Mikalo's Flame (4 page)

His eyes on mine, he snapped open his jeans,
let them fall to his feet, and stepped clear, naked and ready, his
hardness now free.

“Lay down,” he said as he moved toward
me.

He was not inside me.

Pressing himself against me, his hardness
gripped in his fist, he teased me, refusing to enter, to plunge
deep, aware that his thickness pressing against my heat, my
wetness, my thump-thump-thumping desire, would drive me crazy.

He was right.

“Oh god,” I said again as I lifted my hips,
desperate for him.

Another small smile as he watched me.

“This is good, no?” he asked, completely
aware that it was good, very, very good, but that it wasn’t
enough.

He could be a cruel bastard sometimes.

“Yes,” I gasped, his hardness repeatedly
rubbing, grinding against me, the flesh becoming slick with my
wetness. “Yes, it’s good. So good.

“But --” I continued.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I want you.”

“But you have me.”

“No,” I said, my hips rising, hungry for him.
“I want you inside me.”

“But this, this is not a bad thing,” he
said.

And then he slapped his hardness against my
heat.

Oh fuck.

I gasped and snapped my head back, my fingers
immediately clutching my breast, the nipples pinched, my teeth
nearly biting through my lip as I whimpered.

“It’s not bad,” I finally managed to say.
“No, no, it’s not bad. Don’t stop.”

The hips rose again as he rubbed against
me.

“Don’t stop,” I said again.

He stopped.

I almost cried.

His fingers dipped low, tracing me, slipping
in the warmth, the wetness, but not sliding deep, the tips just
lightly, almost barely, moving over the surface, over that insanely
sensitive nub of delicate flesh. Almost a whisper of a touch.

I’m going to die, I thought. Here in my
library on the floor, a cold night outside, a fireplace glowing,
the Perfect Man edging me toward orgasmic oblivion.

I’m going to die.

He’s going to kill me.

His lips were on my stomach, moving low and
slow as he drifted, licking and tasting, biting and sucking.

I opened my legs, eager for him, desperate
for him. Excited over what was to come. The feeling of his lips on
me, his tongue worming its way deep. His licks echoing the
thump-thump-thump now racking my legs, my stomach, my heart.

I was ready.

So ready.

He ignored my heat, his tongue coming nowhere
near my wetness. His lips skipping my sex to discover the inside of
my thighs, the outside of my knees, my calves, drifting up again to
my torso, the underside of my breasts.

Oh shit.

I lifted my hips again.

“Please, Mikalo,” I almost cried. “Please,
I’m begging you.”

He paused.

“Please, I need you,” I said. “I want
you.”

His lips were suddenly on mine, his tongue
roughly pushing into my mouth, his weight quickly on top of me as,
in one breathlessly perfect motion, he brutally slid deep.

Fuck.

And then he rode me.

My hair clenched in his fist, his cheek
pressed to mine, my hands gripping the floor as he pounded again
and again, the wave building, fast, and cresting, even faster, and
then crashing.

I screamed, I think. I know my body shook.
That I could feel. And I know my heart was racing. Dangerously
fast. And I couldn’t catch my breath, the speed of this assault
catching me off-guard and, like a tornado, lifting me into the air,
helpless.

There was a moment of darkness, the blessed
chaos shredding my body stealing me from conscious thought.

His moan brought me back.

He still moved in me, riding my wave as his
own picked up speed, his pace now a blur as the room filled with
the sound of his flesh smacking mine.

A gasp followed by another moan.

I could feel it build again. A second wave,
the first still resonating, still teasing me, still insistent and
alive.

I wanted to lift my hand, thread my fingers
through his hair, bring him to me. Taste him.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, my muscles,
my body, even my mind, a prisoner to his plunging and pounding and
desperate desire for release. To fill me. To claim me, once more,
as his own.

His biceps clenched. Drool fell to stain my
neck. Sweat rolled from his flesh onto mine. He moved deep and then
deeper still. And then a third time.

My second wave caught me. I inhaled deep, my
hips rising to meet his, pushing him into me even more.

It rolled through me, my body too exhausted
to fight, my mind too weary to wrap around the perfection of the
tremors and trembling and inner explosions and sighs.

He paused, feeling this, my body, my heat,
caressing him, coaxing him, urging him, inviting him. Pushing
deeper still, he grinded against me, and then stopped.

The muscles in his back clenched, his hips
clenched, he held his breath, everything stopping in time as he
inched deeper still, throbbing.

And then his eyes closed as his own wave
crested and crashed.

His body jerked once, twice, three times, and
then a fourth as he spilled into me, the small whimpers and gasps
catching in his throat as he fought to catch his breath.

I could feel him again, my hand able to rise,
my hips once more willing to move against him, work with him. Help
him hit his own heights.

I lifted my lips to him, kissing him. His
lips, his cheeks, his neck, his temples. Tasting the sweat from his
brow. Smearing his scent onto me, into me.

Lost in his own world, he gasped, catching
his breath, aware of me, yes, but still balanced on that knife’s
edge of blessed bliss, not yet willing to relinquish the addictive
bedlam of his body’s release.

He came back to me, dipping low, his cheek to
mine, his lips on mine.

God, I loved him.

And, answering my silent thought, he spoke,
the words breathed in my ear.

“I love you, my Grace.”

“I envy you your post-coital glow,” Deni
said, only half-teasing.

“Wow,” I answered. “That’s quite a
mouthful.”

“Something tells me it is,” she said with a
wink.

I smiled.

We were walking up Fifth Avenue. She had met
me for lunch, insisting I take a break from the desk and the
documents and the quickly escalating turf wars engulfing those
quiet, art-lined hallways.

Since Mikalo’s return, I had taken to working
hard. Harder than I had in years, convinced that being at my desk
before anyone else and then leaving only after the sun had set was,
in some way, going to excuse those weekends lost in carnal lust
with a man I was loving more and more with each day.

“You look happy,” Deni was saying.

I nodded, ignoring the persistent doubts and
questions. Doubts and questions that not even the aforementioned
love could erase.

“I am,” I finally said.

She glanced at me. Watched me like a parent
who, aware a lie has been told, is quietly willing to let the child
admit it, confident that somewhere on that road to admitting the
truth, a road strewn with doubt and guilt, a lesson will be
learned.

She looked away.

“And how are you?” I asked.

“Peachy,” came the brusque reply.

Now we were both walking our own roads of
doubt and guilt.

“I heard you met the Byzans,” she then
said.

“Oh god, no,” I quickly said, pushing the
thought of them away. “Anything but the Byzans. I’m officially off
the clock and out of their reach until I’m back at the desk.”

“You know, the father isn’t so bad,” Deni
said as we crossed 54th Street, our conversation temporarily
swallowed by the crowds spilling from the stairs of the nearby
subway station and into the street.

We walked in silence, slowing our pace,
allowing the rushing strangers to move ahead, grateful for the
relative quiet as they darted past.

“But the daughter?” I then said.

“Mara --”

“Yes,” I interrupted. “The Byzan, as she
calls herself.”

Deni lightly laughed.

“New money, dear,” she said. “Desperate to
make their mark and doing it in all the wrong ways, stepping on
important toes left, right, and center.

“They applied for an apartment in my
building,” she then said.

“Really?”

She nodded.

Deni’s building on Park Avenue at 71st Street
was, literally, home to more billionaires than any other building
probably anywhere in the world. Getting past that co-op board was a
feat in and of itself.

It’d be easier climbing Mt. Everest. In Jimmy
Choos. With broken arms. Blindfolded. And no sherpa.

That there was even an apartment available
was news. That the Byzan’s had the guts to try and snag it was
something else entirely.

“I take it their application was denied?” I
asked.

Another nod.

“They’re chin-deep in debt, Ronan,” Deni
said. “And they were late -- well, she was, at least -- to their
interview.”

I stopped.

“Wow,” I said.

She stopped as well, turning to me.

“The Byzan strode in without her father
twenty minutes late,” she continued. “No apology, no explanation.
No anything.

“And then she proceeded to be the little
bitch that she is,” she then said. “Needless to say, it was the
quickest interview in our building’s history.”

“I’m handling their Estate, their tax
planning, and had no idea, no idea, they were planning on buying
more property in the States,” I said. “Don’t they realize that kind
of changes, like, everything when it comes to, well, everything I
do?”

“Does Mikalo know the Byzan’s are in town?”
Deni asked, ignoring me.

“I don’t know. Why would he?”

“Rich family from Europe,” she said. “Rich
family from Greece. Ages not too far apart. Both fathers
ambitious.

“Don’t you think it’s possible he and The
Byzan might know each other?”

“Oh please,” I said, turning my head away.
“As if my Mikalo would know someone as annoying and callous and,
and, and --”

“Crude?” Deni offered, interrupting.

“Yes, thank you -- someone as crude as Mara
Byzan, it’s just, it’s just, just --”

“Impossible?”

“Right!” I said. “Yes. It’s impossible.

“I mean, please.”

We walked in silence for a few moments.

“You know it’s quite possible, right?” she
then said.

I didn’t know what to say.

Of course it was possible. Totally
possible.

But, still, Mikalo with that horrible
woman?

The thought turned my stomach.

“Looks like this is going to be an
interesting lunch,” she said as we turned and headed through the
doors of the restaurant.

“Don’t worry,” she then said, glancing over
her shoulder. “Drinks are on me.”

“Dump him,” she said with a toss of her
blonde curls.

“What?”

“No, seriously,” Deni continued, her voice
slicing through the expensive buzz of well-heeled conversation
surrounding us. “You have all these doubts and worries. So, yeah,
cut him loose.

“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding
someone as fantastic as Mikalo. You know, gorgeous, rich. Someone
who obviously loves you as much as he does --”

“Okay, okay --” I said, regretting bringing
up my earlier doubts and thoughts and silly complaints.

But this Mara Byzan angle. This new info. It
was throwing me.

The thought of it made me sick to my
stomach.

I took a healthy swallow of my drink.

“Do you hear how ridiculous you sound?” she
interrupted, leaning forward to prop her elbows on the table. “You
think with all these sharks circling the water, the little bitches
just waiting for you to stumble so they can take a nice big bite of
your boy, you’d at least realize how good you have it and how
wonderful he is.

“But you just can’t stop picking that scab,
can you?” she continued. “I mean, Jesus, Ronan, I’m looking for one
good reason not to slap the stupid out of you.”

“It’s not like I’m not trying to stop --”

“Oh give me a fucking break,” she said. “Just
stop! Stop it! Enjoy him, for god’s sake. There is absolutely no
guarantee whatsoever you’ll have another day with this guy, who’s
fantastic, by the way. And how stupid and sick are you going to
feel if you realize you wasted it by, I don’t know, worrying about
... well, what, exactly? What the hell
are
you worried about?”

I shrugged, suddenly aware of how right she
was and how stupid I was being. And the fact that I really didn’t
have an ...

“Answer,” she demanded.

Damn, I hated it when she made me feel, like,
this big.

She waited, wrapped in pre-season Prada, her
wrist glinting with diamonds, a blood red ruby gracing her
fist.

“Um, well,” I mumbled. “I have
questions.”

“Questions. You have questions.”

“Yeah,” I answered, desperate to change the
subject, but realizing that was so not going to happen.

“Okay,” she said. “So, ask him.”

“You think --”

“He’s talked with you how many times about
this?”

“I know, I know,” I quickly said. “And I did,
you know. Last night.”

“And?”

“And we talked,” I said. “Briefly.”

“And?” she repeated.

“And then we stopped talking.”

“Ergo, the glow,” she said, sipping her
drink.

“But this Byzan info,” I continued. “That
really bugs me.”

“So, talk with him again.”

“You really think he’s going to --”

“I swear I’m on repeat here, Ronan,” she
interrupted. “He’s said how many times --?”