BLOG TOUR: MIKALO'S FLAME BY SYNDRA K. SHAW

SYNOPSIS:

Ronan Grace and her Greek god in grey wool Mikalo Delis. Still happy, still in love, and now living together in New York. 

Despite it all.

Despite the lingering secrets of Mikalo's past and his complicated life. Despite Ronan's own doubts and worries, the strength of her love for him both shocking and frightening. Despite the jealousy and spite threatening her once successful career. And despite the unexpected emergence of a drunk, drug-addled viciously vindictive blast from Mikalo's past.

Will Ronan and Mikalo stumble under the weight of all these challenges and doubts and confusion as they move toward creating a life together? Or will they fight, giving their love what it needs to survive.

Despite it all.

Mikalo's Flame is Book Two in the The Mikalo Chronicles

 EXCERPT:

"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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born in France, educated in England, Syndra K. Shaw now lives very quietly between New York and Paris.

Author social media links
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/SyndraKShaw
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004695701717
A message via my Facebook account is always nice.

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