But he missed the islands, and he missed Kalani. The two of them were all wrapped up in his mind. Kalani was close to full Hawaiian, tied to the land by blood and birthright, with a classic, timeless male beauty like he could have been standing tall at the prow of a war canoe a thousand years ago. That history, his only inheritance.
Ori closed his eyes, turned on his side, and rubbed himself through his boxers. Kalani, tattooed and wearing a malo, big and muscular and lean. A warrior. No, wait, that was too much like a postcard. Just Kalani, wearing neon-green swim trunks and stretched out on the beach, sand sticking to his calves and the soles of his feet. That sweet little layer of padding just over his hips, softening the hard plane of muscle beneath.
Ori was quiet, very quiet, and when he was done, he fell into a deep, contented sleep.
* * * *
2011 He didn’t want to wake up. He wanted to stay in this lazy half dream, legs tangled in Kalani’s, forever. But the morning light from the broken blinds pried open his eyelids, and he shook himself awake, stretching his body against Kalani’s gratefully, his bare back slipping comfortably across the soft fabric of Kalani’s T-shirt.
“Aloha, sleepyhead.” Kalani’s warm breath in his ear. Heavenly.
“How did you do it?” Ori twisted to raise himself on an elbow for a better view of Kalani’s beaming smile. Ori’s other hand brushed against Kalani’s, and their fingers slipped together easily. “You look amazing. Like you were never in a coma. Did you have to sneak out of the hospital?”
Kalani’s smile fell at one corner, and there was a sudden tightness to his eyes. “Ori, I’m still there. My body…” Ori jerked away from him like he was scalding hot. “So this isn’t real? Am I…are you…are you like a figment of my imagination or something?”
“Would a figment of your imagination be able to tell you—fuck, I guess a figment could tell you anything you wanted to hear.” Kalani hissed. “Scratch that. But I’m real. I’m an ‘uhane, a wandering spirit. I don’t know how it happened. I’m sorry. I should have told you last night. You know, before you got your hopes up.”
“You’re a ghost!” Ori scrambled off the edge of the bed, hit the floor, and crabwalked backward until he crashed into the wall and jumped to his feet. This couldn’t be happening. A rush of terror had his skin crawling and Kalani’s form wavering at the edges. He thought about praying. Thought about the rich, gory tapestry of ghost stories his grandmother would spin in Tagalog, like the one of the multo who had to kill to live again.
“Don’t be scared. Please. Look, the worst I could do was rattle some blinds. I can only stay solid for you. I don’t know why. Maybe because you never gave up on me. Not that I blame Anela. And Julie, maybe I could stay solid for her, but she’d be so afraid, she’d try to cast me out.” His lips twitched and his eyes shone, not with ghostlight but with the onset of tears. “Eh, no make like dat, brah. All hamajang, dis.”
Ori forced himself to slow his breathing and take one shaky step away from the wall, toward the bed. Maybe this was all a malicious trick or a vivid hallucination, but he couldn’t stand to see Kalani so sad, yet still trying to smile and joke.
“So…what. Your body’s still in a coma, but you’re a ghost too? How long has it been like this?” He reached out as he crept forward. Strange how a minute ago he’d reveled in Kalani’s touch, and now he was so afraid.
Kalani sat up on the edge of the bed and stayed very still, his eyes anxious, waiting for Ori to act. Waiting for Ori’s reaction. “I’m sorry,” he said, barely moving his mouth as he spoke. “I don’t know how it works, exactly. It was like…you were in the airport, and then I was there. And then I was gone again. Between worlds. Drifting. There are other ‘uhane, and I’ve seen the ‘aumakua, the guardian ancestors. I know enough that I’m supposed to move on, and one of them is supposed to guide me to the place, but I can’t call out to them, and I don’t know which one is mine. It’s… It’s so much better being here with you, in the flesh.” The touch he gave his own shoulder was tentative, like an experiment, but it ended in a smile.
Ori sat down next to Kalani, close enough to feel his warmth, but couldn’t steel himself to touch him. “So all this… You could disappear at any time. It’s just some kind of cosmic clerical error or something.”
“So…” Kalani’s gaze trailed away, somewhere in the distance. A strange wanting lifted his voice. “Maybe we could make the best of it?”
“You’re a ghost.” Ori was still stuck on that basic, singular fact. Kalani reached out and grabbed Ori hard around the wrist. He pushed Ori’s hand to cup his face. “But I’m here.”
“You’re…you’re…” Ori’s brain was caught in a loop, cycling between visions of Kalani slumped in a hospital bed, drifting translucent through the Hawaiian ghostworld, solid and pleading and inches away.
“Please, Ori. Please. Give me this one goddamn thing. Believe me. What do I have to do?” He let Ori’s hand fall from his face and hit the mattress with his clenched fist. Closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. When he opened them, the smile was back on his lips and a look of mercurial mischief flashed across his face. “Do you remember those times we used to fool around at the gym?”
Yes. Kalani didn’t take the same jujitsu lessons as Ori—Anela couldn’t afford to pay his way—but sometimes he’d meet Ori there and learn some moves after class. Ori remembered the vinegar smell of the freshly cleaned mats, the rattle and roar of the ancient air-conditioning unit. When he was younger, he’d get annoyed at Kalani for not taking this stuff seriously, like the time he tried to wear foam headgear like a codpiece and earned a lecture from the sensei. When they were older, the halfhearted wrestling lessons began—for Ori at least—to include a secret, exhilarating undercurrent that left them both flushed and panting, if maybe for different reasons. By the time Ori signed up with the army, Kalani had long stopped coming around to the gym.
“Yes.” Ori felt himself smiling. “You were terrible at it. You can’t just beat someone by falling on top of them. Well, not unless you gain three hundred pounds and move to Japan.”
“No way. I nearly had you, a few of those times.” Ori’s body twitched, and he twisted his hands into fists. “Only because
sometimes…I wanted you on top of me.” His voice was so low it was barely audible, but Kalani had still heard. In the silence after his words, he could hear Kalani’s breath catch.
“Here’s your chance.” Kalani stood up and moved to the center of the room, peeling off his shirt with a particularly toothy grin. His bare chest seemed to glow, like he was lit up from the inside. It was more than just a chance to settle an old wrestling score; it was everything. Every time they’d touched and shied away, every time Ori had swallowed a word, pulled back from a kiss, been afraid. I love you. Even now he couldn’t say it.
Kalani lowered himself into a crouch. It was so brave. What if Ori said no? What if Ori walked away? What if Ori told him to stop kidding around and shook his head in disgust? Kalani would still be standing there, shirtless with his arms out, waiting in good faith. Ori realized he was tired of disappointing him.
“Not today,” he said as he climbed off the bed and took position, his blood singing in his veins. “You’ll be the one going down.”
“Make me.” Kalani went for him.
Every doubt fell away. This was Kalani. Kalani’s slippery unsure grip on his shoulders, Kalani’s quick breaths of concentration, Kalani’s improper footing but surfboard-conditioned, strong, balanced core. Kalani’s sweat-slick shoulder blade sliding under Ori’s grasping fingers.
He let Kalani think he could use his weight advantage and gave way from that first grapple, but slipped aside instead of falling backward. Kalani staggered down to one knee, grunting. Ori stole half a second to watch the muscles of his back—how they flexed in a desperate, alluring effort to rise. God, Ori almost wanted to draw this out, maybe put Kalani into a submission hold from the front.
Kalani’s foot lashed backward to stri
ke Ori’s ankle. Ori toppled forward but turned his momentum into a roll, wrapping his legs around Kalani’s waist and bringing them both down to the carpet with a whud. Kalani bucked in Ori’s grip as his hands flew back to grab either side of Ori’s head.
He missed. And he’d left his elbows open. Ori hooked his arm, twisted—not sharp enough to wrench the joint, but applying just enough pain to lead Kalani’s body exactly where he wanted it to go—and levered Kalani onto his back. He could put Kalani in a choke hold from below or from above, but the second option seemed to hold so much more promise. From neck to calves, Kalani tightened every muscle, working to free himself. He had the fierce will but not the science. That intimate, hard-gained knowledge of how two bodies came together. Ori had that, and he took a second to revel in it before he scissored his bare thighs across Kalani’s chest and swept Kalani’s arm back across his own throat.
“ Ahhh. That hurts.” Kalani’s captured arm shivered with the strain, triceps flexing in futile effort.
“I tried to teach you this once. The triangle choke hold. I pull harder, you pass out,” said Ori, in between deep breaths. He’d barely broken a sweat, but his skin felt like it was on fire. Knowing Kalani still felt pain, was real enough for that, had his mind reeling, like he was as drunk as last night all over again. Except this time it was good, so good, dizzyingly good, and after all this time and all this misery, he finally had the right man underneath him.
“Let me go.” Kalani’s words were throaty, pleading…insincere. A smile broke through his grimace of discomfort.
Ori shifted his legs forward so he could lean in and get a better hold to—no. He shifted them because he could. Kalani groaned. Ori let go of his arm but increased the pressure of his vise-grip thighs trapping Kalani’s head.
“Tap out,” Ori said and surprised himself at the way it came out in a murmur. And just like that, Kalani stopped struggling to break Ori’s hold on him. Still pinned, his nose and cheek pressed against the inside of Ori’s thigh, the moist heat of his breath filtering through the fabric of Ori’s boxers to the sensitive skin underneath. His dark eyes flickered upward, catching Ori’s gaze briefly before drifting down again.
Right down.
Right at the outline of Ori’s hard-on. It wasn’t the first time Ori’d gotten one fighting, especially not with Kalani, but it was the first time he hadn’t tried to hide it. Do it, Ori begged silently. Kalani licked his lips, nostrils flaring slightly, closed his eyes, and exhaled. The sensation was amazing, maddening, close enough to being touched that Ori twitched at the very base of his cock. Ori gasped, shoulders and arms dropping slack at his sides, as Kalani’s cheek nuzzled in slow circles against his inner thigh.
Breath. Breath. Breath. The steamy heat, over and over again. Consuming him. Withdrawing. Like a fragile tropical bud opening and furling again.
The strange, still moment passed.
“Let me go,” whispered Kalani. The words, their double meanings, seared through Ori’s chest.
“Not yet.”
He brushed a hand through Kalani’s hair. Kalani was here. Kalani was real. He could feel pain and give pleasure, and the urge to claim him overpowered Ori until his hand trembled and his teeth ground against themselves.
He worked his way backward down Kalani’s body, shifting the position of his hold but still keeping a tight grip with his thighs. Keeping Kalani pinned. Kalani’s jaw was clenched shut, but a barely audible whimper escaped through his lips. He didn’t struggle, although all the moving and adjusting Ori was doing had left him several openings. That thought made the desperate, wanting flame inside Ori that had always been so small, so fragile, flare to fill his entire being. Made him force a knee between Kalani’s legs to part them. Kalani threw his head back and bared his throat and moaned so sweetly it was like a fucking song.
Now. Now. All thoughts of positioning and science abandoned, Ori fell onto Kalani and tasted the salt-spiced tender skin of Kalani’s throat. Used every nerve of his hands to map the corded muscles of Kalani’s chest and abs. Ground his hips down until their stiffening shafts met and crossed and rubbed together almost hard enough to bruise.
None of it was graceful, and none of it was skilled. He hoped Kalani understood. He did.
“C’mon, c’mon.” Kalani groaned, hands fumbling up the backs of Ori’s thighs to grip his ass. Ori stuck his thumbs under the waistband of Kalani’s shorts and dragged them down, all rough jerks and hips stuttering and knees scraping against carpet and heart pounding like a jackhammer. Kalani’s cock was beautiful: thick and dark and slightly bent to his navel, ridged with a dusky red where he’d been circumcised.
A dim idea to get Kalani onto the bed rose in his mind, but he was too far gone to speak it. A monologue of he wants me he wants me roared through his head, pushing all the other words aside. He freed his cock from the ripped tatters of his boxer shorts and gripped it together with Kalani’s. “Fuck.Right here, oh God…” They were so good together, so well-matched, Ori’s cock just a shade lighter and more veined.
“This is really happening.” Kalani half sobbed as Ori gave them both a tug. His hips rose to meet Ori’s, his whole body twisting and thrashing like an eel. “You can do it right here on the floor, fuck me, anything you want, Ori, anything—”
Ori rubbed his thumb over the head of Kalani’s cock, thrilling at the wet drip he found there. He wanted to fuck Kalani, open him up and ram into him. Yes, he could do it so well, just like all those times with all those men he’d pretended were Kalani. Even better. A hundred times better, because it would be real, because it would be with the only man he’d ever really wanted. He had to make this happen. “Up on the bed.” The sight of Kalani’s sweet, open expression made him pause. “Please.”
Kalani nodded eagerly. Every trace of his playful resistance had vanished. He’d gone passive, like a perfectly proportioned doll. Ori reached out and stroked Kalani’s jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of Kalani’s lower lip—smiling, always smiling. “You want me? You promise you want me?” He needed to hear it aloud. Needed to know for sure, after all these years.
Kalani lowered his eyelids, parted his lips, and breathed a long, drawn-out, “ Yes.” The look of soft surrender on his strong-boned, square-jawed face… It was like seeing art mixed with pornography and religious ecstasy, and Ori never wanted to lose it again.
Ori rolled off and rose to his feet, immediately missing the warmth of Kalani’s skin. Kalani lay there, naked, legs spread, waiting, smiling, until Ori reached out a hand and helped him up.
They hadn’t even kissed yet. Ori was so used to sex with a minimum of kissing, he wasn’t even sure how it was supposed to fit in. He raised Kalani’s hand and pressed an open mouth to the backs of Kalani’s fingers, just to try it out.
“Oh,” said Kalani. “You… Oh…” Ori dropped Kalani’s hand and slipped behind him, touching everything from the soft skin behind his ear down to the hard, shapely muscles of his shoulder. Kalani shivered as Ori’s lips tentatively followed the path of his hand. He was learning to like kissing. “Will you bend over the end of the bed for me?” he asked against Kalani’s neck.
At Kalani’s breathless, “Yeah,” Ori walked him to the side of the low bed. Bent and posed him on his knees, with his chest flat to the bed and his back and ass arched into a sensual curve.
“This comfortable?” Ori knelt on the floor, situating himself between Kalani’s spread thighs. He’d never done this before—opened a man with his tongue—but he’d waited so long, nearly all his life, and now he wanted it all. Kalani. Every flavor. The salt to the sweet to the bitter. He massaged the tight muscles of Kalani’s legs, up to cup his ass and part his cleft.
“Are you going to—oh God.” A full-body shudder rumbled under Ori’s hands at the first touch of his tongue.
Just a light, testing stroke at first, then, emboldened, he kissed in, lapping wetly. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Kalani gasped, his body twisting and writhing away before
the plea
sure made him press back again.
“You like that, huh? My tongue in your ass?” Ori growled low in his chest, the sound becoming muffled halfway as he dipped his head again, this time letting his tongue flutter lightly. Ori liked it too. The noises Kalani was making. His pleasuretwisted body. The wet shining colors of his contracting, shivering flesh. Ori thrust his tongue now, doggedly pushing past layers of resistance until he felt Kalani’s muscles relax.
“Touch me.” Kalani moaned. “Please, please, Ori.” Ori smiled through his work, but obliged, reaching between Kalani’s legs with one hand to tug down on Kalani’s swollen tool. I could make him come like this, he thought, but his own cock was sending urgent signals up his spine. He cupped the base of his erection, fingers rolling the tightness of his balls, and knew he had to bury himself in Kalani now.
“Let me come inside you,” he said, before he had a chance to stop himself. He’d never asked that of anyone before. “No, I mean, I’ve got—”
“God yeah. Fuck, that’s the last thing we need to worry about, so just come on. Hurry.”
Ori rose, too fucking horny to feel stiff from kneeling so long, and went in search of lube. He found a squat little pot of cocoa butter in his duffel bag and fished it out, and by the time he returned to the bed, Kalani had rolled onto his back, one arm bent and tucked under his head while the other lazily jerked his dick. He looked…spoiled. A picture of excess.
“Oh.” After all they’d done, the sight still made Ori flush. He forced himself not to look away, and Kalani met his gaze and smiled, a little crooked…and knowing and eager and innocent somehow all at the same time, like he knew what shame was but didn’t have time for it anymore.
The fragrant smell of cocoa butter filled the room as Ori fumbled the cap of the container open.
Belleau, Heidi & Vane, Violetta_Hawaiian Gothic Page 4
