More Than Life (4 page)

The desperation in his voice was all Mik needed to hear. Suddenly, it felt like he could climb inside Isa’s skin and still not be close enough. With needy hands, he tugged on Isa’s hips until his cock reached his lips. He took him in his mouth and worked him until his jaw ached and Isa’s thighs began to shake.

With a muttered curse in a language Mik didn’t understand, Isa pulled away and stared at him for a long moment before he lifted Mik’s legs and pressed his knees to his chest.

Isa reached for the oil by the fire and sweet pain surged through Mik as Isa joined their bodies. For long minutes, they remained still, their eyes locked and their bodies entwined in the most intimate way.

For Mik, it felt strange. It had been a long time since he’d had a man inside him, but his memories of the clumsy, fumbling encounters had nothing on the carnal pleasure that surged through him now. Even the heat of Isa’s stare was too much.

Mik took his hands from Isa’s chest and pulled him close. He felt the soft puffs of air Isa panted against the skin of his neck as he slowly lowered his legs and wrapped them around Isa’s strong body.

Isa raised his head and caught him in his heart-stopping gaze. He seemed to search Mik’s face for something, and when he found it, he pulled out of Mik and drove back inside him with enough force to make them both cry out.

Mik steadied himself, and Isa set a gentle rhythm, but before long, months of pent up desire and yearning overcame them both and their coupling became frantic. Mik arched up and met Isa in the middle. Harsh breaths misted the freezing air. Mik threw back his head and gave himself over, and when he felt Isa’s warm hand close around his cock, his whole world turned white.

He clawed at Isa’s back and dug his nails into sweat slicked skin. For endless minutes, he saw and heard nothing. He could only feel…feel Isa’s weight over him, his lips on his neck, and his cock as it drove so sweetly into his body. Like distressed metal, a coil deep inside his belly wound tighter and tighter, and Mik braced himself for the break.

It came sooner than he thought. Without warning, Isa shifted and altered the path of his thrusts. The coil inside Mik snapped and hot, sticky release painted his chest. Isa watched it all through hooded eyes, then he froze, rigid, and warmth pulsed inside Mik’s body.

After, they lay together in front of the dying fire. The slowly fading warmth seemed ominous and foreboding, and Mik fought sleep for as long as he could, but entangled in Isa, still naked and bare, he felt darkness wash over him. As sleep took him, he was sure he imagined Isa’s whispered words.

“More than my life, Mik. It’s all I’ve got.”

Time passed slowly and too fast all at once. Mik made three further trips into Albania, and after the first two, it became impossible for Isa to come with him. The fighting in Kosovo had grown more intense, and it had become harder and harder for the American to reach Mik’s home.

Their time together became snatched and desperately precious, even more so than before. Such a precarious existence was a way of life for Mik. He could barely remember a time without conflict and hardship, but as time went on, the strain of living a double life began to show on Isa. He lost weight and his skin paled. One night, huddled under their secret bridge, he fell asleep in Mik’s arms.

Mik watched him for a long time. He ran his fingers through Isa’s slowly lightening hair and traced the dark circles beneath his eyes. He put his lips to his neck and breathed his smoky, spicy scent. He counted his pulse, spellbound. Isa wasn’t much of a sleeper, and Mik knew this secret, stolen moment with him was one in a million.

Just like Isa.

Mik felt his heart quicken as reality threatened to mar the rare moment of perfection. The war was reaching its peak, and death and destruction were never more than a heartbeat away. How long could they live like this? It was only a matter of weeks, maybe days, before Serbian forces overwhelmed the capital, and with the war lost, Isa’s mission in Kosovo would be over. He’d return to his own people, maybe forever.

Surely forever.

Mik closed his eyes and felt the beginnings of a nightmare creep over him. Their time was nearly up. He could feel it in his bones.

Isa shifted. Mik felt him start awake and soothed him with a gentle kiss to his temple. “I thought you were going to sleep until tomorrow.”

Isa glanced rapidly around their damp, shadowed den before he fixed Mik with a rare unguarded stare. “If only. I dream of those nights in the mountains. Sometimes, I wake up and it takes me a moment to believe we’re not there.”

Mik’s heart ached. “One day,” he whispered. “One day we’ll go back, just us, and stay there forever.”

“I’d like that.” Isa closed his eyes again. “Tell me about it. Talk to me until I have to leave you again. I don’t want to sleep our time away.”

And so Mik did. Between snatched, desperate encounters, he talked all night until the sun stole the moon, and a little more of him died inside.

* * * *

Mik was asleep in the attic of Leka’s family home when the door to the house gave way to the force of a man’s boot. He lurched awake and grabbed his pistol. His body prepared for fight or flight, and hearing Rea’s screams from the lower floor, he chose to fight.

Footsteps pounded the stairs as he slid down the ladder to the first floor. A voice yelled his name, a voice he’d recognize until his dying day.

“Mik! Where are you? Mik!”

Mik’s blood pounded in his ears. He thundered down the stairs and met Isa halfway. The world stopped. Isa had always been so unshakable, so solid and steady, and the fear in his eyes now chilled Mik to the bone.

He’d never seen Isa afraid.

Leka appeared at the foot of the stairs. “I can hear machine guns and tanks. What’s going on?”

Isa kept his eyes on Mik. “The Serbs are coming. They’ve broken through the peacekeepers and they’re heading this way. You need to get out.”

“We’ll fight,” Leka said.

Resolute, Mik nodded and pulled back the safety catch on his pistol. “We’re not running. Not now. We’ve come too far.”

Isa tightened his grip on Mik’s arms. “There’s too many of them. This isn’t a fight. It’s a massacre. They are separating the men from the women. The men are being taken away…Mik, they’re going to kill you, they’re going to kill you all.”

Mik shook his head. “Take Rea and Leka. My parents…”

“It’s too late!” Isa shouted. “They’ve taken the city. Your parents are already dead. Mik, please. We’ve diverted them for as long as we can. They’ll reach this side of the town any minute. You have to leave now.”

Fear churned Mik’s stomach until he was sure he would vomit. “Me? What about you? Do they know who you are? That you’ve been helping us?”

Isa’s eyes were hard. “If they didn’t before, they do now.”

The resignation in Isa’s voice hit Mik like a train. Overwhelming grief made him sway on the stairs.

Isa steadied him and reached into his pocket. “Here. I had these made for the three of you. They say you are Americans so you can cross the borders.”

Still, Mik couldn’t make his legs move. “But we don’t speak English.”

Isa tossed a gun down to Leka. “It won’t come to that, but they’ll buy you time until our agents can get to you. Someone will meet you in Albania and escort you south to Greece. You’ll be safe there.”

The band around Mik’s heart tightened. “Come with us.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

Mik took Isa’s face in his hands. “You’re lying to me. You’re going to fight them so they kill you instead of me.”

Isa’s resolve seemed to waver briefly. “I have to. We have a chance of outflanking them if we move fast. You are what little remains of the resistance. If you can get away and regroup, perhaps…” His voice fell away. He was clutching at straws now, and they both knew it.

“But…”

“Mik, there’s no time.” Isa pulled on Mik’s arm.

Mik fought him. “Isa, please—”

Hard lips cut off his desperate plea. Arms enveloped him, and he felt the tremor of Isa’s own torment. Their kiss was goodbye, maybe forever, and they both knew it.

Isa pulled away and stared at him. “I love you, Mik, more than my life. Whatever happens, never forget that.”

There was no time for Mik to respond, and reality hit him like a nuclear blast as Isa shoved him down the stairs and toward the back door of the house. It was barely dawn in Pristina, and he followed Leka and Rea out into the lightening streets. Behind him, he felt Isa let go of his hand. He turned, but Isa pushed him away.

“Go,” Isa said desperately. “You have to go. Mik, please, just run!”

For a heartbeat, Mik resisted, but Rea’s hand in his spurred him into action. To linger any longer would mean certain death for all of them, and he couldn’t waste her life like that. He cast one last pleading glance back Isa before he turned and began to run as fast as he could.

His legs moved on instinct. He’d lived and breathed the city ever since he could walk, and he knew every twist and turn like the back of his hand. The desolate, artillery damaged buildings and broken streets made up the only home he’d ever known.

Fresh gunfire broke out behind him, and the dull thud of a bomb sent him to his knees.

Rea yanked on his arm. “Get up!”

Mik scrambled to his feet and ran for his life. Behind him, explosions rocked the earth, and the air crackled with gun fire.

The Goljak Mountains appeared on the horizon, almost mystical in their beauty. As a child, Mik had always believed they would protect the city from evil. Now, as they were lost to the thick white smoke of a bomb, he truly believed he’d never see them again.

Another explosion.

Rea screamed, and Mik hit the ground again. He and Leka covered Rea as debris fell from the sky. There hadn’t been much left of Pristina to destroy, but such great clumps of rubble pounded the earth around them, the Serbians must have found something. Dust rained down on them, filling their lungs and clouding their vision. Behind them, the gunfire began again, but Mik was so dazed, it seemed to him to be moving further away.

Leka pulled him to his feet. “Brother, come on. We need to keep moving.”

Somehow Mik’s legs propelled him forward. Sight and smell deserted him. For reasons that couldn’t be explained, the only sense that remained was his hearing. He heard the buildings fall and tanks rumble forward. He heard whizzing bullets, shouts and yells.

A faraway cry of pain reached him.

Isa
.

Mik’s head told him it was the wind, but his heart knew the truth. Isa had been hit. Without Rea’s hand in his, he would surely have stumbled, have slumped to the ground to never get up, but even as his steps faltered, his sister’s voice never faltered.

“No, Mikail. You owe it to Isa to try.”

Mik wanted to scream. His place was with Isa, but as silent sobs tore through his chest, somehow, his legs kept moving.

Rea was right. Isa wanted him to live.

Numbness washed over him as the mountain legends in his head became true and the jagged peaks concealed their flight from the city. The feeling remained as they kept moving through the dense, green forest and covertly crossed the Albanian border.

Doric was waiting for them at the smuggler’s meeting point. He took them into his home, fed them and tended the wounds they hadn’t noticed on their exhausted bodies. They huddled by the fire and listened as the BBC world service reported the siege of Pristina and the massacre of thousands of the city’s men. Old men right down to infant boys, no mercy had been shown. Mik wept for the loss of his beloved mother, his father, his uncles and cousins, but it was later, when Doric told them of the death of an unnamed American civilian that his heart truly broke in two.

Isa was no civilian. He was a solider, the most secret kind of soldier, but there was no doubt in Mik’s mind that the body hung from the city walls was that of the only man he’d ever loved. Isa had made the ultimate sacrifice so Mik could live, but as grief overwhelmed him, the pain was so sharp he could barely breathe, and his life, for all intents and purposes, had come to an end.

Doric offered Mik and what remained of his family refuge, and with Isa dead, Mik saw no viable reason to continue their intended flight to Greece. The trio of young Kosovan’s remained in Albania, taking their summers in the crisp air of the mountains and their winters concealed under the heavy blanket of the forest.

Leka and Rea grew ever closer as time passed. The first autumn after they fled their motherland, Doric’s wife succumbed to her ailing heart. Mik’s nephew was born just hours later. Doric outlived Rita by mere months, and when his body had been laid to rest, Mik left Leka and Rea to their life in the forest and retreated to the cabin in the mountains. Rea and Leka were happy, and it was all he had ever wanted for each of them, but seeing them together made him bitter. He wanted to scream at them. Tear them apart. There was nothing that could ever fill the void Isa had left, and yet Mik still lived on, whether he wanted to or not. How was that fair?

For long months, he struggled to feel anything beyond the suffocating fog of depression. He couldn’t eat or sleep. He barely moved from his bed. His body and mind seemed to shut down. Inside and out, he felt broken. Rea and Leka did what they could. They traveled up the mountain when the weather allowed, fed him broth and built him fires. Without them, he surely would have frozen to death that first winter.

But he didn’t. Somehow, he lived on.

A year after their escape, a package reached the postal office of the small hamlet a few miles from the forest lodge. It was addressed to Doric but Mik opened it anyway. Inexplicably, it contained his mother’s wedding jewellery and his father’s signet ring. With a heavy heart, he slipped Artan’s ring onto his finger and set aside Klea’s gems for Rea. He reached into the remains of the package for what appeared to be a peaked bundle of cloth. It wasn’t until he turned the soft material over in his hands that he realized what he held.