Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  “My wife,” he started to explain again but I heard him the first time and I wasn’t interested in anything having to do with Keeper Sevyn Suleiman. I wasn’t mad at her, or him, I just didn’t give two fucks about her or anything having to do with her relationship to him, which I gathered was about as significant as some stranger walking down Second Avenue. Did she know him, long for him from afar, crave his detached fury, his danger? I had no idea.

  What I did know is that he didn’t love her. Because the way he looked at me—like a man starved for brown and freckles and sex and light, like a man so full of craving and lust and a need to rut so primal he could barely contain himself, like a man so deep in his woman he could not move speak breathe—said it all. If I ever wondered whether Dutch Mathew loved me, this moment set everything straight and let me know that whatever had transpired between us that night in my apartment with Death and her offer and me and my decision and him and his proclamation—Don’t touch me, Juma!—he was mad about me.

  So yeah, I didn’t care about his wife. She was a construct of The Gate, nothing more. She was Khan’s plan and none of her, not one atom of her being not one sliver of her soul, belonged to Dutch. Mostly because Dutch was mine but also because I was Dutch’s and he was the type that only had room for one great love in his life. And since my voice wasn’t yet fully functional as my vocal cords stretched too tight and made it impossible to speak, I did the only thing I knew to shut him up: I dipped low and kissed Dutch Mathew, wide and open-mouthed, the kind of kiss to make him forget everything but us.

  Our tongues danced around each other as if both hesitant and desperate for that first taste after so long. His hands cupped my ass and held me close as a moan began in my toes then rumbled throughout my being as my body recalled all the ways his hands could make me feel. I pulled away from his perfect mouth, wanting to see him full of lust and desire and heat, lips parted as if about to protest but too fucking turned on to make the words come together in any sort of rational complaint. I licked his upper lip and his lower lip and his tongue, finally his tongue, and the shock of his taste after so long moved me in ways unexpected. My breath caught and my eyes filled and even though I didn’t want to cry in front of him, it couldn’t be helped.

  Dutch Mathew overwhelmed me.

  Plain and simple.

  In the face of his devastating beauty and danger, with that taste of him I forgot all my killer instincts and plans and the machinations that had been so honed on death and destruction but were now solely tuned to him.

  My station was Dutch and I wanted him to play twenty-four seven. I didn’t care if it was repeats and oldies, so long as it was all him all the time.

  “Don’t cry, Juma,” he whispered along my jaw, holding me close, his lips my death and my salvation, “please.”

  But I couldn’t stop, it was impossible to retain months on months of longing and despair for his touch his smile his voice. It was impossible to hold back the effects of all that hunting and murder and blood. For so long I had been strong, denying myself one extra moment of sadness for him and me and us, but now, here, in the face of his everything, my strength faltered and I found myself a pool of despair wanting nothing more than his arms around me promising never to let go.

  I didn’t ask whether he was mine again, returned from wherever he’d felt the need to flee to, whether we were inseparable and bound to one another in ways impossible to count or tally. I didn’t give voice to my fears, those scenarios of him disappearing into the night shouting not to touch him, flinching at my nearness. I neither characterized nor quantified the monsters of my nightmares, the blood brains guts I splattered along city streets and bedroom walls, the lovers cut down in their most intimate moments, the siblings caught unawares as they enjoyed an inside joke.

  None of that. Not yet.

  I simply cried. And Dutch held me and touched me and kissed me as he whispered his fears and vulnerabilities, all of his secrets into my skin, pressed into my palm for safekeeping. It was his way of promising never again would we part would he choose silence would I be left wondering. It was a conveyance of souls, his for mine, mine for his, as before but this time different because this time we made the trade with full knowledge of a life lived otherwise. In half. Split and apart.

  “You cannot leave me that way again, Dutch,” I sobbed into his chest, my voice finally returned, cracked and creased but determined to form the vital sounds and syllables nonetheless. “We are one, together. Me and you, you and me. So I need to know everything. Every plot, every plan. No matter the dire circumstances, the horrible decisions, the danger to you, me, anyone we love. I need to know.

  “I deserve to know,” I continued because once I got started, it was difficult to stop, I needed to get it out of me and into the space between us. I needed him to deal with my truths. “What I do not deserve is some hurtful dismissal, the very words you knew would kill me, and then your months-long disappearance. Who does that to the one person they love? the person they sold their soul to protect? the person they plotted and planned with? Who does that and then just disappears?”

  “Do you know how that felt?” I asked rhetorically and he dared not open his mouth and utter a sound, he simply let me get out my grief, hurl it in his face, brutalize him with my words. “How I sank into myself and felt lost and alone and unloved and unlovable? how I wondered what to do to make it to the next day? how difficult it was to move through life without you? That’s not even me—I never act like that. And then you walk in and touch me and love me and swear to me all kinds of beauty and then what? Huh? Nothing. Not one word after the four that destroyed me: Don’t touch me, Juma”—and here I imitated his voice because I was annoyed and upset and allowed to behave childishly and he had to suck it up and take it like a man—“fuck, Dutch. Just fuck. Who does that? Where in the world does that equate to any kind of love? Why are you such an asshole sometimes?”

  I paused and cried and he waited for me to calm.

  “Never do that to me again, Dutch. Never.”

  “Full disclosure, I promise.” Dutch held my face in his hands and searched my eyes, letting me know he meant what he said, that his promise was bond, before kissing me long and hard and deep. And even though I told myself not to get lost in all of his dark danger, his planes and edges, his brown sexy—goddamn all that gorgeous brown that my fingers couldn’t stop touching—I did.

  Because he was Dutch Mathew and I was Juma Landry and if we were made for anything in this mad mad world full of bullshit and death, it was loving up on each other, hard and slow and fast and deep, brown and freckles and dark and light, rock-hard dick and soaked swollen pussy, bump and grind and grind some more, fuck me hard baby please don’t stop.

  So yeah, the second his tongue parted my lips and found mine, dancing and tumbling, tasting me like a man finally sat down to a seven-course meal after fasting for days on end, I was gone. Lost in him so deep I wasn’t sure there would ever be a way to find myself again and at that moment, when he was licking me, teasing me, coming back for more, slashing his tongue along my teeth, relearning my warmth, I didn’t care if I remained wandering forever, so long as the path I meandered was made up of his everything.

  He broke away from my mouth and leaned back into the pillow, studying me as I panted and did my best to gather all of my many selves, those beings so turned on it was hard to do much else but exist in his world of touch and taste and heat. Dutch smiled as he dragged a finger along the most sensitive parts of my throat and trailed down to circle my nipple and I leaned into him because I needed it, his fingers teasing me, touching me, owning every inch of me.

  “Juma,” Dutch sat up and breathed into my ear, and I could feel a smile curving his lips, knowing and confident and so very him. I tried to respond as his hand rested along the curve of my neck, holding me to him, but all I could muster was a moan. “Listen to me: I am so goddamned sorry for every stupid decision I’ve made since crossing your path, but especially for that night in
your apartment. I acted in the moment to save us and I should have said something to you but I needed it to look real and by the time I realized the fuckery I’d unleashed upon both of us, it was too late. So I stuck with it, no matter the cost to me and you and our bodies and souls because I needed to ensure your safety and I fully fucking believed I was doing just that.”

  He held me firm as his finger pinched my nipple, hard and painful and so goddamned good. “Juma, trust that I know what I did was the dumbest fucking thing ever and please believe me when I say I promise”—he licked the shell of my ear and I almost came right there, on his lap, without him ever touching my soaking wet pussy—“to always tell you everything”—he sucked on my lower lip, long and lingering, before pulling away again and twirling a lock of my hair around his finger while his other continued working my nipple—“every goddamned mundane detail. But that promise of full disclosure is a two-way street, Miss Landry”—he smiled all sexy and shit—“and from what I’ve been hearing, you’ve got a whole host of your own secrets.”

  20: JUMA

  I heard him, I swear I did.

  Dutch knew I was up to something. Dutch wanted answers. Dutch needed an explanation from my lips, a bloody, gory, murderous map of what I had been up to the last several months. I heard all of that, his low rumble of a voice moving through me, demanding an answer with a hint of amusement in his tone.

  I swear I heard him.

  But I needed something, too. I wanted something as well. And what I wanted required very little speaking and a whole lot of touching and sucking and fucking.

  Each other.

  Stupid.

  Dutch and Juma, raw and filthy and so goddamned sexy.

  So when his fingers moved from my left nipple to my right, circling and teasing and pinching until those two rock-hard points of sensation on my body could take no more, I pushed him back onto the pillow and away from all of my freckled brown sexy, a smile curving my lips in the face of his silent protest.

  “You’ve been spying on me, have you, Mr. Mathew?” I asked as I leaned back on his lap, slowly grinding my pussy against him. Dutch closed his eyes for a second, his body reacting to mine, whether he wanted it to or not. His hard, big, thick dick pressed into my pussy as I deepened my movements, wanting to feel every inch of him against me. “Letting me go wasn’t so easy after all.”

  He opened his eyes and they flashed in anger, a dark rage just beneath the surface brought forth by my words and the memory of something else.

  “She made that happen,” he growled his defense, “your Mistress you so desperately love. She brought that down upon us. I had no choice.”

  I smiled and watched him and marveled at his beauty—even in anger he was stunning—and I wondered how anyone, man or woman, remained unaffected in his presence.

  “Yes,” I agreed as I tugged my tank over my head, slowly freeing myself of the fabric and giving him full access to my tits and stomach and skin, “she did do that to us, the fucking bitch.”

  My words sat out there for a few silent seconds before Dutch’s eyes widened in surprise and brightened with humor as he wrapped his big hands around my hips and smirked. His fingers shot tendrils of fire through my skin as I closed my eyes and let myself become wrapped in the sound of his laughter. The first time I heard him laugh the sound was bitter and sharp and full of warning, like a big fuck you back off bitch I bite but this, god, this sound was something altogether otherworldly. It was deep and full like it found its feet in the furthest recesses of his being, those warm places he hid from most but I knew they existed where to find them how to tease them forth. It was rich and smooth and hinted at long languorous nights in the arms of a lover under a bed of stars teasing forth kisses and sucks and sighs. It was him all dark and dangerous with a little of the light that seeped through the cracks of his defenses and rested in his eyes his lips his touch.

  I could listen to him laugh for the remainder of my days but was satisfied with this moment right here in this house sharing this bed after so long apart.

  “I don’t want to talk about her.” I leaned forward and sucked his lip as my nipples grazed his chest and he held his breath at that slight contact of me on him. “Fuck her. I’m much more interested in you and your spying.”

  I licked his neck and tasted the salt of his sweat as his hands held me in place, centered on his raging hard-on, pressing me to him in a most delicious fashion.

  “Is that really”—and here his breath caught and he stopped speaking for a second as I thrust against him long and hard—“what you’re interested in, Miss Landry?” The words spilled forth in a rush as if he worried being able to get them out at all.

  I leaned back and studied him for a second, a smirk curving my lips, so happy to be all hot and bothered and sexed up in his presence. He wore a button-down white shirt that was so simple and exquisite I knew it cost a fortune, its ridiculous price tag hiding behind its casual ease. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing the muscle and sinew of his arms, the design of his intricate ink, ending at the simple leather tie he always wore around his right wrist.

  I undid the button nearest me on his shirt and ran my finger along the waistband of his jeans, my touch light and deliberate. “What do you think, Mr. Mathew?”

  His eyes slashed my way, slightly wild and dark, before a slight moan slipped past his full mouth and entered the space between us, the sound so sexy and lustful. “I think you are very practiced in the art of distraction,” he replied as he tried to catch my hand and prevent me from further exploration of his shirt and his body. But I was faster and grabbed his hand as my fingers worked the buttons on his shirt.

  “What is this?” I toyed with the notched leather string around his wrist.

  “Avery gave it to me,” he replied as his eyes flicked toward the band before returning to my gaze, “when I left for my first assignment. Said it would keep me safe.”

  “And?”

  “My first assignment was Kajal.”

  “And here you are,” I replied with a smile, touching his face, leaning down to kiss him, slow and lingering, a quiet exploration of his mouth, hoping to chase away the storm brewing in his eyes, “hundreds of assignments later, safe and sound and all mine.”

  I could see the wheels spinning in his head, considering my statement and its meaning, remembering his first love in all her rose-colored perfection, standing on the edge of the reality of my words, deciding whether he believed in them in me in us. As I watched him suffer through his memories I recalled this Dutch from earlier, in those moments days weeks before we traded touches and sucks and fucks, before he admitted I did things to him, before he accepted the fact that he needed me, and a part of me that small part I tried to keep hidden from him and his darkness, that piece of me ached for his inability to move away from the shadow of his past and into all of my light.

  I kissed him again then made to stand up get away from him put some distance between us as I gathered myself in the face of his indecision and gave him whatever time he needed to reflect recall relive.

  “Thank god for that Chinese motherfucker,” Dutch finally spoke, giving me little time to escape, his words filling the air between us with unspoken promises movement change. He twined his fingers in mine and pulled me back. “Don’t, Juma.”

  “Don’t what, Dutch?” I stood next to the bed and watched him.

  “Don’t leave me with these memories.”

  “I’m simply allowing you a moment to yourself,” I replied, “and Kajal.”

  I opened my eyes and rested on Dutch’s chest, letting the golden light of the afternoon seep into my vision and give everything an ethereal hue, dreamlike and heavenly.

  Dutch sat up and swung his long legs off the side of the bed. The last rays of the afternoon kissed his skin, highlighting the hollows and planes of his beautiful face, the fullness of his lips, his thick eyelashes. He smiled and pulled me to him, resting his cheek against the warm skin of my belly, his hair tickling my breasts,
his hands wrapped around me.

  “Kajal is dead.” He spoke into my skin, his lips heating me with their wet warmth. “I don’t need a moment with her, what I need is you. All of you. Forever.”

  “Forever is a terribly long time,” I whispered as I pushed my fingers through his hair and a chill ran up his body and shot into mine as if we were two parts of one whole.

  “Trust when I tell you”—he pressed a kiss to my hip and I held my breath—“there are not enough forevers when it comes to you and me and everything I want to do with you and for you.” His hands moved up my body as his fingers traced feather-soft over and up and around my nipples and the sensation was so light and scintillating that I found myself eyes closed head tossed back lost in him. “And to you.”

  And to you.

  Those words lit a fire deep in my pussy as my mind flashed images of the wicked shit Dutch had done to my body and the even nastier shit I wanted him to do. His tongue circled my nipple as his fingers teased the other and when I leaned into him, instead of denying me more of his warmth of playing with me teasing me further, he gave me what he knew I wanted, sucking me until I was rock hard and practically crying with desire.

  I could not focus or speak or even breathe, his mouth was that magic. I tossed all care and control to the wind and gave myself over to him, willing to let him do whatever he wanted, so long as it involved all of him all over every fucking inch of me.

  “Dutch,” I hissed as his tongue trailed wet heat under and around my tits and my fingers knotted in his hair and pulled him close, wishing he could crawl inside my skin and find a safe place for all time.

  “Juma,” he whispered and smiled against my skin, the curve of his lips almost as sexy as the shit he was doing with his hands.

  Almost.

  “Oh fuck,” I growled as he unbuttoned my pants and slowly slid the zipper down, his fingers so close to my pussy. “Don’t stop, Dutch.”