Mikalo's Flame (6 page)

Regardless, that’d give me time to relax.
Stop worrying. Move beyond this latest obsession with What Might
Have Been, But Probably Never Was when it came to that skinny Byzan
bitch.

Yes, that’d work.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

It couldn’t hurt to wait another day,
right?

Mikalo was waiting for me outside when I left
work.

With Abigail lurking and Marcus looking over
my shoulder, not to mention a day spent putting out fires left,
right, and center, I’d had to cancel lunch.

“My Grace,” he had assured me when I’d called
to break the news. “Outside, we will meet when you are done with
work and let us walk then, yes?”

I agreed, eager to leave the office and all
its unnecessary drama behind and just get out.

And so, with the clouds now gone and the sun
warming the persistent chill of late-winter, I left, all but
bursting onto 42nd Street through the revolving doors and fleeing
into the arms of my Mikalo.

“Ah, I know this girl,” he said with a nod of
his head as we made our way through the crowds clogging Fifth
Avenue, these anonymous souls rushing by, skirting our path, their
scarves hanging loose and top buttons of their coats undone,
optimistically celebrating the hoped-for advent of Spring.

And in this oversize coat I was wearing, an
almost ludicrously roomy tent of soft wool, it certainly felt as if
Spring was around the corner.

I undid the top two buttons, grateful for the
gentle rush of cool air.

“So, you do know Mara Byzan,” I said, turning
my focus back to our conversation.

“Oh yes,” he agreed. “I would see her at
parties at home, in Europe. She is not so nice, I think. Not so
quiet. Not so liked. Not so polite. And she drinks a bit much.

“Her father, he has money, though.”

“That I know,” I said. “I’m one of their
many, many lawyers, remember?”

He smiled.

“Of course. And they are lucky, my Grace, to
have you with them, helping them.”

“Why do you call me ‘my Grace’?” I suddenly
asked, stunned by my own curiosity.

He stopped, quietly taken aback before
politely answering.

“My father, he would call those he loved,
those friends he loved, by their second names. This is what I grew
up hearing. All the time. It is not so uncommon where I am from,
this second name as the first. It is quite nice.

“And ‘my Grace’, it is beautiful, I think. It
is a word, a name, I enjoy.

“This upsets you?” he then asked.

I shook my head.

“No, no, not at all. I was just curious.”

We walked in silence.

“Tell me more about Mara Byzan,” I finally
asked.

He shrugged.

“There is not much to tell, my ...”

He stopped.

“There is not much to tell, Ronan,” he then
said.

Oh shit. Now I felt horrible. And stupid. And
like a major bitch.

I didn’t want him to
not
call me “my Grace”. I was just curious. Really. And
now that he seemed likely to stop, I missed it.

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.

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 dirty
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.”

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.