let Diwa work the SPF 50 down from his shoulder to his wrist. He submitted to the other arm, to the back of his neck, and to the tops of his ears, which Diwa had learnt were a separate erogenous zone for the omega when rubbed with sufficient attention, because Colin’s head tipped sideways into his palm and his eyes went half-lidded.
“Right,” Colin said, pulling away before anything could develop. “Pool.”
Their pool sat behind the villa in a rectangle of pale stone, screened by palms on three sides and open on the fourth to a view of the sea beyond. The sunlight hit it square-on, turning the surface into a sheet of white glare that made Diwa squint.
Colin stripped on the pool deck, dropping his clothing in a pile on the nearest lounger without ceremony. His body was two-toned, the angry pink of his shoulders and upper back giving way to the pale skin. His cock hung soft between his thighs as he stood at the edge and looked down at the water.
Diwa got his own clothes off and slid in first, because Colin wouldn’t go in without him there. The water was blood-warm and came up to his chest. He held both hands out.
Colin sat on the edge, lowered himself in with a grip on the stone coping, and reached out to hold onto Diwa’s shoulders before his feet had touched the bottom.
They’d done this yesterday, and the day before.
Colin in the water was a specific version of his omega that Diwa had come to covet: his hands locked behind Diwa’s neck, his legs wrapping loosely around Diwa’s waist when the water got deep enough.
The buoyancy did something to him. Took the work out of his joints, and kept him from bracing against the world.
Diwa walked them towards the centre of the pool, Colin’s thighs tightening around his hips as the water rose. Colin’s forehead fitted against the side of his neck, and his breath came warm against Diwa’s collarbone.
“Good?”
“Mm.”
They floated. Colin’s grip on his shoulders loosened as the water took his weight, his hips drifting forward until their cocks pressed together beneath the surface, both of them already half-hard from proximity alone.
Then there was the warm water shifting against them, and the laziness of a morning that demanded nothing more of them than to enjoy it.
Colin rolled his hips. The movement was slow, unhurried, his cock sliding against Diwa’s in the glide of the water, and Diwa’s hands curled around the backs of his thighs and pulled him closer.
Colin’s ankles crossed behind the small of Diwa’s back.
The angle pressed them flush together, and the next roll of Colin’s hips was deliberate, grinding, the head of his cock dragging along the underside of Diwa’s with a pressure that made Diwa’s fingers dig into his thighs.
The water moved around them in small lapping shifts.
Colin’s breathing had changed against his neck, gone shallow and focused, his hips finding a rhythm that was all instinct.
Diwa wrapped one hand around both of them where they pressed together, the water making his grip loose and slippery, and Colin’s mouth opened against his throat.
It didn’t take long. Diwa came first, his hips stuttering, and felt Colin follow a few strokes later with a shudder that ran through his whole frame as his small teeth bit down into the muscle of Diwa’s shoulder.
Colin went boneless against him. His forehead rested heavy against Diwa’s neck, his legs still hooked loosely around Diwa’s waist. The water held them both. Diwa manoeuvred them slowly towards the shallow end, one hand cupping the back of Colin’s head.
“All right,” Diwa murmured. His free hand skimmed over Colin’s spine, fingertips skating across the border between his sunburnt skin and the untouched.
Colin made a sound of assent. His body was loose in a way that Diwa took as a sign of his success as an alpha. He let Diwa hold him against the pool wall, let Diwa’s thumb trace the shell of his ear, and let himself be kissed on the forehead and the bridge of his nose.
Diwa looked at him. His omega, naked, flushed, and heavy-limbed in the shallows, his face gone soft and satisfied.
“I love seeing you like this,” Diwa said. “When you’re not all tired from work.”
The change that those words brought in Colin was immediate. His shoulders pulled back, and his hands flattened and pushed Diwa away. He unlocked his ankles from behind Diwa’s back and settled his footing on the pool floor, immediately putting six feet of warm water between them.
“What do you mean by that, Diwa?”