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Phantom Lover
Copyright © 2008 A.J. Llewellyn
ISBN: 978-1-55410-996-8
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Phantom Lover
By
A. J. Llewellyn
Dedication
To Madame Pele, Goddess of the Volcanoes
Chapter One
“Have you seen my earrings?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said, feeling guilty about brushing past the bizarre woman screaming from the window of the convalescent hospital backing onto our hotel in Lahaina, Maui.
Since I’d arrived on the island a few days before, the woman, clearly demented, had asked me about her earrings each time she saw me. At first I thought there really were earrings, until I heard a nurse admonishing her. “Get back in your bed right now. Leave that poor man alone.”
I mumbled my negative response, but the woman kept staring from the window as I ran past her.
Letting out my breath, I luxuriated in my brief downtime to enjoy Front Street, the center of the old whaling town of Lahaina. Some people said it was a crazy street and indeed it was full of wild, wacky stores and restaurants, but there was a vibe to Front Street that never failed to lift my spirits.
I had just half an hour before I was due at hula rehearsals. I couldn’t be late today. Kimo Wilder, the greatest single male dancer in all of the islands, was making his first appearance for rehearsals of a new show we would be touring throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
Kimo Wilder. My absolute, all-time, number one crush.
Now, I just had to see the painting, feast on it one more time… Please, God, don’t let somebody buy it, I thought as I cleared the last two blocks to Lahaina Art Gallery and there it was. The artist called it Phantom Lover and Kimo Wilder modeled for it. She had captured every fearsome detail of his six-foot, four-inch frame. The perfectly chiseled arms, the powerful thighs, his heavy-lidded eyes and long, gleaming black hair he usually wore back in a ponytail. His eyes were closed in the painting, his mouth at the throat of a beautiful woman. They were standing together, but he was a ghost, vanishing beneath those beautiful thighs.
He was her Phantom Lover.
“Back again, Bobby?”
I stared back at Johnny, ironically my own Phantom Lover. We were a hot item once until his dick grew restless. A musician by night, he managed the gallery by day and had a real eye for talent. He dressed the window with only the painting and special lighting that showed the Phantom fading via different lights.
At night, he vanished from the canvas completely. People like me came and stared at him for hours.
And I was about to start training with the man who inspired the art.
“Had any offers on the painting yet?” I asked Johnny.
“No.” He shrugged. “People love it. The buying people, the damned tourists say, Oh, where’s the dolphins? Where’s the ocean waves? Damned haole.”
I laughed. Front Street was filled with enough stores where tourists could buy the kind of paintings they thought of as Hawaiian.
Phantom Lover was something different, not just art. It was light, fire and movement trapped in time. It was also true to the man who, by all accounts, spent hours posing for the artist at different times of day to catch the final disappearing act.
She painted him naked from the left side, so there was no hint of the striking, quite formidable tribal tattoos marking the real Kimo Wilder. His entire right side, from the side of his face, down his neck, arms, torso, thighs, past his ankle was marked in heavy black ink symbols signifying his status as kumu hula—hula master—and Keeper of Secrets. With each step of his spiritual evolution in the art of ancient hula, more tattoos were added.
There was nobody else like him. Only three Keepers of Secrets were left alive. The other two were extremely old. He was a rarity because he was only thirty-six. Everything about Kimo was alluring and sexy to me. Except that he was married and I had never heard of him having a single gay tryst.
Not one.
And let me tell you, he was so virile and so compelling, every hula dancer I knew, male and female, drooled over him. However, he was very loyal to his wife. I wished he’d like boys, just a little bit. Me in particular.
I smiled, looking at his perfect hands on the face of the woman in the painting.
“Bobby,” said Johnny, who was still my occasional lover. “Quit dreaming. It ain’t ever gonna happen.”
“Yeah, I know. But fantasies are free, right?”
“I guess. I’d pay to hear about your fantasy, though. Looks like it might be worth a million.”
“You’re goofy.”
Johnny was a classic pretty boy. Japanese, Portuguese, French and Hawaiian. I wasn’t exactly chopped liver myself, but for some reason, Johnny just couldn’t be faithful.
“Hey,” he said. “Wanna come by after rehearsal and hang out?”
Hang out meant fuck, and after looking at Kimo Wilder for the next eight hours, so near, and yet so far, fucking Johnny might be just the antidote I needed.
“Sure.”
“I finish at six. I’ll lock up and meet you back at my place. Key’s in the usual place. Go in, take a shower and er…wait for me naked in bed.”
“Will do.”
We grinned at each other, already looking forward to the fun we both knew we’d have. Then I remembered the time, running along Front Street to the hula halau—hula school—that Kimo Wilder’s vast fortune built.
I was so late I didn’t even have time to stop for coffee. I pushed open the wrought iron gate to the house that had been transformed into a dance studio. It was a beautiful old building with high ceilings, hardwood floors and hula memorabilia on the walls and in cabinets.
It sat right on the oceanfront and even now, I could see canoe teams paddling in the distance. It was like I’d stepped back in time. Kimo was inside with the rest of the troupe. Four girls, including Ginger, Jessie, Kalani and Sanoe. All of them talented, energetic girls.
Then there were the three guys, Eddie, who was Ginger’s fiancé, Roland, my best friend and Lon. I was the missing link and I could tell I was in pilikia, big trouble.
Despite this, the sight of Kimo in person hit me like a left hook to the solar plexus. He seemed bigger, more terrifying than I’d remembered.
I caught the nervous glances from the others as he stared straight at me.
“Bobby Kikawa, I presume? You’re late.” Hands on hips, he was an utterly imposing presence. Naked to the waist, he wore long blue sweatpants, his black hair caught back with koa wood beads.
“I’m sorry. I was looking at your painting.” I bit my lip. Now why did I blurt that out?
He fixed me with his predatory, grea
t shark’s eyes. I stared back. His eyes were fathoms of deep ageless mysteries. A strange, unsettling feeling came over me, as if he was a great big hawk and I was a tiny mouse on the edge of the volcanic crater up in Haleakala. I felt as if he was about to swoop down, snatch me in his talons and murder me. Eat me alive.
The rest of the troupe looked at me. I saw pity on the faces of a couple of girls. He was gonna chew me up and spit me back out into anonymity, before I’d even had a chance to dance with him.
But then Kimo Wilder threw back his head and laughed. “You saw my painting, eh? That’s an excuse that gets you one free pass. Just one. So what did you think of it?”
“It’s amazing,” I babbled. “I’ve seen it at all different times of day, but it’s surprising that just before sunset, your image is strongest. I thought it would be morning, but it’s sunset. Then your image just fades away. I’ve never seen anything like it. By night, she’s all alone.”
Kimo looked amused. “You really have studied it. She’s a great artist,” he said. “I believe she was influenced by the work of Leonardo da Vinci. If you ever look at his stained glass of The Last Supper you’ll see what I’m talking about.
“Well, let’s hope you’ve been inspired enough to do something brilliant here today.”
I sure was inspired. I wanted to get on my knees and suck his cock right that minute, but I was betting that wasn’t the kind of brilliance he had in mind. I began to wonder if he’d made it with the artist. Then I decided I just didn’t want to know.
Kimo clapped his hands.”Let me look at you all.”
We stripped to our shorts—and tops for the girls—and performed several rudimentary steps for him as he beat an ipu, or gourd drum. He liked the warrior chants, which were his specialty and he watched us male dancers do what comes naturally to men of all nations: make war.
He followed us around, his chest muscles rippling in the morning light. The man didn’t have an ounce of body fat on him. He was one of the few pure-Hawaiian men left in the islands. His dark brown skin had a sheen I guessed was sweat from an early morning workout and not oil, like some hula dancers used.
“You have a classic hula dancer’s body,” he told me. “Very nice definition. Strong arms, good legs. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And how long have you been dancing?”
He must have known all this, surely. He’d handpicked each one of us.
My story wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t pretty. Kimo was staring at me. I wasn’t bad looking—dark brown hair I’d been trying to grow out for the hula show. Brown eyes and skin. I’d never had any complaints, but I was picky about my men, ever since Johnny.
I was what they call hapa hoale—half white, half Hawaiian. My mother was a great hula dancer in her day. She was doing well until she discovered alcohol and dumped me with my grandparents when I was six years old. It was my tutu—grandma—who raised me and decided I was a chip off the old hula block.
“I’ve been training since I was seven years old,” I said.
Kimo nodded. I wondered if he was somehow psychic, because I felt he was aware of the small, dormant volcano of ugly memories he’d woken in me. But he said nothing more to me, moving onto the others. Then he clapped his hands, again, ordering us into a circle as he said a prayer.
We all held hands and I glared at those lucky devils, Ginger and Lon, who got to hold his hands. This great dancer’s love and knowledge was of Pele, Goddess of the Volcanoes. He danced and chanted a long-forgotten piece in which he portrayed her lover, Kamapua’a, the Pig God. It was mesmerizing to watch and judging by the look on his face as he did it, intoxicating to perform.
I’d only seen him do it once and spent two years learning his form of hula just for the chance to be a part of his remarkable work.
Laka was the Goddess of hula and of the forest, but other dances and chants were told—since there was no written Hawaiian language until the Missionaries arrived on the islands—of Goddess Pele.
Kimo Wilder had devoted his life to the study of ancient texts about Pele and the various aspects of her life. He had a doctorate and had written several books, but his preferred medium was hula. Not the Disney-does-Hula you see at hotel luaus, but the ancient form you see only in competition.
“When the focus is Pele herself, our movements are big and they are loud. We are telling an epic story of her challenging journey to Hawaii,” Kimo told us. “We dance the battles with her sister Namakaokaha’i and her love-hate relationship with Kamapua’a.”
Kimo’s most recent award-winning dance was an ancient one that told of her Shark God brother, Kamauaali’i, who guided her from her home in Polynesia to Hawaii.
He took us through the first steps and we watched his solo, transfixed. If ever a greater hula dancer lived, I’ve never heard of him.
Kimo praised Ginger the most. It surprised me, because Kalani and Sanoe were both far superior dancers. Ginger preened in his adulation, but I suspected he picked her out because he knew she was Eddie’s fiancée and he was doing the Alpha male thing.
Throughout the day, the sound of prayers and chanting from the riveting voice of our lead dancer stirred everybody into top class training. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Kimo’s body.
He looked like a football player, yet had more grace than any female dancer I ever saw. Up close, I drank in the impressive sight of all those tattoos. I’d studied enough to know the pattern of squares, triangles and crescents for what they were—each told the story of his ascension to a leadership role.
One special set of markings on his face signified his personal endurance and dedication to his cultural tradition. I recognized the markings of his personal aumakua, his family god, and was surprised to see it was the shark. I had expected the pig, in honor of Kamapua’a. I wondered where it could be.
“Why are you staring at me?” Kimo suddenly asked me.
“I’m reading your tattoos,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”
“What means this one?” he pointed to his temple.
I moved closer to him to take a good look. Up close, he smelled of cinnamon gum and his skin had a spicy, earthy smell. I also detected a good relationship with soap. I had to concentrate not to let my tongue hang out in a helpless drool, like a toothless old basset hound.
“I’ve never seen that one before,” I said after a long pause. “I assume, since it is close to your tap, I mean marking of knowledge—”
He grunted. “Tap is okay. That means you know our history. That’s what it is. Tattoo means tapping. The tapping of the ink…so what does the pattern signify?”
I looked at the patterns above and below the marking he pointed out to me.
“Is there anything above the hairline?” I asked, earning a slow, delighted smile.
“Yes, there is.”
“Well, then I couldn’t tell you because that is the mark of kaona.”
Some of the others were glancing at each other, looking back at me.
“And what means kaona?” Kimo asked in a teasing way.
“Hidden meaning or secret power.”
“Very good.” He gave me a small clap. “Which means you could never understand the meaning, so stop trying to read the book.”
I laughed, which seemed to surprise him. “What’s so funny?”
“There’s never been another hula dancer like you, not in my lifetime. Asking me not to look at you is like asking me not to stare if King Kamehameha suddenly sprang back to life and wandered in here.”
Then I remembered that King Kamehameha had placed a kapu on all his subjects. You couldn’t look him in the eye, stand in his shadow or stand or sit above him. To do so was an instant death sentence.
There was silence in the room.
Kimo’s burst of merry laughter startled everybody. “You’re flattering me.”
“Yes, but it’s the truth.”
He shook his head. “Eh…you have quite a little fire going on in you,
for such a pretty boy.” His gaze swiveled to the others. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
He coaxed better work than any of us have ever done before. I watched him flirt in a harmless way with the girls, goading them as hard as he did the male dancers.
At lunchtime, I watched him go outside to eat salad and a piece of salmon. I knew from the endless research I’d done on him that he didn’t eat pork, because he felt it was disrespectful to his Pig God, Kamapua’a.
He was very quiet, sticking to himself as he ate. He remained outside, watching the ocean waves from the back door.
All around me, the others were chatting, swapping food from their bento boxes like little kids. Outside, a shark circled in the water and I saw Kimo nodding. His personal god had come to bid him aloha. Kimo’s eyes sparkled when he came back to the group after lunch. I had witnessed something powerful and deeply personal. By the time we held hands for closing prayer, I was more hooked on my personal god than ever.
He recited a prayer of protection, closing his eyes, but mine bore right into him.
I’m gonna make you mine, I chanted in silence. His eyes flew open, as if aware of my intentions and once again, I had the thrilling, terrifying feeling of being in the path of a giant bird of prey.
Chapter Two
I let myself into Johnny’s Lahaina studio, leaving my shoes outside the door, as was the custom on the islands. It wasn’t always a custom, but one that came with the huge migration of Japanese immigrants to the islands in the late 1800s. Johnny’s mom, being Japanese, was especially vigilant about shoes and other weird things, like blowing your nose in front of other people.
His mother had peculiar, unspoken rituals that were easily violated, because I swear she made up the rules as she went along. I’ll give you an example of these rituals, of which I became a part when Johnny and I became lovers. The first family event I was invited to was his grandmother’s funeral.
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