Chapter 10: Blood Ink
The armory was a place of cold, hard logic. The air smelled of gun oil, cordite, and dust. Reaper stood at the central steel table, his balaclava pulled down, running a cloth along the barrel of a disassembled rifle. Across from him, Johnny leaned against a rack of shotguns, tallying ammunition on a cracked clipboard.
“So Clark says the eastern wire is singing,” Johnny said, his voice echoing slightly in the concrete room. “Not just wanderers. Patterned movement.”
“I heard,” Reaper said, not looking up. His fingers worked the cloth with precise, repetitive motions.
“Cheerful bastard, aren’t you?” Johnny smirked, the dimple flashing. “Might be time for that fun little diversion I proposed. The shaped charges near the old overpass. Cause a rockfall, funnel them into the kill zone.”
“Might be.”
“You’re a fountain of conversation today.” Johnny shook his head, making a note. “I’m gonna count the .308. Try not to have too much fun without me.”
Johnny pushed off the rack and disappeared into the walk-in ammunition closet at the back, the heavy door swinging shut behind him with a soft thud.
Reaper heard the main armory door hiss open on its rusty tracks. He knew the footfall. Lighter, hesitant. He placed the rifle barrel down and turned.
Arami stood just inside the doorway, backlit by the dim corridor light. She was wringing her hands, her knuckles white. Her eyes were wide, darting from him to the floor and back. The confident woman who’d brokered a communication with Martha was gone, replaced by a skittish version of herself.
“Michael?” she said, her voice small. “Can we… talk?”
He straightened, wiping his hands on his pants. The sight of her anxiety sent a jolt of cold through him. This wasn’t about the horde. This was something else. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice lower than usual. “Just say it. What happened?”
She took a step forward, then stopped. She chewed her lip. “It’s just… I was thinking… after everything, and with the fight coming… and I wanted… I mean, I was wondering if maybe…” She was rambling, the words tumbling out in a nervous stream.
“Arami,” he cut in, a sharp edge of concern in his tone. “Just say what’s going on.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes screwing shut for a second before blurting it out. “Can I suck your dick?”
The silence that followed was absolute, a physical substance thickening the oily air. Reaper froze. Every muscle in his body locked. His mind, usually a rapid-fire tactical computer, went completely, utterly blank. He just stared at her.
The soft creak of the ammo closet door broke the silence.
Johnny emerged slowly, clipboard held limply at his side. His eyes were wide, his trademark smirk nowhere to be seen. He looked from Arami’s horrified, crimson face to Reaper’s rigid posture.
Arami’s hand flew to her mouth. Her golden skin flushed a deep, mortified red. She hadn’t seen him. She hadn’t known.
Johnny cleared his throat, the sound absurdly loud. “Eh… I should go. I have the… the thing. That important thing that requires my presence. Elsewhere.” He walked stiffly toward the door, giving Arami a wide berth. As he passed her, he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, but a muscle in his jaw twitched. Arami just stared at him, her expression one of pure, unadulterated horror.
The door hissed shut behind him.
Reaper waited three full beats in the renewed silence. He then moved, crossing the room in swift strides to latch the main door, throwing the heavy bolt. The clunk was final. He turned back to her.
“Our room,” he said, the words clipped. “Now.”
He didn’t touch her. He just led the way, his stride long and purposeful. She trailed behind him like a ghost, her face still burning. They didn’t speak in the corridors. They passed a few people; Reaper gave a curt nod, Arami stared at the floor.
Inside their room, the familiar close walls offered no comfort. Baby, the raven, cocked its head from its perch but remained silent. Arami went straight to the cot and sat on the edge, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Reaper leaned back against the wall by the door, folding his arms across his chest. The balaclava was still on, but his eyes were visible, watching her.
“Talk,” he said.
The dam broke, but it was a messy, nervous flood. “I was in the cafeteria with Dante and Carla,” she began, the words rushing out in a stammering torrent. “And they started talking… about how men always want that. To be sucked off. That the best way to have him eating from your hand is with a blowjob. That it’s what they like most, after anal sex.” She was tripping over the terms, her face aflame. “And I just… I thought…”
Reaper waited until she ran out of steam. His voice was dangerously calm. “And you thought that’s what I would want.”
“It’s just… they say men are always looking for that!” she continued, her voice rising in defensive anxiety. “Things that aren’t so conventional, that they get bored, they look elsewhere, and you’ve… you’ve come in me so many, so many times, and it’s always been really, really good, and I wanted us both to feel good!”
Reaper was silent for a long moment. He reached up, pulled the balaclava off. His hair was damp with sweat from the armory. His scarred face was unreadable. “You thought I’d get bored,” he summarized, his tone flat, not angry, just stating a fact. “And go find someone else to give me a blowjob.”
Arami looked up at him, anguish in her eyes. She nodded, a tiny, miserable motion.
Reaper sighed, a long, slow exhalation. He pushed off the wall and took a step toward the cot. “Arami, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. I go down on you because I like doing it. I want to do it. But I want to do it only with you. Everything we do, I want only with you.”
Arami’s shoulders loosened a fraction. A sliver of tension bled away. “But…” she whispered. “What if I wanted to do it?”
“Don’t force yourself–” he started.
“I’m not forcing anything!” she interrupted, a spark of her usual fire returning. She looked up, meeting his gaze. “I love it when I ride you. How your expression changes, how you melt from the pleasure I give you. Now, imagining giving you pleasure with my mouth… if it feels even a fraction of how you make me feel, I want to.”
Reaper’s eyes darkened. He subtly adjusted the front of his pants, the image she painted affecting him immediately.
A small, victorious smile touched Arami’s lips. “See? You want it too.”
Reaper sighed again, but this one was different. Surrendering. He closed the distance and sat beside her on the cot, the mattress dipping under his weight. He turned to face her, his grey eyes serious. “I want whatever comes from you that you’re willing to give me.”
He leaned in and kissed her. It was slow, deep, and passionate, a stark contrast to the frantic, claiming kisses of the night before. This was a conversation. A reassurance. When they parted, they were both breathing harder, and something in the air had shifted. The nervous energy had transmuted into a thick, anticipatory heat.
Arami, her eyes locked on his, slowly slid off the cot and onto her knees on the rough floor. She moved between his legs, her hands resting on his thighs. She looked up at him through her dark lashes. “Michael,” she murmured, his name a promise and a question.
“Fuck,” Reaper cursed softly, the word dripping with want. He pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion, revealing the scarred, muscular torso she loved to trace. Then, his eyes on hers, he slowly pushed his pants and briefs down over his hips, just enough to free his cock.
It sprang free, fully erect, thick and heavy. The head was already slick. He saw the curious, assessing look in her eyes as she took it in.
“I know how much you like my body,” he said, his voice rough. “I want us both to enjoy this.”
Arami smiled, a genuine, eager curve of her lips. “Show me,” she whispered.
“Use your hands first,” he instructed, his breath already hitching. “One at the base, one… yeah, like that. Firm, but not too tight.”
She obeyed, wrapping one hand around the thick root, the other just below the head. Her skin was soft, a contrast to his rigid heat. She looked at it, a scientific fascination mixing with desire. “It’s so big,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I don’t understand how it all fits inside me.”
“God, don’t say things like that,” Reaper groaned, his head tipping back against the wall with a soft thud. “Or this will be over before it starts.” He guided her hand into a smooth, sliding motion. “Like this. Up and down. Use the wetness already there.”
Arami obeyed, watching his face as she moved her hand. His jaw tightened. His breathing grew audibly faster, shallower. She felt a surge of power, of delight. She was causing this. When she noticed his hands, which had been resting on his own thighs, now trembling slightly, her smile widened. She was making the unshakeable Reaper tremble.
Emboldened, she leaned forward. She stuck her tongue out, tentative at first, and licked a broad stripe from the base to the very tip, tasting the salty, musky pre-come that beaded there.
A raw, guttural groan ripped from Reaper’s throat. His hips gave an involuntary jerk. “Christ, Arami…”
“Tell me,” she breathed, her own heart hammering.
“Suck on the head,” he managed, his voice strained. “Use your tongue. Right… right there.”
She opened her mouth and took the swollen head inside, swirling her tongue around the sensitive ridge underneath. His curse was a broken prayer. She tightened her thighs together, a spike of pure arousal shooting through her at the sound, at the sight of his hands now fisting in the thin blanket of the cot.
She wanted to try what Carla and Dante had implied. She wanted to be good at this. For him.
She took a sharp, determined breath, her mouth a tight line. She pushed forward, trying to take more of him into her mouth, down her throat. The thick head hit the back of her throat, and her body instinctively rebelled. She gagged, pulling back with a wet cough, her eyes watering.
“Easy,” Reaper said, his voice a strained rasp, his hands coming down to cradle her head, not forcing, just holding. “Easy. Just the head is perfect. So fucking perfect.”
She looked up at him, eyes watering, and saw no disappointment, only a blazing, desperate hunger. He was completely at her mercy, and he was loving every second of it.
His fingers twined in the braids at her crown.
“Fuck, Arami… your mouth…” he breathed, his hips giving a tiny, involuntary thrust.
She increased her pace, her head bobbing, one hand wrapping around the base of him where her mouth couldn’t reach. She focused on the rhythm, on the wet, sucking sounds, on the tension coiling in the muscles of his thighs. She wanted to consume him, to pull every ounce of that coiled stress out through his flesh.
When she applied a particularly strong, deep suction on an upstroke, hollowing her cheeks, he lost control.