If you could save someone's life, would you? Anyone's? Ali's older brother has a swastika tattooed on his knuckles, a prison ID number for nearly beating an immigrant to death, and spent his teenage years ruthlessly persecuting Ali for being gay. Blood may be thicker than water, but Ali has spent most of his life desperate to prove he is nothing like Tony. A committed vegetarian, charity-supporter, and blood donor, Ali would do anything for anyone. Ali may share parentage with Tony, but he’s determined not to share anything else if he can help it. So when Tony contracts leukaemia, and Ali is the only match for the urgently-needed bone marrow transplant, Ali is caught between two equally awful choices: to refuse and condemn a man to death, or to donate. And in donating, save the life of the man who nearly murdered Ali's Iraqi boyfriend?

Thicker Than Bone

Only Yazid couldn’t be trusted sometimes, so Ali brought them both down onto the hall carpet in a tangle, hooking all his limbs around Yazid’s neck and hips, and kissing him as though their lives depended on it: teeth and tongue and taste, a clash-and-battle instead of a whisper-kiss. He pulled at Yazid’s belt and jeans, his fingers feeling clumsy and stiff.


Yazid laughed and twisted them over, sinking teeth into Ali’s neck and sucking a bruise into being.


“I just want you, and I want you right now, and hurry the fuck up,” Ali hissed, burying both hands briefly in Yazid’s hair to peel his mouth away and kiss it.


Yazid laughed into the kiss, sounding giddy and delighted. Then those warm, rough fingers pulled Ali’s jeans open and were massaging his already half-hard dick through the cotton of his boxers, groping at his balls in a motion that was obscene even under all the lust.


“That quick enough?” Yazid breathed heavily against Ali’s jaw.


Chapter 16