Page 32 of Ravaged By the Reaper

“But I was trained to dominate. To control.”

“Dominance isn’t always soft and polite,” he murmurs. “Sometimes it’s primal, and it’s messy. And with you...” He trails off, eyes dark and storm-slick. “With you, I couldn’t resist.”

My heart thuds. I look up at him, breath hitching. “You couldn’t resist me?”

His grin splits his face—fierce, possessed. “You’re my match.” His fingers tighten, and I melt.

A bead of sweat trickles over my neck. I taste fear and fire and something like...home.

The hum of the engines dips and warbles—maybe we hit turbulence, or maybe the shuttle’s destabilizing. But all I feel is him. His presence is a shield and a torch both, reminding me that control isn’t capitulation—it can also be surrender.

The taste of skin, the beat of his pulse, the electric spark reverberating through my stomach—raw and unstoppable.

“I am so broken,” I whisper.

He chuckles again. Deep and steady. “Then let me be the shards that rebuild. If you let me.”

I open my eyes—and see understanding, not predation. Not possession. A partner forged from the same primal fire.

I lean upward and kiss him—not gentle; not for seduction. It’s reclaiming, naming.

He kisses back. My fingers dig into his chest in mortal worship. The rest of the world drifts away—alarms, pain, fear. All that matters is this quiet tether, forged in shared chaos.

I moan, soft. A confession.

“What were you?” I ask between breaths. “Before me?”

He sucks in a breath, voice low. “Predator. Now I’m something else.”

Something softer?

“No,” he growls. “Stronger.”

For once, control feels like letting go.

No argument.

Just us.

And a beginning I’ve never dared to ask for.

I’ve never looked at him quite like this before—not with wonder, not with awe. I slide my hand across his chest, fingertips grazing bone spurs that bump under armor and flesh in a staggered crown of scars. Once, those spines would haverepulsed me—ugly mutations, trophies of violence, reminders that Reapers are made of armor and brutality. But now?—

Now I trace them like runes, sacred glyphs carved in living bone, feeling the pattern of him with the same reverence I used to reserve for art or poetry. The spurs are rigid and cold, but I feel their warmth beneath my palm, heat pulsing through them like faint drumbeats. I follow each line, each protrusion, and marvel that parts of him once repelled me—but now anchor me.

He watches me. His eyes are heavy-lidded—predator made domestic for just a breath. Sawdust gold in filth-dark pupils. I can feel the hunger ease in him. Not vanish, but settle. He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t shift or try to stop me. He simply sits there, letting me explore. Maybe he’s learning to trust me with that chaos inside him.

I finally meet his gaze and whisper, voice low and raw like warm metal: “You’re beautiful.”

Silence drops between us like rain. A breath later, he growls—a resonant, throaty rumble that trembles the hull. It’s not anger. It’s familiarity, maybe even something tender, but still feral.

His hand curls around my waist then, fingers splaying across my hip bone. The touch isn’t light—no grace here. It’s how wolves mark territory: deliberate, possessive. He pulls me back against him, and we settle into a rhythm of quiet proximity.

It’s slower than before. Softer. But wild. The wild hasn’t left—it never will. It’s in the tremor of his forearm, the flex of bicep under my palm, in the steady rhythm of his chest. My cheek presses against it.

I taste metal and hearth. My hair is thick with sweat and salt. I can feel the stained fabric of my bodice damp against my belly, but I don’t care.

“It’s not the way... I thought love would happen,” I whisper. Voice muffled and urgent.