Mikalo's Flame

by Syndra K. Shaw

  Way to screw it up, Ronan.

  I sighed.

  “I would see her sometimes with her friends,” he continued. “Hear her sometimes. Always, actually. She is a bit loud. I must say she is not someone I enjoyed. She barks out orders like an angry dog, is not kind to people, not gentle, and, I do not know, is very, very unhappy with her life.

  “Her father and my father, they were friends, yes, but they had no business together, so it was only at a party or a wedding when our paths, Mara and I, when our paths, they would cross.

  “That is all I know.”

  He grew silent.

  “And there was a time when she wanted me, I think.”

  My heart went to my throat.

  “But I did not want her, so, like a boy, I ran home and hid.”

  Oh, thank god, I thought, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Thank you for sharing your thoughts, my Mikalo,” I said, playfully bumping against him as we walked.

  “My Mikalo,” he repeated with a small laugh.

  “What?” I teased. “You don’t like ‘my Mikalo’? You don’t want me to call you ‘my Mikalo’? Does ‘my Mikalo’ bother you, my Mikalo?”

  He was laughing now as we joined the crowd crossing 57th Street and headed into Central Park.

  “You may call me whatever you wish,” he said as he grabbed my hand and we started up a tree-lined path.

  I stopped, pulling him close.

  “And you can call me whatever you wish,” I assured him.

  “Yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes.”

  We kissed.

  “I love it when you call me ‘my Grace’. And really, Mikalo, --

  “Oh, I am no longer ‘my Mikalo’?” he teased. “This was quick, my Grace. One moment I am your Mikalo and the next I am a speck of dirt on the shoe.”

  “Oh, stop it,” I quickly said, teasing him back. “You will always, always be my Mikalo. I only asked about the ‘my Grace’ thing because I was curious. That’s all.”

  He kissed me again, his fingers holding my chin as he paused.

  “Then ‘my Grace’ it will be,” he whispered, his breath on my lips.

  Suddenly, he drew away and started up one of the park’s many gentle slopes, pulling me along after him.

  “Come,” he said quickly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the other side of the park, over the grass and through the trees, the twin spires of the Dakota stood tall, this elegant pile of expensive, infamous pale brick easily distinguishable from the buildings crowding Central Park West.

  Others walked this path. The day was ending and many, like Mikalo and I, had chosen to walk, eschewing the subway or the bus or the car service for a leisurely stroll in temperatures which felt unseasonably warm and a sun that still shone bright.

  Finding a bench, we sat.

  He turned to me.

  “Question:,” he began, “Did you think that perhaps Mara Byzan and I were lovers?”

  I laughed, shaking my head.

  “No, of course not,” I said.

  And then feeling guilty for the lie, quickly added,

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  He laughed.

  “Again, you change so quick!” he then said with a smile.

  “And for my head to think of offering my body to Mara Byzan,” he continued with a grimace. “This is not a good thing.

  “It is so important that I find in my beauties something to kiss. They must be kind, they must be gentle and have hearts of passion. And joy. They must smile with their soul and not just their lips. They must have a beauty that comes from more than just the breasts or this smile or a beautiful ass.

  “But it is so important there be something in them that maybe someday I can love.

  “Otherwise, why give them my kisses and my heart and my body and my sex?” he then finished with a shrug.

  “I find all those things in you,” I said.

  And I was being absolutely honest. He was quite wonderful and I was damn lucky to be sitting here with him right now.

  “And I find it in you, my Grace,” he said quietly. “I am willing to give myself to whatever this is with us and just let it be what it wants to be.”

  “This sounds like a recent decision,” I said, a bit stunned by what he’d just said. The thought that he might have doubts had never entered my mind.

  But there you go. They did, there had been, and he’d come to peace with it and decided to just, as he said, let it be what it wants to be.

  “No,” he replied. “This was in my head when I turned and saw your eyes on me when I was holding my coffee. In the beginning. When I first said hello.”

  “Oh, so you were set from the beginning to be with me.”

  “I was open to letting my heart love and, perhaps, be hurt,” he said, turning to me. “It is life, hurt and love and doubt and hope. It is best, I think, to take your hand away and not move it where you want. Let it move on its own.”

  “And if it crashes?”

  “Then you pick up those pieces and go again,” he said with a small shrug. “It is life.”

  He paused then, watching a couple amble by, hand in hand, the day turning to dusk as the sun prepared to set.

  “I will say a truth now,” he continued quietly. “The night that we had our first kiss, when we had wine and laughter, walking there by the park to your home, I took you back to my hotel in my thoughts and, alone, made love to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yes,” he said with a small blush. “I wanted to do more than kiss you that first night. Wanted to do more than, I do not know, walk with you.

  “I wanted to be close to you. To hear you breathe, to smell your skin, your hair. To feel your lips on me. To taste you and watch your passion.”

  He stopped and cleared his throat, folding his fingers together and placing them in his lap.

  Ah, he was growing excited.

  “And a truth from me, Mikalo,” I said. “I thought of you as well.”

  A small smile as he looked across the park.

  “This is true?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah. I took you home in my head and, you know, had sexy thoughts --”

  “You touched yourself with me in your head,” he quietly interrupted.

  Damn, this was exciting. I could feel a lump in my throat. To be sharing this intimacy, revealing these secret dreams, there was something quite freeing and bold and vulnerable about it all.

  “Yes,” I finally answered. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And it was amazing.”

  He smiled and shifted on the bench.

  I glanced below, immediately recognizing the obvious hardness of him bulging in the dark denim of his jeans.

  “But you touched yourself, too, right?” I asked.

  He nodded and cleared his throat again, his eyes still on the trees.

  “Yes?” I asked again.

  “Yes,” he then said, the slight quaver in his voice betraying his excitement.

  “And, my Grace,” he continued. “I still do.”

  I held my breath, silently urging him to continue.

  He did.

  “When you leave for the day, when you go to work, before I leave the bed, I push my face into your pillow and smell you. Feel the warmth of you on the sheets. Imagine you still next to me.

  “And these thoughts, of you and the taste of you and your naked body and of you with me, needing me, wanting me, they are exciting.”

  His voice was almost a whisper now, his eyes still fixed on the buildings in the distance across the park.

  “And I do not know,” he continued. “Even though we, perhaps, had just made love, I need to do so again. Alone. Need to have you in my head. Pretend, like a child, that you are there with me, and then I go to the shower and the hot water and the soap and ...”

  He stopped then, his cheeks blushing red.

  He looked like a boy. A boy revealing a d
irty secret. Shy, embarrassed. Unwilling, even unable, to stop himself from doing something he found both immensely exciting and somehow wrong.

  It was fucking adorable.

  And, frankly, listening to him describe his inner fantasies of me, how these thoughts brought him pleasure and release, I found that incredibly exciting as well, the familiar thump-thump-thump beginning below.

  “And then what?” I asked.

  I knew and he knew that I knew. But I wanted him to say it. Wanted to watch his blush grow. Watch him battle his shyness as he offered this admission.

  “And then I touch myself,” he finally said. “And it is pleasure and exciting and wonderful and then it is done.

  “And then I use the soap and the water to clean.”

  He finally looked at me, his hands still jammed in his lap, his ankles crossed, his thighs pressed tightly together.

  I wanted to kiss him.

  Leaning forward, I did.

  He returned my kiss with a shy smile, our lips pausing briefly before they parted.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This talk, it is not something I have done with a woman,” he said. “To say this truth that she is in your mind and your dreams and that you are touching yourself when you are alone and thinking of her, and that it becomes, you know, a finish, it is a truth I have never said.”

  “Does it embarrass you?”

  He shrugged.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “No. I do not know. It is like a very brave thing to say, to talk about, I think, yes?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it shouldn’t be. It’s normal. And, to be honest with you, I’m flattered you think of me like that. At least sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” he answered with a laugh. “Every day, my Grace.”

  I laughed.

  “Yes,” he continued. “You leave, I put my face into your pillow, feel the excitement as it grows, and then take the special shower with the soap and the water and the steam. Every day.

  “My appetite,” he then said, his eyes again on the trees. “Like with food and your kisses and the smell of your skin, my appetite is a very big one.”

  Sneaking my hand into his lap, I wove my fingers into his, feeling his hardness beneath my fist.

  “I like your appetite,” I said, drawing close to brush my lips against his cheek.

  “My Grace,” he then whispered, his head turning as he pressed his lips close to mine.

  “I am hungry.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Although the path was lighted, the tall streetlamps dotting the well-worn concrete path like tall, slender saplings of metal and chipped black paint, the day was growing dark with the slow setting of the sun.

  The wood planks of the bench pushed into my shins as I straddled Mikalo’s lap.

  This tent of oversized luxurious wool that was my coat covered us.

  And he was inside me.

  He was hungry, he had said.

  I had stood to go, grabbing his hand to pull him with me, eager for the comfort of our home and our bed and his naked flesh on mine.

  He had pulled back, easily guiding me to him, his strong arms holding me tight as I sat on his lap.

  His fingers worked the large buttons of my coat.

  The material opened and spread, falling to the side to hide us.

  He had kissed me then, his hands finding my breasts through my shirt and giving a gentle squeeze.

  I had gasped.

  “No,” I said, rising to stand.

  He had pulled me back, holding me firm, his other hand working his zipper.

  “Lift your skirt, my Grace,” he had breathed.

  A jogger approached.

  We paused.

  I couldn’t do this. Public sex just wasn’t for me. I craved the warmth of our bedroom. Tasting his naked skin.

  This desperate fumbling of zippers and buttons in plain sight of anyone who bothered to spend even a millisecond watching us just didn’t do it for me.

  And with things at work suddenly iffy, the last thing I needed was to be arrested for public indecency. Or whatever they’d call this.

  So, no.

  He gripped his hardness in his fist.

  Oh shit.

  I suddenly wanted him.

  The jogger ran past, oblivious to my desire or Mikalo’s nakedness.

  “The skirt is lifted, yes,” he urged me, “And then you sit and I will move, gently, quietly.”

  His lips found mine again as he reached under my coat for my skirt.

  “It will be very quick,” he said, his lips close to mine. “I know this to be true. And this appetite, it will be happy.”

  Another kiss, his tongue moving deep as he inhaled and then groaned, the sound resonating in his chest.

  A sound I found incredibly sexy.

  I flirted with the idea. Ignored how preposterous it seemed. How idiotic it would be in retrospect were we to get caught. How dangerous it all was.

  And then I thought of that night, drunk on ouzo and giving in to my own appetite, I had taken him in the park, in the dark, among the trees. Had demanded he satisfy my hunger. And how he, maybe, had battled his own doubts to make me happy, the eventual coupling quick, exciting, dangerous. Memorable.

  “Okay,” I said before pressing my lips to his and standing slightly, enough for him to push the skirt up past my hips and, his fingers briefly flirting with my growing heat, move aside that thin layer of fine silk.

  He paused, thinking, his mind racing.

  “Phone,” he suddenly said.

  What?

  “Your phone,” he repeated. “Bring it out. Hold it to your ear as if there is a talk.”

  Ah, got it.

  Poised above him, his hardness hidden by the coat, my skirt bunched above my waist, his fingers teasing the growing wet, I jammed my hand into my pocket and brought out my cell, placing it to my ear, the pantomime of a shared cell phone, our heads pressed together as we listened, explaining our being close should anyone care or look twice.

  Gripping himself, he pressed his hardness to me and closed his eyes.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  I waited, teasing him.

  An older couple turned the corner many steps away and started ambling their way toward us.

  Suddenly afraid, I hesitated.

  And then I gasped, Mikalo slapping his hardness against me.

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  The couple drew close.

  “Talk on the phone,” he quickly said, pressing his face close to mine as if we were both listening.

  I acted as if I was talking, the phone at my ear.

  The older man and woman, lost in conversation, oblivious to us, ambled past.

  Finding my courage, I lowered myself, his width stretching me, his length filling me, the beauty of it almost indescribable, the brief pain damn near addictive.

  He sighed, his forehead pressed to mine.

  It began.

  The movements, his movements, small, slow, careful. The phone pressed to my ear, our cheeks pressed together, my voluminous coat shielding us, our secret sex unknown to those strangers who wandered past.

  Small beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

  I snaked my hand around the back of his neck, my fingers reaching into his hair to grip and then pull.

  “Do it,” I whispered.

  A quick thrust.

  I bit my lip.

  “Fuck yes,” I gasped. “Do it. Quick.”

  I pulled his hair again, my lips moving to his to kiss and then, gently pulling away, to bite, my teeth catching his lower lip.

  “God,” I said into his mouth, “So fucking good.”

  His pace quickened, the movements still small, my coat still hiding us.

  “Yes?” he asked, his voice quiet and thick with desire.

  “Fuck me,” I said. “Fuck me, Mikalo.”

  He was getting close. His eyes were closing, his lids growing heavy with the approach of his own quiet storm
.

  “Do it,” I said yet again. “Fuck me. Hard. I’m yours --”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m yours, Mikalo, to fuck. C’mon --”

  Another pull of the hair.

  “Do it --”

  “Oh ...”

  “Yeah, that’s it --”

  “My Grace .. “

  “C’mon --”

  “Yes ...”

  “Now,” I whispered.

  A groan, low and strong, his chest rumbling with the sound.

  He stopped, throbbing deep within me, his breath ragged, his flesh dripping with small beads of sweat.

  And then he was done.

  I kissed him as I stood, his hands at once pulling down my skirt, his hardness -- yes, Mikalo still stayed hard even after we finished -- uncomfortably tucked into his jeans, pushed painfully to the side, and zipped away.

  The phone still to my ear, I kissed him again and then, gathering my coat around me, sat next to him on the bench.

  He leaned his head back, grinning from ear to ear.

  Then he looked over at me.

  I smiled back and then was suddenly afraid.

  What if we had been seen, our lovemaking not as secret as I hoped, and there were cops on the way to bust those perverts screwing on the park bench?

  “We should go,” I said.

  “Yes,” he answered with a nod of the head. “In a moment.”

  He glanced down at his jeans.

  Oh right.

  “Think of your grandma in bloomers,” I said with a grin.

  “Oh no ...”

  “Or a group of nuns --”

  “Are they naked nuns?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrows.

  “No,” I said. “Just nuns. Old and saggy. In black. Very stern and mean.”

  “I will think of Mara Byzan,” he then said. “And then my excitement will go away.”

  I laughed.

  “You like this idea,” he asked, teasing me.

  “I love it! Thoughts of me get you excited, thoughts of her make that excitement go away. It’s perfect.”

  He paused, squeezing his eyes closed, his nose scrunched up, a grimace on his face.

  “Ah,” he then said as his eyes popped open. “And like the magic, thoughts of her make my pleasure go away.

  “Now I can stand, I think.”