Page 9 of Ravaged By the Reaper

AMARA

The shuttle deck is slick with sweat, scorched and fragrant like ancient ruins.

We lie tangled—me caught in the crush of my dress, him sprawled beside me, breathing loud and ragged enough to rattle my bones.

The hum of the engines washes through the hull like the aftermath of an explosion: regular, insistent.

I can’t believe what just happened.

I can’t believe I wanted more.

Every fiber of my training—every lesson of elegance, of calm seduction, of wielding power with a diplomat’s smile—shatters inside me. Under him. With him. In that relentless, terrifying, beautiful convergence of bodies and wills, everything I thought I was cracked open.

I should feel guilt. Shame. Loss of control. But when I think about it, I don’t. Not really.

I liked it.

No—I loved it.

He’s next to me, chest rising and falling, exhaling the final drumbeat of our collision. Fumes of his heat and the sweat of our bodies mix—a scent that anchors me to the moment more than any vow or code ever could.

My hand drifts up to trace the curve of his jaw. Rough, bone-protruded, scarred. I taste his skin when his breath brushes mine. Smoke and iron and belonging.

“What the hell just happened?” I whisper. My voice is raspy, eyelids heavy, every nerve firing on excess.

He chuckles low, near my ear—thick as gravel in velvet. “You did,” he says, voice raw. “You came with my name on your lips.”

I blink. The words—howling bone-deep—reverberate in my chest. I can taste the memory, salty, real. The way he made me break. Something vital inside me uncoiled.

I press a finger to his lips. They’re cracked from firelight. “Shush,” I murmur. “I’m not… I didn’t…”

He doesn’t reply. His fingers curl through my hair, feather-light—it’s not affection. It’s claim. His fingertips pulse with quiet power, steadying me. I'm not sure if I’m tethered or freed, but I don’t pull away.

I listen to his breath. The feeling blooms in me. I wasn’t missing someone until I met him, but now... now I ache with it.

“It’s wrong,” I say, not looking at him. The words echo. I taste ash and regret.

He clears his throat. “Maybe for someone trained to hold power. But not for us.”

I enclose his wrist, lean my forehead into the inside of his elbow. His skin is warm, ridged, strong.

“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 have repulsed 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.

He shifts slightly, thumb tracing the seam of my waist. His eyes narrow—not harsh, but calculating, like a star mapping the orbit of something precious. “Love,” he rumbles. “Is often blood and screaming and surrender.”

I swallow.

“I surrendered,” I murmur. “Not because I couldn’t... But because I wanted to.”

He hums—wet and strange, half-growl, half-purr. “There’s strength in surrender.”

The shuttle hums lonesomely around us. The engines sound measured, steady. Nothing betrays our chaos.

I inch closer, pressing shy lips against his chest where the armor dips. I hear his heartbeat, slow, thick, resonant—rocking me into that ancient rhythm where flesh and decisions fall away and only the ache of belonging remains.

I swallow. Taste the salt of his skin, iron and dusk—something deeply anchoring. I reach up, fingertips drifting to his jaw again. Goosebumps rise under my skin.

“Is this wrong?” I ask softly, eyes drifting up to him again.

His fingers tighten. Not forcibly. More like guidance. A firm anchor in storm-tossed nights. “Wrong?” he repeats. His voice is low, but he laughs—dry laugh, like gravel sifted through velvet. “This feels like home.”

I blink. That word again—home—but softer than before, like a hymn through deep breath.

I pull across his spurs again, reveling in the swirl of blood and bone. “Then don’t... let me go.”

He leans forward, pressing his temple to my lips. I taste sweat, blood, the static of battle and soot of skin. My breath hitches.

He growls once more—this time laughter and promise. “Not ever.”

His hand moves, tracing down my side to my hip, fingers curling like roots.

He shifts, tilting my body slightly. His thigh slides between my legs, steady and protective. It’s not about pain or dominance now. It’s unity.

I look at him—closer now—fierce, quiet, home.

“Can... we be us?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer. He lets his hand tighten, thumb brushing over my navel through cloth, fingertips sliding upward to the curve of my waist.

I find his chest, my palms resting there, pressed close, breath matching breath.

We fit.

No words. Only ragged breaths and the engine’s hum and the distant starfield blinking outside I feel the viewport press close against us—a silent, cold sentinel to this unspoken covenant of bone, flesh, and claim.

Beyond, space sprawls in infinite stillness.

In our private quarters on Station Gamma, swathed in pale starlight through glass, we forge something altogether different.

His arm circles me like armor, as solid as the structural beams holding the station aloft. His ribcage, rimmed with white bone spurs sharp as obsidian, flexes beneath my palms. I nestle into him, riding slow, deliberate—every motion a testament, not to desperation, but connection.

His breath rumbles low at my ear, a drum guiding my ragged rhythm. Each of my breaths matches it, thin strings of air tethering me to this fierce presence beneath me. The friction between us ignites—my slick, warm folds enveloping his cock as stars burn in the void outside.

I trace his chest—over bone, over scars, over skin that’s both armor and living warmth. “You taste like cedar and ancient wars,” I murmur.

He shifts, deeper into me, and his voice answers—a growl threaded with reverence. “And you… like promise.”

Alarms flash red and white across the room. Warnings of systems failing. But I feel nothing but this: us.

He follows my rhythm, subtle, responsive. Every overlap of breath, every movement is an unspoken vow.

A hitch in his breath breaks the stillness. I meet his gaze—eyes burning red embers against midnight skin. Vulnerability flickers there, and I breathe, “I belong to you.”

No flinch. No recoil. Only the weight of acceptant warmth.

His movement shifts—timid, worshipful. I let myself dissolve into him, surrendering to the rise and fall of his body against mine.

My climax overtakes me like dawn. I shatter into light and sound, limbs trembling, heart thundering. He folds into me—gripping tight, living warmth pressed against fragile surrender.

I press my lips to his chest—bone cold, alive with battle’s memory, but tender beneath my touch. His pulse thunders through me, steady and unbreakable.

We hover there, breath entwined, station hum anchoring us to reality.

“Amara,” he whispers, voice softer than prayer.

“I’ve found us,” I say, voice raw, awe-laced. “Not destiny. Fire. But us.”

He presses a kiss to my temple. And in that single tremor of contact, I know—that’s all that ever matters.