Dutch

by Madhuri Pavamani

  Like a man starved for too long of the warmth of a lover’s body, of the gentle curve of her smile, and the scent of her desire, untangling myself from Juma was fucking brutal and if I could have stayed in her arms forever, trust when I say I would have done just that.

  But I had to check in. I couldn’t just disappear.

  Or could I?

  I shook the thought out of my head because it was an impossibility and contemplating it was a waste of time. I would never escape The Gate—for all intents and purposes, my family was The Gate—it was in my blood, an intricate part of my being. There was no getting around it, so rather than dwell on the coulda, woulda, shouldas, the motherfucking I wishes and why nots, I focused on her. Because she made all of that other shit not so present and immediate. I could step outside it for a second and lose myself in something that was so fucking good. And that made me feel good in return.

  I pushed back from her for a second and then, like a crazy person, because really that’s what I became in her presence, changed my mind and pulled her back to me, pressing my lips to her forehead, wanting to kiss her every-fucking-where but knowing that would lead to something very dangerous and silently agreed upon between the two of us not to happen. At least not now.

  I released her and reached into my back pocket, pulled out my phone, and smirked. “Attending to my ass.”

  “You do that.” She pushed past me, her hand lingering on my hip for a second before she continued on, picking up a few plates scattered about her island and walking them to the dishwasher. “Because later, attending to your ass and your mouth and your arms and your chest and your dick and anywhere else I feel needs attending to is going to be my job.”

  Good fucking god.

  “And don’t look at me like that, Dutch,” she said, glancing up from loading the dishes, “because when you look at me like that, all I can think about is you throwing me on top of the island and fucking me. Hard. Like you own my pussy. And you’re not going to fuck me right now, so stop it already.”

  Her mouth and the wicked shit that came out of it were going to be the goddamned brilliant end of me. And I should have been answering Avery’s texts, letting him know I was all right and he didn’t need to come for me, but he could wait another two minutes. Almost like he knew I was contemplating blowing him off, my phone started ringing and Juma shot me a look as if to ask whether I was going to deal with it. I swiped my finger across the screen as I moved in her direction, stepping around the dishwasher to get to her. She backed away from me until she couldn’t anymore and found herself pressed between the wall and my rock-hard dick and she fucking smiled.

  I knew I shouldn’t do it, that I just needed to grab my shit and leave, but I couldn’t without rubbing up against her, she was so tempting and beautiful and I could smell her from across the room. She gasped and I pressed into her deeper and she moaned but did not tell me to stop and I knew if I kept going we would throw all our silent promises out the window and fuck until we couldn’t anymore.

  “Is there something you should tell me?” I asked, licking the crook of her neck.

  She arched into me as she grabbed my ass and held me close.

  “I should tell you to go,” she gasped, “check on your dealers and your corners, you badass cocaine kingpin.”

  I laughed as I pushed the strap of her tank aside with my nose and kissed the rise of her breast, my lips so close to her impossibly hard nipple and yet not close enough.

  “I’m going.”

  She opened her eyes and everything stilled. “Not yet,” she requested, and “Not yet,” I agreed.

  “Touch me,” she whispered, and I shifted away from her while my hand trailed its way up her thigh and she spread her legs ever so slightly and fuuuuuck, that move was sexy. She watched me the whole time and we were so present and even when my thumb brushed the silk of her panties and she cried out, she never broke our stare. “Soft,” she gasped, “I like it soft,” and I traced her throbbing clit through her drenched panties with the softest of touches ever, barely there, until she grabbed my arm and begged me to stop. So I did and watched her as she collected herself and stepped back from the precipice of her orgasm to finally open her eyes and flash me that smile of hers that brought me to my goddamned knees every time.

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Trust me,” she cocked a brow and my dick jumped, “the pleasure was all mine.”

  “You didn’t finish.”

  “I know that,” she replied as she walked away and headed down the hall, “so now you owe me.” I watched her for a second, hypnotized by the sway of her hips and the curve of her neck. Then my phone buzzed and I shot back to reality.

  “You’re not going to walk me out?” I called to her. I could hear her laugh from her bedroom.

  “You’re a big boy, you know what to do.”

  “I’m gonna leave my number for you.” I grabbed a pen and started writing down my contact information when she stepped into the hallway, totally naked, and shot me a look.

  “Dutch.” My name on her lips sounded like the best sex ever. “Are you telling me that you’re going to wait for me to call you?”

  It wasn’t the first time I had seen her naked, but holy fuck it felt like it. “Nah-nah. No, definitely not,” I stammered and shook my head like a dumbstruck teenager, barely able to make my mouth work properly in the face of all that gorgeous, brown skin and dark nipples and her pussy, god her pussy.

  “Good.” She smiled and headed back to her room. “Now go away, Mr. Cocaine Kingpin, and let me freshen up. I cannot go to work smelling like frustrated vagina.”

  I laughed and grabbed my keys off the island. “What do you do anyway?”

  “Good-bye, Dutch,” and then the shower started and I took that as my cue. I couldn’t even begrudge her secrecy since I wasn’t much better in the let’s-be-open-and-honest-about-our-careers department. Plus, I had other things to think about besides Juma’s job.

  Exiting her building, I checked my watch and grimaced. I was ten hours late for my meeting with Khan, hardly a desirable position for anyone, least of all me. There was going to be hell to pay for this transgression. Thank god, and Juma, my body had healed from the last go-round.

  I’m alive.

  See you at Kowdiar

  Palace by 10.

  I headed to my place, showered, grabbed my bicycle, and although I was expected at Ren headquarters, I turned uptown for 9th Street. Weaving in and out of the traffic, I pulled in front of the familiar door, locked my bike, then stopped, a flash of color catching my already distracted eye. Nestled inside the front window of Meg, the boutique next door to Frist’s lab, just off to the side so it might catch your eye, but you’d keep walking if you were in a rush, was a red dress that looked as if it had been designed with Juma in mind. I shook my head and chuckled to myself, wondering if I’d lost my mind as I lit a smoke and inhaled. I was a sick motherfucker, totally incapable of getting that woman out of my goddamned head, but I needed to if I planned on living long enough to see her again.

  Pushing Juma and her deep laugh and sexy freckles and her hips—god her fucking hips that just begged to have my fingers wrapped tightly around them—to the outer confines of my consciousness, I checked the lock on my bike once more and then started for Frist’s door, only to stop again.

  That fucking dress.

  It was made for her.

  It was made for me to take it off her.

  “Very nice.”

  I smiled and exhaled on my smoke, glancing to the side for that shock of pink hair.

  “Who’s the lucky girl?” Frist raised a brow in my direction.

  “Fuck off.”

  She grinned and walked toward the window. “I’m thinking she’s got gorgeous brown skin to set off that color, a perfect neck to show off the line right there,” and she pointed to just what I had been studying, “and hips that are made for holding on to while you fuck her.”

  I ste
pped past Frist and pinched her waist, eliciting a yelp as I entered the boutique with her skinny ass on my heels.

  “You’re killing me, Dutch.” Frist followed me to the window as we circled the dress, her eyes full of amused curiosity. I glanced up at her as I looked for the price tag, then met the eye of the salesgirl lurking nearby. “I haven’t seen you in months and now you show up buying fuck-me dresses.”

  “It caught my eye.” I smirked as the salesgirl approached. “Could I get this? And I need it delivered.”

  The young girl raised her eyebrows. “Sir, you know that dress is nineteen hundred dollars, right?”

  “I didn’t, but that’s fine. I want it.”

  Frist laughed, wrapped an arm around my waist, and kissed my shoulder. “Fucking god, my Dutch has gone and fallen in love.”

  The salesgirl was so confused, I could see it all over her face. She probably thought I was buying the dress for Frist, but overhearing our conversation, was suddenly not so sure of herself anymore. Eyeing Frist, she turned back to me. “A size two?”

  “I have no fucking clue.” I laughed, realizing I had no idea of such details when it came to Juma because the fact of the matter was I knew very few of her details. I sure as hell didn’t know her dress size. “She’s a size two?” I asked, pointing at Frist who stood next to me, quietly amused by the whole situation.

  “That would be my guess,” the salesgirl replied, running her eyes up and down all five feet eleven inches of wispy, barely-there Frist. Frist winked at her and I swear the girl released a sigh of relief.

  I turned to Frist, thought about what Juma would look like standing next to her, and turned back to the still-confused salesgirl. “I’m going to need an eight. Can you have it delivered for me? I have to get out of here.”

  “Of course.” She turned and headed toward the back of the boutique. “I’ll ring you up, you can leave me the delivery address, and I’ll handle everything else.”

  I turned back and grinned at Frist who just rolled her eyes, shifted her weight to the other hip, and waited for me. I gave the girl my credit card, wrote a note for Juma on a piece of the store’s stationery, left the address, and then rejoined Frist, intertwining my fingers with hers and leading us out of the boutique and back into the waning afternoon sunlight.

  “What the fuck was that?” she asked as she opened the door to her building and I followed her upstairs.

  “Hell if I know.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone to know about Juma, I just felt a little weird having the first “anyone” be Frist. I watched her unlock the door to her lab and hold it open for me; as I stepped through, she grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled me to her.

  “Don’t do that, Dutch.” She glared, a jumble of different shades of pink fury.

  “I would never.” I held her hand and gently loosened her fingers.

  “You’re doing it now and I fucking hate it. It’s me.” She shot me a wide-eyed stare. “Frist. I know damn near everything about you and still love your ass. And just so we understand each other and you don’t come slinking around here being all vague and shit again, I am not in love with you. I have never been in love with you. You have a very special dick and, god knows why, I love your company, but I’m not stupid. You’re not mine any more than I am yours. But I pray every time I see you and you fuck me but can barely touch me or stand to kiss me or flinch when I touch you that you find your love—that strange, bizarre being to give all of this to.”

  And here she looked me up and down but would not release her hold on me.

  “Because despite what you have spent so long telling yourself and anyone else who will listen, I know you are kind and loving and just so fucking unique.”

  Then she finally let me go, smoothed down my shirt, bit her lip, and glared at me.

  “I hope she knows that.”

  I pulled her close and kissed her forehead. My Frist. My skinny, pink-haired mad scientist.

  “Thank you,” I whispered in her ear, then leaned back with a sheepish look on my face and added, “and I need some more of that stuff.”

  Frist punched me in the chest. “I knew it, you jerk.”

  “I wanted to see you, too.” It wasn’t untrue, but she and I both knew I could have stopped by months ago.

  “Just not as badly as you wanted to see ‘fuck-me-dress’ girl.” She laughed as she moved about her lab. “Or perhaps I should say woman?” And she turned back to me with raised brows.

  “She is most definitely a woman,” I agreed, taking a seat in her window and watching her work.

  “Good.” Frist put a cap on a vial and walked toward me, pushing my legs apart and making space for herself. “Because the thought of you fucking a girl irks me.”

  “I’m not fucking her.”

  “Oh.” Frist grinned. “I hear a double entendre in there—purposeful, I hope.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  She cupped my face in her soft hands and I didn’t flinch.

  “God, she’s done a number on you.”

  I laughed as she studied my hands, making sure the powder hadn’t left any marks on them, a sign that I was slowly being poisoned from touching the stuff. Satisfied I was okay and wouldn’t be dying any time soon, at least not on account of anything she’d given me, she then placed the vial in my safekeeping.

  “Thanks for this, Frist.”

  “I hate that you need it,” she replied, a cutting edge to her voice, “but I’m not letting you walk around unarmed.”

  “If it doesn’t hurt me will it be useless against the others?” I asked, purposely cryptic.

  She knew exactly who I was speaking of and her eyes clouded. “I made it for you and you only. It’ll kill Rani and James and any of those other assholes so fast they won’t know what hit them.”

  I hated that I made her do these things for me, but I couldn’t take a chance.

  “I owe you.”

  She pressed her lips to mine and then stepped away from me, grabbed some goggles, and headed back to her lab. “Silly boy. The only thing you owe me is to stay alive. Otherwise, we’re even.”

  “We’re never even.”

  “We’re always even, Dutch,” she turned back to me and glared, a mischievous glimmer in her eye, “now get the fuck out of my house.”

  I jumped on my bicycle, headed downtown for the portal, and was standing at the gates of Kowdiar Palace seconds later. Located in Trivandrum, the palace was built in 1934 by Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal but decades later, by luck and happenstance, fell into the hands of The Gate. It was my childhood home, and the site of some of my worst memories.

  I checked my watch and said fuck it, pulled out a smoke, and lit that bitch. I was already late, another five minutes wasn’t going to make a difference.

  To his face, my father liked to be called “achan,” which sounded affectionate and warm. I never did that shit. I called him either “father” or Khan, because that asshole was anything but affectionate and warm.

  Khan Mathew was a large man, in stature and in spirit. He ran both my life and The Gate with an iron fist, saving whatever warmth and kindness that resided somewhere in his being for my mother, Shema, and my younger sister, Veda. And, really, mostly for Veda. She was his spitting image, so much so that one wondered whether my mother had even played a role in Veda’s conception. She held him in the highest regard, took his word as gospel, and believed wholeheartedly in his twisted and perverse view of the world, in our family, and in using whatever means necessary to hold on to the massive power he wielded.

  Veda was the son Khan never had, because I sure as fuck did not buy any of the shit coming out of his mouth—in my opinion, Khan was a batshit crazy, violent psychopath, and although she was only thirty-three years old, Veda was doing a stellar job at proving the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  When I first learned of The Gate and the fact that my father pretty much ran the organization, everything in my life suddenly made sense; all the question
s of my childhood found their answers. My father’s cold stare, his always distant demeanor, his brutal punishments—they were inevitable, for he believed in no other way. He would not laugh, tousle my hair, or attend my football games because he needed to focus on The Gate, he had to control Death, and he had to make sure each and every Poocha met its bloody end.

  I later learned that was only half true.

  He smiled and joked and cavorted with those he respected, revered, liked. It’s just that I did not fall into any of those categories.

  My father hated that I resembled my mother, did not have his diabolical tendencies, and, unlike Veda, did not blindly obey him. It infuriated him that I made my own friends, rarely sought his advice, and seemed determined to blaze my own trail within The Gate.

  But those were not the reasons why he truly despised me.

  Khan Mathew hated me because his beloved daughter, his precious baby girl, his perfect Veda, was born Junta and as such could never take the reins from him and run The Gate. She could rise to the top and lead the Junta, as my mother did, but the one role he so desperately wanted to bestow upon her was out of his control and would never be within her reach. Only Keepers could rise to the rank of Ren, and only Ren could lead The Gate.

  I, not Veda, was the next Keeper in the Mathew bloodline, and as such, rightful heir to the gruesome, violent, bloody throne of The Gate.

  Lucky fucking me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JUMA

  If I knew

  I didn’t want to

  I suspected it

  what with all the anger and disdain

  I sensed it

  in the hiss and burn

  but it’s so much easier to latch on to the little lie you tell yourself

  despite knowing the truth sits on the tip of your tongue

  if only you were brave enough to give it life