Page 7 of Riding the Reaper

He’s perceptive, this one. Annoyingly so. His soul is practically blazing now, wild and bright, making the shadows around us look deeper by comparison. Thirteen minutes left.

“I want to try something,” Sam says, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’m a dead man walking anyway, right? Humor me.”

I’m trying to remember the protocol for this sort of situation. There isn’t one. The manual covers everything from violent resistance to existential breakdowns, but there’s nothing in there about a flirtatious mortal who treats the end of his life like a hookup opportunity.

“If I can get you hard,” he continues, blowing a perfect smoke ring, “you have to admit that you’re still somewhat alive. Deal?”

I look at him. This stubborn, foolish, utterly captivating human. He’s playing with forces he can’t possibly understand. And yet… I don’t want him to stop. Because judging by the heat building low in my gut, the insistent throbbing beneath the robe, he might not be wrong.

“Relax, I won’t touch you,” he adds. He stubs the cigarette out against a tree trunk and starts unzipping the offensive skeleton costume. “You only have to watch.”

5

GRAVENTHOR

This is a terrible idea. On several levels.

Every instinct is telling me to put a stop to it. Remind him of the gravity of his situation. Maintain professional distance.

But I don’t.

I stand there, scythe in hand, and watch as Sam shrugs the cheap polyester off his shoulders and pushes it down to his knees in one motion. The body underneath is worth the pause. Not overly muscular, but solid. Smooth skin pulled tight over defined abs. Two brown nipples, hard from the October chill. A trail of dark hair down his stomach that disappears beneath white boxer briefs, where an unmistakable bulge strains against the cotton. It twitches as he looks at me.

“See?” Sam says, a smug little smile playing on his lips as he grabs the front of his underwear, palming the shape beneath the fabric. “This is what you do to me, Gray.”

I can’t deny what it does to me. Warmth floods through this body. Energy chases it. Foreign. Deeply concerning. But it’s the look on his face that’s doing the real damage. That cocky, fearless grin in the face of death itself.

He pushes his underwear down, and his cock springs free. Thick, flushed, curving up toward his stomach from a thatch of dark curls, the same color as the hair on his head. The tip glistens in the moonlight.

I’ve witnessed countless moments of human intimacy. Seen all of it. And it has never affected me. It was always like watching a documentary about a species I once belonged to but no longer understood. Data to be logged in the cosmic archives. So why is Sam Calloway making my robe feel two sizes too tight?

He wraps a hand around his shaft, groaning softly as he begins to stroke. Lazy pumps, root to tip, using the slick bead of precum to ease the glide. He looks me right in the eyes as he does it.

“You can come closer,” he says. “It’s okay.”

My grip on the scythe tightens until my knuckles ache, but my feet remain rooted to the spot.

“Or stay right there.” Another stroke, a slow twist over the head that makes him suck air through his teeth. “I don’t mind putting on a show.”

“Aren’t you cold?” I say, not knowing what else to say.

“Are you kidding? I’m on fire.” He grins. “And I know you are too. I can feel it.”

He’s right. I’m supposed to be cold. Detached. But my body is running warm. There’s a thickening between my legs that shouldn’t be possible. Every part of me is responding to him with total disregard for regulations, protocol, or my own better judgment.

Sam turns around and braces one hand against the trunk of an oak. Moonlight spills over the perfect curves of his ass, the dusting of dark hair disappearing into the cleft. He arches his back, showing himself to me.

“Ever seen an ass like this in the afterlife, Gray?” He glances over his shoulder, that cocky grin still in place. “Go on. Tell me you don’t want a piece of this.”

He reaches back with his free hand and spreads himself open. I see everything. The tight furl of his hole, dusky pink, clenching under my gaze. The smooth skin beneath, his balls hanging full between his thighs. It’s an offering. Brazen and vulnerable all at once.

“Sam…” My voice comes out as a rough scrape. I barely recognize it. “This is highly inappropriate.”

“Yeah, well, so is dying before you’re twenty-two.” He pushes two fingers into his mouth, wetting them with a slow, lewd slide of his tongue. Then he reaches back and presses them against his hole. He shudders as they breach him, his forehead dropping against the bark of the tree. “Fuck,” he breathes.

I can’t get involved. My job is to collect. To guide. The rules are clear.

But as I watch him fuck himself on his own fingers, the wet sounds obscene in the quiet of the woods, the muscles in his back rolling with every push, those rules feel a million miles away. A distant, abstract concept. What feels real, what feels immediate, is him. The life pouring off him in waves. The warmth of flesh I can almost taste.