He pressed his lips to the edge of my panties while his hands pushed my pants over my hips and cupped my ass, his sharp intake of breath proof he liked what he felt. “I won’t, so long as you promise me something”—and he blew his warm breath over my panties, teasing my pussy with his mouth like some evil deal-maker, certain I would agree to whatever he wanted, mostly because I wanted him so badly.
“Depends,” I replied, barely able to move the sounds past my parted lips.
Dutch laughed and squeezed my ass as he pulled me closer and licked my panties right down the middle of my pussy, pressing his warm tongue against my clit because he was bad like that.
“Oh fuuuuuuuuuck.”
He did not play fair.
“Depends on what, Juma?” he stood and towered over me while he pinched my nipples and licked my bottom lip. “Answer me, gorgeous. What does it depend upon?”
I hooked my fingers into the belt loops of his jeans in an effort to anchor myself to something solid hold me to the earth ground me in the here and now, but it was folly because he had his hands all over me and his lips on the shell of my ear and even though I wanted to shoot back something smart and full of snark, the fact of the matter was I couldn’t really get my brain to work properly at that moment or any of the moments involving Dutch Mathew his hands his mouth.
“Depends on what you want from me,” I finally replied as his tongue traced fire around my ear before wandering down the slope of my throat, eliciting a long low dangerous moan from deep within me, a sound so foreign and strange because it was. No one ever touched me the way Dutch did.
“I want to know everything.” He kissed along my jaw before he pulled away and fell silent. I knew he was waiting for me to open my eyes and meet his stare. And I knew he would wait as long as it took for me to gather myself and focus. I pulled him close and ran my hand over his jeans, his dick begging to bust out of its confines, and I smiled. He was just as wrecked as I, he wanted to fuck me as badly as I wanted to fuck him, we were both desperate for each other.
And yet.
He was calm and in control, determined and serious—albeit with a hint of mischief, a touch of laughter—steadfast and stubborn in his insistence we talk chat discuss whatever it was he wanted to discuss.
One
two
three
four
five
I counted and breathed deeply, told myself to get it together, and met Dutch’s dark wild stare.
“I especially want to know what you’ve been doing,” he continued as he cupped my face, a bemused expression in his eyes, “since I left you.”
Left.
You.
Those words, the admission he left me, shook me from my Dutch-induced reverie and suddenly every atom of me, every piece of Juma, was wide awake aware alert.
“Don’t look like that,” he whispered and rested his hands on my waist, his eyes turning from wild to still wild but tinged with sadness and something like regret. I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and for a moment considered pushing him off me moving away from him escaping his touch. But only a moment and then it passed and I relaxed.
I considered him and me and us and whether I wanted to share that part of myself, did I want him to meet my other half, the darker one so similar to him despite being opposite creatures engaged in a generations-long battle with each other. More important and more interesting, did I want to share her with him, my dark angel of vengeance, was he worthy of meeting her because she was awesome and amazing and she was not going to be deterred by any of his worrying, she was not going to be stopped by his loving. She was going to finish what she started, what they were supposed to start together—Keeper and Poocha—until they didn’t and she acted alone solitary without him.
As the silence enveloped us in its cocoon of unspoken truths and possible denials, Dutch pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes and traced the hollow of my cheek, his fingers dancing along the freckles he so loved. And I stilled at his touch because it was a little like heaven but also because I liked watching his face as he dragged his fingers along my skin, the wonder and awe and love buried deep in those dangerous eyes and burned into all that gorgeous brown and kissed into those lips made for lifetimes of wickedness.
“You know what I think you’ve been doing?” he asked as he leaned close and ghosted his breath along my mouth and I gasped a little because really, I couldn’t help myself.
I shook my head as my eyes slid closed and I tried to fight the reaction my body had to his touch but his fingers snaked up the nape of my neck and curled into my hair and everything became a little fuzzy and hot. He pressed his lips along the edge of my mouth, his tongue tasting me here and there as he whispered his suppositions.
“I think you went home and sharpened that blasted machete of yours”—he kissed me full on the mouth, lips parted, tongue slashing into me—“then attended some meetings, maybe reviewed some reports,” he whispered right before tonguing down my ear so deeply I thought I would come right then and there, “all about Poochas not named Juma Landry.”
He pulled away from me and I moaned with frustration at the loss of his heat and touch and sexy and he smiled because he liked that he made me this way, hot and bothered and wanting nothing more than to be taken in the most animalistic way possible right there against the wall in that bedroom in a house belonging to people I didn’t know on a street whose name mattered little.
“Is that so?” I finally mustered a voice and some snark.
He pinched my nipple and bit my neck in response, slapping my ass hard and sharp, the contact leaving me shocked and enthralled.
“That’s not even the half of it,” he continued, pulling my nipple then sucking it, pulling and sucking, the sensation relentless and glorious and good god, could he just fuck me already? “Because after you gather your subversive intel, you hit the streets, alone, without your team, just you and that fucking machete.”
I smiled because I loved listening to his voice all low and shit but also because I loved that he knew me so well.
“Does she have a name?” he pulled away from me and asked, his voice earnest, like my answer mattered on some very sublime level of his conscience.
“She does.” I dropped my eyes and smiled, almost embarrassed.
“And?” Dutch tipped my chin so we were eye-to-eye.
“It’s Simone”—I grinned—“as in Nina.”
His eyes flashed wild and the pulse point in his neck thumped hard and fast but to the common observer, my response elicited no significant reaction from Dutch. If anything, he seemed bored and uninterested by the fact my machete was named after his favorite singer, the woman who put all other women to shame when she opened her mouth and released her contralto, the baddest of badasses, his Nina Simone.
But I knew.
I knew my response settled in his bones crawled into his darkest corners moved through his blood, igniting something in him that no one else lit, no one else knew existed, except me because I paid attention to the tiny details the subtle nuances of his personality and persona and him. Because everything about Dutch Mathew mattered to me.
“You can admit it now,” I teased. “It’s okay to say that’s the coolest fucking thing you’ve heard all day.”
Dutch watched me laughing and teasing and flirting with him for two beats longer than expected, long enough that I almost paused and reconsidered and wondered, hey, was I wrong about his whole obsession with Nina Simone? did I make that up? was it imagined in some fugue state? but then he moved and his lips quirked and broke into a full, heartbreakingly gorgeous, pussy-throbbing smile and I smiled back because it was nearly impossible not to smile in the face of all that dark deadly beauty.
“Juma and Simone, kicking ass and taking names.” He laughed and kissed me.
“I didn’t say that, Dutch,” I pulled away, protesting.
“You didn’t have to, Juma.” He smiled against my mouth as he dragged his fingertips over my nipple
and around my belly button and along the top of my panties and suddenly I wanted all of my clothes off so nothing came between my skin and his hands. I moved into his touch as he drew his fingertips away and I sighed.
“You want me to touch you there?” he asked and glanced down at my pussy and I glanced down at my pussy and both of us knew I wanted him to touch me there to run his fingers along my swollen lips and inside my wet walls and around my rock-hard clit.
I nodded as I watched him studying me.
“Say it, Juma.” He pinched my ass and I jumped in pain, my eyes full of pure heat and desire. He had never mixed so much pleasure and pain and I was beside myself, so turned on I found it difficult to make sense of him me us. “I need to hear you say what you want me to do.”
I moaned my complaint and pressed myself into him, trying to rub my swollen pussy against his leg, needing so desperately to be touched. right. there. but he held me at bay until I complied with his demand.
“I want you,” I gasped, “to touch me, to run your fingers over me and inside me and fuck me. Please.”
“Tell me what you’ve been doing.” He kissed along my throat. “You and Simone. Tell me what happened to all those missing Keepers.”
I rolled my eyes underneath my lids as Dutch pressed his lips along the curve of my shoulder and bit me. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer, my lips on his ear, and he sucked in his breath because just as he did things to me, I did things to him.
“Why would you ever think I know anything about your Keepers?” I hissed low and dangerous, my breath warm on his skin.
“Don’t play coy with me, Juma,” he replied as he ran his fingers over my panties. “I’m only going to ask once more: What happened to those Keepers?”
He touched me feather-light barely-there because he knew just how to play my body and I spread my legs wider and moved against his fingers as he sucked in his breath and I knew he could feel how wet he made me as the smell of my desire wrapped us in its sex-driven musk. I wove my arms around his neck and held him tight because I needed something to keep myself upright because everything he did to my pussy felt so damn good.
“Juma,” he growled low, his voice a hiss of desire and lust, “I want to slide my fingers under your panties and touch you.” I moaned in want and then protest as he stopped moving, stepped away, and brought his hand close to smell me on him, and he was so goddamned sexy I couldn’t decide which was better, him touching me or me watching him. His eyes bored into me as he sucked his finger and everything about him went taut with lust.
“But first I want to know.”
“Goddammit, Dutch, I fucking killed them,” I growled in frustration, my voice low and sensual despite my words encompassing buckets of blood and gore and rage. My admission bounced off the plaster walls around us, ricocheted around the room and over us and through us until it became us as it found a home in our souls, a place to forever remind us that I was dark and deadly and not so light-filled after all.
Dutch paused and stared and studied me and I laughed because he looked downright silly but also because I was scared that he might not be able to love this version of me and I knew there was no going back to the older version he’d fallen for, the one he loved, the one he’d touched and allowed to touch him. Again I felt my toes dangled over the edge of a precipice and I wondered this time, what would happen—would we jump together or would I jump alone?
21: DUTCH
If it was possible to make a murder admission sexy as fuck, like something you wanted all over you, clawing your chest, biting your lip, sucking your dick until you exploded everywhere only to turn around and do it again but this time raw and hard and fast against a brick wall in some dark alley while strangers passed on the street, then Juma did it with that lazy “goddammit Dutch, I fucking killed them,” her southern twang kissing the vowels and softening the consonants in that way she kissed and softened and made everything fucking divine. I watched her for a second, the fire in her eyes making me want to slam her into the wall and fuck her hard, own her pussy, corral her soul, and brand my initials somewhere safe and secret and just for her.
“I would tell you I didn’t mean to do it,” she said, and her words sounded guarded and tense and almost scared, “but that would be a lie. I meant to kill every single one of those sixty-six motherfuckers.”
She kept count of her kills.
God, I fucking loved her.
Not that I wanted her to be some blood-thirsty psychopath, not at all. Of course I still wanted her to be that being I met all those nights ago in Frank’s, full of light and love and all kinds of shit I couldn’t imagine wanting in my life but needed desperately. But fuck. The woman standing in front of me, half-clothed, nipples peaked, lips bruised from kissing too much too fast, the woman with a dark edge who understood my fuckery and loved me anyway, she was so goddamned unbelievable.
I never thought I could love Juma more than I already did.
Until this moment.
“And maybe you want me to act contrite,” she began, and I dipped down and kissed her. Hard. Like she needed to be kissed. Like I needed to kiss her. I shut her up because I didn’t need her to tell me she was sorry or to act like those murders kept her up at night. I knew they didn’t and I fucking loved that about her.
I loved that even though we’d parted ways in a most horrible manner, amid lies and deceit and bullshit, she’d carried on. She might have been sad and destroyed by decisions forced upon us, but she maintained.
Because she was Juma.
Because she was badass.
And goddamned perfection in all her madness and crap, at the core she was pure light and love and all things good. No matter how many motherfuckers met their last breath at her hand and Simone’s deadly steel. So yeah, I kissed her because I wanted to but also because I didn’t want to hear anything that sounded like an explanation for killing my kind.
I finally pulled away from her fuckable mouth—those lips and that tongue and her taste—and studied her, lips parted, eyes closed, breaths fast and short and tinged with peppermint, and I smiled before dipping down and licking her lip and pinching her nipple and groaning so goddamned loud when she unzipped my jeans and slipped her hand inside.
“Are you mad?” she asked in fits and starts, the in-betweens filled with touches and sucks and skin and freckles and breath and her and I knew I needed to answer her, to let her know I could never be mad at her for anything, there was nothing she could do, not one fucking thing ever, to make me anything but mad about her, but she had her hand wrapped around my rock-hard dick, moving slow, up and down, running her thumb over its throbbing head, sucking that drop of cum with her eyes closed and all I could do was slam her into the wall and kiss her hard.
Juma yelped in pain as she moved against me and I meant to pull away from her mouth and make sure she was all right, that I hadn’t hurt her in my raging lust and desire and insane need to fuck her but nothing about me was able to separate from any of her. And instead of taking a moment to regroup, calm the fuck down, and get some control over myself and her and everything around us, I said fuck it. And I fucked her. Right there against that wall without any foreplay or preparation, without any gentleness or care, I slammed into her. Again and again and again.
There was no sliding her panties down her legs and kissing her pussy, licking her, sucking her until she came everywhere, her fingers in my hair, holding me close, her body convulsing against my mouth, her taste flooding me. There was no listening to her calm and slow and gather herself then gasp as I kissed her swollen pussy and licked her aching clit and she moaned my name as she moved against my mouth again. There was none of that because instead of worshipping her glorious body, those curves and hollows made for my hands and lips, I was balls deep in her wet, hot, tight pussy, her legs wrapped around me as I slammed into her against that wall, fucking her so hard I forgot where she began and I ended.
I forgot everything but her.
Nothing
else mattered.
Khan and Veda and The Black Copse could march into that room and carve me up into a million pieces, killing me on the spot, but I would die inside her and that would make it fine. Rani could walk in with revenge on her lips and poison on her blade and I wouldn’t care. Death could saunter by full of jealousy and ire and I wouldn’t raise a brow. I was so focused on satisfying the craving my body felt for Juma, the need to dull the ache I’d lived with for too long, the desire to relearn all of her and make her mine again.
Now and forever.
Inseparable.
Bound together with a twine made of generations of blood, gore, sweat, and death, culminating in our most gruesome and bizarre union. A promise to each other despite lifetimes of bullshit and madness, torture and pain inflicted upon each other’s kind, ending with us as we came together in heated lust and love.
Touching.
Sucking.
Fucking.
“Dutch,” Juma whisper-gasped in my ear, “take it, baby, harder. Fuck. Me. Hard.”
That was all I needed to hear, her voice begging me to imprint myself on her pussy, rip her to shreds, own her. Her nails dug into my ass and her teeth bit my shoulder as I bored into her, pleasure and pain comingling as every atom of my being, every cell and sensory center focused on the building pressure in my dick, the tightening of my balls, the way her pussy wrapped around me and held on tight.
I told myself to calm the fuck down and enjoy being inside her after so long, but then I heard her begging for it deeper, harder, more and I couldn’t do anything but explode. Everywhere in her pussy, again and again, my cum filling her as my body jerked its release and she cried out my name as sound and sight merged into little more than gasps and blurs and pants and
deep
slow
long
breaths.
“I love you,” Juma sighed, her eyes closed, breath warm on my skin, “so much.”
I buried my face in the sweetness of her skin and kissed her neck, a touch of tenderness after such violence and fury. The salt of her sweat mixed with the sweet of my bourbon, resulting in a cocktail of pure desire.
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