Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  He tossed his smoke to the ground, rubbed it out with his boot, and came inside as I gathered the last of the glasses from the kitchen table and blew out the candles.

  “Why did I know you would be cleaning?” He stood in the doorway and watched me, unsmiling, but his voice gentle and low. I paused and wondered whether I imagined a gulf opening between us, then pushed the idea out of my mind because it was stupid and silly and nonexistent and instead, wiped down the table with my free hand.

  “Because you’re as smart as you are sexy,” I said as I loaded the dishwasher.

  “I’m going to take a shower.” As suddenly as he appeared, Dutch disappeared into the bowels of the quiet house, leaving me alone in the clean and sleepy kitchen. I dug around under the sink for some detergent, filled the dishwasher, and set it to run.

  As I turned out the last light in the kitchen and made my way toward the back of the house, I heard the very distinct sound of the shower, more staccato and insistent than the dishwasher’s hum, and headed in its direction. The bedroom was lit by a pool of moonlight coming through the window and as I crossed to the bathroom, I slipped my T-shirt over my head and tossed it at my feet, then paused to unburden myself of my shorts, right leg first then left, unsnapped my bra and dropped it to the floor as I stepped into the steamed-up bathroom and listened to Dutch sing “Mull of Kintyre.”

  I’d never heard him sing before, and as he reached the refrain and his baritone washed over me, I wondered why not. His voice was beautiful, deep and melodic, as if he’d trained professionally at some point. And it struck me then that perhaps I’d never heard him sing because it was something he’d done before entering The Gate.

  And just like that, it happened.

  And I didn’t mean for it to, because I told myself I was going to stop having these moments of overwhelming grief for Dutch and all he’d suffered, but I couldn’t help myself and as I listened to him sing, the pieces of my heart I’d put together since the last time they’d broken for him scattered again all over that bathroom floor. But instead of reaching down and picking them up, trying to find each and every one of them on that bathroom tile, I did what I’d wanted to do the second he told me he was headed for the shower: I stripped off my panties and stepped inside with him.

  He turned and looked surprised and almost as if he didn’t want me sharing that glass-enclosed space with him, and as I traced the marks on his chest, I kind of knew why. Because even though he seemed healed—after whatever magic Shema had had running through her blood worked its way through his system and saved him from the black death Khan had begun—he wasn’t, and his body was living proof. And I’d already touched him everywhere and taken ownership of his old hurts, but these new ones belonged to him. He’d claimed them, it was in his eyes, it lived in the brown of his wet skin.

  “I’m fucked up,” he said as my gaze moved over the jagged cuts where chunks of him had been missing.

  I nodded in agreement. “Yes, sweetness, you are most definitely fuuuuuuuucked up.”

  A sliver of warmth remained nestled in the light flecks of Dutch’s eyes, and it washed over me as he stepped into my arms and wrapped himself around me and for the first time in our togetherness I hesitated paused stepped out of myself and watched us because where I expected to find walls and gnashing teeth and bitterness wrapped in rage—that gulf I imagined back there in the kitchen growing between us—instead I found love and touch and tenderness. I came back to myself and the moment and pulled him close and held on to him and forgot there ever existed a second between us when he could not bear any of me on any of him.

  I snaked one hand up the nape of his neck and twirled my fingers in his wet hair as my other learned the death written all over his back, the scars thick and raised and full of magic to fight magic, all of it making up a most fucked-up family concoction of control. Dutch tensed as my fingers wandered his wounds but he didn’t stop my exploration, because just as he owned his horrors so would I. This was him wanting me to crawl deep inside his darkest heart and see it all know it live it. With him. And in the silence of that shower wrapped in discovery and reckoning, he proved to me again that he loved me and it was deep and it was forever.

  “Does it hurt?” I whispered into his skin and felt him press me closer, and if he could, I knew he would push me deep inside him to hold on to forever, a light for all his darkness.

  Dutch unwound himself from me and ran his hands over my wet hair, sweeping it off my face as his eyes danced over my freckles and all of him seemed to be drinking me in with eyes that had seen too much and never enough. “Not really,” he said, and winced as my fingers kneaded a jagged angry-looking keloid under his breastbone. “Okay, when you do that, yes, Juma, it hurts.”

  He smiled and grabbed my wandering hand and kissed my fingers and suddenly Dutch seemed so very Dutch.

  “Hey.” I cocked my head to the side and he eyed me as he kept kissing my fingers and when I didn’t say anything immediately but just kept watching him because he was so beautiful and I couldn’t help myself, he kissed the inside of my wrist, on my spot, and my lips parted but all I could muster was a low moan.

  “Yes, Juma,” he said, and kissed me again as he reached behind and turned off the shower and the room fell quiet but for random pings of droplets of water and my ragged breath. “You were saying?”

  He pressed his lips to the inside of my forearm on a pool of freckles he loved as his other hand cupped my ass and pressed me into his rock-hard dick. I sucked in a groan and gathered myself—deep breaths, girlfriend—spread my thighs just a touch and smiled because two could play this game of seduction and just as Dutch knew his dick did things to me so, too, did I know my wet pussy drove him mad.

  I shifted and he groaned.

  Checkmate.

  “Before you kissed my spot?” I asked, and rubbed my wet swollen lips up and down his dick and reveled in his low hiss and closed eyes and big hands wrapped around my waist. “I was going to say you seem kind of okay.”

  Dutch opened his eyes.

  “I am.”

  I ran my fingers through his beard and traced his full lower lip. He nipped my finger and I smiled and licked his lip.

  “I worried when you left,” I said because I wanted him to know.

  “It wasn’t about you.” He whispered his truths into that place where my throat and clavicle met in a mess of nerve endings desperate for his touch. “I needed quiet to sort out the nonsense.”

  He bit me, then pressed a kiss with his full lips to the tender mark and my pussy flooded all over his dick because I loved when he mixed pleasure and pain. I rocked into him, surrounding him with all my slick heat as all of him throbbed a beat I felt in my blood, and I swear he could have fucked me right there.

  Instead.

  “I know it wasn’t about me, Dutch.” I took his face in my hands and made him see me. “I still worried.”

  And he did see me.

  He always saw me.

  “I know you worried and wondered where I was and whether I was okay. But you knew I would come back.”

  “I did,” I agreed. “I just wasn’t sure which version of you would return.”

  He considered me for another second and licked his lips, and I swear if he had plans to devour me, I would happily serve myself up as his last meal. Instead he leaned close—so close I could feel his heat everywhere but not so close we touched and he knew that made me crazy and I knew that was his intention. His breath tangled with mine and my lips parted and my eyes closed and I held on to him because for two beats of a second I needed to ground myself.

  “Goddamn, Juma.” His voice rumbled through me and I was done. I leaned into the cold wet of the tile wall behind me and felt his eyes crawl all over my tits and pussy and I was hard and soft in all those places I needed to be hard and soft and if he wasn’t going to touch me, then I was going to touch myself.

  “You know which version returned?” he asked, and licked my bottom lip and held my hands to t
he wall so I couldn’t move and I sure as fuck couldn’t touch myself. And I knew his question was rhetorical and even if it wasn’t, he knew I couldn’t speak. “The version that likes licking your dark nipples until they’re rock hard and begging to be bitten.” And he leaned down and circled my nipple with his tongue until my back arched off the wall and I pushed myself between his teeth and I knew it was going to hurt but I didn’t care, I wanted all his pain. He bit down and covered my mouth at the same time, my cry muffled by his palm, then he sucked and licked and kissed and all that glorious pain slipped into pleasure and every second of it was heaven.

  “And in case you’re still not sure which version of me is standing here, dick hard as a rock, in the shower with you,” he said with a smile, crooked and wicked, and I knew I was in trouble, “it’s the version that likes touching your pussy. Soft. Just the way you like.” And he traced his perfect fingers up and down my soaked pussy then brought them to his mouth and tasted me and I moaned and it sounded like a plea for him to touch me and tease me and fuck me every way possible. He just kissed me and smiled. Because that sexy motherfucker wasn’t finished with me. Shit, he was just getting started.

  “And then you know what this version of me likes to do, gorgeous?” he asked, and grasped my hand before I could touch myself and pushed it behind me and against the wall so I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. But truth be told, I didn’t want to, not even an inch. I wanted to stay trapped in this moment with this man, turned on and out and dripping pussy juice all down my leg for as long as possible, and he knew it he could see it in my parted lips he could feel it in the air between us. “This version likes to kiss your wet swollen lips up and down, and tease your clit with my tongue until you’re spreading your thighs wide open for me, and you’re pushing your pussy in my face and pleading with me to suck your clit and fuck you with my fingers and make you come hard and fast and again and again and again—‘Please, Dutch, don’t stop.’”

  He imitated me and I couldn’t even get mad because he was right, that was exactly what I would say.

  It was exactly what I said when he finished his story.

  “Please, Dutch,” I said, and he licked my tongue and kissed me and I was a goddamned mess.

  “Please what, baby?” He pinched my nipples hard and my pussy squirted on his dick and we groaned together.

  “Don’t stop.” I rubbed my pussy all over his dick and I needed him inside me so I spread my legs and his tip slid in just a little. I wanted to grab Dutch’s ass and push him deeper but my hands were trapped within his own and try as I might to free them, he wasn’t letting go.

  Instead.

  “Turn around, gorgeous,” he commanded, then turned me around himself because he knew I was too much of a sexed-up mess to do much of anything but exist. He pressed my hands above my head, leaned close, and whispered, “Don’t move. Not a goddamned muscle.” Then he slid down my body and spread my ass checks wide and blew warm air all over my pussy.

  “Oh my fucking god, Dutch.” I arched my back and tried to grind on his face and he smacked my ass. Hard.

  “Not a muscle, Juma. This version of me likes to be listened to when I ask you nicely to do something.”

  And he waited for me to still before he pressed wet hot kisses up the backs of my thighs, and parted my legs as I moaned his name and begged him never to stop. And I didn’t dare move a muscle, I stayed right there and let him do exactly as he wanted. And what he wanted was to spread my lips from behind and suck my clit, and he didn’t do it soft, as I liked it, he tongued me hard and his full lips owned me and he taught me in those moments of frenzied need and sex and desire that I could learn new things and I could enjoy the new things, because holy fuck did I enjoy that man and his mouth and what he did to my body.

  “Dutch.” I moaned into that cold tile wall as all of me tensed and became one bundle of nerve endings owned by that tongue and those lips that circled and sucked and kissed. “I’m going to come.” He spread my ass cheeks and sucked me harder and I tried to fight it and hold on and dance on the edge of the most brilliant orgasm ever, but it was impossible because his lips were so soft and wet and his tongue. Fuck. His tongue.

  I came hard, pressed against that wall, barely moving, his mouth all over me, his hands all over my ass, and it was intense. He kept moving his mouth over my clit and he licked my come and I felt everything tighten again and I knew he’d told me not to move but I couldn’t help myself. This was too much, complete and utter sensory overload, the cold the heat him all over me. I tossed my head back and begged for something anything. Him.

  “Dutch!”

  And everything just kind of exploded, all of me again all over his mouth, and if you’d told me I died just then, I would beg you to kill me repeatedly. He was that magic. And relentless in his ownership of my body, as though he needed to possess every inch of me, imprint himself into every pore so there was no doubt to whom I belonged.

  “Don’t move,” he said as he stood and teased the shell of my ear with his warm breath and then disappeared and I knew this because where I was covered in his heat, suddenly I was not. I shifted and watched him from the corner of my eye, the way he moved like water, the fullness of his mouth, his long fingers dancing along the countertop.

  “Juma.” He looked up and caught my eye, unsmiling, but there was mischief in his voice. “I said don’t move.”

  “I can’t not watch you,” I said in my defense, and he smirked and laughed as he found whatever it was he sought in the drawer—yes!—squirted it all over his dick and was all over me again in seconds, pushing my chest into the cold wall, his hot breath at my ear.

  “Good answer, gorgeous.” He kissed my neck and teased my nipple while his other hand slipped inside my pussy and found my clit, hard and exposed and waiting for his touch, and his big thick dick pressed against my asshole. “I can’t even argue with you because holy fuck, I cannot not watch you and your goddamned fabulous ass.”

  He pushed away from me and his hands were warm on my hips and I could feel his eyes all over my ass, hungry and so full of need, they burned right into my core. I tried to shift and let him know I wanted him inside me but that slight movement only made him grip me tighter.

  “Don’t.” He leaned in again and hissed and even though he wouldn’t let me do what I wanted and touch myself, he certainly gave me what I wanted as he pushed a little of himself into my ass and I gasped because his dick was huge. “Shhhh,” he said, and kissed the back of my neck as he held on to my hips and pushed into me inch by slow and deliberate and delicious inch, his thickness filling my ass and he felt so good and so big, all of him owning all of me.

  I relaxed into the pressure of him inside me and just let myself go with it and my body kind of sighed and whispered, Yes, baby, let’s do this. I pushed myself away from the wall even though he told me not to move—I was past the point of caring about much of anything but him being balls deep in my ass—and gave him all of me, pushing him so far inside, I cried out but it wasn’t in pain, it was unfiltered pure ecstasy.

  Dutch didn’t complain or comment that I’d moved or order me back against that wall. He did exactly what I hoped and lost himself in all of me.

  “Juma.” He moaned as his dick disappeared in my ass and his hands wrapped around my hips and he fucked me like a man possessed. “God, you are pure sin.” And I wanted to say something, let him know how good he felt, how I loved feeling his balls against my pussy every time he sank into my ass, but I was too caught up and breathless and senseless to put words together. Instead, I functioned on pure instinct and guided one of his hands to my pussy because while he was in my ass, I also wanted him in my pussy, I needed him everywhere all over me.

  “Fuuuuck,” he sighed as he slipped three fingers inside me and began fucking me from both ends and I leaned into him because I wanted him deeper and faster and harder and holy fuck, this man knew how to work me over.

  “Don’t stop, Dutch,” I begged as his dick throbbe
d and felt even bigger and I sensed he was going to come but I wanted him to fuck me a little longer. “Hold on, baby,” I said, and pressed a hand against him and forced him to slow and step back slightly from whatever cliff he was about to jump off because I wanted us to jump together—relax—and he listened.

  And he breathed deep.

  And he slowed.

  For about five seconds.

  “Don’t,” he growled in my ear as he rammed himself deep inside me, “move,” again and again and again, “Juma.” And he fucked me everywhere, and I knew it was going to happen, he was going to come in my ass and I was going to come on his hand and we were going to ride each other like nothing mattered but us and touching and fucking each other blind deaf and stupid.

  His balls tightened and everything in my pussy was ready to explode and I needed him to come because I was standing on the precipice, soaked and swollen, waiting for him to push me over to the other side.

  “Dutch, please. Fuck me. Hard.”

  And he did, so hard I felt ripped in half pulled apart shredded and so goddamned alive as he groaned all lust-ridden and feral into my skin—“I’m going to come”—and shot his load wave after wave of hot sweetness into my ass and my pussy clenched around him and I came hard on his fingers—“Oh god, Dutch, please”—and we collapsed against that wall, its chill welcome against our overheated skin.

  I gasped and breathed and settled, and try as I might, I couldn’t recall ever feeling so complete and so lost in someone as I did with Dutch. It was deep and wild and I loved him with abandon and if this was me losing my light, then I would happily spend the rest of my lives shrouded in dark.

  Dutch kissed my shoulder and shifted.

  “Don’t,” I said with my eyes closed, cheek to the tile as my hand circled behind and cupped his ass, “not yet. I like how you feel inside me.” I smiled as he leaned into me and covered me with the warmth of his brown skin and filled me with his perfect dick and I wondered if it was fair to be so in love and so turned on and so everything with this man.