Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  But now I knew his story and so I confronted him with all of its ugliness because I wanted him to move past it, render it powerless. I wanted him to steal its control and thereby also wrest away Khan’s twisted and sick power over him. Or I wanted him to let me hold his horrors, be the keeper of his pain, his very own Pandora’s box. Because that was how I loved him. Fully. Completely. To my detriment.

  So I pushed and cajoled and persisted in the face of his growing ire and unease, I watched as all of his beauty and sexiness, those parts of him that always drew me near, grew taut and tense, his eyes hardened and his hands balled into fists he would never throw no matter how desperately he wanted to. I listened as his voice of clipped consonants and mischief filled with gravel and growled dangerous and low, and warned me to stay away from his shadows. And I learned his pain, for it lived in the brown of his skin and the darkest shadows of his soul, it wrapped around him like a blanket of despair that weighed him down so heavily because he’d worn it for so long.

  And in the face of all of his threatened danger and warnings—Stop it now, Juma, I’m warning you, fucking stop—I continued revealing what I knew of him and the Palace and that room, despite the fact it was unsettling him. And for one or two beats of a second there, I thought he might make good on his threats and warnings and rise up in the face of my words and hurt me, lash out, and attack because he was scared and pissed off and violence was all he knew. Then those seconds passed and he softened and sighed and silently gave me permission to save him from himself.

  “Dutch.” I took his face in my hands and tried to make him look at me and when he wouldn’t, I pulled him close and kissed the top of his head.

  “Just please let it be, Juma.” He pushed into me and replied so low I almost didn’t hear him except that I did because I always heard him, even when I existed in another state his voice called to me vibrated through my cells tissue blood nestled in the furthest reaches of my soul.

  I leaned back on Dutch’s lap and he leaned into the couch and we watched each other and I noticed that even in his sadness and frustration—his terrible fear of what I knew and how I’d learned it, his anger that I knew any of it at all—he couldn’t help but touch me. His fingers played along the skin of my thigh, tracing light circles running up and down simply resting but always some of him in contact with some of me. I smiled because even surrounded by such oppressive truths horrific realities crippling darkness he was mine and I loved him, this man of warm brown skin that felt like home and muscle and sinew that surrounded my curves and clipped consonants that bumped against my rounded ones, and I would hold all of his darkness for all of my remaining days if it meant he basked in what was left of my light.

  “That mark on your side.” I reached for his shirt without looking at him because I didn’t want to hesitate and I feared his sadness anger ire might make me do just that. I pushed the material up slightly, just above his hip where the violent line curved from his front to his back and I traced the slightly raised skin with my finger. “I thought Keepers’ injuries heal.”

  It was a question housed in a statement thereby giving him freedom to do with it as he pleased. My fingers danced along his skin and his body reacted to my touch, seeming alive and responsive no matter what deaths that scar tissue held. He covered my hand with his own so it was difficult to continue my exploration but when I pulled away, he made little effort to prevent my escape and I wandered higher, my touch feather-light and tentative.

  “And here”—this time I traced a line under his breast bone—“and this one.” I pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside so I could follow the jagged line on his shoulder with my fingers and then my lips.

  He sucked in his breath as my mouth pressed to his skin and left a trail of warm wet heat along the anger of that mark.

  “It’s impossible to heal,” he sighed and closed his eyes and his voice was full of violence and regret and shame but underneath was a hint of desire and sex and love, “when the poison remains.”

  My insides cringed at the thought of him walking this life with permanent reminders of each and every terrifying ordeal of knives he suffered but I didn’t let him see it since he already held too much sadness for one soul and did not need to add mine to his lot.

  “Is that why none of the marks remain from where I healed you?” I asked as I traced along the imaginary lines of where I remembered drawing out the poison that flowed through his blood all those many nights ago when I offered my first life in exchange for his.

  Dutch opened his eyes and held my gaze and the silence wrapped us in all kinds of lust and love and forever evers and I knew there was nothing I would not do for that man I loved him all of him even those parts of him that could take me under and kill me but at least then I would die happy—and his.

  “That is exactly why, Juma,” he deadpanned as his hands wrapped around my waist and found their favorite resting place.

  “Then I’m going to have to stake my claim.” I leaned close and brushed my lips to his, barely making contact, the slightest touch electric and charged. He growled low and dangerous and his eyes closed and his lips parted and I watched him for an extra beat because he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and even though I wanted to taste him and kiss him and get lost in everything that was him, first I just wanted to look at him.

  “There is nothing for you to claim.” Dutch opened his eyes and caught me studying him, “Every part of me has belonged to you since that night in the bar.”

  “Not every part.” I dipped down and pressed my lips to a scar cutting across two of his ribs as he held his breath. “I want all of these to be mine.” My fingers danced along his side, followed by my lips tracing the trails of horror etched into his skin, determined to erase their origins from his mind and fuse them so completely with me that he reveled in their existence they reminded him of touching sucking fucking every black mark whispered my name.

  “Don’t.” He pushed me away but it was half-hearted and I knew what he really meant was don’t stop please yes make all of me—even the horrific cruel blackest parts of my being—yours. And so I did.

  I moved his hands away from the parts of him he tried covering—the scars and the black and the horror—and I slid down his body so I could kiss and lick and suck the spot on his right side until Juma Landry was stamped all over it. Then I moved over a little, to the space near his abs, then back up to his left shoulder and worked my magic until those marks, too, screamed my name.

  I lost myself for a little while as I worked his neck, partly because I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like having such a sensitive area of my body carved out like that, but mostly because he smelled so good right there and the sounds he made when I kissed his throat had my pussy swollen and soaked, and his hand was on my ass while the other was in my hair and all of it was just. too. much.

  He distracted me with his sex and love and lust.

  “Juma,” he whisper-moaned as I crawled back into his lap and pressed my pussy against his rock-hard dick as my hands wrapped around his neck and my fingers got lost in his hair and we kissed each other hard and deep and I found myself wondering how I ever lived without his sweetness.

  Our tongues dipped and slashed and everything about him tasted so damn good and if there was a way for me to slip inside his skin I would have because I needed to be that close to him, closer even, my body craved an impossible nearness to him and I knew we could never function as one but at times like this, it felt like an almost-maybe. His hands moved down my waist, coming to rest on my hips, and my breath caught in my throat as a moan escaped my lips: “Dutch.”

  He distracted me with his sex and love and lust.

  He spread my thighs wide and ran his thumb across my useless panties while our tongues and teeth and lips crashed and gnashed and everything became messy and desperate. I wanted his fingers inside me, fucking me until I came all over his hand, and I wanted his lips on my pussy while his tongue circled my clit, and I wante
d his big beautiful dick deep inside me, owning me like only he could, and I almost succumbed to all of my wanting and needing because that was what happened when he brushed his thumb along my panties like that.

  He distracted me with his sex and love and lust . . .

  Until he didn’t.

  I pulled myself back from the edge of desire and breathed deeply, then licked his full lower lip and tangled our tongues as I moved his hand away from my pussy. He looked confused and about to protest but I kissed him and swallowed whatever words sat on the tip of his tongue. I had no interest in them—my only interest was owning his hurts. And so I continued what I’d begun before he distracted me with his sex and love and lust—a crossing back from the dead, my own special reclamation tailor-made just for him.

  I might have been his assignment from The Gate, but tonight Dutch Mathew was mine.

  “This right here.” I ran my finger over the ragged marks along his waistband as I undid his belt and started working the zipper on his jeans and he stopped breathing for a second as I applied a hint of pressure to his crotch because I knew he wanted my hands on him and for real, I couldn’t be this close to his dick and not touch him. He was big and thick and so goddamned hard and all of him begged for some of my attention. It was the least I could do.

  He leaned his head back and spread his legs and groaned low and long and deep and the sound shot straight to my pussy.

  “It looks like it hurt,” I whispered as my tongue followed every gash and jag of the marks along his waistband and then dipped below it, my hands working his jeans off his hips so my mouth could move along the seam of his inner thigh as his hands wove into my hair and he whispered, “Juma,” and I swear I almost came, his voice was that sexy, but instead, “yes, baby,” and he groaned because my tongue and my lips were all over his hurts and I don’t think he could muster much else.

  “Or once upon a time it looked like it hurt”—I smiled down at his scar and kissed him there once more—“now it looks like it belongs to me.” And I really wanted to put my mouth all over his beautiful perfect made-just-for-me dick, but instead I dipped a little lower and kissed a spot on his left thigh. “What happened here?” I asked as my tongue circled the raised skin, determined to erase the violent memory of the encounter from his soul forever.

  “James Sussex happened there,” he finally replied, and I sensed James was someone of significance but at the moment, he hardly mattered. I kissed and licked and sucked until nothing made sense and time and sound became irrelevant and all that existed was touch—my mouth on his body—and he begged, “Juma, please don’t stop,” and I swore, “never, baby,” and I continued reclamating every broken cursed jagged piece of that man I loved.

  Once I had taken ownership of his pain—Please, Juma—corralled it into a space of my personal construct where I controlled it, deemed it worthy, gave it a voice, then turned it on itself and made it wholly irrelevant and nonexistent—Oh god, Juma—only then did I turn to my own wishes and desires.

  30: DUTCH

  My name was Dutch Mathew.

  I was a Keeper for The Gate.

  Juma Landry owned me.

  All of me.

  Body, mind, and soul.

  * * *

  I was one lucky motherfucker.

  31: JUMA

  “Thank you, Juma.”

  Dutch leaned his head back and his lips curved into a crooked slow smile, and all of him that had been so red and bloody, enraged and combustible when I crossed back and gave voice to his dark truths, now appeared almost other, so wrapped in a bubble of ease and comfort was he. I liked this upgraded version of my dark and dangerous lover, all of his brown sexy usually fueled by too many lifetimes of angst and depravity, now awash in love and tenderness, leaving him a most beatific version of his always-fuckable, most-delicious, forever-making-me-think-the-dirtiest-shit self.

  I studied him for the first time in what felt like forever, my eyes crawling over every inch of his body, and all of him evoked sultry summer nights full of whiskey and slow dances. I lingered on the beginnings of his beard that seemed to appear overnight, all sexy and dark, where before was just scruff, and I wanted to know what that beard would feel like against my thighs as he kissed my pussy, I wanted to know what that beard felt like under my fingertips. And as if he read my mind, Dutch opened his eyes and caught mine and he must have seen all kinds of nasty shit in my face because he smiled like he knew—oh he knew—and I loved that about him.

  “You are so beautiful,” I whispered and kissed his thigh and he smiled and closed his eyes and everything about him was quiet and still, his dark spaces lit from within, giving him an almost ethereal quality, leaving me quite spellbound by his aura. I breathed and watched him, and all of it was quiet because the last thing I wanted was to disrupt his peace and calm and any of his tranquility. He ran his fingers through my hair as I rested between his legs, surrounded by his scent and his beauty and his sex, and we just were.

  And it was wondrous.

  I touched him and watched as he breathed deeply and seemed to settle into me on him and I thought back to that first night in the bar when I reached for him and asked him to stay and he flinched like my fingertips contained fire because the idea of any of me on any of him made his skin crawl. Now here we were in this space of safety and comfort and love, the two of us wrapped around each other so intimately it would be difficult to tell where he began and I ended so seamless was our union. He owned my breath my skin my sigh. His laughter his sweat his heartbeat belonged to me.

  And now, so too did his darkness, gathered up in a bag for safekeeping, in exchange for lifetimes of kisses and Neruda and half-smoked cigarettes at three in the morning.

  “There are no thank-yous between us,” I whispered, then placed a warm wet kiss on his thigh

  then another

  then another.

  The third one lingered and my mouth was so close to his dick and he noticed and he let me know he noticed—Jesus fuck, Juma—and when I placed my hands on his knees and spread his legs a little wider, he didn’t resist because we both wanted the same thing: his dick in my mouth.

  He was thick and huge and hard, like all of his blood pumped through those tiny veins into his swollen head and when I bent low to press a kiss along the cut of his hip, my cheek grazed him and he groaned so low and long, like he forgot how to put sound together to create coherent words.

  I loved him like this.

  Mine.

  All mine.

  Every cell in his body belonged to me to do with as I pleased and at that moment, what pleased me most was sucking the drop of cum off his tip and listening as he almost begged me for something but then didn’t, because like I said, he was past the point of rational thought and speech. My mouth and my hands and my everything reduced him to a series of lust-filled grunts and moans and holy fuck, it was divine.

  I wrapped my fingers around him and I knew he was watching me, I could feel his eyes all over me, wondering what I was going to do to him and how I was going to do it, and I loved all of that power but I also loved that I was able to make him feel so good and give him something he wanted desperately. I spit and watched as it covered his tip and started running down the sides of his dick and he held his breath as I ran my hand up and down his length, my saliva mixing with his sweat and his heat and all of it making him mad with desire and longing and need.

  “Oh god, Juma,” he hissed as his fingers worked their way through my hair and I could tell he wanted to push me toward him because he wanted my mouth on him but he wouldn’t he couldn’t he held himself back.

  “What, baby?” I asked because I wanted him to put his desire into words and to know that with me he could ask for anything and if I was able, I would do it.

  “Please”—he could barely get the word out, he was so undone as my lips pressed along his length until I reached the top and sucked on his head while my tongue traced a slow circle around and around and around him. His dick jerked in my h
and and even though there was nothing more I wanted than to take him fully in my mouth and listen to him say all the wicked shit he wanted me to do to his body, I also wanted this moment to last as long as possible so I pulled away from him and simply worked him with my hand

  up and down and around

  up and down and around

  up and down and around.

  And that was also kind of orgasmic because then I was free to watch him in the throes of ecstasy as I worked his dick with my hand and he was beautiful and unrestrained and free and I made him like that, my love and light and even some of my darkness did that to him and no one could tell me there was a more stunning sight than Dutch Mathew naked on that couch undone owned.

  If you did, I wouldn’t believe you anyway, so convinced was I of his perfection.

  “Dutch,” I whispered before pressing my lips to his and slashing my tongue against his teeth and tasting him and listening to his heavy breaths, “I’m going to suck your dick and lick your balls and finger your asshole and it’s going to feel like nothing you’ve ever felt before”—I swallowed his moan with my kiss—“and you’re going to explode in my mouth and trust that I’m going to suck you dry because I want to taste every last drop of you.”

  I didn’t wait for his response because doing so would be cruel, for both him and me, because as badly as he wanted to be inside my mouth and feel my tongue move around his thickness while my lips moved up and down him, so too did I want to oblige those desires. I wanted to feel stretched around him and that almost too-intense pressure when he hit the back of my throat and that relaxation of my muscles when all of me opened up to take as much of him as I could handle. I wanted to cup his balls while my other hand moved in sync with my mouth and double-timed his dick. And just when he was right at the edge of his orgasm, I wanted to pull back and push his legs further apart and dip below his balls and lick his asshole.