Dutch

by Madhuri Pavamani

  I ducked down on the far side of the bed and fished around underneath, all the while watching him as he smoked and watched me, a bemused curve to his mouth. “Should I even ask?” he wondered as he sat on the side of the bed with his back to me and put out his smoke.

  I found what I was looking for and smiled as I stepped around the bed and pushed myself into the space between his legs, my machete at his throat, a glint in my eye. “Ask away.”

  He ran his hands up the back of my thighs and cupped my ass and grinned. “God, I love a woman who comes prepared.”

  I pulled the blade away from him and admired her in the evening sunlight, points of brightness glinting off her deadly steel. She was smaller than your average machete and handcrafted to my fingers—we were made for each other and I never left home without her.

  “Did you really come over here with that thing?” he casually inquired as he stepped into his closet and grabbed a shirt. I dropped the blade on the bed and invaded his space again, gently pushing his hands away before he could start working his buttons.

  “I did. Because as much as I believed you would never hurt me, I’m still me”—I smiled and began checking the scars on his chest—“and if there are two things I despise, it’s being underdressed and unprepared. Just in case you decided to get all Keeperish on me and I needed to put you in your place.” I pressed my lips to one of his scars and listened as he hissed, the skin still so sensitive. “Those assholes did a number on you. These are going to be tender for a very long time.”

  He kissed my fingers. “Thank you for that analysis, Dr. Landry.” I ran my hands over his stomach because I just had to touch him, trail my fingers along those flat planes of brown skin pulled taut over iron muscles. “How did you get like this?”

  “Like what?” he asked as he returned to buttoning his shirt.

  “All hard and tight and perfectly carved.” I leaned against the wall to watch him dress.

  “I believe most folks call it skinny. Only you, Juma, make it sound like fucking poetry.” He took my face in his hands and teased me with his lips and tongue, refusing to commit to a real kiss, then laughed and leaned close. “If I reach under your dress right now, will your pussy be wet?” I cursed under my breath as I leaned into him because how annoying that he could own me so easily and how thrilling that he could own me so easily.

  And how lovely that two could play that game. “If I press my hand right here—” He watched my fingers trail down between his legs and touch him just so and his breath hitched because just like he owned me, so, too, did I own him. “—will your dick be hard?” His eyes flashed and before I knew it, he had me against the wall, hands pinned above my head, totally at his mercy. He grinned, that wicked curve of those full lips making my pussy ache and my skin dance as he leaned close and pressed kisses along the dip of my throat while he pushed my legs apart and it was obvious that as soon as he touched me, I would come right then and there, that’s how tightly wound he had me.

  A bead of desire rolled down my thigh and I knew he sensed how much I wanted him, it was all around us, clinging to us, the heady scent of our madness, when out of nowhere my stomach growled and grumbled and groused. And what was one second a mash-up of swollen lips and a hard dick and all kinds of crazy turned into an amusing and light fit of laughter as he kissed me and I snorted and blushed.

  “As much as I want to rip that dress off and fuck you blind, I think it’s time to eat.” Dutch finished getting dressed, strapped a blade around his calf, and slipped another in the small of his back before holding his hand out to me with a wink. “Let’s go, gorgeous.”

  “Got enough weapons there, Mister Keeper?” I tucked my blade against my thigh and laced my fingers with his as he led us down the dark stairs of his building, a smirk on his face and a light air to his gait. I couldn’t help loving him a little more in that moment, pleased something about me had that effect on him because there was little more I wanted than to make him smile and forget some of his pain ease him away from the darkness he held so close coveted used as a shield.

  But. Just there. A flash. And frenzied movement. The cold chill up my spine. Keepers. Everything around me faded to black and all that mattered was life. Mine. And his.

  I had never been attacked because no one knew I existed until a little while ago, but I had trained and sparred with the best, and despite many taking me for sweet and sexy and could-never-hurt-a-fly, I knew I had the cold heart of a killer.

  “I should have been a Keeper,” I groused to Death all those years ago and she laughed as she pressed her knee against me, holding me in place as she dipped low and teased my nipple through my shirt, “because I dream of ways to kill you.”

  “Tell me about that, Juma.” Her eyes dancing as she continued her wicked ownership of my body, her fingers circling my clit, trying to distract me with her touch, almost succeeding when in a flash of movement I kicked her legs apart, knocked her off-balance, and shifted away from her wandering hands.

  “There’s nothing to tell you,” I hissed in irritation as I pressed my blade to her gut and her eyes widened in shock and probably a little amusement, “just leave me the fuck alone.”

  That afternoon she had been caught off guard and I could have killed her if I hadn’t loved her so much. But the opportunity existed because I created it made it happen, same as the darkened staircase with the man I loved and his easy smile—I made that shit happen. The only difference being that this time I finished the job.

  Dropping Dutch’s hand, I hitched up my dress and whipped out my blade, delivering a roundhouse kick to the shadowy attacker, quickly gauging their small stature and slight build. A woman. I had her by a good fifty pounds and thanks to the surprise of my attack, she was finished before our fight even began. Giving her no time to recover, I leapt from the staircase and landed on her just as she moved to push off the ground, swung her leg around, and tried to counter my offense with a defensive slash intended to trip me up and throw me off-balance. Her leg snapped with a sickening crack as she screamed and lashed out with a blade, desperate and unskilled, simply seeking contact rather than a strategized hit.

  For a Keeper, she was so green. She lacked stamina, intelligence, speed, stealth. Her attack was sloppy and haphazard and as I sat atop her while she writhed in agony, the bone in her leg broken through the skin, blood pooled everywhere, I wondered what kind of hell she would pay for this mistake. Based on what The Gate had done to Dutch, I could only imagine the atrocities awaiting her and so I did the only humane thing to do—I slid my blade across her throat and silenced her forever.

  My first kill.

  My first Keeper.

  Juma: 1, The Gate: 0.

  “Where the fuck did you learn to fight like that?” Dutch stood behind me, the hollows of his cheeks highlighted by the dim light of the stairwell. “What Poocha is a goddamned killer?”

  I bent low and swiped my blade across the dead Keeper’s pants, cleaning my weapon before returning her to my thigh, then glanced up and met Dutch’s stare. He was cut across the eye but it was already healing, otherwise he hardly looked like someone who just brought about another’s end of days, and yet the proof lay at his feet, bloody and bruised and very, very dead. And he was staring as if we’d just met and he wasn’t quite certain what to make of me.

  “It’s no big deal,” I began.

  “Don’t be coy, Juma.” He lit a smoke, inhaled, and waited.

  “Every Poocha knows how to defend an attack, Dutch.” I waved off his questioning like my skills were commonplace.

  “Bullshit, not like that.” He stepped toward me and for some reason, maybe it was the look in his eyes or the tension in his jaw, I stepped back. “Okay, so I have some extra skills,” I admitted as I continued backpedaling in the face of his approach.

  He laughed, clipped and bark-like. “Extra skills, huh?” I hit the wall with nowhere left to move. He stopped inches from me, his eyes roaming up and down my body, touching me in spots, gathering
bits of information that somehow mattered to him. Finally he met my stare and breathed deep and long and I understood.

  He wasn’t pissed, he was scared.

  I took his face in my hands and pressed a kiss to one cheek and then the other, to both his eyelids, and finally his lips. “I’m fine, I promise.” He opened his eyes and let me see everything, every fear and hurt and worry.

  “Really?” and I kissed him again, softness to softness, breath on breath.

  “Yes. Really.”

  I touched his cut—it was deeper than it seemed—and reached under my dress for my wand. He caught my wrist and studied my hand, the small, brown, compact container seeming so nondescript and innocuous. I cracked the case with a simple twist, revealing the dim glow of its tip, watching his eyes widen in wonder.

  “Don’t move, silly.” I touched the glow to his brow and closed the skin, leaving it as if it had never been opened. “Much better.” I sealed it with a kiss.

  He touched his once-damaged skin and smirked. “What else have you got under that dress?”

  Before he could heat my blood with one of his looks that suggested all kinds of filth and naughtiness, I slipped around him and grabbed the ankles of my kill. “Do you have an incinerator in this building?”

  Dutch watched me for a second then shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Yeah, come on,” and grabbing his own, dead Keeper, he led me down to the basement and the back of the building where he switched on the burners and we cleaned up our mess, ridding the world of two pieces of scum I was certain no one would miss.

  “You okay?” he finally asked as the fires died down and all that remained of our attackers were piles of grey ash.

  “I am.” And I was, strangely so, in a very heightened and alive way where every sense of mine was aware and in tune with him and me and us. “More than ever before.” He laughed and half-groaned and tweaked my nose as he lit his smoke. “You’re a natural-born killer, Juma, and I’m a little fucking scared.”

  I laughed and grabbed his collar to pull him close, kissing him once, slashing my tongue against his, tasting his sweetness mixed with tobacco and bourbon and pussy, and god, he was heaven. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, sexy. It’s those motherfuckers you call family who better be scared.” I kissed him again, deeper, stealing his breath and swallowing his moan as he pressed his dick into the soft heat of my pussy. Our eyes locked and we both knew the other’s dirtiest thoughts without verbalizing a thing. He pushed my panties to the side as I opened his fly and guided his dick and he fucked me hard against that wall, bumped and grinded and whispered all kinds of filthy shit until neither of us could hold on another second.

  “I’m coming, Juma.”

  “Oh fuck, Dutch.”

  He kissed me and settled and we stayed like that, wrapped around each other—deep breaths inhale exhale—until I shifted and gently pushed him away and straightened my dress then watched him put himself back together until we both looked perfectly respectable

  instead of like two otherworldly types who just brought the death with skill and gusto and then fucked each other silly to unwind and celebrate being alive and in love and surrounded by magic.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DUTCH

  Options.

  Everyone had them.

  Right or left, yes or no, up or down.

  The path well trod or the road less taken.

  Since Kajal, my life had been a series of paths well trod and of least resistance. Mostly because I was fucking dead inside, unreachable and untouchable, a pit of dark, where my grief mingled with my demons, all fueled by liquor and nicotine and a fucked-up desire to die without enough balls to take matters into my own hands.

  I liked to think it was because somewhere, somehow my soul knew to wait, hold out a little longer, fuck a few more women, drain a few more bottles of Scout, and bide my time because she was coming, with all her light and life and love, her good smells and deep laughter and sexy hips, her wit and determination and killer instinct. And she was going to wrap me in all of it and remind me what it meant to be aware and alive and accountable and not a goddamned asshole.

  Okay, I was probably still an asshole and fucking dark and shitty to be around, just not with her.

  Juma.

  And she’s all that mattered.

  I snuck a sideways glance at her as we walked downtown, mingling with the nighttime pedestrian traffic along the West Side Highway as if we were like any other couple enjoying each other and the Hudson River Greenway and hadn’t just fought and killed two Keepers an hour earlier. I worried that she was troubled or traumatized by what just happened, by the fact that although she was a giver of life, the ultimate vessel for the hopes and dreams of those wishing to return to the land of breath, of flesh, of blood, she had just taken a life with her own hands.

  But after stopping by her apartment so she could shower and change her clothes—“As much as I love this dress, I’ve gotta take it off before it walks out of here by itself, Dutch.”—she seemed more alert and energized than ever. I would have thought that was impossible when it came to Juma, yet as she walked beside me, our fingers intertwined, her head slightly cocked to the side, her lips curved in gentle amusement, she hummed with vitality, a life force so strong and alluring, and again, I had one of those moments. The ones where my chest felt tight and I fucking wanted her with an all-consuming, feral abandon as I fell deeper into the pool that was Juma.

  “I can feel you watching me.” She shot me a look from the corner of her eye. “Why don’t you just ask?”

  “Ask what?”

  “Whatever it is that’s troubling you so.” She stopped right in the middle of the pathway and turned to me and smiled real slow and I could feel my body reacting to her.

  “Amachi, Amachi, Amachi.”

  Juma quirked her brow. “What on earth is an amachi?”

  I dropped her hand and rubbed my face, laughing at the ludicrousness of my behavior. I was thirty-seven years old, for fuck’s sake!

  “Not what. Who. Amachi is my grandmother.”

  “And you just happened to toss out an incantation in her honor?”

  I felt my face flush and Juma saw it, too, and right then and there she knew. She grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me to her, a wicked gleam in her eye while she kissed me, full on, wet, in front of everyone, eyes wide open. “Trying to control that steel-like erection you’ve got working, Mr. Mathew?” She pushed her hips into me and I hissed. God, she felt so fucking good.

  “Obviously an exercise in futility,” I groused as I reached around and rested my hands on her ass, accepting my delicious fate.

  There were worse things one could suffer than being pressed up against Juma Landry for all the world to see.

  “I could have told you that shit wouldn’t work.” She winked and stepped away from me, my jeans hardly able to constrain my raging dick, then suddenly pulled me back to her, a strange look on her face. “Why don’t I feel cold around you?”

  “Huh?”

  She placed her hands on my chest and I winced as my scars sang. “Sorry,” she offered as she placed her finger on her tongue then traced the few she could see, her touch the simple salve to my hurts.

  “It’s not so bad,” I insisted.

  “Said the man who winced,” she countered and kissed me, lingering on my mouth for a beat longer, her eyes closed, deep in thought. “You’re so warm. Everything is normal, nothing about you chills, and yet every other Keeper I’ve ever seen or crossed paths with evokes cold.”

  “No way.” I shook my head in disbelief, knowing it was unfeasible for her to have such an innate sense of my kind. No Poocha could “feel” a Keeper and if they could, our jobs would be damn near impossible.

  “Way,” she insisted and eyed me because she knew I thought she was full of shit, I just wasn’t saying so. “I’m not playing, Dutch. How do you think I knew that woman was waiting for us back at your place? One second you were saying something to
me and the next I felt that chill, the same one I always feel, and I knew some Keepers were in that space with us.”

  I studied her for a moment—the set of her jaw, her hands on her hips—she was the picture of stubborn determination, so convinced was she of her impossible capability.

  “That night in the bar.” She raised her finger and grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Your friend, the hot Chinese guy, he’s a Keeper. I felt him as soon as I walked in and sat down and then when he came to talk to my friend, the bartender, I was positive. Everything about him was ice.”

  Fuck. She wasn’t kidding.

  “And for a second I freaked because I had just been told my Keeper was assigned, but Death didn’t know who it was, she just told me to keep some eyes on the back of my head, so your friend had me shook. I breathed a little easier when he left and then everyone left and I could lock the door, but damn—” She laughed and pushed me. “—I should have been watching out for your ass, only I didn’t even know because you don’t even register.”

  We continued walking downtown, parsing our discovery, turning it over, analyzing it from every angle.

  “Don’t you have a way to tell a Poocha? Some kind of secret Keeper superpower?” She glanced at me. “Do you wear a cape?”

  “A gold one with black tassels,” I deadpanned as I lit a smoke, catching a glimpse of her smile from the corner of my eye.

  “I pictured you kinda more red or pink, but gold works. Highlights your gorgeous brown skin perfectly.”

  “There you go with that poetic shit again.”

  “I already admitted you’re my muse.” She wrapped her arm around my free one as we walked. “So get used to the poetic shit.”

  I kissed her absentmindedly as I considered my skills versus hers, or more accurately, my lack thereof. “Now that I think about it, we don’t have ways to identify Poochas, nothing special at least, because there’s no need. We’re always handed a file with photos and addresses and all kinds of other information, so such a skill or talent wouldn’t even develop over time. That said, once I smell my Poocha, I can track them anywhere, but I can do that with anyone, not just Poochas.”