Chapter Thirty-One
The shower had a rainwater head. Colin stood under it with his arms at his sides and let the water hit his face, because he’d run out of ways to process the fact that he was having a shower on an aeroplane.
The cubicle was bigger than his entire bathroom in Barking, the tiles heated beneath his feet.
There was a bench, and a row of dark glass bottles along a recessed shelf.
Diwa was behind him, crowded into the cubicle because he’d followed Colin in on the pretext of showing him how the temperature dial worked.
His chest was warm against Colin’s back, the water streaming down both of them, and his hands were moving across Colin’s shoulders in slow, deliberate circles, working in some product that bore no resemblance to anything Colin had ever pulled off a shelf.
“What’s in this, then?” Colin asked, because whatever Diwa was rubbing into his shoulders smelled like a forest after rain and felt like someone had liquefied money.
“Hinoki wood oil. Yuzu. Some kind of botanical extract.” Diwa’s thumbs pressed into the knots at the base of Colin’s neck. “It’s a Japanese brand that does a whole sensory line.”
“A sensory line.”
“Mm-hm.” Diwa’s hands slid down the length of Colin’s arms, lathering as they went, his palms fitting over the muscle of Colin’s forearms with a grip that turned the wash into something more purposeful. “How’s the water pressure?”
“Better than the shower at my flat.”
Diwa’s laugh was warm against the back of his neck.
His soapy hands came round Colin’s ribs, one palm flattening against his stomach while the other traced lower, following the crease of his hip down to his inner thigh.
Colin’s head tipped back against Diwa’s shoulder as the alpha’s slick fingers found his cock, already half-hard from the proximity of skin and heat and Diwa’s scent amplified by the steam.
The first few hours of the flight had been rough.
Every bump of turbulence had sent Colin’s stomach into the back of his throat, his hand finding the armrest or Diwa’s sleeve or, during one pocket of air that dropped them what felt like six feet, the front of Diwa’s shirt in a fist. He’d eaten his way through the five-course dinner.
The champagne had helped, and the films more so.
By the time Diwa had suggested the shower, Colin’s body had stopped bracing for catastrophe and settled into the luxury of the suite.
Now Diwa’s hand worked him slowly. His thumb dragged across the head of Colin’s cock on every upstroke, smearing the soap and precome together until the slide of his palm was frictionless, and Colin’s hips rolled forward into his grip in shallow thrusts.
“Good?” Diwa murmured against his ear.
Colin’s answer was the hand that reached back and gripped Diwa’s thigh, fingers digging in, pulling the alpha’s hips flush against his arse.
Diwa’s cock pressed into the cleft of him, thick and hard, and the heat of it against his slick-wet skin made Colin’s breath catch.
Diwa didn’t push inside. He just held himself there, grinding against him while his hand kept its rhythm on Colin’s cock.
He came with his forehead against the wet tile and Diwa’s arm braced across his chest, the orgasm moving through him, leaving his thighs shaking and unable to stand under his own strength so that he had to lean his weight fully against the alpha behind him.
Diwa held him through it, his mouth pressed to the junction of Colin’s neck and shoulder, both of them breathing hard under the warm spray of the water.
This was the reality of his life now. He was the kind of person who took a shower in a first class aeroplane suite, with an alpha who washed his hair, made him come, and held him upright afterwards like it was the most natural sequence of events in the world.
This was a man who kept putting food on his plate before he’d finished what was already there.
He could never have envisioned this future for himself when he was a boy in a care home with two new-borns in plastic cots.
For years he’d been scrubbing other people’s bathrooms at seven in the morning so his sons could have school shoes that fit.
Just a few months ago he’d been lying awake in his flat, overheating, blaming the radiator, and dreading the onset of another unserviced heat…
He turned in Diwa’s arms. The water hit his back, and Diwa’s face was right there, wet and close, his dark eyes soft with affection. Colin put his hand on the side of Diwa’s face, his thumb against the cheekbone, and kissed him under the spray.
“Right,” he said, against Diwa’s mouth. “I could do with another glass of that champagne.”
? ? ?
The freshness from the aeroplane shower lasted about thirty minutes.
He’d stepped off the jet bridge feeling nearly human; showered, moisturised with whatever Diwa had rubbed into him, his hair still damp at the nape.
The air-conditioned tunnel from the plane to the terminal had been fine.
Passport control had been fine, partly because Diwa’s name on the booking had conjured a woman in a pressed uniform who’d escorted them past a queue of two hundred people and through a door marked DIPLOMATIC AND VIP.
Then the terminal doors opened, and the Philippines hit him in the face.
The heat was a physical thing. It didn’t build or creep into place; it landed on him as a wet wall of air that plastered his shirt to his back before he’d taken three steps.
His lungs, used to the British weather, tried to process air that was closer to steam than oxygen, and came up short.
The sweat arrived immediately and everywhere; under his arms, pooling at the base of his spine where Diwa’s hand had been resting since they’d cleared baggage claim.
By the time they were outside, the shower might as well have happened to someone else. His linen shirt was dark across the shoulders and sticking to his chest, and his hair had gone flat. The film of sweat on his palms made his grip on his carry-on handle slippery.
The arrivals area was a crush of bodies and trolleys. A horn blared, then another. The noise reminded Colin of Barking Road on a Saturday, except it was twenty times hotter, louder, and all the shouting was in a language he couldn’t follow.
He tightened his grip on his bag and stayed close to Diwa’s shoulder.
Then Diwa let out a loud yell. The sound came out of him with a force that jerked Colin sideways, because Diwa’s hand was still on his arm and had clamped down hard enough to bruise. “Kuya!”
Colin recognised the word: older brother.
Diwa was already pulling him forward through the crowd, his carry-on banging against his hip, navigating the crush the way only someone who’d grown up in it could.
He stopped in front of an alpha who was taller than Diwa by several inches, broader across the shoulders, with the same jaw and the same dark eyes set in a face that was ten years further along.
Diwa let go of Colin’s arm and threw both of his around his brother’s neck.
Lakan caught him, one hand clapping around the back of Diwa’s head.
He said something in Tagalog that made Diwa pull back and grin so wide his dimples could have held rainwater.
The woman beside Lakan, gorgeous and wearing a flowy pink sundress, got the same treatment, Diwa gathering her into a hug that lifted her onto her toes.
Sonya, Colin’s brain supplied, from something Diwa had told him on the plane. His sister-in-law.
Diwa turned back to Colin with both hands outstretched, his face lit up, and pushed him forward like a man presenting a prize marrow at a village fête.
A hand closed around the strap of Colin’s carry-on and yanked.
Colin’s weight shifted, his grip locked, and his shoulder dropped to anchor the bag against his side.
The strap bit into his palm. He didn’t think about it; the years he’d spent on night buses and moving through dodgy council estates had wired the response in, and whoever was on the other end of the tug was going to need considerably more force than that.
“No no no —” Lakan’s laugh cut through the noise, warm and easy. He put his hand on Colin’s shoulder. “That’s Deng. He’s our driver. Please, please, give him your luggage. He’ll take care of it for you.”
Colin looked at the man attached to the other end of his carry-on. He was uniformed, in a short-sleeved button-down, smiling patiently at Colin, who released the strap.
Then Lakan pulled him in. The hug was comprehensive.
Lakan had the wingspan for it, and he used every inch, wrapping Colin up with ease.
He smelled of cologne and warm cotton, and his palm came up and pressed flat between Colin’s shoulder blades in a gesture so like Diwa’s that Colin’s chest went tight.
Lakan pulled back, held Colin at arm’s length, and looked him over with frank appraisal. His eyebrows drew together. “You are very sweaty,” he said, with genuine concern. “Very red.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. “I am.”
“We need to get you somewhere with air conditioning,” Lakan said, and his hand landed on Colin’s shoulder blade with the same easy pressure Diwa used, steering him through the crowd towards a black Mercedes SUV parked in the loading bay with its hazards on.
Lakan talked as they walked. His voice carried the same warm register as Diwa’s but sat lower, steadier, and he pitched it close to Colin’s ear to cut through the noise of the arrivals area.
“So tonight is just immediate family. Mama, Papa, Mutya and her husband Jun, the kids. My wife Sonya you’ve just met.
” He sidestepped a trolley without breaking stride.
“Tomorrow is the cousins, which is…well. Tomorrow is a lot. Kuya Maki runs the schedule. He’ll have a printed itinerary, Colin, I’m warning you now. There’s going to be karaoke.”
Colin nodded. The heat had turned his shirt into a second skin, and the noise of the car park with its rumbling engines and blaring horns pressed against his temples from every direction.
Lakan glanced sideways at him. Whatever he saw made him close his mouth, and the rest of the walk to the car passed in silence. Lakan’s hand stayed warm and light on his shoulder, guiding him between parked vehicles.
The door to the car opened, and the cold hit Colin’s face. He climbed in and the leather seat was cool against his back through the soaked linen of his shirt. Lakan pressed a bottle of water into his hands before he’d finished pulling his seatbelt across.
“Drink,” Lakan said. “Take small sips.”
Colin cracked the cap and drank. The water was so cold it ached in his teeth.
Diwa slid in beside him a moment later, leaving a careful six inches of leather between them.
He didn’t touch Colin, didn’t press close, but his hands went straight to the air conditioning vents in the ceiling and the ones set into the door panel, angling every single one of them until the cold air hit Colin from three directions at once.
“We’ll be at the house in about forty minutes,” Diwa said, his fingers still adjusting the nearest vent. “You can lie down, have a shower, whatever you need. There’s no rush.”
He reached across and pushed Colin’s hair back from his forehead, his palm sliding through the sweat at Colin’s temple, and left his hand there for a moment.
In the rear-view mirror, Lakan was watching them. Colin caught the alpha’s reflection as Diwa cracked the safety seal on a second water bottle and put it in the cup holder by Colin’s knee. Lakan watched his younger brother’s hands — busy, careful, tending to his omega — and his expression softened.
Colin leaned his head back against the seat, the air conditioning raising goosebumps on his wet arms, and let himself be driven somewhere he’d never been.