Page 79 of Soul on Fire
It wasn’t a beach,but they were side by side. Beaming, Elliot snapped a selfie of him and Ikolo at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Sunshine wreathed the world, teased marigold and emerald and sapphire blue out of the earth and sky. It was a stunningly perfect day, and spread out beneath them lay all of East Africa: Kenya to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east. Savanna, plains, and Lake Victoria to the west, and beyond Lake Victoria, the Congo. Four months ago, they’d brought the orphans from Ikolo’s hospital back to the Congo and found homes for all of them. It took six weeks, but each child now had a new family and a future unfurling before them.
On top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Elliot sneaked a quick kiss to Ikolo’s cheek and snapped another picture. The shot captured Ikolo’s surprise and laughter as Elliot’s lips landed on his cheek.
Later, they ate at an open-air restaurant in Arusha, sitting on the patio as Innoss’B’s Afrobeat hip-hop thrummed through the air.
“He’s from Goma, you know?” Ikolo said, setting his beer down. “I watched him perform once at a Mwangaza club game.”
“What’s that?”
“Football. Real football, you know, played with your feet.”
“You mean soccer.” Elliot winked.
“That name makes no sense!” Ikolo’s eyes flashed as he sat back, laughter spilling from him as Elliot tried in vain to argue for the sport’s name to be soccer, despite the entire rest of the world calling it by its rightful title: football.
“I will take you to a real game sometime. Mwangaza, they are my team. Though I do like the Kilimanjaro Heroes out of Moshi, too.”
“Take me anywhere,” Elliot said, drinking his own beer. “I’ll go everywhere with you.”
Their eyes met over the table and lingered.
Later, they were back at Ikolo’s Tanzanian home, stripping each other slowly as they crawled into his bed. Kisses turned to long, leisurely caresses and their bodies sliding together. Legs wrapped around legs, arms around shoulders, and kisses rained on chests and biceps and bellies. Elliot grabbed a pillow and held it over his face to muffle his screams as Ikolo went down on him, sucking him to the root and back for almost thirty minutes.
He pulled Ikolo off when he couldn’t take it anymore. Ikolo grinned, then moaned as Elliot lifted his legs and went down on him, his lips sliding beneath his cock and balls to his hole. “Yes,” Ikolo whispered. “God yes, Elliot.”
Elliot ate him out as long as Ikolo had sucked him, tonguing his hole and sliding inside as he loosened, working his fingers in around his sucks and the caresses of his tongue. Ikolo opened for him, his hole wet and ready when he was finally finished. He reached for the lotion they kept near.
It was still new, coming together this way. Each time it felt like the first time, and Elliot wondered how long that would last.
At least another time after this. As he sank inside Ikolo, his entire body seized, gripped by the raw sensation of Ikolo’s heat, of his body taking Elliot inside of him, the way Ikolo made him want to burn alive inside his soul. Entering Ikolo was like flying into the sun and helovedit,cravedit, every single time. That tight, hot slide, the way Ikolo stared up at him openmouthed and breathless. The way they kissed when Elliot was buried inside of him, all of his inches throbbing inside of Ikolo’s depths.
Sometimes it was slow and luxurious, kissing for what felt like years as their bodies rocked together, Ikolo rolling on top of Elliot and riding him slowly, stroking his chest as they traced patterns and promises on each other’s skin. Sometimes it was fast and hard, needing each other so badly they couldn’t say the words, could only talk with their kisses and their thrusts. They fucked until they screamed, cried each other’s names and burst apart, exploding like bombs detonating in the night, until they reformed and loved each other again.
It was something in between this time, a slow start with kisses that stoked the fires inside them both. Ikolo gasped as Elliot hit a certain spot, his leg stiffening as his foot arched, braced over Elliot’s elbows. Elliot hitched Ikolo’s legs up to his shoulders and slid deeper.
Groaning, Ikolo’s eyes rolled back and he wrapped his hands around Elliot’s arms. “Yes,” he breathed. “Like that. Love me like that.”
Elliot did. Long and thick and deep, strokes that pulled him nearly all the way out of Ikolo before plunging back in, sliding to the deepest part of Ikolo that he could. Ikolo trembled in his arms, his body quaking as he crawled closer to exploding. He kept his arms wrapped around Elliot’s arms, even as his rock-hard cock bounced off his abs, the head purple and desperate for attention.
“Come for me, baby,” Elliot whispered, leaning in and kissing Ikolo, nibbling his lips as he buried himself completely and withdrew until only his head remained in Ikolo’s heat. His cock throbbed, right on the edge of the tipping point. “Come with me.”
“Yes, Elliot…” Ikolo groaned, and then he blasted apart, every muscle locked in orgasm as the wave swept through him, over him, and into Elliot. Ikolo’s orgasm slammed into him, ripping Elliot’s from his body. He screamed Ikolo’s name and pitched forward, drove his hips as deep as he could go, and flew apart.
They kissed for an hour after, Elliot still inside Ikolo’s warm hole. His come slicked them both and trickled out as Elliot softened. Later, he’d slide back inside, and sometimes Ikolo was still open and slick enough from Elliot’s first orgasm that he didn’t need any more lotion.
Moonlight streamed through Ikolo’s bedroom window as they laid side by side facing each other. Ikolo lived in a block of homes against the edge of a national park, old British colonial concrete structures where English expats once lived. From the rear windows, it almost felt like they were back in the forest, like the world went on forever between the trunks of the iroko and the wenge, and in between the dream root vines and the dangling moss, and the bamboo that sang when the wind blew. Like they could step outside and walk into another world and never return. It was different, though, seeing the forest in moonlight. In the Congo, there was no light in the midnight forest, nothing but what they brought with them.
The truest light of all had been Ikolo leading the way. Leading their journey and leading Elliot’s heart.
“This already feels like home,” he whispered, tracing a moonbeam across Ikolo’s cheek and down to his collarbone.
“How long is your leave from the Navy?”
“Indefinite. I get to say when I want to go back.IfI want to go back.”
Ikolo’s gaze searched his, looking for something. Whatever it was, he couldn’t find it. “You’recertainyou’d want this?” His voice was hesitant.
Doubt. Ikolo had been looking for doubt. Elliot scooted closer and hitched his leg over Ikolo’s. “I’ve always been certain about you, right from the first moment I saw you.”
