Dutch

by Madhuri Pavamani

  My chest, my side, and her hands, shit, they were running up and down my thighs so close to my balls and why the fuck wouldn’t she just grab my balls already. Her tongue inside my belly button, on my hip, her lips on my thighs, on my balls. Yes. And then she dipped lower and tongued my asshole and. and. and. I don’t even know what I did because I was too fucking gone.

  “Relax,” she whispered into my skin but I couldn’t because her lips and tongue and breath and hands and eyelashes, her everything was too much, and she pushed my limits and my self-control wavered and every goddamned thing I once believed to be true, Juma had walked in and flipped it all on its head.

  She was just. that. magic.

  “I’ll go slow,” she promised and she waited and I calmed but I still had no rational thought, no intelligent brain function, all I could do was breathe. “But I must admit”—she licked me up and down, shaft to head, slow and sinful—“seeing you and all this gorgeousness”—she held my dick and swirled her tongue over my head. “Juma.” It was the only word I could formulate and she smiled because she knew exactly what she was doing to me but she didn’t care. “—has my imagination wondering at the things you must do with your—” Suck. “—very perfect dick—” Kiss. “Mr. Mathew.” I couldn’t even think, her mouth was madness, the words she spoke, her tongue, her lips. “And the things I’m going to do”—the wickedest smile ever—“to your very perfect dick.”

  She ran her lips along my shaft and took me into her mouth, real slow-like and goddamned deep while her tongue swirled all around me and I touched the back of her throat and part of me told myself to lie back and let her do her thing but another part of me couldn’t and before I knew it my hands were in her hair and I was literally begging her, “Don’t stop.” She licked and sucked and squeezed and I was a fucking mess, then she worked me with her hands while she sucked my balls and my eyes rolled into the back of my head and it was over—“I’m gonna come”—so she stopped and slowed and her hands held my hips while she pressed wet, hot kisses up my dick. “You are going to come, Dutch, trust me.” She deep-throated me again while she played with my balls and her rhythm was perfect, like she knew my body inside and out, and just as I was telling myself that I was going to make it and she was going to be sucking my dick for a while, she fingered my ass and I couldn’t even warn her and it didn’t matter because she knew.

  Wicked, gorgeous, nasty, beautiful Juma knew.

  I came everywhere and kept coming until she teased and sucked and swallowed every last drop of me, leaving me empty and spent and more satisfied than any lover had ever felt in the history of love and you couldn’t even fucking try to argue that with me—I knew it to be fact. I randomly thought back on all those times I’d read the word boneless in some book of Frist’s or Avery’s and rolled my eyes, finding it so feminine and bullshit-like, knowing no one ever felt boneless, it was fucking impossible to feel boneless and it was some state of existence created by writers trying to titillate their throngs of young readers into frenzies over book boyfriends and team whatevers and all that other shit Frist and Avery liked to go on about.

  Now I got it.

  Boneless was the result of Juma’s mouth all over my dick. Boneless was shooting my load again and again and again. Boneless was being on the receiving end of the most mind-blowing oral sex ever.

  I was Dutch Mathew, motherfucking boneless killer for The Gate.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  JUMA

  We were together.

  I forget the rest.

  Walt Whitman and his beautiful words resonated throughout my being as I lay there in Dutch’s bed, on his chest, listening to his deep, steady breaths, every so often a chill running down my spine and pooling in my toes as his fingertips traced designs on my bare skin. We were the epitome of sexual satiation, covered in each other’s sweat and spit and come, exhausted, and still so fucking horny. I wanted him inside me everywhere anywhere, but I wanted lots of things: world peace, easier Deaders, a pet snake, Death’s unconditional love, those yellow sandals in the window at Saks, unlimited supplies of Agent Provocateur, dark chocolate Kisses that didn’t stick to my thighs, naked Mondays, my da’s pulled pork, an original copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road, perfect tits.

  Just because I wanted those things didn’t mean I was getting them. Dutch included. As much as it pained me to deny myself those hands his lips that dick, for once in my life I needed to exercise some self-control and restraint and deal with the big scary fucked-up shit front and center. No hiding and pretending it wasn’t coming for me—it was coming, and not just for me, for both of us.

  And there was no way it was taking him anywhere. Not while I lived and breathed and loved. The fucked-up shit would have to go through me to get to him and going through me was damn near impossible.

  “Dutch.”

  “Don’t do it, Juma.” He played with my hair and pulled me closer.

  “We can’t pretend,” I began.

  “We can,” he concluded.

  I sat up and stared at him, everything about him lean and long and taut, corded muscles, bulging veins, ink on his left elbow and another design on his right forearm, a simple silver ring.

  “Who gave this to you?” I fingered the jewelry.

  “My grandfather”—he twisted the band on his finger, manipulating it with his thumb—“before he died and my father burned all of his possessions.”

  “Why?”

  “To wipe him from everyone’s memory and make it as if he never existed.” He shot me a wry smile as he lit a cigarette and I knew he didn’t like where the conversation was headed, because he smoked when he was unhappy or stressed. “It makes dividing and conquering much easier.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” As if he didn’t know what I meant, as if his selling of his soul wasn’t hovering over us, as if his promise that I would stop doing the very thing I was created to do hadn’t happened. I didn’t say anything and we sat in silence, the light outside slipping into dusk, leaving us shrouded in shadows. His face was all angles and planes, sharp cuts except for his full lips—those game changers that made him so deeply sensual and inviting. I knew that was what drew women to him, pulled them into his orbit so he could pounce.

  What was the rhyme? Dutchie Wutchie, pudding and pie, fucked the girls and made them cry.

  I smiled to myself, amused with my perverse take on “Georgie Porgie” as I slid over Dutch and out of bed, walked over to his kitchen, and began rummaging for a glass. His place was spotless, almost unlived-in, and I could feel his eyes on me as I moved around the room. He didn’t strike me as one of those types who got all pissy about someone making themselves at home—I did just have my finger in his ass and his dick in my mouth and him begging for more more more—but you never knew. I found a lowball and a bottle of his Old Scout—he had enough stashed in his cabinet to open his own distribution center—and headed back to the bed.

  He was still smoking and still watching me, his eyes running over every curve of my body, feasting on me like a man starved, and I loved it. I wanted his eyes on me, imagining all the sorts of nasty things he would like to do to my body. It made me crave him fiercely, but he would get none of this, and I would get none of him, until we talked.

  I climbed into bed with my bottle and glass. “I bought some of this, you know?”

  His eyebrow quirked and my pussy flipped, he was so fucking sexy without doing a damn thing but existing. “I do.”

  “How?”

  “I could smell it on your breath.”

  I sipped the Scout—“God, this really is so good.”—and shot him a look over the edge of my glass. “You mean to tell me you can discern types of alcohol on someone’s breath?”

  He nodded and smoked.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It’s how I do my job.”

  I laughed. “Oh, duh. Keeping and bourbon-sniffing, of course they go hand in hand.”

  “Ha-h
a.” He rubbed my leg and lazy-laughed and my skin tingled at his touch.

  His touch.

  So freely given and so unlike that man in the bar all those months ago, determined to hurt me with his judgments and accusations, convinced he deserved nothing I had to offer, incapable of seeing his worth and beauty and pain, having gone so long denying that those aspects of his person had existed at all, if ever. I had foolishly assumed a lover had made him that way—I could be so simple sometimes.

  Only a parent could inflict such horror and wreak such havoc on one’s soul. And I might never have been able to fully heal that wound, but I knew I could certainly help hold it together along the seams, make it hurt a little less, make it easier to ignore.

  “You’re so funny, Juma.” He joked about Keeping and bourbon-sniffing while I daydreamed about murdering every single member of The Gate who had done him wrong. He leaned close and kissed me, real soft, lips parted, a hint of tongue, and all thoughts of murder and mayhem were forgotten. It was the kind of kiss that left me heated and incapable of closing my mouth or opening my eyes or thinking straight about much of anything because that briefest of contact was so damn sensual. He came close again and I could feel his breath on me, ghosting over the corners of my mouth, wanting me but restraining himself.

  Because he knew.

  “You’re killing me.” His voice was desire and need and sex and love and want all mashed together and whispered as if it was too painful to speak aloud and when his breath tickled my throat and his fingers teased my nipple I could not help moaning and leaning into his touch and silently begging: just a little more. Please.

  I knew if I asked for it, simply said the word, he would give me everything all of him until he had nothing left, but that was the old me, the easily distracted me. The new me had business to attend to, so long beautiful languid explorations of Dutch’s body would not be happening. Instead a touch here a kiss there would have to suffice.

  “I shouldn’t,” he whispered as he cupped my breast and teased my nipple with his tongue and I arched into him because it was just a little, I could keep myself on track and in control—“Just say no and I’ll stop.”—and he moved down my body, pressing wet kisses lower and lower and I rose to my knees because. because. because I wanted his lips all over my pussy I couldn’t think of anything but coming with his tongue inside me and it was too late because his mouth was on me and those soft lips were working their magic all over my clit and my hands were in his hair. And, and, and.

  “No, Dutch,” I gasped, and pushed him away and for a second we both swayed totally off-balance and consumed by blinding desire. “No more. No more of your lips anywhere on me. Don’t touch me,” I warned because I couldn’t even say no to a graze of his fingertips he was so fucking electric, “and stay over there, on that side of the bed.”

  He smirked and I wanted to punch him in the face, and then sit on his face and let him go to town on me.

  “You are so bad,” I hissed. “Do not even look at me.”

  “I’m beginning to think you have very little self-control around me.” He lit a smoke and leaned against the headboard looking positively fuckable, his dick so hard and just waiting for me to crawl over there and climb on top of it.

  “I have NO self-control around you,” I corrected him as I watched his every move, hating being so far away from his heat his fire his sex. “None whatsoever,” I admitted as I inched toward him, bit by bit as he smoked and eyed me, amused by my inability to stay away from him for even a few seconds. “It’s okay.” Double-edged words.

  “It’s not okay, Dutch.” And then I was sitting on his lap watching him put out his smoke to focus solely on me.

  “It is, I promise.” He took my face in his hands and studied me really saw me and because he had no other comforting words to offer, he kissed me. But I didn’t want kisses and touches and sucks—I wanted words. Serious, brutal, honest words. And I wanted them from him.

  “Why’d you do it?” I studied him and he reached for a smoke and I stopped him from grabbing his pack and turning his attention elsewhere. He glared at me and if I didn’t know about all those layers of tenderness he kept hidden from prying eyes I would have blanched at that flash of ferocity, the deadly glint of his eyes, there for a second then gone just as quickly, but I saw it. He reached for my drink instead, tipped it in my direction, and downed its contents. “Must you ask?”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Bullshit,” he snarled. “That doesn’t even sound like you. It sounds like some idiot girl I bumped into at a bar and fucked in the bathroom. Not you, not at all.”

  “It sounds just like me,” I retorted, annoyed with his evasiveness. “I’m that idiot girl you met in a bar, you just couldn’t be bothered to fuck me.” I slipped from the bed, pissed because suddenly it felt like he snuck up and stole my shine. And fuck him for making me so damn crazy. I snatched his tank off the back of a chair as I passed the dining room table, my nakedness leaving me feeling too vulnerable, and slipped it over my head as I headed for the kitchen.

  I needed a drink or two or three, just a moment to calm myself and not feel so stupid, falling for him even when I knew he was dark and so fucking dangerous.

  “Juma.” He came up behind me, all heat and lean muscle and brown, wrapped me in his arms, and pulled me close, whispering into my skin, “No, no, no. Juma, no. I’m sorry,” his lips on my throat and when I didn’t bend to his touch, his words at my ear, “I did it because you were my assignment, your face came up on that tablet screen and I didn’t think twice because I have already been down that road before and I know it only leads to pain and horror like no other. And I will not let anything happen to you so I traded the only thing valuable enough to him, the only bargaining chip he’s ever wanted—my life for yours.”

  I shook my head as he held me tighter. “You don’t know that.” And I felt him shudder and crack and I wanted to shout at him to hold it together and not be so easily cowed by some bully of a father and his psychotic sycophants. What kind of man fell apart so easily? And as quickly as those thoughts entered my psyche I wanted to take them back because I didn’t mean them I was just tired and upset and scared and I hated that in a moment of weakness and irritation my temper and stress got to me and I let myself wallow in such nastiness. That wasn’t me, I wasn’t that girl but Dutch had me doing, thinking, feeling all kinds of crazy shit, so maybe I was that girl. Who the fuck knew anymore? Or I became her and this was my full evolution into someone who found that person she loved like a sickness she needed like air she wanted all over her and she was just kind of batshit crazy. In general and about him.

  I breathed deeply and searched for myself deep inside that voice of mine to settle and ground me and she came swimming up the surface of my consciousness and she was calm and sane and I breathed easy because I knew I was okay things were fine I could handle this shit and not lose sight of me him us. I just wanted him to talk to me, plain and simple. I didn’t need his whole life story or how he was feeling or what he was thinking—I simply needed to know why he sold our lives to that fucking psycho he called a father.

  “I do know, Juma”—his voice pulled me out of my thoughts—“because I tried it already and failed. With Kajal.” At the mention of her name I stilled and he finally whispered his truths shared his secrets acknowledged his pain.

  “I was new to The Gate, maybe only had a few assignments, a few kills when Kajal’s name came up. ‘Kajal Chaudhry,’ James barked at me that morning, and instead of being scared, terrified in fact, a thrill ran through me. Because I was young and foolish and naive and she was my first love returned. I read her profile, acting as if I was learning her for the first time, pretending I didn’t have every detail memorized a lifetime earlier. I plotted and schemed my rescue, my power play, planning to hide and keep her safe. And for a couple of weeks we did just that, until we didn’t.” He faltered and held me, his chin nestled in the crook of my neck, breathing me in, and for a few m
inutes we just stood together in the darkness as the sounds from the street rose up through the windows and mingled with our sadness. I softened in his arms my sharp edges dulling a little and he felt it and perhaps that gave him the strength to keep talking, trusting, loving.

  “I came back to our safe house to find not only Kajal but also James, waiting for me. Kajal was bound and hanging from the ceiling while James wielded a machete and a sick gleam in his eye.” He quieted and it was okay because he didn’t need to say any more—I knew the rest of the story I could imagine how it played out and just like that, so much of him made sense. “For the next five or so months, I was left in that house, imprisoned by black magic and poison, chained to a wall like an animal, forced to live through each and every one of Kajal’s heinous murders and they were like nothing you can imagine, torture so sick and vile and all because of me. He could have simply killed her but that wasn’t enough.

  “Not where my mother and father were concerned.”

  I turned at those last words and we faced each other in the darkness. He leaned against the island and lit a smoke, swigged some Old Scout from the bottle, and flashed me a heartbreaking smile. “My mother and father always hated Kajal, from the first time they saw us together, for no reason at all but the fact she existed, her fucking audacity—” He laughed, the sound so hollow and my heart hurt for him. “—so when they had the chance to kill her and send me a message in the process, they took it, orchestrating every dismembering every rape every stab. And when it was all said and done, I heeded the message, tried to forget I ever had a family, and went about my business.”

  “Until you met me,” I whispered after a few minutes of his silence.

  “Even when I met you,” he disagreed. “Who was that man who slammed you into that door and almost fucked you? Said all those horrible things to you? Made you cry? Fucked hundreds of faceless women since crossing your path? Maimed, killed, caroused?”