Chapter Sixteen
A note before this one: Colin discloses to Diwa what happened to him as a child. The conversation isn’t graphic, but it is a hard one.
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Fooling around with Diwa made Colin feel twenty years younger and eight hundred per cent more reckless than any middle-aged, andropausal male omega had a right to feel.
Not that Colin had a strong frame of reference.
His sexual history prior to Diwa could be written on the back of a till receipt with room to spare for the shopping list. But the evidence that he was losing control over this alpha was mounting; in the looseness of his limbs when Diwa’s hands were on him, and in the way his own hands had started reaching for him without Colin’s conscious permission.
It was good. It was so good that Colin hadn’t thought very far past it; the way Diwa’s mouth opened against his like he was starving for a taste of Colin, or the way his hand had learnt the exact grip and rhythm on his cock that made Colin’s breath come apart.
He was in Diwa’s bed again, wearing one of Diwa’s T-shirts.
He had a perfectly good shirt of his own folded in his holdall.
He’d reached for it, caught a whiff of Diwa’s on the back of the chair, and that had been that.
Now the cotton sat too wide across his shoulders, and the scent of it was making his thoughts slow and useless.
Diwa’s mouth was on his neck, just below his ear, and Diwa’s hand was sliding down Colin’s stomach.
Colin’s hips lifted into the touch instinctively.
His cock was hard and straining against the cotton of his boxers, and every nerve in his body was tuned to the trajectory of Diwa’s fingers as they dragged lower, past his waistband and the jut of his hip bone.
Then Diwa’s hand kept going. Past his cock, past the crease of his thigh, and down between his legs to cup the curve of his arse, one fingertip tracing a slow, deliberate line along the cleft.
Colin’s body went still. Diwa’s touch didn’t immediately trigger the old panic.
His fingers were light and warm through the cotton, and his mouth was still skimming, soft and aimless, against Colin’s jaw.
There was no threat in Diwa’s touch. Colin knew that.
His nervous system knew it too, which was its own small miracle.
But the heat that had been building behind his navel stuttered and cooled.
Diwa’s finger pressed teasingly against his hole through the fabric, and Colin shifted his hips sideways on the mattress, putting three inches of Egyptian cotton between Diwa’s hand and anything it might have been planning.
Diwa blinked at him. His eyes were soft and half-focused. His hand stayed where Colin had left it, resting on the sheet between them. He let Colin have his distance.
The ceiling fan turned overhead. Colin lay on his side with his pulse ticking in his throat and waited for the questions to come, or for Diwa to make another play for it. He could see the alpha’s erection tenting the front of his boxers, obvious and unaddressed.
Diwa smiled at him. His hand shifted across the sheet between them and stopped halfway in a clear invitation.
Colin let his pinkie find Diwa’s and curl around it.
The words had been sitting in his chest for days now. Every time they’d been in this bed together, every time Diwa’s hands had found him and Colin’s body had responded with a hunger that still caught him off guard, the words had been right there, nudging at the back of his teeth.
He fixed his gaze on Diwa’s collarbone. It fixed on his favourite spot; the hollow at the base of his throat, where the skin was smooth and golden brown. “I’ve never had sex, Diwa.”
Diwa huffed out a laugh. “You’ve had twin boys, Colin. Unless you’ve somehow managed immaculate conception—” The rest of the alpha’s sentence trailed off, as though someone had pressed a thumb against his windpipe to choke him off. The colour left Diwa’s face.
If this was going to work, and Colin wanted it to work more than he’d wanted anything in a long time, then Diwa needed to know all of it.
“Before you, the only experience I’ve had of someone else’s hands on me is one I didn’t choose. In a council flat stairwell.”
The silence that followed was the loudest thing he’d ever sat inside. Diwa’s hand came across and lifted Colin’s to his mouth. His lips pressed against Colin’s knuckles, warm and dry, and held there.
“Okay,” Diwa said, against his skin.
Colin’s jaw ached. He hadn’t realised how tightly he’d been clenching it.
“What do you need from me, Colin? And when I ask you this, I need you to know that I’m not asking with the end goal of us having sex.” Diwa looked at him earnestly. “I just want to know how to make you feel safe. That’s it.”
“I don’t know,” Colin said. The ceiling fan turned above them, casting its slow shadow across the bed.
“It’s a lot to ask of you, Diwa. I’m forty.
I’m starting andropause, and you’re twenty-eight.
My heats are going to get worse before they stop.
I’ve got a cabinet full of suppressants that aren’t doing what they used to.
” He let the list of his faults sit there, plain and unadorned. “So there’s that.”
Diwa moved slowly and curled himself against Colin’s side. His forehead rested against the point of Colin’s shoulder. His arm came across Colin’s waist and rested there, light enough that Colin could have shrugged it off without effort, if he’d wanted to.
Colin didn’t shrug it off.
“I might panic,” Colin went on. “I might be fine, and then I might not be, and I won’t always be able to tell you which one’s coming.
” His throat moved around the next part.
“So I need you to know that before you put your hands on me again. Because I won’t have you blindsided by it.
I mean, if you even want to. After hearing all that. ”
Colin waited for the let down. He breathed in deeply, taking in one last lungful of Diwa before the alpha started to untangle himself from him. He was doing the maths on a forty-year-old omega with dodgy knees, and years of damage from manual work he couldn’t always keep the lid on.
The sums didn’t come out right. They couldn’t.
Colin had known it since the first morning he’d woken up on the sofa with Diwa’s arm across him, in a house that cost more than Colin would earn in five lifetimes.
A warm body, a decent hand with a drill, and a knack for keeping his mouth shut when other people needed the quiet. Those were his only selling points.
Diwa twined his fingers through Colin’s and settled more firmly against him.
“I snore,” Diwa said. “But you know that already, and the way you complain about it, I think it might actually become a dealbreaker at some point. I’ve told you about the nose strip that helps it a bit, and you won’t let me wear it because you say it makes me look like a rugby player.
But we can explore that again if it really becomes unbearable for you. ”
“My ego is catastrophically linked to my business. It’s unhealthy.
I know it’s unhealthy. I can work seven days a week for months at a stretch, and when I’m in a coding jag or I’ve latched onto a new project, I’m gone, Colin.
Emotionally unavailable doesn’t begin to cover it.
Ezra once had to physically take my laptop out of my hands because I hadn’t eaten in thirty-six hours and I was crying at a spreadsheet because the numbers had started moving around.
I was looking at a running ten-thousand-dollar monthly line item just for cold-pressed juice for the office, Colin.
Ten thousand dollars. On juice. I approved that. ”
Colin’s mouth twitched.
“I’m telling you all of this because you’ve just told me the hardest thing you’ve ever had to say to another person, and I’m hearing you, Colin.
I hear you.” Diwa’s grip tightened. “And I’m grateful you told me, because I’m choosing to take that as a sign that you’re not planning to run.
Which means I need to work a lot harder on getting you to understand that you’re a fucking catch.
” His free hand came up and touched the silver at Colin’s temple, tracing the streak back from his hairline with his fingertip.
“You’ve got this fucking incredible thing right here, which I realise is a weird thing to fixate on, but I’ve been thinking about it since the first time you showed up at my house and told me to flip my own breaker.
And I have never, in my entire life, met anyone who can terrify me and turn me on with a single look. ”
Colin’s face went hot. He fixed his gaze on the ceiling because looking at Diwa while he said such flattering things was more than he could reasonably be expected to manage right then.
“You’re one of the smartest people I know.
And I went to Stanford and worked in the AI industry, Colin, so that’s a competitive field.
” His finger was still tracing the silver at Colin’s temple.
“You call things exactly as they are. No bullshit, no dressing it up. You told me my smoothie was disgusting to my face, in my own kitchen, on the first day we met, and I’ve been obsessed with you ever since.
” His voice dropped. “And underneath all the sarcasm and the death stares, you’re the most loving person I’ve ever been around.
The way you talk about your boys. The way you are with me, even when I’m being unbearable.
No matter what a fucking ass I am, you put the kettle on and you sit with me and you don’t make me feel like a lost cause.
So no, Colin. You’re not going to scare me away with your fake list of shortcomings. ”
“You’re a fucking billionaire, Diwa,” Colin pointed out.
Diwa huffed a laugh against his hair. “Yeah. And some people would consider that a pretty big indication of a flaw in my character, Colin.” Diwa shifted beside him, pressing closer, his leg hooking over Colin’s shin.
“Like I said. I’m obsessive about things.
I latch on, and I’m a total stage-ten clinger.
” His mouth kissed the curve of Colin’s shoulder through the T-shirt.
“You’re not going to put me off. I’ve been all in since the light bulb, and nothing you’ve told me tonight changes that. ”
His arm tightened around Colin’s middle. “Also, your andropause makes you run really hot, and my bed has never been warmer. So there are practical considerations to my commitment.”
Colin let Diwa pull him closer. The alpha’s chin tucked over the top of his head, his breathing already settling into the slower rhythm that meant he was halfway to sleep.
“You’re doing that clingy thing right now,” Colin told him.
“Mm-hm.”
“Just so you know. I’m not complaining.”
Diwa’s arm tightened. His nose pressed into Colin’s hair, and a long, contented breath moved warm across his scalp.
Colin lay still and let him cling on.