Mikalo's Flame Page 3

  I groaned and ran my hands up his back. And then, knowing his likes, understanding his needs, slowly raked my nails down his flesh, the manicured talons scratching their way lower and lower.

  He gasped, his mouth leaving mine, the breath hot against my lips.

  I watched him as he leaned his head back, his eyes squeezed shut, his brow quietly furrowed. He breathed slowly, his lips parted and teeth clenched, reveling in the twin sisters of Pleasure and Pain, my nails reaching the tender span of flesh around his waist as they finished their journey.

  He was in heaven, my Mikalo, my love, his eyes almost stinging with happy tears.

  I tugged at his jeans.

  “Please,” I said. “I want to feel you.”

  Another kiss.

  He then lifted, his arms outstretched as he looked down at me.

  “No,” he said. “You. I want to see you now.”

  Bending low, his quickly kissed me again.

  “Please,” he insisted, leaving me to kneel between my open legs as he waited.

  I slipped out from underneath him and kneeled, facing him.

  He watched me, silhouetted in the orange and red of the fire, the flames in the fireplace having quieted to a glow.

  Peeling the shirt over my head, I ran my hands over my breasts, my pace slow, my fingers calm, unhurried.

  I avoided his gaze as I traced my own sensitive circles of flesh, the pink eager and willing. Hungry for a touch. A kiss. The twin nubs yearning for the grazing of teeth.

  I knew he was watching. I knew this excited him. And I knew the more I did and the slower I did it, the more desperate his need for me became.

  Grabbing a nipple, I pinched. Hard.

  I closed my eyes, losing myself to the gentle pain.

  He sighed, the unexpected breath thick with emotion. With need. Desire.

  And then he cleared his throat, softly, as he swallowed, his tongue shooting forward to quickly lick his lips.

  I glanced at him from beneath the curtain of my dark bangs.

  His eyes were on my flesh, my fingers caressing my breasts, my stomach. The small pink mountains of flesh he so loved to suck and lick and bite.

  Standing, I undid the first button of my jeans.

  He raised his head, watching me.

  Moving near him, I lifted a foot, placing it in his lap.

  He took it, slowly peeling the thin sock free and wrapping his large hands around my slender heel.

  Taking it from him, I offered him the second.

  Again, the resilient cotton came clear, the foot briefly held and caressed.

  I snapped the second button open.

  The jeans slid from my waist, the remaining buttons preventing the denim from drifting further.

  Shirtless, hungry, horny, Mikalo waited, his frustration growing as his hand flirted with the hardness still hidden in his pants. The fingers first gripping his width and then moving away, denying himself the necessary luxury of that squeeze, before moving back, his need for release growing as I undid a third button.

  I stepped away from him and turned, my back now to him.

  My hands reached to my breasts again, feeling the generous, smooth flesh, the pink once more teased and pinched.

  A fourth button snapped free, my gaze quickly catching his as I looked over my shoulder.

  His hands were now rubbing the flesh of his own chest and torso, the fingers toying with his own dark nipples, his mouth slightly open as his breathing grew ragged, the tongue sneaking out again to run themselves over his lips.

  I slid the denim down and stepped free.

  Behind me, he moaned.

  “My Grace,” came the whisper.

  My ass was nice. This much I knew. As were my legs. Slender but strong, the calves sculpted from years of navigating the city’s streets and climbing its many stairs in an almost endless variety of heels.

  My fingers hooked into the only thing separating me from nakedness, the fine layer of silk hugging my hips.

  I turned, toying with the thin fabric covering the growing damp.

  “Now you,” I said, holding his gaze as he watched me.

  He stood, shirtless, barefoot, and ready, the length of his desire stretching the denim down his thigh.

  Jesus, I wanted him. Wanted to go to him. Throw myself on him. Forget the striptease, forget the flirting and the gentle peeling of layers, and just force him back, climb on him, grab his thickness in my hand, and ride him, allowing him to ram his way deep. Deep and hard.

  But no. This is what he liked, this dance. This tease. This is what his heart desired and this is what made him eventually ravage me until the sun rose.

  So this, this is what I would give him.

  “Please,” I said. “Please.”

  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.

  Chapter Eight

  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.”

  Chapter Nine

  “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.”

  Chapter Ten

  “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.