Chapter Twenty-Five
The cottage had underfloor heating, which Colin’s feet registered before the rest of him had finished taking in the entrance hall.
The kitchen was open-plan, all pale wood and matte black fixtures, with a fridge the size of a wardrobe and an Aga.
Beyond it, a living space unfolded around a wood burner set into a wall of rough stone, flanked by two armchairs.
Colin ran his hand along the back of one and felt up the butter-soft upholstery.
His eyebrows, which had been climbing steadily since he came through the front door, went up another notch when he found the bedroom.
The bed was vast. Emperor-sized, at least, dressed in heavy white linen that slipped between his fingers like water, its thread count was so high.
Beside the bed, a low table held a ceramic tray arranged with small bottles in dark glass, unlabelled.
Colin picked one up, uncapped it, and sniffed.
The lube was sandalwood scented and slippery between his fingertips when he rubbed them together.
He set it down and moved through to the adjoining room.
The swing hung from a recessed steel beam in the ceiling.
It was made of matte black webbing and padded leather, and suspended at hip height.
It looked like a piece of Scandinavian sculpture.
Colin crossed the room, gripped the overhead straps, and tested the give.
It was satisfyingly solid, and the beam didn’t even creak under his weight.
He turned, sat in it, bounced once, shifted his weight side to side, and bounced again harder.
In the doorway, Diwa swallowed audibly.
“It’s not — I didn’t specifically request that.
” Diwa’s hand made a tight circular gesture at the swing, his neck flushing from the collar up.
“It’s part of the cabin’s standard amenities.
Everything in here comes with the booking.
I didn’t pick any of this out, it just…they set it up in advance. I could have it removed, if you want.”
Colin swung gently, his feet off the ground, and watched Diwa unravel.
“Right.” He stood, crossed back to the master bedroom, and laid his palm flat against Diwa’s chest. The alpha’s heartbeat was going at a fair clip under his hand. “Let’s go to bed, Diwa. No swing for us today.”
Diwa hovered at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets. “So…what do you think?”
Colin threw himself backwards onto the mattress. The memory foam caught him without a sound, swallowing his shoulders and hips in one slow give, and he lay there for a moment appreciating the ceiling beams before reaching down to unbutton his trousers.
“S’nice,” he said, and shimmied them off his hips.
? ? ?
Diwa fucked him slowly, with the curtains half-drawn and the afternoon light coming through in pale stripes across the bed.
He covered Colin’s body with his own, chest to spine, his weight settling over Colin in a way that should have triggered every alarm his nervous system had ever wired into him.
It didn’t. Diwa’s arms came round him, forearms braced on the mattress on either side of Colin’s ribs, and the circle of his arms; his bulk, and the steady press of his hips against Colin’s arse held Colin in place rather than pinned him.
His face was in the linen, breathing hard, and Diwa’s mouth pressed against the nape of his neck and stayed there.
Afterwards, Diwa made him eat.
He’d brought food from London in a cool bag that he unpacked onto the kitchen counter.
Tinapa, garlic rice in Tupperware, two packets of Tender Juicy hotdogs, a jar of achara, and four mangoes so ripe Colin could smell them from the bedroom doorway.
The hotdogs went into the pan, the rice into the microwave, and Colin sat at the kitchen island in Diwa’s T-shirt and his boxers and ate until his plate was clean.
“Walk?” Diwa asked afterwards, already lacing his trainers.
They took the path that looped behind the cottage and out through a gate into open moorland.
The ground was soft underfoot, heather and peat giving under Colin’s boots, and the air held the sharp mineral smell of recent rain.
Diwa walked beside him with his hand finding Colin’s lower back every few minutes, adjusting, checking, as though Colin were something fragile he’d been entrusted with carrying across uneven ground.
Colin’s thighs were wet. Diwa had stopped wearing condoms weeks ago, and the feel of being filled was something that Colin now craved.
He loved the feel of the alpha’s hips stuttering out of rhythm as he came, the hot pulse of his come warming him deep inside.
The way Diwa’s body went on instinct and kept pressing forward in slow grinding thrusts long after he’d finished, milking himself empty because something older than thought was telling him to fill and to breed.
Colin had lain under him and felt every pulse and thought yes.
Now, walking through the heather with Diwa’s spend leaking warm down the inside of his thigh, he watched two red deer pick their way across the ridge above them, and there was total quiet in his head.
They came back to the cottage as the light was going.
Colin’s calves ached from the peat-bog terrain, and his lower back was singing at him from the morning travels.
But his hips moved loose and easy, from being thoroughly fucked.
He sat on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots, which were a challenge to manage with his hands gone clumsy with tiredness.
The mattress gave under him when he lay back. He closed his eyes as the warm flush that had been sitting at the back of his neck since the walk home spread down through his chest.
He pulled his T-shirt off without sitting up, dragging it over his head and dropping it on the duvet beside him. Better. The linen prickled against his bare skin. His socks went next, peeled off and kicked towards the foot of the bed.
From the kitchen, Diwa’s voice drifted through, saying something about the kettle and asking whether Colin wanted Barry’s or the oolong, and Colin said “Barry’s” without opening his eyes.
He reached for the spare duvet folded at the foot of the bed and dragged it up alongside him.
The weight of it against his hip felt right, so he pulled it closer, bunching it against his side.
One of the pillows had ended up at the wrong angle, and he reached for it, tucking it in against his stomach without thinking about why.
His boxers were too warm. He shimmied them down his hips and added them to the growing pile of fabric beside him.
The duvet went over his legs, and the second pillow came across before he’d thought about it.
He reached for the throw that had been draped over the armchair by the window, pulled it onto the bed, and folded it into the space between the spare duvet and his back.
Diwa’s jumper was still tossed over the headboard from that morning.
Colin pulled it down and drew it in against his chest, pressing his nose into the collar where the warm green scent of the alpha’s skin was strongest.
The bed, by the time he was done with it, looked as though someone had emptied a wardrobe onto it and then burrowed in. Colin lay in the middle of it all, bare-skinned and flushed, with the jumper against his face and every available textile in the room arranged in a loose wall around his body.
Diwa found him like that.
He’d come in from the kitchen with the Barry’s in one hand and the oolong in the other, still talking, and stopped in the doorway.
His gaze moved across the bed, taking in the architecture of what Colin had built while he’d been gone.
Colin was naked inside all of it, flushed from throat to navel, his skin sheened with sweat that caught the low light from the bedside lamp.
“Oh,” Diwa said. “Colin. Is this…are you nesting?”
“I’m resting.”
“You’ve rearranged the entire bedroom. You’ve got my jumper. You’ve built a… Colin, this is a nest.”
“It’s a pile of blankets.”
“It’s a nest.” The mugs went down on the dresser. Diwa crossed the room slowly, stopping at the edge of the mattress. “Can I come in?”
Colin shifted the throw aside to make a gap, which was all the invitation Diwa needed. The mattress dipped as he climbed in, careful not to disturb the arrangement, and his hand settled on Colin’s waist.
“You’re burning up.” Diwa pressed his lips to Colin’s shoulder, and whatever temperature reading he’d been about to deliver dissolved into a slow exhale through his nose. The scent had hit him. Colin could tell by the way Diwa’s chest expanded to take in the smell of him.
Colin’s scent had been shifting for hours, the green-sap sharpness mellowing into something heavier, sweeter, dense enough that he could smell it on himself when he turned his head against the pillow. Diwa’s mouth stayed on his shoulder.
Diwa’s warm solid bulk against Colin’s back drew a moan out of Colin. The cotton of Diwa’s T-shirt chafed against Colin’s skin, so he reached back and got a fistful of the hem.
“Off,” he commanded.
Diwa pulled the shirt over his head and came back.
They were skin to skin now, the heat of his chest spreading across Colin’s back.
His joggers went next, shoved down and kicked to the foot of the bed, and then there was nothing between them.
Diwa’s cock was already half-hard, pressed against the cleft of Colin’s arse, and when Colin shifted back into it, Diwa’s breath caught.
“Tell me what you need.”
Colin reached back between them, closed around Diwa’s cock, and guided it between his thighs.
The slick that had been building since before he fell asleep was pooled warm in the crease of his groin, and Diwa slid through it with a low groan that vibrated against Colin’s spine.
His cock dragged along the wetness of Colin’s arsehole, the thick head catching against his opening before sliding past, and Colin’s fingers tightened on his own thigh.