Death

by Madhuri Pavamani

  and right there

  at that

  place

  the precipice of lust and desire

  I stopped.

  And flipped her over, spread her ass cheeks, and licked her very perfect kind-of-pink, kind-of-brown asshole. Around it, over it, inside it.

  Juma lifted her hips off the bed, her ass high in the air, and begged me to do my thing, “Don’t stop Dutch,” and I didn’t. I dined on her ass and stopped only when I thought I might lose myself in all her tight perfection and slide my dick in deep and fuck her hard and make her pussy come with my fingers as I was balls deep in her ass, when I really wanted to make her come with my tongue.

  I pushed her thighs wider and whispered, “Slide up,” so I could slip between her legs and let her ride my face. I situated her on top of me, put my hands on her ass—god, I loved her motherfucking ass—caught her eye, and smiled. She traced my lips with her finger and looked positively fuckable and you couldn’t tell me a more perfect creature existed.

  Ever.

  “What are you doing, Dutch?” A slow smile curved her lips as she asked the question she very well knew the answer to.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I smirked and squeezed her ass while I pushed her closer to my mouth. She rose a little and shifted and her pussy dripped on my chin and my dick jump so hard, it slapped my belly. And we both laughed the laugh of two people about to fuck each other stupid and senseless.

  I slid my thumb along the line of her lips and she closed her eyes and rocked real slow.

  “You like that?” I asked, and she hummed in agreement, so I did it again and watched as she shifted closer to my lips and squeezed her nipples and I knew I had her just where I wanted her. I pulled on her hip and she followed my lead, finally resting her swollen wet lips against mine.

  And for two seconds, we froze. Time stood still and neither of us dared breathe.

  Then I slid my tongue inside, found her clit, and it was on. I held her as she lost herself and fucked my face, all of her moving to the rhythm of my tongue on her clit.

  “Dutch.” She knotted her fingers in my hair and soaked me in her desire and I sucked and licked and circled as she spread her thighs wider and showed me exactly where she wanted to be touched. I kissed and sucked her as she moved against my mouth and begged, “Don’t stop,” and all of her was fast and tight against me as I slid a finger into her asshole and another deep in her pussy and fucked her everywhere. She arched her back and cried out that she didn’t want to come but held on to my face with her hand and kept fucking me anyway.

  And I knew she was going to come, I fucking wanted her to come. I wanted to feel her pussy clench around my finger and taste the flood of desire as her orgasm ripped through her. I told her as much, “Come on my face, Juma,” and she rocked against me a few more times, then did just that, her release hard and long and beautiful, before she collapsed next to me and purred soft and low, all of it sounding like satiated bliss.

  Lying next to her, I cupped her face and kissed her so she could taste herself all over my tongue. She lapped at my mouth, discovering all the places hints of her lingered, savoring the taste of our fucking as she wrapped her leg around me and pulled me close. I rubbed my dick against her clit and covered myself in her come as she spread her pussy lips and begged me to slide inside.

  “Please,” she whispered into my ear, her breath hot, her pussy hotter, and my dick wanting all of it, “fuck me, Dutch,” and my tip disappeared inside her before I pulled out and caught my breath because holy fuck, her pussy.

  “Don’t stop, baby,” she begged, and jutted her hips forward so she could wrap her pussy around my dick and I had to place my hand on the flat of her belly and push her away.

  “Shhhh,” I whispered as I rubbed against her and slid inside her, then back out and she groaned and spread her thighs wide so all of her was open to me. Then she used her fingers and opened herself wider and both of us looked at her pussy—wet and swollen and begging to be fucked—then watched as I guided my dick deep inside, inch by slow murderous rapturous inch.

  I slid deeper, bumped up against her cervix, and listened as she gasped, the sound swelling my dick even more. I licked my fingers, found her clit, then started fucking her long and slow as she held me and her warm breath tickled my skin and all of her felt like the wild magic.

  “I love you, Juma.” I kissed her throat as I slid in and out of her and she cupped my balls and kissed me hard and called my name over and over and I wanted to fuck her forever so I could listen to the way my name danced on her tongue when I was balls deep in her pussy, but I also wanted that other moment. The one where her pussy clenched tight around my dick and squeezed up and down me as I moved against her and released inside her and our orgasms tumbled around each other, shattering us in new ways each time. So when I felt her toes dangling over the edge, instead of calling her back to me and seeing how long we could wait, I started moving faster and held her tighter and she gasped my name and swore, “I’m going to come,” and I knew she was, I could feel her. I fucked her harder, faster, my dick so deep inside her, my balls smacked her ass each time, and told her to come.

  “It’s okay, baby, come all over me.” I wanted her to come.

  “Oh god, Dutch!” she cried and arched into me and everything went dark and silent as my dick exploded everywhere inside her and nothing made sense as I kept fucking my orgasm deep into her pussy, and she milked every drop of me, grinding on me until we had nothing left but sweat and kisses.

  We stayed wrapped tight around each other, our climax rendering us silent and exhausted but unwilling to let each other go. I pulled the blanket over us and remained buried in the warmth of her pussy as we breathed deep, closed our eyes, and settled into the wonder of us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: JUMA

  This place is called my heart

  there’s a seat for you

  across from me

  I’m saving it

  forever

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: JUMA

  I didn’t know how much time passed before Dutch and I slid apart from one another, I didn’t really care because really, I wanted all the time, I wanted to claim it own it put my name all over it so no one else could steal another second away from the two of us. Because we’d already had too many seconds taken by others, time that should have been spent walking on the beach, laughing over dinner cooked together, wrapped around each other in the quiet of the night. So the ones we had left, I intended to guard them be selfish about them observe territorial ownership of them, and anyone who crossed our path would know: Do not fuck with the time we have left together.

  And that reality made me sad, the kind of sadness I could feel in my toes and that lived in my bones, but now was not the time for it. Now I needed to live for all we had left. Together.

  I rolled onto my side and watched him as he smoked and rested his hand on the inside of my thigh and everything about that man spoke poetry to me, words filled with wonder and love, tender kisses and too-little time. I thought about my notebook in my apartment that I hadn’t seen in far too long and wanted that book to jot down my thoughts and that airy space that I called home but also, didn’t really care about any of it because all that mattered was right here right now.

  “I love you,” I whispered, and even though my throat no longer ached with the newness of crossing back to this last life, I spoke low so as not to disturb the peace settled around us. “So much.”

  “I know,” he replied, and waited a beat before flashing me a grin full of mischief and light and even as I laughed, a little of me broke inside.

  “How very Han of you,” I said as I gathered myself and did my best to sound light.

  “And so very wise and Leia-like of you,” he said, then leaned over and kissed me.

  “You are such a nerd.” I laughed as he put out his smoke, shot me a look full of shock, then swept me into his arms and out of bed.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thin
g.” And then he swallowed my reply with a long deep kiss that I felt in the soles of my feet as he carried me downstairs.

  “Put me down, Dutch,” I said, and laughed and pushed at his arms.

  “No, Juma,” he said, and laughed because he knew I thought my butt alone weighed too much to be carried and I knew he thought that was the dumbest shit ever.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, resigned to the fact he wasn’t letting me down.

  “Outside,” he replied as we walked through a kitchen that he probably never used for much more than walking through to the next room.

  “I have no clothes on,” I noted as we reached the back door.

  “Nor do I,” he stated the obvious as he put me down and stepped into my space so I was pressed between the wall and his rock-hard dick. He moved against me and I moaned and all of me was wet and turned on and even though he’d just spent hours fucking every inch of my body licking sucking touching me everywhere, I wanted him to do it again.

  I spread my legs and he groaned.

  “Remember the first time you pressed against me like this? And touched my pussy and almost made me come?” I asked as I guided his fingers to my clit and he mumbled a reply I could barely understand and we both recalled that morning in my apartment. “This time,” I said, and wrapped my fingers around his thick huge dick and guided him inside me, “I want you to finish what you started all those nights ago.”

  “Good fucking god, Juma,” he breathed into the skin of my neck as he wrapped his hands around my hips and fucked me against the wall, hard and fast, his dick working me deep as though he owned me, as if he needed to be owned. I climbed his body, wrapped myself around him, and held on to all his brown tatted gorgeousness. He rammed into me again and again and again and I begged him never to stop and we came all over each other, fast and hard and so goddamned brilliant, just like our love.

  “See?” he asked when he pulled away from me a few minutes later, looking all smug and sexy, “that’s why I brought you downstairs without any clothes on.”

  I laughed and followed him into the kitchen and we both downed two glasses of water in silence. The moon was big and bright and cast the space in an eerie glow.

  “Moonset,” he commented, and nodded out the window. “I was going to show it to you before you so rudely laid waste to my plans, making me fuck you against the wall like that.”

  I spat my water and he laughed and did the same and I thought to myself, Maybe these final moments together during this final life together won’t be so brutal after all.

  “I hope you know, Juma Landry, I have every intention of fucking you and making you laugh every goddamned second of this last life we have together.”

  He knew.

  Without my saying a word, he knew.

  Of course he knew.

  My eyes filled and all of me felt the weight of his inevitable loss and he shook his head no as the tears I’d been fighting ever since I crossed back to him spilled over and rolled down my cheeks.

  “No, gorgeous,” he said as he wiped my tears, “that is neither laughing nor fucking.” And he smiled a sad smile but it reached his eyes and it bathed me in love and I cried harder. He pulled me into his arms and listened as I cried and kissed me and told me all sorts of beautiful things he would always love, such as the way I snorted when I laughed and my insistence on chocolate syrup on the bottom of my bowl of coffee ice cream and my love of bad pop music. And he promised to walk around the city holding my hand and kiss me every second he got and read me Neruda as I brushed my teeth, and eventually I had no more tears.

  And even so, we stayed like that, wrapped around each other, kissed by moonset in the quiet of his kitchen.

  “You cannot focus on what we’re going to lose,” he whispered into my hair. “You have to be present with me now, here, rooted in our moments until we have no moments left.”

  “I know,” I breathed into his chest.

  “Plus—” He kissed my hair and wrapped himself around me tighter. “—everyone knows you’re a much bigger badass than I could ever hope to be, so if they see you fall apart, everything will collapse.”

  I laughed and punched him and he laughed and wiped my wet face.

  “Much better.” He kissed me and glanced outside, shaking his head as he released me from his embrace. “Juma, Juma, Juma. First you make me fuck you, then you make me hug you, and now look, the sun is rising.”

  And he was right, the sun was peeking up on the horizon, giving everything that pinkish morning glow. I smiled and watched him as he dug around in the fridge.

  “I know you’re not complaining,” I replied. He turned around and the backlight from the fridge made him seem angelic, and I knew it was corny but my breath caught in my chest anyway.

  Dutch Mathew was all kinds of beautiful.

  “I am most definitely complaining,” he said with a smirk, then went back to the fridge, pulling out eggs, cheese, and milk, a bunch of vegetables, fresh herbs. He dumped them on the butcher block counter and stared at me with mirth in his eyes.

  “What are you doing, Dutch?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing, Juma?” He turned away from me to open a drawer and pull out some pans, then grabbed a carafe of oil from a cabinet near the stove, heated the pans and the oil while he grabbed some utensils.

  All the while butt-ass naked.

  “I didn’t know you could cook.” I sidled up next to him and he rested his hand on my ass, looked down at me, and smirked.

  “This is going to come as a shock, but there’s more to me than this fabulous dick,” he replied, and handed me a knife, “and nothing smart out of your gorgeous filthy totally fuckable mouth, just chop those herbs.”

  He then reached into a high cabinet, pulled out a mandoline, and started slicing the potatoes. I stood mesmerized as his hands moved with such speed and confidence and I knew he told me to stay in the moment with him, but I couldn’t help feeling tied up in knots as I thought of all the meals we wouldn’t eat together.

  “Stop it, Juma.” Dutch paused all his movement, turned to me with glassy eyes, and whispered, “Please, gorgeous. Right here. With me. This moment.”

  I kissed his shoulder, leaned into him, kissed him again, then grabbed some rosemary and started chopping. He went back to the potatoes, checked the temperature of the oil, and grated some cheese, all the while sneaking peeks at me.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  Dutch placed the mandoline in the sink, grabbed a bright red tomato, and handed it to me. “Chop this.”

  I took it from his hand, washed it, and went to work.

  “Jesus fuck.” He took the knife out of my hand and nudged me out of the way, “Stay over there, princess.”

  “As in Leia?” I asked as I stepped away, leaned a hip against the counter, and watched him go to work.

  “As in Princess I-Don’t-Know-How-to-Cook,” he said as he glanced my way and smiled, then leaned over and kissed me. “God, you’re annoying.”

  “But you love me—” I bit the rim of my glass and smiled and he pulled me close. “—even though I don’t know how to cook.”

  “I love your ass,” he corrected as his hand rubbed all over my behind.

  “And me,” I insisted, mostly because I loved hearing him say it.

  He leaned close and my lips parted and he licked me and why was everything with him so goddamned electric?

  “And you, gorgeous. I love you. Always you.” He kissed me again, then turned back to prepping the food. “Even if you can’t cook for shit.”

  “Your hand was just on my ass,” I noted with a raised brow as he cracked eggs and poured in some milk.

  “And all up inside your pussy as well. I didn’t hear you complaining then,” he replied as he layered cheese in the bottom of a pan, then poured his egg and milk mixture over it.

  “Fair enough,” I agreed, but he moved toward the sink and started washing his hands anyway.

  “Better?” he asked.
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br />   “Better,” I agreed, and he shook his head, amused with me as he went back to prepping our meal. “Should I do anything?” I asked.

  “Grab some plates,” he said, and nodded in the direction of the cabinet, “and some champagne out of the fridge. The flutes are next to the plates, and the silverware is in the drawer in the island.”

  I set the table and poured us some champagne, then sat down and watched him move around the kitchen like a professional, everything fluid and certain. And I wondered if it was because he’d spent so much time in a kitchen cooking for himself and others that he exuded such confidence or was it the Keeper in him, that deadly killer that made him the best at damn near everything he touched.

  I figured the latter.

  With a fucked-up family like his, he had to be the best to have survived this long.

  “Dutch!” I suddenly exclaimed, and he spun around and all of him looked ready to kill anything moving. “Your sister. What happened?”

  He stared at me as though he couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of my mouth, then breathed deep, leaned against the counter, and tried to recover.

  “Don’t ever do that again, okay?” he said, and pointed the spatula he was using at me as he spoke. “I’m serious. Unless you’re in trouble, and I mean last-life kind of trouble, do not call my name like that. Unlike you, I don’t have a bunch of lives, Juma, and you goddamned almost killed me.”

  I shot him a sheepish look and blew him a kiss, to which he rolled his eyes, grabbed our plates, and returned to the stove without providing any news on Veda, which led me to believe she’d gotten away and he would fill me in on the details after we ate. She had already ruined so much for us, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting her to also ruin our morning.

  Dutch piled our plates full of steaming eggs with tomatoes and cheese and fried potatoes drizzled with masala and rosemary. It smelled so amazing, I forgot about Veda and instead became fully focused on my empty belly.