Phantom Lover Read online

  Believe me, that was creepy. The service took place at the crematorium and we each had to hold chopsticks and pick up parts of grandma’s ashes and deposit them into an urn. When it was my turn, I was appalled to see that some of the bones hadn’t broken down in the firing process. I almost threw up on the spot. Trying hard not to embarrass my boyfriend, I picked at the ashes and somehow withdrew a bone. His mother became hysterical because it was grandma’s windpipe and only a family member was allowed to touch the windpipe.

  So these were Johnny and his people. Weird, ritualistic, but oddly endearing.

  It didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I thought it would, to be back in his studio. Johnny and I had been boyfriends for two years, until I caught him in bed with our neighbor. That was three years ago and although I moved to Honolulu and pursued my dancing career, Johnny and I stayed in touch and fucked whenever we felt like it.

  Since I’d come back to Maui these past few days, we’d felt like it. A lot.

  I took a shower and got into the sheets of his futon. I hated that damned futon and remembered endless backaches from sleeping in it. The last couple of days, he’d come to stay at my hotel and the bed there was a lot more comfortable, but didn’t have the cool view of the ocean from the bedroom. I got up again and opened the sliding door to the lanai.

  Yeah, I missed the view and the gentle trade winds wafting into the studio. But, did I miss Johnny?

  My cell phone rang and I checked the readout. It was my best friend, Nicky, calling me from Honolulu. Nicky moved here from the mainland a year ago, opened a great bookstore and married herself Hawaii’s top female hula dancer, Kaiona, which was how I had met her.

  “Aloha, Nicky,” I said, climbing into bed again. “Howzit?”

  She laughed. “Howzit with you, Bobby? I can’t believe how much I miss you.”

  It was good to hear her say that. We’d become so close since I took on a part time job as a tour guide in her store almost a year ago and I’d watched with a mixture of envy and happiness as she and Kaiona grew more and more in love. In fact, last month she’d married Kaiona in the wedding event of the year.

  The islands hadn’t seen anything like that sumptuous celebration. It was like King Kalakaua came out of his grave and married his Queen Kapiolani all over again. It was a traditional Hawaiian royal wedding since Kaiona had ancestors linking her to the Great King Kamehameha. Traditional, except that there were two brides.

  That was when I glimpsed Kimo in person, in non-dancing form, from afar. He radiated a pure white light, a chemistry you could feel, before you even saw him. He had that certain…something, that star power that a few great athletes and maybe a major movie star had.

  Johnny said Kimo carries an angel with him, which certainly made sense. I watched him dance with Kaiona and when I overheard him talk about his new show, I went after it, and him, immediately.

  He’d been with his wife Mim, a very large Hawaiian woman who looked older than him and had lots and lots of hair. Nicky said that I was just jealous of her, that Mim was a real sweetheart.

  I settled into bed, one ear open for Johnny and talked to Nicky. “I’m naked and I’m waiting in bed for Johnny,” I told her.

  “You naughty boy,” she giggled. “I thought you were supposed to stay, you know, chaste, when you’re in training.”

  “Honey, I couldn’t keep chaste if my life depended on it.”

  Nicky laughed. “You haven’t had any action for months. That sounds good, that you’re finally getting some. Are you having fun with him?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t add that I wasn’t in love with Johnny anymore. Nicky would only worry about me. She wanted me to be in love. She wanted me to be happy.

  We chitchatted a moment more, then I heard the key in the front door.

  “My lover’s home.”

  “Yippee-ky-yay,” Nicky said, finishing the call.

  I turned off the cell phone and rushed for the door. Johnny’s worried eyes lit up when he saw me naked. He was carrying a sushi takeout box and a bottle of sake.

  Taking everything out of his hands, I kissed him. I adored kissing Johnny, the most sensual kisser in the world. It was Johnny who taught me the art of kissing for hours, of hunting and capturing a man’s secret crevices and licking and sucking them.

  I unbuttoned his vintage jeans and he shook his head as I yanked his trousers and underpants down.

  “You always have to go there,” he said. “Always in a rush.”

  If he knew how slim the pickings had been for me in Honolulu this past year, he wouldn’t tease me so much.

  But Johnny held my head to him as I started to lick his cock. Johnny had the perfect body. Slim, even-toned, his chest and shoulders were well defined. His cock was not that big, which was always a source of disappointment to me, but then I had discovered that a lot of bottom boys weren’t well hung.

  His cock responded to my resuscitation efforts. I’d given it quite a workout the last two nights and now it demanded relief. Johnny was unbuttoning his shirt and I dragged him to the futon.

  On his knees on the hard Japanese bed, he watched as I kept working on that sweet dick, working his body like an extra long, tasty piece of taffy. He kept stroking my head and I took a mint from the bedside table, put it in my mouth and went back to work.

  The vapors from the mint sent a tingling sensation from his lovely, moist cock head all the way to the base of his shaft as I plowed him with my mouth. He fell back on the bed and I stayed on him, coming off his cock only to tell him how good he tasted.

  Johnny just watched me, his eyes half-closed. Sometimes he liked to say that he created a monster, a cock glutton, and I always had to agree.

  His balls pulled up and I caught them in my hand. I never used my hand on his cock. I took pride in only using my mouth for a blowjob and Johnny watched and let out a cry as he came, sending his molten lava down my throat.

  Bucking and bobbing in my mouth, his cock kept giving me more liquid fire. I held onto his hips and lapped up every last drop, releasing him and crunching on the last of the mint.

  Johnny rubbed his eyes. When he had a particularly rocking orgasm, that’s what he did. He lay back on the bed and smiled.

  “You’re the only man I know who can pull out those stupid parlor tricks with the mints, the crushed ice, whatever, and send me to the fucking moon.”

  “You’re welcome.” I kissed his lips. Johnny held me to him, tasting his own come. We kissed for a long time and I felt his cock getting hard again.

  “Let’s eat.” He pushed himself away from me. He moved away from the bed and I watched him put the sushi on plates, heating the sake in the microwave in the tiny kitchen and coming back to bed with it.

  “What do you want to watch on TV?” he asked.

  “I don’t mind.”

  He handed me my plate, so daintily organized, with the chopsticks he keeps for special occasions and the midnight blue sake cup. Pouring out for both of us, he kissed me and speared a piece of pickled ginger, feeding it to me.

  Yeah, I did miss Johnny.

  It hurt like hell when I found out he’d been fucking around on me. I blamed myself, my lack of something, for his inability to be faithful. It took me a long time to realize Johnny is weak and easily manipulated into doing just about anything. For him, the thrill is the chase, not the act of sex or the art of love, despite how much he enjoys it with me.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he asked.

  I smiled, because it was the second time that day I’d been asked that question. I tried not to think about Kimo’s taut muscles as he glided across the dance school floor. I stayed on Johnny, on the sushi he had bought us.

  “Have you missed this as much as I have?” Johnny asked me.

  “Oh yes,” I said and suddenly he was on me, his tears shocking me, as he kissed my face and neck, his mouth moving to my nipples, which he knew I loved having sucked, back to my mouth again.

  “I’m so sorry.” He pulled the pl
ate away from me. “I know I hurt you. Can you ever forgive me? I miss you. I miss your heart. I have your body back, but not your heart and that’s what I miss the most.”

  We held each other and kissed again, Johnny’s hands on my chest and stomach. He always loved my body and treated it tenderly. It was just my heart he pulled out and smashed against the wall. The heart I wasn’t sure he could ever have back.

  Johnny cried and I hushed him with kisses. He wanted me to fuck him and he moved to my cock.

  “I’d forgotten how big it was.” He was on his knees now. Johnny gave good head and I loved watching him suck, even though it had always been too much for him. I let him have his fun and he looked drunk with my cock, slurping impatiently on it.

  “Fuck me,” he said, through his freely flowing tears.

  I put him on his back and his legs opened up to me. I wiped at his tears with my thumbs and pulled his legs apart further. I loved looking down and seeing his ass, balls and cock waiting for me. I dropped my head, licking from his cock to his balls, to that cute ass and back again.

  Johnny always made a lot of noise when I licked him and pretty soon he was worked up, hollering, “Fuck me,” until I put my cock exactly where he wanted it and plunged it into him.

  I loved fucking Johnny and he knew how to move those hips to get more and more of me into his ass. Some guys say they can’t take it all but Johnny just always gobbled it up.

  “Oh yeah,” he kept saying, breathless now as I held his cock, jerking gently on it. I knew how to time things so we’d explode together. Johnny was better than any girl I’ve fucked and since I only fucked girls until the day I met him, I knew the difference.

  I felt the orgasm building from the base of my spine.

  “Johnny,” I said, and he instantly lifted his arms above his head. My mouth dipped to his armpits. He knew that I loved to suck and lick them when I fucked him. My mouth went from his armpits to his mouth, to his nipples and as I moved back to his armpits, I was surprised to find them wet. Fresh tears were coming down his face.

  “I love you, Johnny,” I said, because I knew he needed to hear it. I slammed my cock into him, pumping on his until we erupted in our shared, blissful earthquake and I collapsed on top of him.

  Johnny wrapped his legs around me, keeping me there.

  When I pulled out of him a long time later, he lay in my arms and I held him, stroking his head and back and he gave me his mouth to kiss. He snuggled against me. I picked up the first sake cup I could find and let him sip some. We nibbled at sushi pieces and at each other’s mouths and finally, I pulled him as close as possible to me.

  In the deepening night of brilliant stars blanketing the sky the way it does only on these outer islands, neither of us made a move to turn on a light. I held him tightly with one arm, powering up the remote with the other. I felt Johnny’s heartbeat against my throat, his smile at my chest as we settled into the simple pleasure of watching TV together.

  Chapter Three

  A week after we started training at Kimo’s halau, Johnny surprised me by coming to meet me for lunch. I introduced him with reluctance to the other dancers as Kimo kept up his habit of eating alone in the back yard.

  I was reluctant to introduce Johnny because he’d already burned me once and I’d lost all our friends who’d picked sides in his favor. He was already engaging Roland in the game of Remember when?

  Roland had been close to me and Johnny. He and his lover David were devastated when Johnny and I broke up. Roland had offered to send a couple of big Samoan buddies over to Johnny’s gallery to give him what-for but now you’d have thought they were the best of friends, catching up on old times.

  Ginger and Eddie were arguing beside us about whether or not she’d been flirting with Kimo. She had, but I would never tell Eddie this.

  Not really being ready to share all parts of my life with Johnny again, I suggested we walk further down to 501 Front Street and Johnny fell in step with me.

  “You ashamed of me or something?” he asked.

  “No. I just need to get out of there for a while, baby.”

  “Rehearsals are that stressful, huh?”

  “Very.”

  He seemed to accept my explanation, which was half true. “I can see why you’d want to get away. Lover boy Kimo ain’t responding to your charms?”

  I let the comment pass. At 501, we found a table at an outdoor sushi café and I let Johnny pick our meals, while I enjoyed not talking about hula for the next half hour.

  “You’re exhausted,” Johnny said as he came and sat beside me. He popped open a couple of cans of iced green tea and handed me one.

  “Yeah, I don’t get much sleep.” I grinned. “I got me a hot Asian man who’s pretty wild in the sack.”

  Johnny laughed. “Any regrets?”

  “None.”

  “You wanna go to the Hailii Maile General Store for dinner?” he asked.

  Hailii Maile was not only the best restaurant on the islands, but it had been our restaurant. I’d avoided it for the last three years.

  I knew what he was asking. He wanted to move this past fucking and quick bites of food between the fucking.

  “Sure,” I said and he put his hands on my face.

  “I’ll make the reservations. I’ve got a little surprise in mind for dessert.

  “You do?” I was hoping that dessert would involve Johnny, a car, a lonely deserted road and some hot cock action.

  Our playtime was soon over.

  Kimo appeared, descending on us as just as our food arrived and Johnny was pointing out the exotic array of sushi on our lunch plates.

  Jerking his thumb toward the entrance of the outdoor courtyard, Kimo snapped. “You didn’t ask permission to leave. Get back to the halau right now.”

  He gave us withering looks and I saw Johnny visibly shrink.

  “See you later,” I said and Johnny nodded, looking terrified of Kimo.

  * * * *

  I had no idea why Kimo was so angry and for the rest of the day, he was in a horrible mood, picking on everybody. What kept me going through the whole awful rehearsal was the knowledge that I had a hot date that night.

  “None of you are concentrating. Too many distractions. Girlfriends, boyfriends.” I felt the measure of his anger when he said that. “This rehearsal is bullshit. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Do better. Or else.”

  He stormed out without saying a farewell prayer.

  “That man totally hates us,” whimpered Ginger, who up until now had felt she had immunity as Kimo’s model student.

  I shrugged. I kind of enjoyed the anger. I knew when a guy wasn’t getting any and I knew that Kimo Wilder was definitely not getting any. We were working up quite a lot of heat—I mean sexual heat—in the dance of the ancient gods and goddesses. I wondered if his wife was back in Honolulu and there was nobody around for him to release all that pent-up aggression.

  “He needs sex,” Ginger mused. “Why do some hula dancers abstain?”

  “I don’t think he’s abstaining for religious reasons. Have you seen his wife?” Roland said. “I’d make her wear a paper bag over head. Just like the guy on Nip/Tuck.”

  “Really? What does she look like?” Ginger asked.

  “Sort of like a cross between Fred Flintstone and Cousin Itt,” Lon said, making everybody laugh.

  “He’s got the hots for you, Gin,” Eddie’s insecurity was turning into obsession.

  “Oh, pish,” she said, but I saw her stick her massive tits out just a little more.

  I was thinking, poor, sex-starved Kimo. Maybe I was just what the hula doctor ordered.

  * * * *

  As I waited for Johnny later at his studio apartment, I lay on the bed, looking forward to our evening. I was wearing my new best pants I bought cheap at the Lahaina Cannery Mall. I hated shopping and I hated that damned mall, but I wanted to look nice for Johnny. I had Keali’i Reichel playing on the I-Pod speaker on the bedside table.

  Keali’i w
as a kumu hula who elevated our art to the international level by becoming a singer and winning Grammy awards. He introduced our songs and chants to the outside world. My hand went down my pants, thinking about fucking Johnny and what I’d like to do to Kimo when my cell phone rang. I was shocked to find it was Kimo.

  “Hello?” I hoped my voice did not reveal my terror that he was going to fire me.

  “Howzit, Bobby.” He didn’t bother telling me who it was. He seemed to assume that I knew it was him. “I’m not happy with the way things are going.”

  I sucked my breath in, waiting for the final blow.

  “So, I’ve chartered a plane and we’re all flying to the Big Island tonight. We’ll meet at ten p.m. in the lobby of the hotel, yeah?”

  It wasn’t a request, but a demand, because he immediately hung up on me.

  I stared at my cell phone, which started ringing again.

  This time, it was Johnny.

  “What’s up, honey?” I asked. “I hope you’re coming home soon. Your man is starving. For you and for some ono grinds.”

  “Well, um…that’s the thing. I can’t make it. Something’s come up.”

  Yeah, I thought. Like another man’s cock. Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions. “You have to work late?”

  “Yes…well…” his voice trailed off. He couldn’t lie about that. It would be too easy for me to come by the gallery and see that he wasn’t there.

  “I have to go look at some new art work,” he said.

  “Art work? Tonight?” I knew for a fact Johnny got paid by the hour and had nothing to do with the selection of artwork. About the only selection he was entitled to make was the roll of toilet paper that went into the shop toilet.

  “It’s…um…the only the time the artist is available.”

  “Well, can I can come with? We can still grab a bite afterward.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “Listen, I have to go.”

  “You want me to wait for you?”

  He paused and I thought my heart would shatter into a million pieces.