Dutch

by Madhuri Pavamani

  I pressed my lips to hers and lost myself a little.

  My name was Dutch Mathew

  I was a killer for The Gate and I was totally fucked.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JUMA

  He pulled away from me and looked a little strange, like he’d gone too far and maybe wanted to take it all back—pretend the night didn’t happen he didn’t just kiss me despite telling me he would never kiss me didn’t want to kiss me hated the idea of kissing me. I knew he was full of it.

  I grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him close before he could make whatever escape he was busy planning.

  “Stop,” I said, as he looked left and right and up and down and anywhere but me. And much to my surprise he did. He stopped and pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. “Deep breaths. It’ll be fine, I promise.”

  Stepping back and leaning against the counter, he studied me studying him, both of us wondering what to make of the other of the night of the kiss.

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” He finally broke his silence with the very words I didn’t want to hear but fully expected would fall from his lips because he was Dutch and he just had to break my heart. I turned, giving him my back, and placed my mug in the sink watching the city move below my window, calming myself.

  You are a Poocha, Juma, one of the best, you have nine lives, you are fierce. Men yearn for your touch, women tremble when you are near. You are brilliant and wily and wondrous. You are caring and considerate and warm. You are love. Your lives are devoted to giving life to those from whom it was so thoughtlessly taken. You do the work of a higher power, you ARE a higher power.

  He is small and nothing and cannot hurt you.

  Do not let him steal your shine.

  “I have to get to work.” I gripped the edges of the sink and closed my eyes, holding on to the little shine he had not stolen with that tiny cutting phrase. He moved and I knew he was headed for my door and I refused to watch him leave so I waited—one, two, three, four—and then the chill of my solitude was surrounded by his warmth as he came up behind me and placed his hands outside of mine and stepped close so close. Our eyes locked in the reflection in the window and he bent his mouth to my ear and I almost came right there the heat between my legs unbearable.

  All that without being touched.

  This man was trouble and I wanted all of his danger.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he whispered, never taking his eyes off mine.

  “It’s fine,” I lied, because I needed to at least make an attempt to hide my pain from him.

  “What I meant . . .” he continued as I shook my head no.

  “Please,” I begged, and this time I didn’t hide my pain it was all out there in that tiny word in the tone of my voice in my eyes when I pleaded, “don’t hurt me again.”

  And he stilled and I breathed.

  “I meant,” he began again and I braced myself for the cut the burn the bottomless sorrow that only he could sow, “I shouldn’t have panicked and shut down and closed myself off from you when you are the one person who makes me feel good who makes me feel all right, like I might not be so fucking horrible after all, like I might be worthy of something better than what I have allowed myself to believe for longer than I care to recall. I should have realized that being able to even say Kajal’s name aloud and talk about her and remember who I was when I was with her is some kind of goddamned magic you hold in the palm of your hand and I want it. I want you. I need you. All of you. To wrap around and protect me from myself. That’s what I meant, Juma.

  “And you don’t have to say a word in response because there is every fucking chance that the last thing you want to do is protect me from anything, I sure as hell don’t deserve it, but I can’t leave your side without confessing myself to you I can’t have you thinking I regretted kissing you when I want to do so much more, need to do so much more, but know I don’t have the right.”

  Then he pressed his lips to my throat and I closed my eyes and wanted to lean into him because I needed to feel him his desire his thickness against me but I resisted because I promised myself that the next time I touched him he would have begged for it. And although in this moment this very heated intense moment when all I could think about was running my hand along the length of him pushing back into him to feel him press against my ass I knew he was silently begging, I needed to hear it he needed to verbalize it and it needed to be full of ache and need and burn. Until then I satisfied myself with the fact that his nearness his lips on my throat his eyes watching me like a man starved for all kinds of affection meant he was mine.

  Mine.

  Dutch Mathew belonged to me.

  Whatever horrors had taken place whatever unbearable events he suffered whatever brutal truths he endured they were in his past—his present and his future were mine to do with as I pleased to care for as I wished to cherish as I intended.

  “I’m going to go before I bend you over and fuck you silly because you have to go to work and I have some things to do and I’ve already taken up enough of your precious time.”

  I watched him as he pressed wet points of heat along the side of my throat and as much as I was never a girl for filming my exploits, my pussy flooded and ached and all I could think was how I wanted to watch him do a whole host of other dirty filthy unspeakable things to my body. I wanted to film all of it and then play it on endless loop. Dutch and Juma do each other again and again and again.

  He was totally going to steal my shine and I was totally going to let it happen.

  “I don’t even know what you do,” I realized aloud as he unwrapped himself from me and moved toward the table where I’d left his sneakers. He sat down and pushed his feet into them, bending back the heels in that way that drove my ma nuts, all the while eyeing me with a funny look.

  “I could say the same to you.”

  I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms, my head tilted to the side as I sized him up, his unease with my question, his caginess, his bizarre injuries that we weren’t talking about but both knew were not of this world. Not the human one, anyway. But we could go on pretending otherwise—at some point he would come clean and then so would I because clearly we were both holding major secrets and neither of us were quite ready to share.

  Instead, I distracted myself by concocting all sorts of unsavory careers he could have since his discomfort suggested he did something not so nice hardly desirable possibly deviant: porn star, gigolo, gravedigger, pimp, drug dealer, corrupt police officer, up-and-coming politician, cartel overlord, illegal ivory trafficker, humpback whale hunter, sex slave owner.

  “You’re a little cagey about my question and you answered it with a question, sure signs of a bullshitter,” I ignored his statement as to my job status and teased him. “You’re wearing custom-designed wings + horns sneakers, your flask is filled with top-shelf bourbon but not one I know, which leads me to believe it’s difficult to find, and your underwear costs a fortune.”

  And here I smiled the kind of smile I felt in my eyes because I liked that I knew his brand of underwear and I liked that he liked I knew his brand of underwear and I could tell he liked it because the longer I spoke the more he relaxed.

  “Your hair is perfect as is your manscape.” I winked and he laughed and it sounded genuine, not that sarcastic bark he tossed my way the first time we met. “You’re the kind of guy I would spot in a bar, strip off my clothes, and ask him to fuck me.”

  “Like Hitler’s Wet Dream?” he asked with a raised brow.

  “He ripped off my panties,” I corrected, “I’ve only stripped for you.”

  “I feel so much better.”

  “I had no idea it was a problem,” I replied with a smirk, “but we’re not talking about who I fuck, Dutch, although that was a clever attempt at making this about me and my pussy instead of you and your nine-to-five.”

  He stood across from me looking like he couldn’t quite believe some of the words escaping my lips but aga
inst his better judgment found me amusing. I reeled him in and it was intentional—I wanted him to know I got it, the caginess and unease, and it was fine. We weren’t going to make a thing of it because it didn’t matter. At least right now it didn’t.

  “You have a dirty sexy mouth and talk of what you don’t like other women to do which leads me to believe you know sex but you don’t fuck men. And that’s a shame because you and another guy would be so goddamned hot I could come just thinking about it and even though you’re standing here right now saying there’s no way you’ll fuck a guy, I think I can convince you to fuck one with me.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Oh Dutch.” I laughed and wagged my finger at him. “Not only can I, but you’ll enjoy it. But back to the matter at hand. Your fingers are perfectly manicured.” Here I stepped close to him and reached for his hand and he froze and so did I, because old habits were hard to break.

  For both of us.

  I backed off a little and he met my stare with eyes full of unspoken apologies and when he realized I was not going to hold his hesitance against him he breathed deeply.

  “This Ferragamo belt is beat up and aged.” Here I dared to pull him close, our bodies pressed against each other the heat between us almost too much despite the fact both of us knew there would be no fucking no sucking just touch. “But I get the impression you could buy hundreds of these if you fancied.”

  “For the record, Juma, I don’t fancy anything.”

  “But me.”

  I needed to hear him say it again and again and again because for all my power and strength I was vulnerable like that.

  “But you,” he agreed and smiled and ran his thumb along my lower lip and I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking the same, which was why I kept talking and making him laugh and grin and relax. Because there would be no fucking no sucking.

  “I think you’re a cartel overlord.”

  “HA!”

  He laughed and pushed back from me and laughed some more and he was so beautiful right there in that instant and for once in my life I was prescient enough to catch it all on my camera every light lovely spontaneous moment.

  “All those weeks I don’t see you, you’re off in your hacienda, tending your mountains of cocaine, shipping massive amounts of illegal automatic weapons to Iran, while beautiful brown women cook your meals, wash your clothes, and suck your dick. With their hands tied behind their backs, of course.”

  “Of course.” He chuckled, and I got another shot of him. “What are you doing with all those pictures?”

  “But today you’re going to drive around the city and check up on your dealers.” I ignored his question as I continued my story while scrolling through the shots of him. “Pop in and scare the shit out of them let them know Dutch Mathew, cartel overlord, is in the city and watching their every move.”

  He eyed my phone and I knew part of him wanted to grab it and delete everything but he wouldn’t dare. Photos were intimate and personal and he did not function on those planes but I did so he would have to deal because I wasn’t deleting anything. I looked up from my phone and met his stare.

  “So?”

  “So what, Juma?”

  I set my phone on the counter, leaned back on my hands, and closed my eyes, relishing the sound of my name on his tongue. It was silly and so girly of me but I couldn’t help myself I felt like that kid who ran the whole length of the neighborhood to catch the ice cream truck missing it at each turn and finally deciding to cut around the back way and take a chance that it was going to make the same turn and then meet it head-on. And it did make that turn and that ice cream was. the. best.

  Heaven. Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods.

  That was him saying my name. I could listen to it forever and never tire of the sound the cadence the slight accent that hinted at something other unknown distant. And the mischief as if it always pleased him to say it even when I had asked him not to.

  I felt him approach and didn’t even bother opening my eyes, knowing he was going for my phone to delete those pictures that were bothering him, so I was surprised when his heat covered me his lips pressed to my ear his hand rested on my hip and he whispered, “Juma,” because he knew without me having to say it that listening to him made me crazy made my pussy swell made me so fucking wet. I moaned I didn’t mean to it slipped and he smiled I could feel his smile against my ear and I thought that was too much but I was wrong because then he pressed his leg against my pussy just so like he knew exactly where to touch me and it took everything in me not to come right there.

  “Behave,” I gasped, and pushed him off me as I tried to slow my racing heart gather myself chill the fuck out. But he came back at me not in a rush but real gentle-like and touched my hair and traced the hollow of my cheek and whispered his breath across my mouth and I think I died because it was rapture and since I had died once before I knew what I was talking about.

  This was it.

  He was my heaven and my death his touch ghosting along the curves of my body affirming his ownership of my soul.

  “Juma, please.” His breath grazed my neck his voice low so full of hunger and somewhere in there a hint of pain a fear of rejection.

  “What?” I could barely make the small word push past my lips I was in such a state but his tone his need pulled me out of myself my heat my throbbing pussy.

  “Please.” He placed his hands on either side of me and created a box for just us to exist within together, nothing and no one else. His eyes pleaded with me until he lowered them as if ashamed of wanting something—me—so desperately that he was forced to ask for it when he was so used to just taking. I bent low until he had to meet my stare forcing him back into our new reality of gentleness and care and unspoken love of laughter and sharing and nighttime chats.

  “Please what?” I asked.

  He bent his head and leaned into me breathing in breathing out so tense fraught with emotion.

  “What, Dutch?” I said his name because I knew it mattered and I felt him relax a little release some of the tension in his neck and shoulders. “Please what?”

  “Please,” he spoke into my neck, his breath so warm, and then pushed back from me and I could tell he was waging a battle with himself putting his need in direct conflict with how he had lived his life for far too long. His eyes were more haunted than ever and I almost gave in to that trauma and pulled him into my arms promising to forever wrap him in me and my shine but I didn’t.

  I waited and it hurt because there was nothing more I wanted than to ease his suffering and let him know he was loved and worthy. But I made a promise to myself and this was me, holding on to my shine.

  And he wasn’t stupid he knew he would have to ask for whatever it was he needed because I had already given him so much of myself without him doing anything but existing being present showing up. He pressed his forehead to mine and his eyelashes tickled my face evoking such light thoughts when all around us the air was heavy and thick and I wondered how we so quickly went from laughter and lust to this moment of unspeakable hurt and desire.

  “Juma please.”

  Until we passed the moment and moved into another plane altogether.

  “Touch me.”

  He panicked as soon as the words left his mouth and I watched as he fell apart, his simple request undermining his every sensibility. It broke my heart and mesmerized me and even though those two words didn’t sound like begging they most definitely were just that. Every atom of his being was pleading with me to save him from his very lonely existence to take a chance on his dark soul to trust he would not steal my shine.

  And just as he closed his eyes, convinced I would not dream of putting my hands my fingers my lips on him—which was so crazy because that was all I had wanted to do since I saw him sitting in that booth at Frank’s drinking and smoking and looking dangerous—I reached up and placed my hand on the back of his neck curled my fingers into his hair and pulled him close.

  Hi
s skin was warm just like I knew it would be and again I thought of the beach and sunshine and long summer nights. And his hair was thick and my fingers got lost in the dark silk cooler than his skin but just as beautiful. He shook slightly bracing himself against the counter and I wanted to cry for him but instead placed my other hand under his shirt against his heart and whispered in his ear all kinds of things full of affection and love and tenderness things he believed he did not deserve but with me as his teacher would learn he was so very worthy of.

  “Dutch.”

  “Juma.”

  And he pulled me in to him and dipped his head into the crook of my neck and I wrapped my arms around him and held him and sighed because I knew he was going to be the death of me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DUTCH

  Where the fuck

  are you??

  Dutch?

  DUTCH??!

  Fuck you asshole.

  You’re lying dead

  somewhere. That is

  the ONLY

  explanation

  for you

  blatantly

  ignoring

  my texts.

  There was no need to look at my phone to know who was texting me so unrelentingly. Only one motherfucker would have such shitty timing. Only one motherfucker would be so goddamned annoying. And really, only one motherfucker cared enough about me to even bother.

  Avery.

  I’m coming. Now.

  And when I get

  there, if you’re

  alive, I’m going

  to kill you with

  my bare hands.

  “Your ass is desperate for some attention,” Juma whispered in my ear, her voice low and full of laughter and I wanted nothing more than to keep it just like that. Light and amused. But I knew that was not possible, that by loving me or whatever it was she felt for me she was setting herself up for some pretty dark days ahead. I had every goddamned intention of doing everything in my power to protect her from that reality, and although I knew such thinking was naïve folly, it was all I had to go on if I was going to believe in everything she offered me.