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Ruari fed his cock forward in one continuous stroke, and the stretch was enormous, a burning, splitting pressure from his tailbone to the backs of his knees.

“Ruari,” Cassian moaned, when the alpha bottomed out inside him.

Ruari drove in again, hard, jolting Cassian into the counter. His rhythm was graceless and desperate, each thrust landing with his full weight, his breathing harsh above Cassian’s head. One of his hands planted itself on the counter beside Cassian’s elbow, his arm locked, bracing himself to fuck deeper.

Cassian took each stroke with his cheek pressed to the laminate, the wet slap of Ruari’s hips against his arse echoing off the tiles. Slick dripped down his inner thighs in warm trails, and Ruari’s cock dragged against the swollen front wall of him on each withdrawal until Cassian was writhing, right at the edge of it.

He pushed into each thrust, meeting Ruari halfway and chasing the impact. His cock hung hard and neglected, bobbing with each collision.

Ruari’s forehead dropped to Cassian’s nape, his thrusts shortened. Cassian reached between his own legs, wrapped his hand around his cock, and stroked twice before he came, clenching tight around Ruari’s shaft in contractions that dragged a broken noise from the alpha’s chest.

Ruari buried himself to the root and came with his teeth sunk into the muscle where Cassian’s neck met his shoulder, his hips jerking in uneven spasms while his cock pulsed inside the condom.

Cassian’s legs were shaking as Ruari pulled out slowly, and Ruari’s hand returned to his hip, gentler now, his thumb tracing an arc over the bone. Then Ruari grabbed a nearby tea towel and wiped between Cassian’s thighs with it, before attempting to drop-kick it into the corner.

It wrapped around his foot instead. Ruari shook his leg, the tea towel clinging on with the tenacity of a living thing, and the laugh that came out of him was the most beautiful thing Cassian had heard in a long time.

Cassian turned, beaming, and kissed the side of Ruari’s mouth. “Morning, alpha,” he said.

“Morning, Cass.”

Cassian installed Ruari at the kitchen table, pressing him down into the chair. Ruari sat with his elbows on the table while Cassian pulled drawers open and began to assemble breakfast.

He’d made the muesli himself with some oversight from Colin, from ingredients he’d bought at the Portobello Road Tesco with his own money. He’d stood in the cereal aisle for forty minutes yesterday choosing between oats, comparing the ingredients in each. His lips moved over the nutritional information because reading small print still took concentration, and he’d picked the one with the most honey already in it and then added more honey at home.

He set the bowl in front of Ruari with a flourish.

“I made this,” Cassian announced. “It’s got oats, and banana, and coconut flakes, and I put yoghurt on it, and there are absolutely no raisins because raisins are disgusting, Ruari. They pretend to be chocolate chips when they’re really not, and that’s a betrayal.”

Honey pooled at the bottom of the bowl, sweetening the yoghurt so aggressively that it had taken on the consistency of cake batter. Cassian liked it that way. The banana slices were cut at wildly different thicknesses, some translucent, some the width of a finger, all of them sinking slowly into the yoghurt.

Cassian watched Ruari eat. The alpha blinked three times, fast, as he attacked his bowl.

“Good?” Cassian asked, bouncing onto his toes.

“Great, Cass,” Ruari said as he loaded the spoon again.

Cassian slid into the chair opposite and propped his chin on both fists. “I just put in all the things I like. Because I know what’s good, Ruari. I have excellent taste.”

“You do,” Ruari said. His hand found Cassian’s on the table, his thumb pressing into the soft centre of Cassian’s palm. “This is proper quality, gorgeous. Best breakfast I’ve had in weeks.”

Cassian’s whole face opened up. He scrambled out of his chair and launched himself onto Ruari’s lap with a momentum that shunted the chair back two inches. Ruari caught him by his waist, and Cassian tucked his nose into the warm skin beneath Ruari’s ear.

“I’ll make it every day,” Cassian said into his neck. “Every single morning, if you like.”

Ruari’s fingers threaded through the hair at Cassian’s nape. “And I’ll eat each bite of it. Dunno what I did to deserve you, Cass,” Ruari murmured. “Coming up and feeding me. Sitting with me when I…wasn’t feeling my best. You did such a good job taking care of me.”

His alpha was soft right now, and the notebook in Cassian’s head ticked through the conditions like a preflight checklist:

ALPHA

1. Fed: yes.

2. Calm: yes.

3. Looking at Cassian like he was the sun his world orbited around: yes.

“Why were you sad, Ruari?”