Dutch

by Madhuri Pavamani

  Juma scrunched her nose and shot me a look. “Like their funk? Their personal stank?”

  “Nah, not funk—” I chuckled. “—more like essence. Everyone’s aura has a distinct scent, sometimes even more than one, and once I detect it, I can find that person anywhere.”

  “So that’s what you Keepers do? Sniff us out?”

  “First off”—I stopped walking and joked—“I object to the disdain in your voice.”

  “Disdain, huh? Is that what you hear?”

  “Quite clearly, in fact.” I smirked. “But more importantly, your disdain is misplaced, because that is not what us Keepers do, it’s just what I do. Only me. No one else.”

  She stepped closer with a strange look in her eye. “But The Gate knows this about you and exploits it mercilessly?”

  And then her questions made sense—she worried.

  About me.

  Shit.

  “No.” I shook my head and flicked my butt, the arc of the ember bright in the darkness. “Only Avery, my friend from the bar that night, only he knows. No one else has a clue. All they know is that I’m really fucking good at my job.”

  “Really?”

  I placed my hands on her hips and pulled her to me. “Something you should know about me: I keep to myself. There are three people in this life I’m close to: Avery; his significant other, though neither of them will ever admit it, Kash; and my friend Frist. That’s it. No one else, so no one else knows a thing about me. No one.”

  She studied my face, searched my eyes long and hard as she wrapped her arms around me, mulling something very serious and solemn, something that mattered. “There are four people,” she said finally.

  Pedestrians and skateboarders, cyclists and roller bladers moved past us, not giving us a second glance as we stood wrapped around each other, rooted to the spot, ignorant to the throbbing humanity all around us. “Four,” I agreed as I cupped her face, kissed her forehead, and pulled her close, her scent flooding my senses. “Of course.” I kissed her again and she smiled and it crinkled her eyes and stretched her mouth wide and I fell even harder.

  She stepped away from my embrace and pulled me with her. “Feed me.” She laughed as we walked a few blocks farther downtown. “And then smell me—I want to know my essence.” I opened the door to the darkened dining room of Flor de Sol and she walked past, a sexy grin on her face. “I knew your smell the first time we crossed paths.”

  She stopped and shot me a look.

  “Two for dinner?” the young hostess with a low-cut shirt and perfect tits asked as Juma waited for me to answer her or the hostess, I couldn’t be sure. So I guessed.

  “Yeah, two. Thanks.” I nodded to the hostess as Juma shot me a frustrated look—that was not the answer she sought.

  “Great, follow me,” the young woman suggested. I grabbed Juma’s hand and followed the hostess to our table.

  We settled into our darkened corner, placed our orders, and before our waiter was two steps from our table, Juma was up and in my lap, getting nice and comfortable, like it was normal to eat a meal seated on your lover’s lap. I smirked and kissed her because I knew she knew I thought she was crazy and I also knew she knew I would never dream of making her move, that I relished her nearness, her touch, her everything.

  Juma Landry could sit on my lap any time she damn well pleased.

  “That hostess has the most gorgeous tits I’ve ever seen,” she whispered as she absentmindedly played with my ears, her eyes following the young woman around the small dining area, and I wondered at the many and no doubt varied men and women who shared her bed and worshipped her body.

  “She does,” I agreed.

  “And her scent?” Juma cocked her head to the side, still watching the woman.

  “Anise with an undertone of dirt, loamy, very of the earth.”

  The waiter brought our drinks and didn’t even bat an eye at the fact I had a woman sitting in my lap, looking sexy as fuck, my hands resting on her perfect ass as we joked and kissed and pretty much forgot we were in a public space. He handed Juma her bourbon, set mine down on the table, told us our food would be out in about fifteen minutes, and kept it moving. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew Juma and her tits and her fabulous ass would dominate much of his thinking for some time to come. It was to be expected—it couldn’t be helped.

  “I want mine.” She stared at me as she sipped her drink.

  “Your what?” My hand rested on her thigh, her skin warm and soft. “Your lemons and honey and grass and light?”

  She kissed me and smiled and headed back to her seat, looking so pleased with that information. “Really?”

  “It suits you, which I’ve found is rare because often the nastiest fucks have the most amazing scents,” I continued, loving the effect my words had on her, “but you, goddamn, everything about you is fresh and good and reminds me of sunlight captured in a jar. You’re unforgettable, and your scent has lingered in the farthest reaches of my mind since that night in the bar.”

  She rested her chin on her hands as she listened to me and smiled and I breathed easy because I’d finally done something right by her.

  “Even when you’ve been with others?”

  “Even when I’ve been with others,” I confirmed, knowing she held no jealousy in her bones, she just wanted to hear my truth. “It’s been you who haunted my every thought.”

  Juma closed her eyes and sighed. “Your words, Dutch Mathew. All that beauty from that filthy, dirty mouth.”

  I laughed and dug into my food as she savored every item set before her, from the bacon-wrapped figs drizzled with truffle oil to the chorizo with fava beans and greens to the plate of Serrano ham, Asiago cheese, and melon. She ate everything and then started picking at my salt cod fritters, garlic and parsley grilled squid, and patatas bravas.

  “Oh my god.” She closed her eyes and purred. “Either I’m starving or this food is from the gods.”

  “Try this.” I fed her some bite-sized churros with chocolate then watched her suck the sweetness off my fingers. “Behave, Juma.”

  “Around you?” She kissed each of my fingers. “Never.” I grasped her gently behind her neck and pulled her close, kissing her deeply, our tongues finding a perfect rhythm so easily, as if made for the other. “Keep that up, Mr. Mathew, and I’m going to climb into your lap and make you fuck me in front of all these god-fearing folks.”

  I quirked my brow and grinned. “This is New York City, gorgeous. There is no God and these people will happily watch whatever it is you want to do to me.”

  Juma leaned back in her chair and circled her glass with her finger, watching me all the while. The candlelight from the table cast her face in warm shadows and flickering gold, making her freckles dance and her eyes shine. The strap from her tank slipped down her shoulder and she never pushed it back, and the effect was maddening. As much as I wanted to pay the check and find a dark alley to push her against a wall and fuck her silly, I also wanted to steal her away, somewhere far from prying eyes and dangerous glances, and keep her safe from The Gate, from Khan. Shit, even from me.

  “Stop it.” She kicked my foot under the table and I paused, made the crazy in my head shut the fuck up for a few seconds. “Stop it, Dutch.”

  “I’m not doing anything, Juma.”

  She leaned forward, sipped her drink, and studied me, a hard set to her eyes, and I knew I was about to be hit with something.

  “You’re worried about whatever’s going down around us.”

  “No, I’m not,” I lied and drank and wished I could smoke.

  “And you’re a horrible liar,” she continued, “but here’s the thing, Dutch, whatever plan you’re putting together in that beautiful, dark, serious head of yours, I’m certain it involves putting on your Superman cape and heading back to India to deal with Khan, keeping me safe and hidden from The Gate.”

  She let that simmer because she knew she was right. I was guilty as shit, she read me like a book.

  “
You don’t want me, your Poocha lover, that giver of life, that woman who smells like everything good in this world, to sink into your funky shit and soil myself, sully all of this”—she ran her hands over her breasts and down her stomach, disappearing under the table—“but I like your funky shit and it’s kind of fun getting a little dirty, so stop it. Stop worrying. Stop thinking I can’t kill a motherfucker. Stop plotting and planning without including me. Now.”

  “Or?” I couldn’t help asking.

  She softened and all of her sharp edges that had come out to put me in my place disappeared. “I don’t have an ‘or,’ sweetheart, just that request.” She came around the table and returned to my lap, touching my face and hair and kissing me. “You’ve been alone for so long that I know you don’t know what to make of me, this free spirit who seems to have latched onto all of your darkness and danger and I know you worry that whatever it was about you that made you do all that nasty shit, you think that’s going to somehow wrap itself around me and pull me under.”

  Then she smiled and it wasn’t a sad smile or a resigned smile or even a hopeful one. It was just a simple smile and it reminded me of everything good and my body responded to it because I couldn’t not respond to it: her smile was perfection.

  And she felt that. She knew it.

  So she kissed me, deep, fucked my mouth hard with her tongue because of course, in the middle of a serious conversation in the middle of a New York City restaurant, Juma thought it would be a good idea to give me a raging hard-on.

  “I’m going to get us the check and we’re going to go back to my place and take care of the rock between your legs,” she whispered in my ear, her hot breath doing all kinds of wicked shit to my brain, “but first you’re going to understand something, Dutch. We’re in this together. It’s you and me, baby. And you might have made a unilateral decision about my future back then when you chatted with your dad, but that type of shit is going to stop and you’re going to start letting me in on what’s going on in all of that darkness.”

  Juma tapped on my forehead and waited for me to argue with her, contest the words spilling from her lips, but I had no intention. For one, it was pointless and two, I didn’t want to. She was right, this battle involved both of us and I couldn’t rightly fight it on my own.

  After tonight and knowing Khan the way I did, I didn’t expect a repeat performance of such amateur ambushes, Keepers who couldn’t keep to save their lives. That was simply a warning. A little message to let me know that he was not playing—that I belonged to him, now and forever, and in essence, so, too, did she.

  “So yes, I will stop any obvious reclamations. To all appearances, I will be an inactive Poocha, I can even have Death make some pronouncement concerning my status. She could meet with Khan and tell him herself—she would do that, you know. But I won’t stop working behind the scenes, I don’t care what you or your dad or The Gate thinks, I’m not going to leave my Deaders sitting in limbo because The Gate is being run by a fucking asshole.”

  “It’s not that simple—” I started to argue when she pressed a finger to my lips and shot me a stern look.

  “It is exactly that simple, Dutch, and you know it. There is an entire faction of The Gate who takes umbrage at Death being a woman. Death is a man’s job, only a man can understand such power”—she imitated some generic asshole male voice—“the complexities inherent in the task at hand demands a man’s oversight. What bullshit. Your grandfather might have had no issue with her, but he’s one of a few. That is where the problem lies, not this nonsense about her through-the-roof reclamation rates.

  “Do you know the amount of research I’ve done into this?” Juma asked, and I knew she didn’t want a response, that she was pissed and her question was rhetorical. “Her rates are no different, and for certain years they are less, from any of her predecessors, who I might add are all men. And yet, suddenly there is a problem with her rates, her irrational expectations and behavior, her crazy, her need to not have folks around her, for space to move about. What nonsense. The problem is that she has tits and a pussy and that drives The Gate bananas.”

  Juma’s nostrils flared and the tiny vein in her forehead popped and her fingers pressed into my side. “Death does have a rather spectacular pussy,” I joked, and for a second her gorgeous, grey eyes, those pools of stormy fire and cool light, bulged and I wondered if I had so quickly, so carelessly broken my promise of never upsetting her again. Then I felt her shake and I braced for the worst only to be surrounded by the otherworldly sound of her laugh. The one that came from somewhere deep, the one where she tossed her head back and snorted. That laugh.

  And it fucking happened again.

  I fell harder.

  Because even in all her imperfections, she was perfection.

  “She does. You are so right, it is utterly spectacular.” She held on to me and laughed some more, then leaned close as if we were conspirators. “And you just totally pulled me from the brink of self-combustion right there. I could literally feel my head about to explode in frustration.”

  “I saw that.”

  “And it scared you?” She kissed me.

  I touched her hair and ran my thumb along her lip. “There’s nothing about you that scares me.”

  She leaned back and studied me, really searched my face, and I knew she was seeing everything, like only she could see, and I met her stare, wanting her to see it all—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the love.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  JUMA

  I don’t know why I didn’t know didn’t sense didn’t feel that shift in the energy that change in the air. I was so caught up in getting Dutch upstairs all to myself with no blood or wounds or death.

  Just us.

  Alive.

  Throbbing with lust and the intense need to fuck each other. Hard.

  We raced into my elevator and as soon as the doors shut, he was on me all over me everywhere. His hands couldn’t find enough of me to touch, one tweaked my nipple as the other slipped inside my panties and traced the seam of my pussy as I spread myself wider giving him access to all of me.

  And then the doors opened on the tenth floor and my neighbor entered and we pulled apart and the poor woman looked like she wanted to be anywhere but that elevator. She could probably smell the sex rolling off us, but it was too late, decisions were made, bodies put into motion, and now we all had to deal. She gave us her back, pressed the number seventeen repeatedly, as if doing so would make us move faster, and then she waited. They were probably the longest twenty seconds of her life, as Dutch, ignoring her completely, caring little for her presence, pushed me against the side wall of the car, and continued his exploration of my body, his fingers and lips doing all kinds of wicked shit.

  I didn’t even notice when she slipped out and we continued upward, all I knew was he owned me and when his fingers worked me like that, and he said all that dirty filth under his breath, I couldn’t even think straight. I couldn’t focus on anything but him and his effect on my body.

  And that’s why I didn’t know.

  Because we tumbled out of the elevator and he slammed me against the wall and our tongues fucked each other’s mouths while hands slipped into and under and around all kinds of clothing refusing to be stopped by silly fabric barriers. He bit my neck and then pressed his full lips to the spot and I thought I would die. He pinched my nipples and lifted my dress as he pushed my legs apart and pressed his huge dick against me and I went into sensory overload. I ran my fingers through his black hair as he dipped down and took my aching nipple between his teeth.

  “Don’t you dare bite me,” I hissed, my voice a river of seduction, low and guttural and wholly possessed. He bit me. Hard. And the pain shot straight to my pussy in a blinding burst of ecstasy.

  That’s why I didn’t know.

  He licked and sucked and his fingers fucked me against that wall and he didn’t care that we were in the middle of a public space that my neighbors could come out any s
econd that what we were doing was probably a crime. And I was too far gone to do much else besides work his belt, slip my fingers into his jeans, and release his dick so I could run my hand up and down its thick long perfection.

  “Fuuuuuuuuck, Juma.” He braced his hands against the wall, boxing me into him as he closed his eyes and growled. I dropped to my knees and cupped his balls as my tongue circled his tip before sucking off his arousal. I looked up and caught him staring at me, his eyes wild and sexy and free and I smiled because I did that to him, I made him light like that, I made him want to be touched and sucked and fucked. Without breaking our heated stare, I took him into my mouth inch by lovely inch until he touched the back of my throat and groaned. Loud. Because now he, too, was gone.

  He wove his fingers into my hair as my hands found his ass and. and. and.

  He paused and pulled away and glanced down with eyes full of question and hesitation because he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of everything I was offering him and I didn’t say a word, I simply pushed him back into my mouth, his dick so deep, and began working him up and down and my tongue all around until it was too much and he finally gave in and started moving his hips to the rhythm I created, fucking my face with slow purposeful beautiful abandon.

  He was heaven to watch all that gorgeous brown skin pulled over lean muscle with touches of softness: his mouth, his eyelashes, his voice as he sighed my name and begged for me to never stop touching him and honestly I had never heard a more beautiful sound than those words falling from his lips.

  “Juma.” His hips moved faster and his hands felt desperate as they tangled in my hair and he fought the release his body so badly sought and I held his ass tighter and sucked him deeper because I wanted to own that release I needed to devour him taste him. Then his stomach tensed and his head dropped back and I swirled my tongue around his tip and he came, his dick jerking in my mouth as waves of ecstasy rolled over him shot out of him until he pulled away and I swallowed.