First Foot

  Phantom Lover, # 15)

  By A.J. Llewellyn

  Cover Art: Karrie Jax

  Third Edition, Published December 2023

  The Pele Press

  ASIN: B0C86S52BQ

  Author’s Note

  First Foot was a Scottish Christmas tradition that, along with many other holiday customs, was banned during the Reformation of the 1600s. All Christmas celebrations were banned in Scotland for nearly 400 years. Christmas mass, exchanging Christmas gifts, even baking Yule bread were banned and violators punished.

  With its return in 1958, celebratory traditions resumed such as First Footing, although many families now celebrate it on New Year’s Day. First Foot, also known as quaaltagh, means that the first person to cross the threshold of a home on New Year’s Day brings good fortune for the coming year.

  Though it’s acceptable in some families for the First Footer to be a resident of the home, legend says this person can’t be inside the house at midnight in order to First Foot. Leaving the residence and then immediately returning is not considered to be legitimate First Footing.

  The First Foot is also supposed to be a tall, dark-haired male. In many families, a female or fair-haired male are considered to be unlucky.

  This story idea came to me after my brother described a First Foot event he witnessed and the calamitous results when the tradition was well, disrupted. I thought it would make a funny Kimo and Lopaka story and so here is the fifteenth book in my best-selling Phantom Lover series.

  I’ve chosen to celebrate this rich holiday tradition on Christmas Day since this is a Christmas story and some people still celebrate it then. Others celebrate on New Year’s Day.

  To all of my wonderful readers who have sent me so many amazing emails about Kimo, Lopaka and their family, this book is for you.

  Thank you.

  Without you, there would be no series. And without you, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to write this book. Thank you for loving “K and L” as much as I love telling their stories.

  May your Christmas and winter holiday celebrations be bright and loving…and your New Year filled with love, health, happiness, prosperity, Yule bread and song.

  And lots and lots of great, good luck.

  A.J. Llewellyn

  CHAPTER 1

  December 23, 2023.

  “Lopaka, you’re the parent. You just tell Pele she can’t go outside in her bikini. This isn’t Honolulu you know. We’re in Scotland for God’s sake. Look! There’s snow outside.”

  My husband, Kimo, pulled on an extra thick sweater, then jabbed the frosted windowpane to emphasize his point. Like I didn’t already know, it was snowing.

  I was freezing my Hawaiian ass off in spite of wearing leggings, jeans, two sweaters and heavy woolen socks.

  And for that matter, so was he.

  A traditional Scottish family Christmas had seemed like a swell idea gathered around our TV in warm Waikiki, watching Bing Crosby’s White Christmas on DVD. Snow and winter clothing, snow boots, ski poles, crackling fires and stuff, sounded awesome when you didn’t actually need them.

  “Kimo, I know it’s snowing. I’ve told her she can’t go out barefoot in her bikini but she refuses to listen.”

  He stared at me. “You’re her ther.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “She’s two-years-old.”

  “Yes, I know that, too.” I barely managed to restrain an eye roll.

  “She’s the child. She has to listen to you. You’re the parent.”

  “So you keep saying!”

  “You must establish ground rules.”

  “Right.” I almost laughed.

  He tilted his head. “She’ll understand. You’ll just tell her.”

  “Do you know our daughter at all?” I asked.

  “I’m her father. She’ll obey me.”

  This time, I couldn’t smother my smile. Okay, okay, I laughed.

  Kimo gave me a hmph sound and went off in search of our toddler, the bossiest person I’ve ever met. She sat on her bed in her red bikini in the castle room she shared with her twin brother, Kamapu (short for Kamapua’a and her older brother, four-year old Little Kimo.

  The boys stood, bundled in thick layers of clothing. They peered up at us as Kimo and I walked in together. I stroked their little heads.

  Once again struck by the magnificent opulence of our surroundings, I was distracted briefly by the tapestries on the walls, the luxurious antique carpets on the floors and the six-foot live Christmas tree placed in the room for our children. Decorated with antique Scottish baubles, tartan ribbons and buckets of tinsel, I was dazzled by the prisms of light bouncing off all that polished glass.

  I could no longer hide behind the distraction. I took a deep breath.

  Pele’s eyes blazed. She should have been freezing her Hawaiian ass off, too, but Pele was not like most kids. She’d been named after our sacred island goddess, Queen of the Volcanoes, and well, Pele, like her namesake, always seemed to feel hot. She peeled off clothes constantly, leaving a trail everywhere she went.

  Kimo hunkered down to her as she swung her feet against the floor.

  “Pele, sweetheart, you have to put something on. It’s snowing outside.”

  “No,” she said.

  I’d read all about the terrible twos. As terrible twos went, our twins were pretty good.

  “No?” Kimo seemed so shocked at her outspokenness, I wondered where he’d been since the day she tumbled out of my sister’s womb. She might have had Kimo’s DNA, but Pele also had my sister’s stubbornness. And Kimo’s too, come to think of it. Her face took on a mulish expression. We were lucky her brothers were so sweet natured.

  “Pele, it’s cold outside. You’ll get sick.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. Boy, was she a chip off the old block. I could almost hear the words “subject matter closed” screaming from her pores. She was just like Kimo.

  He looked up at me. I shrugged. We could give her a time-out in her room, but that would punish everybody.

  “Come on Pele, you can wear my gumboots,” Little Kimo offered. He held them up. She glanced at them. She adored her older brother. No, she worshipped him. He had red gumboots and so, for that matter, did Pele, but anything that belonged to Little Kimo was like a prize to her.

  “Okay,” she said, and stuck her foot out. I took advantage of her rare acquiescence to put red socks on her feet. I noticed the unopened red tights on the bureau beside her bed, cluttered with books and toys. I tore into the package. I made a game of rolling them up her legs, over her bikini bottoms. She giggled when I tickled her belly. I lifted her up and slid her feet into the too-big gumboots.

  “Would you like a sweater or the shawl?” I asked.

  Kimo and I had learned to offer her alternatives. Anything to avoid hearing, no.

  “Shawl, Mama.”

  She stared at me, her expression grave as I put a red woolen hat with a pompom on her head. I wrapped her in the thick red cashmere shawl her grandma had knitted her. She gave me her trademark beautiful smile.

  “Kisses?” I asked. She tumbled into my arms, my tiny slip of a girl, and let me cover her face with kisses.

  “Mittens?”

  She shook her head. She glanced at the bureau

  “Muff, Mama,” she said.

  Anything to get something else warm on her. Kimo snatched the old fur muff that Pele’s great-grandmother, Fyfa, my father’s mother, had brought for our Christmas visit. She’d picked the drafty castle that came with a host of cold-weather toys, sleds and even cross-country skis. She’d also unearthed some ancient winter clothing. The kids seem to love it all. The muff was over a hundred years old and snow-white. Pele seemed besotted with it, which was unusual since she normally refused to wear anything but red.

  Pele kissed Kimo, who, like me, was a bit of a sucker for the soft-soap routine.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Ready, Mama.” She let me release her and she clomped off in her borrowed boots, her long hair trailing under her woolen hat. She followed the boys, who were too busy for kisses and hugs. Kimo and I had learned to take them when we could get them. I saw Little Kimo watching over the younger kids and would have gone outside with them, except my sister, Maluhia waved me away.

  “We’ll watch them,” she said at the massive front door of the castle. Her husband Raul clattered down the stairs with toboggans and their six-year old twin boys, Kamaha and Keli’i.

  “Mypaka!” the boys screamed in unison, reaching up for hugs. Kimo and I squatted down. We held them tight, releasing them to the excitement of snow. We didn’t get the good white stuff in Honolulu. Snow fell high on the mountains of the Big Island, but way up high to where the kids would never go.

  Maluhia pointed a gloved finger that looked like a giant marshmallow.

  “You go to your room and get busy. We’ll switch places in half an hour,” she said. “I’ve been taking my temperature. I’ll be ovulating then and I’m hornier than six rattle snakes.”

  Oh, boy.

  All I could see of my sister’s beautiful face in her massive snowsuit were her eyes and nose.

  I leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose.

  The boys ran outside to play with their cousins.

  “Don’t let Pele lose that muff!” I yelled to my sister, who lurched like the Abominable Snowman in her big, puffy w
hite suit.

  “Did she just give us permission to have a little hanky-panky?” my husband asked, draping his arm around me.

  “I believe so. A whole half hour.”

  “Then let’s tarry not,” Kimo said in a perfect impersonation of Fyfa’s Scottish brogue.

  We ran to our room. It was a wonderful refuge for two men hopelessly in love and as much in lust as we were. Our massive four-post mahogany bed had a headboard made of wooden slats inlaid with mother of pearl. When the sunlight streamed into the room, light bounced from the pearl giving a lilac hue to everything in it. The bedding was soft and luxurious, piled high on the huge frame. We stood by its side, swapping feverish kisses.

  Breaking off our increasingly fierce embrace, I went to kneel down before him, but he grabbed my sweater sleeve, dragging me back to him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I thought I’d pay a little homage to your cock…which is really my cock.”

  “And so it is.” His eyes gleamed as he released me and let me get back to my task. I got down on my knees and glanced up at him. Kimo’s magnificence never failed to thrill me. Six feet, four inches of pure Hawaiian masculine grace, his long black hair shone as it tumbled over his shoulders. His right hand cupped my face, his thumb brushing against my bottom lip. I glimpsed the dark tattoo on his skin. His tribal tattoos ran the entire right side of his body from his forehead, across his eyelid, down his temple, down his face all the way to the sole of his foot. His thumb bore his latest tap, which was how we referred to his kahuna-prescribed inking. It was in the abstract shape of a bird. I knew it to signify the Nene Pele, the volcano goose sacred to the goddess Pele.

  I felt the lick of fire he always stoked in me. I rubbed his crotch with the palm of my hand, delighted as always with how big it was. He watched me intently as I coaxed him to hardness, finally releasing my favorite toy in the whole wide world. I unbuttoned his fly, reaching past the thermal wear to his boxer briefs, my fingers itchy for contact. God, how I loved his big, juicy cock.

  It sprang out at me and I fondled its smooth, hard length. I licked the head, which was huge and tapered down to a thick shaft I always called a Yule log. I got some Ho Ho Ho all year long thanks to that beautiful cock. I ran my fingers along my name, tattooed along its length in a tribal ceremony. I followed up with kisses and licks.

  “Oh, Lopaka.” His head fell forward and shot back again. I felt like crackles of lightning greeted my tongue as I licked the letters of my name. I had some massive ownership issues where Kimo’s cock was concerned. Not that I ever had to worry about him straying.

  We had an unusual bond, a fire branch, that didn’t allow us much time apart. If we spent more than thirty minutes away from one another, it felt like a raging temperature flooding our systems. He’d only been with one other man, my ex-lover, Johnny, in an ill-conceived threesome shortly after we met. Kimo was mine, mine!

  ::Show me::, he telepathed to me. That was another advantage of our connection. We could read each other’s minds. I began to suck his cock, once again getting used to its massive size as I swallowed more and more of him into my grateful mouth.

  I sucked and pulled, making my mouth as tight as possible for him. His head came forward again, his eyes glazed as he drank in the sight of his wife-husband sucking his cock. According to tribal law, I might have been a man, but I was his woman and he loved me being both.

  My lips sucked in more of him and I drew back, my tongue working the sensitive veins underneath his wonderful cock head. I sucked back down, my fingers tugging at his balls. He held my face in both hands, cradling me as he gently fucked my face. I felt his hands stroking my face and neck. He always got a thrill it seemed, tracing my lips as I sucked him. I reached for his balls and just knew he was ready to come.

  I tugged them into my palm, squeezing them.

  “Oh, yeah!” he rasped as I sucked and pulled with my mouth, tugging and jerking harder and harder in small circles on his balls.

  “Lopaka!” His hands flew from my head, his arms outstretched, as if he could fly. I loved producing these sensations in him and swallowed every last drop. Kimo braced himself as he flooded my throat, his hands moving to my shoulders now. I inched back over his cock, moaning to produce vibrations in my throat that would produce an extra thrill for him. His cock twitched against the roof of my mouth.

  “Not bad,” I said, coming off his cock, “for a couple of married men.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. Kimo had the most erotic laugh.

  “Not bad? We are the last of the red-hot lovers, baby.”

  Yeah. I grinned up at him. We were.

  Kimo had no chance to reciprocate, but we called it a sixty-eight, meaning he owed me one. And Kimo was a man who always liked to reciprocate.

  My sister hammered on our bedroom door, bellowing.

  “We’re going upstairs to fuck,” she said. “Your turn to babysit.”

  Okey-dokey, Smokey.

  Kimo and I ran outside. I had an idea where the kids were, based on Pele’s discarded garments. The muff lay abandoned on the crunchy, white snow. The hat and shawl lay farther down the slope. Pele was up ahead in her bikini top, her red tights and one foot in a boot, the other now being packed with snow for a snowball fight.

  “Pele!” I shouted and got pelted with snow.

  “Hey!” I spluttered as I fell face down in the white stuff. I lifted my head and found my kids falling about laughing. Snow clung to my face.

  “Gotcha!” somebody yelled. Kamaha peered around a tree. “Oops, sorry Mypaka. I meant to get Pele.”

  Another snowball whizzed past my ear and got Kimo in the knee.

  “Hey,” he shouted, then Pele hauled back and got him right in the kisser.

  Kimo was so stunned that she reached him so high. The man is six feet, four inches tall, a little more in his snow boots. There was a moment of deathly silence and then Pele began to cackle. She inherited her mad laugh from my grandma, Tutu, who also passed it onto my sister.

  “Are you laughing at me, young lady?” Kimo asked, dropping to the ground, his face and hair frosted white. He began packing a huge snowball. The kids eyed him for a moment, then they began to scream.

  “Arrrgh!” They tore off down the hill in mock terror, a grinning Kimo racing after them. I left them to it. It was wonderful how our kids had someone their own age to play with. I could hear Kimo’s deep chuckle and Pele’s squeals of laughter and went back inside.

  I kicked off my boots, leaving them just inside the door. This had taken some adjustment. In Hawaii, we leave our shoes outside. Leave them outside here, in a wintery castle, and they could disappear under a fresh snowfall. It had taken all of us a couple of days to get used to the idea. In Hawaii, it is bad luck to wear shoes across the threshold.

  “Lopaka?”

  Tutu’s voice rang from the far recesses of the main castle floor. For a moment, my gaze traversed the stunning great hall of the eighteenth century castle. It belonged to Fyfa’s current beau, the Earl of Glennich, and his castle, called Glennich, was located in the northern mountain area of Cairngorn. A fairytale castle built in the baronial style popular a few hundred years ago. It was located on its own loch, overlooking King Fergus’s Island. We’d planned to go there by boat to explore the ancient castle ruins we could see from Glennich, but the surprise of a fresh snowfall had changed our plans.

  We were lucky the earl was so smitten with Fyfa. He rented out his home from April to September to foreign visitors. The rest of the year he holed up, enjoying good food and wine, and, according to Fyfa, stalking. I’d learned this meant deer hunting, not hunting celebrities with a camera. Hunting deer didn’t thrill me one bit. Right now, he and Fyfa were on their way here from some winter celebration in Aberdeen. None of us had met the earl, except for my father, Paden. When I asked Paden about the earl, he said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Whatever that meant. I glanced out the windows at the icy-looking loch and the magnificent mountain wilderness and felt gratitude that we could have Christmas in such an amazing place. The earl and Fyfa had decorated it with endless, wonderful-smelling boughs, fresh garlands and a mountain of tartan ribbon. Tartan throws decorated every chair back and seat arm. Tartan curtains adored every room. It smelled like Christmas. It screamed Christmas. It was a bit of a Yuletide overload, but wonderful just the same.