Title: Nothing if Not Time
Author: EmmaFrost
Email: emmafrostuk AT gmail.com
Rating: ADULT
Summary: What if Riddick had escaped before the Hunter-Grazner had flown through the tail of that "rogue comet"?
Disclaimers: The characters of Richard B. Riddick, Carolyn Fry, Pete Mitchell, Walter Owens and William Johns belong to Universal Studios and their other various copyright owners. I make no claim on them and do not intend to profit from the use of them in this work of fiction. All other characters are mine; kindly seek my permission if you plan to use them.
Warnings: Harsh Language, Explicit Rape, Explicit Sexual Content, Graphic Violence/Gore.
Author's Notes: This fic is an attempt at first person present from both Riddick's and Carolyn's points of view. Working in their distinct 'voices' was a real challenge. Let me know if you think I got it right. Also, this story isn't, strictly speaking, finished. There's a jump between the scene where Riddick exacts his revenge against Johns and the final couple of scenes. That jump encompasses over two weeks in story time and about three chapters that I never wrote because I lost the feel for this Riddick after seeing "Chronicles." Sorry! Hope you can still enjoy.

 

They say most of the brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. All but the primitive side. The animal side. No wonder I’m still awake . . .

And here’s my real problem. Mr. Johns. Blue-eyed devil. Planning on taking me back to slam. Only this time he picked a ghost lane. Long time between stops. Long time for something to go wrong.

This time, it’s the bindings the merc has put on my wrists to keep me chained. The right tether is loose, but not enough to slide my hand through. Yet. But I’ve got nothing if not time.

How many days have passed while I’ve worked the tether? I can’t tell. There’s no difference between day and night on the ship. No change beyond the blindfold wrapped around my eyes. With the cryo-drugs pumping through me, I don’t feel hunger. I can’t tell how long has passed, only that my wrist has rubbed raw from my small movements against the rough fabric, frozen, healed under its icy scab, only to rub raw again. Days, weeks, maybe months. I don’t know.

All I know is that the tether gets fractionally looser, until finally, my hand slips through.

The fucking bit comes out first. Just being able to close my mouth, lay my tongue flat, is such a relief it’s almost orgasmic. I peel the blindfold back to see my other wrist. It’s short work to free it and yank out the tube pumping cryo-shit into my vein. Comparatively. And I’ve got nothing if not time.

There’s no release lever in my security cryo-locker, but the lid yields to several hard kicks from my still-chained feet.

I stand in a pool of freezing vapor, listening. No klaxon. No rising whine of other coffins opening. Stupid fucks. They were so confident that cryo-sleep would hold me that they didn’t set an alarm, didn’t rig Johns’ pod to trigger if mine opened. Their mistake. For some of them, it’s going to be a fatal mistake.

I free my feet and spend a long time stretching, working blood back into my frozen extremities, strength and feeling back into my locked muscles.

Then I hunt for a weapon.

Some spare ducting finally provides what I need. Sharpened, the metal edge slices easily through the ice-coated tubes leading to the coffins marked ‘Captain Mitchell’ and ‘First Officer Owens.’ After some consideration, I leave the tubes leading to ‘Pilot Fry’s’ locker alone. I can fly, but I’ve never tried anything beyond little prison transports. This star-jumper’s beyond my skills. And after seeing the pretty woman in ‘Pilot Fry’s’ locker, I might have more than one use for the Hunter-Grazner’s pilot.

I linger the longest in front of Johns’ tube. William Johns. Mercenary and murderer. The temptation to slice through the thin lines tying the fucker to life is almost overwhelming. His frosted face fades into a leer as I remember him standing over Annie and the kids. He’d terrorized them into silence, but I didn’t need to hear them sobbing to know what he’d done to them. Their torn clothing, their shattered expressions, told me everything I needed to know. Ed’s body, crumpled in the corner, his bloodied hands still gripping a wrench, confirmed it. They’d fought, but Johns had won. And once he’d gotten me into chains by holding his gauge to the little boy’s head, he’d made me watch while he used them again, before putting a round through each of their chests.

I want to ghost him so bad I can taste it. Tastes copperish. Like fresh blood. But I finally turn away. That’s too quick and easy a death for him. Johns is going to suffer before he dies.

Instead I smash the controls on Pilot Fry’s cryo-pod and wait impatiently while she thaws. The cover of her pod opens in a cloud of vapor, revealing a small, pale-haired woman in a fitted flight suit. She blinks groggily, disoriented. When she begins murmuring something, I reach in, grab her by the hair and haul her out of the tube. Her mouth falls open, but she swallows a scream, staring up into my shined eyes.

"You know who I am?" I ask her. My voice is soft. But I tighten my fist in her hair, venting a little of my rage at Johns on her.

"Yes," she hisses. Her face twists in pain, hands reaching for her head. I let her down a few centimeters. No point ripping out that silky-soft hair.

"Then you know better than to fuck with me. And if you need a reminder—" I drag her the few steps to the other two crew lockers and shove her nose-to-nose with her dead Captain.

Her body tenses as she registers her Captain’s bloodless, still face through the clear plaz.

"Wha-what," she stammers.

"Same thing I’ll do to you if you fuck with me. Only you’ll be awake. Understand?"

Her body sags in my grip. "Yes."

"Good." I give her a shake for emphasis and let her drop onto her heels. "Get going." I shove her towards the flight deck.

There, I test her by having her point out the communications equipment. She points out the deep space relay, but not the emergency beacon. Reaching under the console, I rip out the transceiver and grind it into silicon dust under my boot heel.

She stares at me, wide-eyed. But I don’t buy her doe act. She doesn’t smell of fear, not the way she should. Holding her eyes, I reach across her and smash the beacon controls.

When she looks back at me, I’m holding the shiv against her throat.

"Told you not to fuck with me." I press the point into her white skin for emphasis. "Don’t do it again."

She nods, and now the sour fruit scent of fear rolls off her. I give her a smile, cold and cruel, before I sink into the co-pilot’s chair.

She sits quietly for a few seconds, staring at her hands, twisted together in her lap. "Where are we going?" she asks finally.

"Kelsin system."

"That’s a long way from here."

I nod. At least she knows her way around the Frontier. "Six weeks at supercee."

"That’s about right." She reaches forward and taps the console. A star chart appears in the viewer.

"Did I tell you to touch anything?" I growl. I don’t mind that she’s starting to work, but signs of independence have to be crushed immediately. We’re still establishing who’s boss. I can’t let her forget until I’m sure she understands her true position.

She sinks back in her seat. "You can’t expect me to ask permission before everything I do."

I rise from the chair and tower over her, planting my hands on either armrest of her chair and leaning into her. She shrinks from me, but still I don’t smell much fear.

"Yeah, I do. And you will, or I’ll ghost you like the other two. Got it?"

She nods, but her jaw is set mulishly.

I grab her by the front of her uniform and haul her up out of the chair to my eye-level. "Six weeks of obedience too long to trade for your life?" I push the point of the shiv into her ribs for emphasis.

"Kill me and you’ll never see the Kelsin system," she says.

She holds my eyes. She thinks she has leverage.

"Fuck with me again and neither you nor the forty-odd you got on ice back there’ll ever see anything beyond Kelsin. You willing to gamble with their lives, too?"

Fear glimmers in her eyes, but defiance shines there, too. She’s not reacting to the blade in her side. At least not as she should. If I dig it in much further, I’ll cut her. How will she react to a punctured lung? Annie’s shattered face drifts across the pilot’s features. No, I don’t want her like that. I ease the blade away from her as I mentally shuffle through other methods of control. Physical domination is the easiest, but it’s not the only way. In slam, sometimes all I had was the mind-fuck. She’s young, pretty, clearly competent, but she was still riding third chair behind the two men. Ambitious? Maybe there’s a button to push.

I look her up and down. Curl my lip into a sneer. "That the best you can do for them?" I ask, dropping my voice in contempt. "No wonder you haven’t made Captain."

Her face crumples. Bingo. I release her and dust off my hands like I’m disgusted at having to touch her. She slides back into the flight chair and sits slumped, her hands folded together between her thighs.

I settle into the co-pilot’s chair and let the silence deepen, weigh her down, for a few minutes.

"Now you can touch the controls," I say finally.

She lifts her head and I can see the tear tracks glisten on her cheeks. She’s been crying silently, swallowing any noise she might have made. I have to admire her for that. She’s pushy, but she’s not stupid.

She touches the controls tentatively, her hands shaking.

"Fastest route to Kelsin," she says, her voice tremulous. "We’ll need to make two sling-shots. At Nectar Point and the Brevin Cluster." She points them out on the chart. "We don’t have enough fuel to do the Brevin jump."

"Then you’ll need to find some."

Her hands shake and she clenches them into fists. Oh, she wants to snap back at me. But she controls herself. Good girl, she’s learning.

She says, low and tight, "The reactor runs on heavy water. But it can take regular H2O, too. All we need is a water world."

"Good. Find one."

She does, and then she lays in the course, checking and double-checking the coordinates. I watch her carefully, tracking what she’s doing on the co-pilot’s console. As far as I can tell, she plays it straight. For the moment. I haven’t broken her, and the defiance will be back. But it’s more amusing than irritating right now. So she can have her small moments, as long as she doesn’t do anything to seriously screw up my plans.

She starts checking the trajectories a third time and I can tell she’s stalling. She’s methodical, precise, and I appreciate that. Getting lost somewhere on the Deep Frontier is not part of my escape plan. But she’s sure of her calculations now. The little line that creased her brow when she double-checked the flight path the first time is gone. She’s just killing time, afraid of what I might want from her next.

I yawn. She’s got me wrong if she’s afraid of me trying to jump her right now. All I want now is to eat something and sleep off the last of the lingering disorientation.

"You about done?"

She starts, stills herself with an effort. "Yes."

"Good. Finish up. Let’s go." I rise, stretch. My back pops like a projectile weapon. It seizes all the way down my right leg. Fuck, I’m stiff.

She punches the sequence into the flight computer a final time. A faint ripple runs through the ship. It rises to a rumble as the thrusters engage, turning us away from our path towards New Mecca.

"How long to the first jump?"

"Three days," she says, climbing out of the flight chair.

Three days to kill. Looking at her, trim and curvy in her flight suit, I can think of a lot of ways to spend those seventy-two hours. I smile at the thought and she shudders, wrapping her arms around herself. I can’t help but grin. She’s so transparent. She keeps handing me ways to control her. But she doesn’t have any reason to fear me now. I’m so fatigued I couldn’t fuck her even if she was tied down.

With one hand, I gesture her to lead the way off the flight deck. I watch her pert ass appreciatively as she proceeds me down the hall. Okay, if she was tied down, I might give it a go.

My chuckle makes her jump.

*

Silence makes her fidgety. She makes fluttery gestures with those small, capable fingers, like she wants to brush the silence away, fill it with something comforting. So I let the silence stretch, not speaking a word to her while we eat except to say, "Get used to the dark," when I slap her hand away from the light controls as we enter the small crew galley.

The ship’s recyclers are probably pretty basic in comparison to what she’s used to, but after the pap in slam, what they dispense tastes like manna to me. I savor each bite, rolling it around in my mouth the way I roll her scent in and out of my lungs. She still smells a little of fear, but underneath there’s a nice female scent, musky and warm. And a floral note, very faint, probably soap or something she used before cryo-sleep. Apple blossoms. Very nice. I’ve never liked women who smell of roses. That smell always reminds me of funerals.

I finish and wipe my mouth with satisfaction. She drops her eyes as soon as I look at her, and pushes her food around on her plate some more. I think she’s eaten about three bites.

"You done?"

She nods. Even with her head down, I can see the color leach from her cheeks. She thinks it’s coming now. Now that I’ve gotten her to do what I wanted and have satisfied one hunger, I’ll satisfy another. She’s not wrong about that second hunger. I haven’t had a fuck in so long that a curvy chair could turn me on right about now. But I’ve never forced myself on anyone, man or woman. I don’t see the pleasure in it. Far more fun to tease, cajole, seduce, until it’s given willingly. Carolyn’s so full of fear and rage that she’ll take more persuasion than most.

Let the games begin.

*

He finishes a huge pile of food with evident gusto and looks at me with those eerie, glacial eyes. The little food I’ve managed to choke down turns leaden in my stomach. It’s going to happen now. Maybe even on the table between us. Murdering rapists don’t care about niceties like doing it on a bed, do they?

He rises. I shrink down in my seat, trying to make myself as small as possible. Absurd, I know. As if I could escape his notice now. But it’s another of those damnable self-preservation instincts. The same ones that finally shut me up rather than continue to defy him. I wanted to, oh, how badly I wanted to. I wanted to spit in his face, scream at him that he could gut me a thousand times but I wouldn’t take him anywhere except back to prison where I hoped they threw him in the darkest hole they had and lost the key. But that shitty instinct, that belly-crawling, head-down, self-preservation instinct, closed my throat and kept me silent. As silent as Captain Mitchell and Owens. As silent as the forty sleeping passengers that it’s my duty to protect. From him. I’m not sure I can even protect myself. Dear God, how did it all come down to me?

I lift my head again at a scraping noise. He’s pushed his tray across the glass-topped table, picked it up before it reached the edge, and walked back towards the recyclers. Is he clearing the tabletop before he rapes me on it? I follow him with my eyes but don’t move. He hasn’t told me I can, and that crappy, cowardly instinct keeps me still until he does.

He glances back over his shoulder at me, a shimmer of silver from those demonic eyes.

"What’re you waiting for?"

"You haven’t told me I can move." It comes out sullenly. Not at all the way I want it to sound, but that damnable instinct is hard at work, keeping me alive.

He chuckles. That sound trickles down my spine like ice-water. It’s a cruel sound, his laugh. I despise it.

"You can get up, Carolyn."

The sound of my name slides down my spine, too. But it’s not icy. It’s hot, rich, like melted chocolate. It makes me shudder where his laugh only made me hate him.

But how does he know my name? It’s not on my crew badge, or my cryo-locker. The only place he might have seen it is in the ship’s manifest, or the crew files. Is that what he was doing at the co-pilot’s console while I was entering the flight path to Kelsin? I thought all he was doing was double-checking my calculations. He clearly knows more about flying than the average goose. I should have figured that out sooner. It was stupid not to show him the emergency beacon. That was a test, one I failed. But he failed it, too. He showed me that he knows something about ships, enough to know where the comm systems are, but not enough to be confident piloting to Kelsin by himself. So he needs me, at least for a while.

And if I can stay alive long enough, I’ll figure out a way to trip him up.

"C’mon, Carolyn. I said you could get up."

I jump to my feet, shaking off my wool-gathering. Idiot, stay alert. But it’s hard. My mind keeps shooting off on tangents. My eyes are gritty with exhaustion. I ache everywhere. My head, my back, my arms and legs. Cryo-sleep always leaves me drained for a day or two, like the worst possible case of jet lag. I long to sleep, but I’m afraid he won’t let me. Not yet, at least.

I carry my tray to the row of silver recyclers, where he’s waiting for me. After a moment, I realize he doesn’t know what to do, so I flick on the return-cycler and wait for it to warm up before sliding my tray into it. With a crunch, the tray and my left-overs disappear. He follows suit, watching the process curiously. When he looks up, he catches me watching him.

"Big improvement over slam," he grunts.

I shift warily, unsure of how to take this. He’s barely said anything to me, and nothing at all about himself. Is this an opening? An invitation?

I point to the wall behind the recyclers. "The system breaks it all down into component molecules. Tray, silverware, napkin, food, everything. Then this one—" I tap the first recycler in the row. "This one reassembles the molecules for the cutlery, tray, containers, and rehydrates the food concentrates."

"Didn’t ask for a guided tour, Carolyn," he says. His voice is rich with amusement. At my expense. I look away. What an idiot I am, jumping at the smallest opening. I want to see him as human, as reachable. But I’m fooling myself. There’s nothing human about Richard B. Riddick.

"Where d’you sleep?" he asks.

I can’t control a shudder. So he does want to rape me in a bed. He’ll probably want me to sleep there afterwards. Easy access for round two.

I swallow hard, my mind racing. I can’t let him do this to me. I haven’t let a man touch me in years. Not since Neils screwed me over. I can’t let this monster inside my body. I glance at him, taking in his size now that we’re standing side by side. He’s huge. He towers over me. His massive shoulders seem to take up half the galley. If his thing is in proportion to the rest of him, he’ll tear me in half. I cannot let him do this to me.

"I-I don’t," I stammer, trying to come up with something, anything, to stave off the inevitable.

"You don’t sleep?" he asks, that dark amusement deepening his voice again.

"No, I mean, I usually go right into cryo after take-off."

"Ah," he says. "No sleeping quarters aboard?"

There are. If he turns down the main corridor from the galley he’ll find them himself without any trouble. They’re not marked, but they’re not locked, either. All he has to do is start opening doors.

If I lie to him, he’ll be twice as brutal, twice as hurtful. I don’t think I can take that. "Y-yes."

"Good. Lead the way."

God, no.

I take two steps forward. I hear him fall into step behind me, his breathing at my back. It’s that sound, the sound of his harsh breathing, the sound that I’ll have to listen to when he’s above me, inside me, that finally breaks me free of my cowering instinct.

I slam my hand into the recycler’s controls. It spits silverware at me and I grab a fork. Spinning and crouching defensively, I wave the utensil at him.

"Stay away from me." I can hear the hysteria in my own voice, but I can’t control it.

Riddick rubs a hand over his mouth like he’s trying not to smile. Bastard. He lets his other hand idle at his side, but I’m not fooled. He could have that wicked blade out in a heartbeat.

"Carolyn," he says slowly, like he’s talking to a child, "what d’you think you’re gonna do with that?"

I wave the fork at him. "I-I could take your eye out."

He hangs his head and shakes it slowly, but I can still see his evil grin.

"I could!"

He moves in a blur, catching my free hand and whipping me around. His arm snakes around my throat and yanks me back tight against him. His ankle slams into mine, forcing my feet apart. I’m shoved off-balance, thrown forward against his forearm. His hand closes on my wrist, crushing, grinding the bones together.

With a sob, I drop the fork.

I sag in his arms. How did he do that so easily? How am I supposed to defend myself against him?

He holds me against his chest, his arm still across my throat, but not strangling me. His hand remains around my wrist, but no longer crushing the small bones there. He’s just holding me, waiting to see what I do next. I can feel him peering down at me, like a snake watching a bird caught in its coils. He’s not even breathing hard. Maybe I only imagined his breathing before. Maybe it was my own heart pounding in my ears.

His lips brush my hair when he speaks.

"You done?"

I nod, defeated.

"Pick a better weapon next time, Carolyn. Doubt you could’ve broken my skin with that." He releases me, steadying me with a hand on my shoulder as I sway. I turn awkwardly, off-balance, straining to look up at him.

"You-you’re not—?"

"Angry?" He yawns, shakes his head. "I like a little entertainment with my food." He grins, turns it into a leer. "Foreplay’s good for the digestion."

My insides turn to ice and I let myself fall to the ground. If he wants to rape me in a bed, he’s going to have to drag me there.

He towers over me, silhouetted in the faint emergency light that’s all he’s let me have on. "C’mon, Carolyn. Get up."

I shake my head, rocking back and forth on my hands and knees. "No, no, no. I won’t let you."

"Won’t let me what? Sleep?"

I look up at him, meeting his iridescent, half-lidded eyes. I feel a tear slip down my cheek and bat at it angrily. I won’t cry in front of him. I won’t. "Is that all we’re going to do? Sleep?"

He tucks his hands behind his back and cocks his head to one side, studying me. "Maybe."

"Please. Please, Riddick." Now I’m begging him. I bite my lips to stop myself, but I can’t take it back.

"What’ll you do?"

"Wh-what?"

"What’ll you do? To keep me off you tonight. What’ll you give me?"

He wants payment for not raping me? I rock back on my heels and glare at him.

"What do you mean? I don’t-I don’t have any money on-board."

He pretends to study one of his hands. I’ve studied them already, wondering if he could beat me, strangle me, kill me with them. They’re incongruous, his hands. Long-fingered, almost elegant, with trimmed, shapely nails. Not a killer’s hands.

He turns his hand over, inspects a fingernail.

"No? Too bad." He shrugs and begins to move toward me.

"I-I have some jewelry." My old wedding rings are in my carry-on.

"What am I gonna do with your jewelry? Play dress up?"

"You could sell it."

He shakes his head. "Too easy to trace. ‘Specially stones. They’re all imprinted now. What else you got?"

My mind races as I think through the contents of my carry-on. My credit chip is implanted in my thumb. I couldn’t give it to him even if I wanted to. Other than that, all I have with me are a few changes of clothes for the other end of the trip and some toiletries.

"My underwear?" I’m grasping at straws, but I think I’ve read somewhere that convicts like women’s underwear.

Riddick roars with laughter.

"If I want your underwear, Carolyn, I’ll take them warm."

He means he’ll take them off me. I shrink back. "I-I don’t have anything else."

"No?" He shrugs. "Then you got nothing to bargain with."

My mind flails. Anything, anything.

"I’ll give you a blow-job," I blurt out. I clap my hand over my mouth as I say it. Did I really just offer to fellate him? But anything, anything is better than having him rape me.

He stops in sinuous mid-motion. "Really? Hmm." His chin wrinkles as he considers this. Or pretends to. I have the sense that his mind works a thousand times faster than mine.

"Okay," he shrugs. "If that’s the best you can do. Let’s go."

He sounds nonchalant, unconcerned. As if I’d offered him a drink instead of taking his dick in my mouth. I struggle to my feet and follow him. He waits for me in the corridor, falling into step beside me as I lead him to the sleeping quarters. I can’t look at him, can’t stand to see the amusement on his face, the glow of his shined eyes. How can I suck this monster’s dick? How can I touch him without gagging, vomiting? Will he kill me if I throw up on him?

I palm open the door to the sleeping quarters and stand aside to let him inspect them. They’re serviceable, not luxurious. There are two separate rooms with double beds and a shared refresher. Standard for a commercial-grade transport like the H-G. My carry-on is stowed in a cubby in the first room. I glance at the two carry-ons above mine. Their names are printed on the sides of their luggage. Pete Mitchell. Walter Owens. I look away.

Riddick methodically checks the rooms, opening drawers, examining the ‘fresher and the two closets. He picks up a few things and slips them into his pocket. He opens the three carry-ons and goes through them item by item. From my bag he removes a nail-file and a small vial of the perfume I wear sometimes. The nail-file goes in his pocket. The perfume he sets out on the night-stand.

He glances at me as he heads back into the ‘fresher. "Get undressed."

No. No, no, and no. My mind revolts at the idea of being naked in front of him. I grab my bag, rummage until I find my one nightgown. I change as fast as I can, throwing the slip over my head while still struggling to push my uniform down over my hips.

The sound of the chemical shower in the ‘fresher mocks my frantic efforts. He’s showering. How can he be so calm about this?

I remove my uniform in a more orderly fashion and hang it in one of the empty closets. My hands are shaking so badly it takes me three tries to get the uniform on a hanger. I have to get a grip on myself.

Dressed, I feel marginally better, despite the thin protection my nightgown offers. I start to move automatically, climbing into the bed, but stop and staring at it like a snake across my path. Can I get into it, knowing what I have to do in it? My mind circles.

I register the silence, the absence of the shower-sound, with a start. Too late. He walks through the door from the ‘fresher wearing only a towel around his waist. His bare skin glistens in the low light. It’s a caramel color, rich and warm. Another incongruity. There’s nothing warm about Richard B. Riddick.

"Get in bed," he growls. My feet move against my will, that damn survival instinct kicking in again and propelling me to do his bidding. I sit on the edge of the bed with my back to him, listening to him shed the towel and slide between the covers.

"Lights off," he says. Then he sighs. Does even the low light hurt those inhuman eyes? Finally, maybe, a sign of weakness.

"Carolyn, lie the fuck down. You can stay on your side. I’m not gonna touch you."

I turn my head and stare into the darkness, trying to see him. All I can make out is a shadow against the sheets. "Bu-bu-but—"

"You owe me a blow-job? Later. I’m too tired to enjoy it right now. Lie down. Go to sleep."

I finally obey him, climbing into the bed and laying stiff and scared with my back to him. I keep expecting him to touch me, to turn me over. For his weight to press me into the mattress. But it doesn’t happen. And after long moments of it not happening, fatigue catches up with me and I close my eyes.

*

When I wake in the darkness, there’s a warm weight against my side. I don’t need to open my eyes to see what it is. I can smell Carolyn. That faint floral scent is stronger now. But it’s still a sweet, fresh scent. Almost edible. Maybe from the slip she’s wearing. Coming out of the ‘fresher to find her standing by the bed, dressed in a little white slip that did more to reveal than conceal the curves of her body was almost too tempting. She looked good enough to eat. Lucky for her I was too tired to contemplate anything but sleep.

The silk of her nightgown lies slippery-soft against my skin, pressed there by her breasts and stomach and hip. She’s lying in the curve of my arm, her arm thrown across my chest, her round thigh tucked between mine. I smile. She’d be mortified if she woke right now and found herself cuddled up to me. She’d blame me, no doubt, but she did this all by herself. I’m used to sleeping on a three by seven bunk. I barely even twitch in my sleep.

I like this position. I haven’t slept with a woman in longer than I can remember; I’d forgotten the small pleasures of it. I almost like Carolyn, her amusing mix of competence and self-doubt, cowed subservience and defiance, and there aren’t many I say that about.

I savor the feeling of her for a while, the softness of her skin, the pleasant pressure of her weight on me, the sensuous touch of the silk. They’re all alien sensations, doubly delightful for having been missed for so long. Finally I have to stretch and slide out from under her. My bladder’s too full to go back to sleep without relieving it first. When I return, she’s rolled onto her other side. I lie down and stretch out with my hands behind my head, careful not to touch her.

After years of the bunks in slam, the bed seems massive to me, even though I know it’s really not large at all, just big enough for us to lie on our respective sides without touching. Lying alone on my side, I miss the warmth and softness of her body against mine, but it’s better this way. I’ll fall asleep faster without a hard-on.

But after a few minutes, as I’m beginning to drift, she stirs, shuffles under the covers, and scoots back against me. She nestles into my side again, her head inching up onto my shoulder, her back pressing against me, her round cheeks pushing against my hip. Fuck the hard-on, I want to feel all of her, not just these too few points of connection. I shift onto my side and wrap around her, spooning her into my chest and stomach and thighs. Her ass settles maddeningly against my groin. But I really am too tired. My cock stirs half-heartedly, and then, thankfully, relaxes.

Carolyn sighs in her sleep. Her small hands wrap around mine and she curls our joined hands against her chest until they’re cushioned between her breasts. I open my hand. One of her soft breasts settles naturally into my palm. Oh, she really will blow a gasket if she wakes up. She’s so modest, so reticent about sex. Like some kind of neo-Catholic schoolgirl. Most women would take it as a given that I’m going to fuck them. They might even offer first to score a few points. Not Carolyn. She only offered to blow me to stop me from raping her. And she was so horrified that I accepted her offer it almost broke her. I could see it in her eyes. She nearly panicked when she thought she’d have to go through with it. Having her owe me a blow-job is too good a chip to use so soon, though. If she keeps handing me chips like this, I won’t need to figure out her other buttons.

I rub my face in her hair as I close my eyes, enjoying the silky brush of the pale curls against my chin and cheeks. Ah, I could get used to this. Freedom, the merc on ice, and a warm, if not exactly willing, woman in my bed. Really not a lot more that I could ask for.

*

Carolyn wakes before I do, and her tiny, frantic movements as she tries to extricate herself from my arms without waking me accomplish exactly what she’s trying to avoid. I tighten my arms around her.

"Wriggling like that’s gonna give me ideas," I say into her hair.

She goes rigid instantly and I have to control a chuckle. It’s just too easy to yank her chain.

I yawn, stretch, and rub my piss hard-on against her ass. It doesn’t need much encouragement before it’s pushing firmly into her crack. She’s shuddering, the sour scent of fear rolling off her in waves.

I can’t help baiting her a little more. "What’s wrong, Carolyn? Your pristine ass is safe as long as you give me a little head. Whaddo you say? Ready to go?"

Her swallow is so loud it echoes in the small cabin. I’d like to keep going, maybe get her to put those small white hands on my cock, but I really do need a piss. I roll away from her and head toward the ‘fresher.

"Never mind, Carolyn. It’ll have to wait. Mother Nature calls." I toss over my shoulder.

When I return, she’s up out of bed and dressed in a fresh uniform: short tunic and fitted pants, with darker accents on the shoulders and down the sides. I survey the uniform for a moment. She looks good in it and I’m tempted to let her wear it, despite the fact that she put it on without my permission.

But being dressed again has brought that spark of defiance back to her eyes. Since the first stop after breakfast is the flight deck to check on our progress towards the jump point, I’m not sure I want her defiant right now. Also, the thought of getting back into the grimy trousers and vest I shucked on the ‘fresher floor last night is unappetizing. With a tweak of the climate controls, I could be comfortable in just my briefs, or in nothing at all, which has a certain appeal after years of prison-issue. But having her in uniform while I’m in my skivvies is a psychological disadvantage. No dice.

"Toss me your bag."

Shock registers in those wide eyes. In the near dark, my vision gone over to shades of purple and red, I can’t tell what color they are. They’re pale, maybe blue or gray. Whatever their color, Carolyn’s eyes are extremely expressive, and almost always give her away.

She pulls down the bag and clutches it to her chest for a moment. Then she slowly extends it to me. I paw through until I find fresh underwear for her: a midriff-length halter and boy-shorts. She’s lucky. If she’d had a lace bra and thong in her bag, I’d have made her wear those. The halter and shorts will cover more of her than the dresses I saw women wearing during my last run.

I toss her the underwear. "Take that off and put those on."

"Wh-wha-why?"

I smile, amused that I make her stutter. "Because I told you to, Carolyn."

A muscle works in her jaw, but she follows my orders. I pretend to ignore her while she changes, ostensibly hunting up a fresh pair of briefs from her Captain’s bag. But I’m watching her, watching the expanses of bare skin she reveals as she takes off her uniform, the smooth play of skin over muscle and bone when she moves, the hint of pale curls between her legs as she bends over to draw on the shorts. So she’s a natural blonde. Nice, but not surprising. I have the sense that Carolyn doesn’t do artifice. She probably doesn’t play politics, either, which I’m guessing is the real reason she hasn’t made Captain.

She pulls on the underwear in frantic haste. I’m sorry to see her covered again, but it’s probably a good thing since stuffing my erection into her Captain’s shorts is going to be impossible in another moment.

"Okay, Carolyn, let’s go."

She follows me without a word, but the silence as we start to eat breakfast clearly disconcerts her. She starts making those fluttery gestures again, looking up, opening her mouth to speak, and then dropping her eyes to her food again. I’m not really interested in conversation while I savor the first eggs, ersatz bacon and reconstituted orange juice that I’ve had in a while, but she’s so uncomfortable she’s not eating and if she goes on like this for long, she’ll be too weak to pilot the ship. I can humor her a little to keep us on course.

"How long you been with this ship?"

"Two years," she says. A flicker of relief passes through her eyes and she takes a bite of her eggs. "Captain Mitchell took me on after I’d finished deep-jump training."

"Right out of school?"

"No. I did short-hop transport for five years. Then I trained for deep jumps."

Which makes her almost thirty, if civvie flight training takes as long as Ranger training did. She doesn’t look it. Her body’s still firm. No crow’s feet. No lines around her mouth. Good genetics, or good design. These days you can’t tell.

"What made you pick the long-haul?" I’m not actually interested, but it keeps the conversation flowing. Keeps her eating.

She shrugs. "I wanted to get away from home. Bad marriage."

That explains why she’s not wearing the rings I saw in her luggage.

"No kids?"

She shakes her head, stares at her food. Even with her head down, I can see sadness sweep across her face, quickly concealed. She wanted kids and he didn’t, or maybe she tried to have them and couldn’t. That’s a common problem for spacers. Too much time in zero-gee. Too much exposure to stray radiation.

"Other family?"

"My brother lives on Vegus. I see him more now than when I was on short-hop."

"Easier to get shore leave on the Frontier if you’re doing deep jumps."

She nods and looks surprised.

"What? You think all I ever did is kill people?"

Color tinges her cheeks and she jabs an inoffensive piece of bacon with her fork. "What did you do before you went to prison?"

"None of your business." This conversation’s beginning to annoy me. She’s eaten enough to keep her going, so now she can shut up.

She pushes the bacon and remaining eggs around on her plate while I finish my meal in silence. When I rise to toss the dirty dishes into the recycler, I grunt at her, "You want some coffee?"

She nods but doesn’t look up. She’s upset at being slapped down when she thought she was building a rapport with me. Sorry, Carolyn, I had years of noise for noise’s sake in slam. I like silence, and we’re playing by my rules now.

I hand her a cup of coffee as I sit back down at the table. "After you drink that, we’re going to check on the course."

"I double-checked it yesterday," she says sullenly.

"Yeah, and I want to make sure we’re on it."

She looks up, anger flashing in those clear eyes. She doesn’t like me questioning her competence. In a minute, she’ll realize why we’re going to check and then she’ll be hurt that I don’t trust her instead of angry that I think she can’t fly.

"Fine," she says, still annoyed. Then it dawns on her, and, sure enough, hurt wells in her eyes. "You don’t trust me."

I have to chuckle at that. Does she really expect me to? How naive is she? "Fuck no."

"I-I’ve done everything you said!"

"Before or after you tried to gouge my eyes out with a fork?" I ask caustically.

I’m not really angry about that. She was just defending herself. She clearly feels strongly about the sanctity of her body, which makes her different than most of the women I’ve known. But then, I’ve mostly known cons, hookers and run-always for the last decade, so maybe my sample’s a little skewed.

She flushes. "I only did that because-because—"

"Because you thought I was going to rape you."

Her eyes flash up to mine. "Yes."

"Lemme tell you something about prison, Carolyn," I say, pausing to sip my coffee. It’s not great coffee, but after years of the mud-water they pass off as coffee in slam, it goes down smooth as silk. "Slam doesn’t change who you are. It strips you down some. Refines you. But it doesn’t alter what’s at bottom. Men who come out killers went in killers. Maybe they hadn’t killed yet, but it was in them already. And men who come out rapists went in that way. I’ve done a lotta shit in my time, but you never heard of me rapin’ anyone."

"Except that family on Novalis," she says.

Fuck.

That story spread fast. Novalis was where Johns caught up with me. I was on ice for the trip from Novalis to where we caught the Hunter-Grazner and started the next leg of the long trip back to slam, but it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks of real-time. Could it? I’ve been running so long, I don’t even know what year it is anymore.

Long enough, at any rate, for another false rumor about the notorious Richard B. Riddick to spread.

"That wasn’t me," I growl, irritated by her willingness to believe anything of me. Even more irritated that Johns has pinned his sick shit on me.

"But they showed it on the news flashes—"

That enrages me. Those leeches violated Annie and the kids again, showing their bodies on the flashes, coupled with the name of the Butcher of Tiorine, just for a few ratings points. Carolyn’s face dissolves in a wash of red and before I know it, I’ve reached across the table, grabbed her by her arms and hauled her up out of her chair. She squeals and squirms but I clamp down, crushing her arms against her sides.

"I didn’t hurt Anastasia or those kids," I roar. "They took me in. I’d never have done anything to hurt them. Johns—"

I release her, let her drop back into her chair. She’s not going to believe me. No one will believe that the Great White Hunter raped and murdered a Colonist family just to bag himself an escaped convict, no matter how notorious. No one will believe that Johns could have subdued me solely by threatening them.

A twisted irony strikes me. Other cons might believe me, because they’re the ones who understand host law. You never, ever bite the hand that feeds you when you’re on the run.

Annie and Ed took me in when I was feverish, dying, from an infected stab wound I’d gotten from my last encounter with Johns. I gave him worse. He’ll be carrying around a piece of my shiv in his spine for the rest of his very short life. But he gave me something to remember, too. Without Ed and Annie, Johns would only have gotten to collect the "dead" part of my bounty.

But Carolyn, with her neat uniforms and years of flight school and failed marriage, Carolyn with her routine life and good job and carefully selected news feeding her just the titillating hints of the abnormality that is my life, Carolyn will never understand that I gave myself up rather than see Johns hurt Annie and those kids any further. Carolyn will never believe that I screamed through the bit and fought the chains to try to protect them when Johns had a second go at them. Carolyn expects me to be a monster.

And I can be one for her.

She stands still on the far side of the table, looking up at me. When she sees I’m not going to grab her again, she brushes at the front of her halter, then reaches for a napkin and mops up the table. I realize then that I grabbed her when she had a full cup of coffee in her hand, and it spilled all over her. No wonder she squirmed.

"You burned?" I ask quietly.

"No. It wasn’t scalding. It just surprised me. Can I go change?"

The monster wouldn’t let her change. The monster would make her wear the soaked undershirt while it dries cold and sticky against her breasts. The monster would leer at her nipples, make her fear that a blow-job won’t be enough after all.

I’m tempted. But then I wonder. Will she go change? Or will she run for the flight deck and try to crash us into the nearest star rather than face six weeks alone with the monster? A test. Yes, that’s better than a wet tee-shirt contest.

"Yeah. Go on."

She nods and tosses the wad of napkins to my side of the table, where her spilled coffee is spreading in long, milky fingers. She rights her chair before she walks out of the galley. Tidy woman, even in a wet shirt.

I don’t need the napkins, as it turns out. A silver ball drops out of the ceiling and sprays foam over everything, then sucks it all up before disappearing back up into the ceiling.

Without that small task to occupy me, I itch to go out in the corridor. To see which road she’s taken, which choice she’s made. But I refuse to scratch that itch. I get myself another cup of coffee instead, sit, and itch some more while I drink it slowly.

Before I rise for the third cup, Carolyn returns. She looks composed. She’s wearing a clean halter with the shorts. I control a smile. Gutsy after all; she took the road less traveled by.

"Do you want to go up to the flight deck now?"

"Yeah." I toss my cup and saucer into the recycler and follow her.

We’re on course, as it turns out. She didn’t fuck with me, at least not that way.

She watches me check the headings. That defiant spark spreads from her eyes to the rest of her face. Hmm.

"See?" she says finally.

Oh, she really needs to be taken down a notch. Before she thinks she’s got the upper hand.

"Yeah, good job," I say casually. "Still another thirty hours before the jump. So we got some time to kill."

I look her up and down and she blanches. Tch, tch, Carolyn, weren’t you listening? No, that’s not it. She hears just fine when she wants to. She doesn’t believe me.

Luckily for her, it’s not what I’ve got in mind.

"Show me the rest of the ship."

She does. There’s not a whole lot to it. The flight deck’s up front. A central corridor runs back from the flight deck towards the engines. The cryo-lockers, passenger lounge, and storage spaces all open off the main corridor. Towards the tail of the ship are the crew areas where we’ve been: the galley, the sleeping quarters, more storage spaces. She shows me the airlock to the engineering room and engines, but I have no interest in them right now.

I return to the rows of cryo-lockers and stare at Johns for a long time. His punishment could begin now. That would wipe the defiance off Carolyn’s face. It would also seal her conviction of my monstrosity. That fucker is going to taste some of his own medicine before he dies, and it’s going to go down bitter as battery acid.

Finally, I turn away from the iced merc. Plenty of time after the first jump to give Johns what he deserves. I stretch, stiff from standing still for so long. What I need is a good work-out. To limber up my unused muscles. To work off some of this unspent rage.

"C’mon." I snag Carolyn’s wrist and pull her towards the passenger lounge. It’s the largest open space on the ship, a carpeted room with a pseudo-wood bar and groups of beige seating clusters. Probably some ship-designer’s idea of post-mod commercial chic. Fucking soulless. But it’s also short work to shove the couches and chairs into untidy heaps against the walls and open a space on the floor. I smile at the thought of what the Hunter-Grazner’s designer would think of my redecoration.

"You work out?" I ask after I push the last couch out of the way. Carolyn’s standing in the middle of the floor, watching me warily. Seeing her in her skivvies, the toned muscles of her arms and legs bared, I’m already sure she does.

"Uh, I run, if that’s what you’re asking."

That explains the musculature. "Yeah, good. Stretch out like you’re going to run."

She eyes me. "There’s really not enough space here to run."

"Nope," I agree, but I don’t enlighten her any further as I start to stretch myself. Ah, it feels good. My muscles unknot. A pounding in my balls, that I wasn’t even really aware of until now, eases. I do knuckle push-ups until I’m sweating lightly, my muscles fluid and warm. Carolyn mimics me, only doing half-push-ups, but keeping up with me as I count upwards toward a hundred.

At a hundred I sit back on my haunches and smile at her. "Now we work out."

*

Uncertainty flickers through those expressive eyes. "I thought we were."

I shake my head. "That was just the warm-up."

She glances around. "But there aren’t any weights or anything here."

I grin. "We don’t need weights."

The uncertainty fades to annoyance as she realizes I’m baiting her. "Then how are we going to work out?" she asks, gritting her teeth.

"You had any training?"

"What do you mean? I told you I’ve had flight training—"

"Martial arts."

"Oh. No."

No wonder she came at me with a fork. "You’ll learn," I say. "Make a fist."

She does, the wrong way, tucking her thumb into her palm.

"You’ll break your knuckle if you connect like that." I correct her fist and step back a meter. "Fists up. Come at me."

"What?"

"Come at me. C’mon, Carolyn. Hit me. First one’s free. I know you want to."

Does she ever. All the rage she’s had to suppress, all the fear she’s felt, focuses into two bright points in her eyes. She flies at me, moving faster than I thought she could. I let her have the first hit. It’s a good punch, right to my stomach. She’s strong for an untrained woman. But I see it coming, tighten my gut and take the hit. The next one comes right behind it. She may not have had any martial arts training, but she’s hit a punching bag a time or two. Probably in gloves, if the way she’s holding her right fist, close in to her chest, is any indication. It hurts to really hit someone. Carolyn’s just learned the first lesson of street fighting.

I block her second punch with a sweep of my open palm, twisting her away from me and spinning to get behind her. She steps back and for a moment I think she’s going to disengage. But no. She pivots on her back heel, keeping the weight off her front foot in case I sweep it. Smart.

She comes at me again, her head tucked down between her shoulders like a boxer. That fear and anger have ignited in her eyes and she’s not about to let this chance go. It doesn’t matter that her right knuckles hurt like hell now or that her hands will be black and blue tomorrow. She’s going to hit and hit and hit until one of us goes down. I thought she might, given the chance. I block her punches, going through defensive forms one by one. Right to left, left to right. First my hands, then my feet. I never try to hit her back. This is purely exercise for me. For us both. I’m exercising my muscles and she’s exorcising her demons.

When I’m good and lathered and I can see her punches slowing, her arms sagging, the fury dying from her eyes, I catch her fists and hold them instead of pushing her away.

"Enough. Good work-out, Carolyn."

Her eyes flare again, briefly. "That’s it? You’re not going to hit me?"

I swallow a chuckle. She wouldn’t appreciate me laughing at her right now, not when she’s tried so hard to hit me, to hurt me. And telling her the truth, that I’ve never hit a woman and don’t intend to start with her, would put me at a disadvantage in dealing with her in the future. Doubt she’d believe me anyway.

"No. This was just exercise. Remember?" I say instead. A gentle reminder that she shouldn’t really be trying to TKO me. I am, after all, the one in control.

Her shoulders sag. "Yes."

"Good. Go get a shower. This tub got a relay viewer?"

I know a ship traveling at supercee can’t pick up ordinary frequencies, or transmit on them. I’ve counted on that fact to make our detour to Kelsin undetected. But an FTL ship that I stowed-away on during one of my many escapes was able to snatch transmission bundles from relay beacons as the ship passed them by. I’m hoping the Hunter-Grazner has the same sort of thing. And I’m hoping it’s a separate system from the transceiver I trashed. Otherwise this is going to be a long six weeks for me, as well as for Carolyn.

Carolyn nods. "On the flight deck."

Excellent. Entertainment. Not as fun as tormenting Carolyn, but I can see she can only take that in short doses. I can’t spend the next twenty-eight hours teasing her. She’ll snap.

*

I know he’s watching me. Somehow. Maybe he runs up to the flight deck and watches on the intraship monitors. Or maybe he sneaks around in the shadows, trailing me. He’s so silent he might be able to do that without me hearing him. But he can’t possibly be letting me walk around on my own for the second time in four hours.

I glance at the door into the engineering spaces before I turn into the crew quarters. God, it’s tempting. I could lock myself in there. It would take a pneumatic drill to get through that airlock. But he’d just starve me out. There are no recyclers back there. I could live on the water out of the fuel tanks for a while. Two weeks, maybe three. Not long enough for the IAA to determine that we’ve changed course and send a DSR ship to investigate. And I’d be poisoning myself by slow degrees. Heavy water’s toxic in quantity.

I open the door into the crew quarters and head towards the ‘fresher. Better to seem beaten for now, to play along with him. I’m not sure I actually have anything to fear from him until we get to Kelsin. If he was going to rape me, he’d have done it by now. Maybe that’s what he was talking about with that line of b.s. about prison not changing a man. Of course, once we get to Kelsin, he’ll try to kill me. At least he didn’t try to convince me he’s not a killer.

But maybe, just maybe, if I play along and he gives me these moments of freedom, maybe by the time we get there, I’ll have figured out a way to get him. I know he has weaknesses. Bright lights, for one. There have to be others, and if I can learn them all, maybe I can take him down, at least for long enough to wake the policeman or get out a distress call.

I shower with my back to the door, not wanting to know if he is watching me. He might not be ready to rape me, but he likes to fuck with my head. Having him watch me dress this morning was so unnerving that I nearly threw-up. But then he seemed to soften at breakfast, to open up. Until I asked that stupid question. What was I thinking? He lulled me into a false sense of approachability. But I should have known he wouldn’t talk about his past.

He reveals it in bits and pieces even if he won’t talk about it. He’s ex-military. The way he spoke about shore leave was the biggest tip-off. My Space Marine uncle talked the same way. There are other clues, too. The martial arts moves. Having me punch at him, like he was training a new recruit. Maybe even his knowledge of ships, although he could have picked that up on the run. What I don’t understand is how an ex-Marine, or whatever he is, ended up as Richard B. Riddick, infamous mass murderer.

Nor do I understand why Richard B. Riddick, infamous mass murderer, would try to defend his undisclosed past. I don’t know what happened on Novalis, but Riddick didn’t rape and murder that family. No matter what the news flashes said. He was so furious at the accusation, I thought he was going to kill me. But all he did was shake me and make me spill my coffee. I don’t know what the truth is there, and Riddick’s made it clear that he’s not going to tell me, but if I watch him, if I listen, maybe he’ll reveal more of those bits and pieces for me to put together.

I stand under the hot spray for a long time, letting it soothe the sore muscles of my shoulders and back, ease the ache in my wrists and knuckles. God, I haven’t worked out like that in a very long time. I’ve never hit anything other than a mannequin in self-defense class. I brace my hands against the shower stall and stretch up onto my toes, feeling the pull in my hamstrings. I’m sore now and I’m going to be sorer tomorrow. But I’d do it again. It was so satisfying to swing at him, even if he only let me connect once.

A sound snaps my head up. But it’s just a ship-noise. New crew like Owens jump at every sound for a while. Plaz and polycarbon rubbing against each other, the engine cleaning cycle turning over, recyclers bubbling, even hot components ticking. They all make noise. New crew take a while to get used to that fact of ship-life. I’ve been on ships for most of my life, long before I became a pilot. Their noises are familiar. Usually I find them comforting.

I roll my shoulders, feeling the tense muscles pop. The only reason I’m so damned jumpy now is because of that shadow, real or imagined, lurking in the doorway and watching me shower.

I finally switch off the spray and turn to face whatever’s there. The cabin’s lights are dimmed, as he’s insisted, and for a moment my eyes search the shadows around the door, thinking I’ve seen movement, the slide of faint light over caramel-colored skin. But there’s nothing. Nothing near the doorway. Nothing in the cabin beyond when I wrap myself in a towel and step through to look. Damn, he’s making me crazy. It’s easier just to be in the room with him, to suffer his silences and his mind-games, than to be alone and jumping at every shadow.

I pull on fresh underwear quickly and stuff the two dirty sets into the tiny wall valet. I only have four changes of underwear with me; better try to keep the ones I’m not actually wearing clean.

Then I go find him.

He’s sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, watching news flashes on the big central viewer. Damn, he figured that out fast. It took me an hour to puzzle out the relay viewer system, and I had training on a similar model. He’s smart. Facile with machines. I can’t underestimate him.

"When was it?" he grunts as I ease myself into the chair beside him.

"When was what?"

He glances at me, a slippery silver glare. "The flash about Novalis."

"Oh. About two weeks before we left Finvey."

He glances at a chrono display on the control board. "Fifteen weeks ago?"

I nod.

He returns his attention to the flashes. "These’re too recent. The oldest’s about eleven weeks ago."

I glance up at the screen, mildly curious to see what’s been going on in the universe while I’ve been asleep. The viewer shows hollow-eyed refugees from the famine on Earth. Camouflaged soldiers holding the line against rioters. Suited men talking about technological advances in resource distribution that sound good, but probably won’t reach those poor bloated refugee children in time. Tanned, polished women in tight clothes touting the latest vacation package, latest anti-radiation, anti-fat, virility supplement, latest officially-sanctioned recreational drug of choice.

It doesn’t look like anything’s changed while I’ve been down.

I turn my attention back to Riddick.

"Anything interesting?"

He nods but doesn’t take his eyes off the viewer. "Fresh food’ll be scarce beyond the Ten-Year Border for a while. Rioting might spread to the Deep Frontier. Either way, plenty of black market ships running back and forth over the Border for the next coupla months."

How does he get all of that out of a handful of weeks-old flashes?

"And?"

"Newruba is the place to go for a cancer-free tan." He smiles briefly, a real smile, not that cruel curving he does when he’s taunting me. I laugh a little, not because what he’s said is so funny, but because I’m desperate to encourage these small signs of humanity.

He turns his head and pins me with those silvery eyes. "What d’you want, Carolyn?"

I start. Is he angry with me? What have I done? His moods are as mercurial as his eyes.

"N-nothing." I bite my lips, hating the way he can make me stammer. I feel like a stuttering child again, all the years of speech therapy deserting me in a hot rush, like pee trickling down my leg. "I, uh, I finished my shower and I didn’t know what you’d want me to do next, so I came to find you."

"Did you?" He’s amused again, but this amusement is cruel. The wintry smile I dread curves across his lips. "How very . . . obedient of you."

I shiver and shrink down in the flight chair. I hate him like this. Hate his amusement at the expense of my dignity. Hate the way he grinds humiliation into me with just a few words, with just that cruel smirk.

"I’ll leave you alone."

"Will you now? I don’t think so. Come here."

I’ve half-risen from my chair, not really knowing where I’m going, or what I’m going to do. I just want to get out of his way before he directs that cruel amusement at me, invents some further torment. His order freezes me, nearly topples me over the armrest of my chair. I grip it with both hands, white-knuckled.

"Wha-what do—"

"I said, come here."

The menace is clear in his voice now. But the only reason he’d want me to come to him is because he wants the blow-job I promised him. The thought of it makes my stomach churn, squirts bile into my throat. I glance around crazily, seeking some avenue of escape.

"Carolyn."

Dear God, he can turn my name into a sound so threatening it makes my hair stand on end. I relinquish my death-grip on the chair reluctantly and take a shuffling step towards him. The small floor-space between his feet seems to loom large, taunting me with the image of me kneeling there, forcing my mouth open to accept whatever he rams into it.

He sits forward in the flight chair and taps the control panel in the arm. The padded back reclines flat and he gestures over his shoulder.

"Sit there."

Behind him? How am I going to do what he wants if I’m behind him? The image of me kneeling in front of him is swiftly replaced with one of him crouched over me on all fours as I lie on the flight chair. Of him lowering his massive, dangling parts toward my mouth. I shudder and nearly fall.

"You gotta start eating more, Carolyn. Fainting while you’re piloting a jump’ll make this a real short trip."

I nod but I have no idea what he’s saying. With each movement an effort of will, a struggle against my screaming urge to bolt, I climb into the flight chair and sit behind him.

"If you’re gonna be in here while I’m tryin’ to watch the news, make yourself useful. Rub my back."

Oh. Blood rushes to my face. Relief makes me more light-headed than my earlier, crazed imaginings.

I touch him tentatively. I haven’t rubbed a man’s back in years. But I’ve had plenty of massages. I treat myself to one whenever I’m on leave. I enjoy having my back rubbed so much I almost wish it was the other way around, except then he’d have his hands on me and I’m not sure I could stand that.

I rub his back the way the masseuses rub mine. Starting up at the base of his shaved skull. Working my thumbs down the thick muscles of his neck. I have to shift up onto my knees to reach him. He must be a half-meter taller than I am. Even though his height is mostly in his long legs, it’s still a stretch for me to reach his neck when I’m sitting behind him.

I use my knuckles on the huge muscles of his shoulders and he grunts. I wish I had a little oil to do this right. But he’s still sweating slightly from our sparring, so there’s not much uncomfortable friction. I knead the long sweep of sinew over each shoulder-blade, concentrating on the knots under my fingers. He breathes heavily, exhaling through his nose, as I work. Occasionally he makes a low grumbling noise deep in his massive chest as I knead a stubborn knot.

He groans when I reach the small of his back.

"Hang on," he says. He shifts, moving forward onto his hands and sliding his legs back. He settles beside me, so that he’s lying face-down, on his stomach, and now I’m stuck, crouched on one arm of the chair.

"Riddick, I can’t reach like this."

"Sit on my legs."

I look at the strong thighs extending from the bottoms of his borrowed briefs. What would it be like to straddle them? To feel his warm skin between my thighs?

I shake my head. "I don’t think so."

"Sit wherever the fuck you want, Carolyn," he growls. He’s losing patience now. Not good.

I settle carefully onto his thighs. He doesn’t even register my weight as I sink onto him. It is a good position, I have to admit. I can reach his whole back from here. I have leverage to bear down on the stubborn spots. I lean forward and feel him press against me, just as I imagined. His body is hard, hot, between my legs. It’s a startlingly intimate feeling, given that he’s not even really touching me.

"Carolyn," he says. A warning. I slide my hands over his lower back, working the taut muscles there with my thumbs. The movement rocks me forward, pressing his thighs right against my pelvic girdle. I close my eyes for a moment. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but the warmth and firmness of him pushing up against me.

I shake myself and begin rubbing his back again. Hard, slow strokes to smooth the muscle fibers back together, to push out the accumulated toxins. He makes that grumbling rumble deep in his chest again, and I can feel it vibrate all the way up through my belly.

I stop at the top edge of his briefs, running my thumbs along that edge before moving upward again. He reaches back and pushes the briefs down over his buttocks.

"Sciatica."

Sciatica? I glare at his profile. If he has sciatica I’ll eat his shorts.

"C’mon, Carolyn. Don’t stop."

I grudgingly shift my hands down onto the rise of his buttocks. I’ve seen him naked, but I haven’t really spent much time appreciating his body. As I look down at him now, focusing on his firm buttocks, the smooth, dark honey skin stretched taut over all that muscle, I have to admit that he has an impressive body.

"I suppose you work out a lot."

"Thought you were going to rub, not talk."

"Sorry." But I’m not sorry. He didn’t snap at me that time. Didn’t growl like some hunting cat. He sounded almost human.

I push my thumbs deep into his buttocks, working down the sciatic nerve. He flinches, groans. Maybe he really does have a bad back.

"Not much else to do in slam," he says. It takes me a moment to connect what he’s saying to my earlier question. I smile at the back of his head. Much closer to human.

"Do they let you read?"

"Yeah. Selected materials. Nothing recent. Nothing political. Lotta old Westerns for some fucking reason. Like they don’t give a man ideas about freedom. Mmm, Carolyn, lower—"

I push his briefs down a little further, shift back a few centimeters, and rub my thumbs down into the top of his thigh.

"Sleep. Read. Jack off. Try to survive. Not a lot else to do."

I don’t really understand what he’s saying. His imprisonment is such a foreign experience to me that I can’t even begin to imagine it. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to understand what he’s been through. I just want him to tell me about his life, his past. To open up to me. To accept me as a person. Someone to talk to instead of something to bark orders at. Because maybe, just maybe, if he sees me as a person, he won’t be able to cut me up later.

I finish with his sciatic nerve and begin working back up. The muscles under my hands are pliant now. Not soft. Maybe nothing about Riddick is ever soft. But he’s relaxed. I move my hands up over his ribs, begin stroking his shoulders. It’s a stretch, so I scoot up onto his buttocks. He wiggles them under me and I grab his shoulders to stay upright. Not because his motion has nearly unseated me, but because of the warmth that shoots up into my belly from the rubbing of his flesh against mine.

I whip my thumbs over his shoulders. "You’re done." I have to get off him, get away from him. This isn’t right. I don’t want to feel anything but fear around him.

"Neck still aches," he grumbles.

Men. They’re all such infants. Evidently mass murderers are no exception to that universal rule.

I reach up and rub his neck. It’s sweaty and my thumbs glide easily over the smooth skin. I have to admit that there are still a few kinks in his neck. I settle back onto him, onto that hard roundness. Warmth kindles in my stomach again, spreading with each beat of my blood. My strokes over his skin slow, become languorous, as that drowsy warmth spreads through me.

"Lie down," he says.

I stiffen. I should have known.

"Lie down on my back."

"W-why?"

"’Cause I told you to, Carolyn."

I hate him. I hate the way he orders me around without ever explaining himself. I hate the way he never spares a thought or a word for my pride.

I lie against him angrily, awkwardly, holding myself as rigid as possible. But the earlier work-out and the lingering effects of cryo-sleep work against me. My muscles begin to shake; I can’t remain rigid. I have to relax against him. He doesn’t move under me. Slowly I find a comfortable position, with my face between his shoulder-blades, my breasts pressed into the curve of his back, my belly and hips arched over his buttocks. My hands flutter awkwardly, until they settle naturally on his bent arms.

"Stop twitching around, Carolyn," he says, a low rumble that vibrates through me. I try to remain still. As I lie on him, warmth spreads through me again, radiating in waves from his skin and up from my belly, pressed against his buttocks. I lie there for as long as I can, until the warmth becomes unbearable.

"Riddick," I finally whisper.

He doesn’t respond. I’m tempted to poke him. Instead I listen to his deep, even breathing. Could he be asleep? I listen for what feels like minutes. He is. How could he fall asleep with me on top of him like this?

I want to slide off him, to escape the warmth of his body and the strange sensations it spreads through me. But if I move it will wake him up.

That’s when I realize why he chose this position. I thought he was fucking with me, that he knew about the strange heat in my blood and was trying to provoke me. But he just wanted to make sure I didn’t go anywhere while he was asleep.

I should be annoyed by his lack of trust, but I’m not. It makes sense. I suppose I’d do the same thing in his place.

My hands can’t seem to stay still. I stroke the curves of his arms. My fingertips trail over the silky-soft skin of his underarms, the hard edges of his elbows. Soothed by the feeling of him, warm and human, under my hands, by the heat of his body that was anathema when he was awake, I close my eyes.

*

A klaxon snaps me out of a deep sleep, the kind of sleep you never get in slam. If the non-stop noise doesn’t make you a light sleeper, the constant threat of danger will.

I lift my head, feeling a weight between my shoulders. Carolyn’s still asleep on my back. I grin, but my grin fades as I look up at the viewer above us. The words "Proximity Alert" display across the viewer in huge block letters.

"Carolyn," I say.

"Mnuh?"

"Carolyn, wake up."

She stirs sleepily, her breasts shifting across my back, her tummy sliding against my ass. If it wasn’t for the words blinking above me, I’d really be enjoying this.

"Carolyn, wake up. We got a problem."

"Uhn." She climbs off my back and sits on the reclined chair, rubbing her eyes like a child.

I rise onto my forearms, feeling a twinge of stiffness from lying in one position with Carolyn’s weight on me for so long. But she did a good job on my back. It’s nice and loose.

"Holy shit." She rises off the back of my chair and slides into her own. Her eyes are focused now, her face intent. I bring my chair up and sit forward.

"That’s a liner. Strap in." She sounds grim.

"How fucked are we?"

"I don’t know yet."

The viewer clears and the Doppler-shifted streaks that are the stars at supercee fill the screen. The blackness of space ripples oddly ahead of us.

"What the hell is that?"

"The quantum wake off the liner in front of us." Carolyn’s tapping in commands now. Codes scroll down the edges of the viewer and a pair of handles rise out of the arms of her chair.

"Strap in. I’m going to have to do this manually. It could get bumpy."

I find the chair’s harness and adjust it until it fits across my chest. She’s not kidding about the bumps. The first hits before I’ve got the harness on and nearly throws me out of my chair. We ride out the next few minutes of turbulence in silence. The bumps finally trail off, but the ripples still stream down each side of the viewer in front of us. It looks like we’re riding the other ship’s wake.

"What’re you doing?"

"Riding it in to the jump point."

"Why not just cross the wake and wait for it to pass?"

She shoots me a dark glance. "Why don’t you just trust me for once?"

I cross my arms over my chest. "Against my nature."

"Fine. If we’d done this the normal way, filed a flight plan with the IAA and confirmed the jump, I’d have known about the liner and I could get out of its way. But as it is, I don’t know what’s coming in on either side of me. I could get out of its wake only to get broadsided by another ship, or caught in another wake. Drafting the liner is the safest way. And, you’ll be happy to know, it’s almost impossible to detect another ship riding a wake this big. So nobody will even know we’re here. Happy?"

"Yeah," I say grudgingly.

"Then settle in. I’m going to have to fly her in manually to keep her centered in the wake. It’s eleven hours to the jump point. Long day ahead."

*

Twelve hours later she rises out of her chair. The high, sweet scent of ketones rises with her. She’s been running on adrenaline for hours. Her hand shakes as she grips the arm of her flight chair.

I vault out of my seat and catch her as she falls.

She pushes at my chest. "I’m okay."

I have to grin. She’s been holding on by her fingernails for the last hour, desperately pushing herself to stay focused, to stay sharp, as we skimmed the corona of the Nectar pulsar and were spit out the other side at a hundred times the speed of light.

"Sure you are." I release her.

She takes two steps, staggers and goes down.

I scoop her up, holding her to my chest despite her muffled protest. She’s done good. Least I can do is carry her to bed.

She’s half-asleep by the time I settle her in the bed. She murmurs something when I lie down beside her and pull up the covers. It sounds like, "Stay on your side." I’m glad she’s asleep and can’t see my grin.

I sink onto my back and slide my arms behind my head. I’m tired, but not nearly as exhausted as Carolyn. All I did was bring her coffee and help her hold the ship steady at a few critical moments. I stare up at the darkness above the bed, but see instead the fresh memory of the last twelve hours. Carolyn’s tense, intent little face as she rode the huge space-liner’s wake. She really did do good.

Most of the time it was a smooth ride. She kept us just far enough back to avoid proximity alarms on either ship, but close enough that no other ship or monitoring station would pick us up. She never relaxed for a moment, making constant tiny adjustments to keep us centered in the wake.

She slung us into the jump fearlessly, right behind the liner. We slid across the gravity well of the pulsar like butter across a hot griddle. Plasma cocooned the ship, painted psychedelic patterns across the walls of the flight deck. I stared at them until they began to make a kind of twisted sense. But Carolyn never took her eyes off the viewer. She held us tight to the inner rim of the well, picking up the maximum push possible from the star’s crushing gravity. It flung us out on the other side so fast we blew past the liner. It was only when she was absolutely sure we were on course for Brevin that she relaxed. I’ve seen trained Rangers who couldn’t handle that kind of pressure.

I reach across and stroke her hair with my fingertips.

*

When I wake, Carolyn’s wrapped around me again. Her face is buried in my chest; her soft head’s tucked under my chin. She has one arm around my neck, the other across my ribs. Her breasts and belly are pressed tight against me. But it’s lower down that’s the problem. She’s got one thigh slung over my hip, her calf curled tight across my ass. She’s clamped us together with her leg, welding her groin to mine. The layers separating us are so thin that my cock is pressed between the open lips of her body. I’ve come in my sleep, or maybe she’s the one having wet dreams. I can’t tell. All I know is that the bed stinks of sex and I’m soaked from hilt to tip.

She undulates against me in her sleep, and it’s all I can do not to tear away the flimsy cloth separating us and ram into her. It doesn’t help that this is one of my favorite fuck-positions, particularly with a small woman like Carolyn. There’s nothing better than lying face to face with a woman and rocking her back and forth on my cock. Makes for a slow, deep fuck. It’s the way I’m going to fuck Carolyn the first time, if she ever relaxes enough to let me.

My hands are already on her ass, kneading those soft globes, ready to move her to my rhythm. But I can’t. If she wakes to this, she’ll break. She’s so terrified of rape. Waking to me fucking her, without any memory of instigating it, will convince her I’ve forced her, no matter what I say.

As frustrating as it is, I can’t take advantage of this situation. I know she didn’t do this deliberately. She was married. She’s used to sleeping with her husband. Lucky fuck. It’s not her fault that in her dreams she’s still in bed with him.

I release her by slow degrees, to avoid waking her. When I’ve disentangled myself, I roll out of bed and walk to the ‘fresher. I’ve got to do something about my balls before they explode.

I peel off the wet briefs and let them drop to the floor as I stand over the commode. A couple of strokes get me going. I let my mind wander back to the bed, imagining that I’d never left it. Imagining that Carolyn had opened her eyes and instead of screaming and trying to scramble away, pressed closer, wriggling out of those little shorts and pulling me inside her. Imagining that it’s Carolyn’s tight heat around my cock instead of my hand. I brace myself against the wall above the commode and begin pumping, putting my hips and ass into it, imagining thrusting into Carolyn as she writhes and moans against me.

Then I hear her voice, but it’s not raised in ecstasy.

"Riddick, are you—"

"Get the fuck out."

"Oh! I-I . . . sorry!"

The door to the fresher snicks shut.

Fuck.

I look down at my dick, gone limp in my hand. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone jerks off, even Carolyn of the pristine white ass. She was just doing it, rubbing up against me in her sleep. Thinking of that makes my cock stir, and I finish off with a few fast strokes. My orgasm’s a relief, but it’s not the tsunami come that I’d have had if she hadn’t interrupted me. She owes me for that.

She’s standing on the far side of the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, when I walk back into the sleeping quarters. Her eyes flick up and down me. She’s seen me naked before, but it’s different now, isn’t it, Carolyn? The lingering sense of skin on skin. My cock still at half-mast, still glistening with our shared fluids. Fluids that have left a dark triangle at the crotch of her shorts.

I lean against the door to the ‘fresher and stare back at her.

She bites at her full lips. "Riddick, I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have walked in except I-I-I thought I heard you calling my name."

Entirely possible. I was fantasizing about fucking her.

"Okay, Carolyn."

"Were you-were you—"

"Jacking off?"

She flushes all the way down to the tops of her breasts. "N-no, I could see . . . were you calling me?"

"Not deliberately."

She rubs her hand over her eyes. "I’m really sorry, Riddick."

I shrug. "Forget it. You hungry?"

She nods.

*

After the jump, our days settle into a pattern. We eat at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. ship-time. I’m confident that’s when he had to eat in prison. I wonder if he knows how much of the institution he’s internalized. In between, we work out at least once, sometimes twice a day. I still haven’t landed a punch other than the one he allows me at the beginning of each session. But sometimes when I have a rhythm going, when I’m really swinging hard, I think I might be close to breaking through the shield of his sweeping hands and feet.

He spends a lot of time standing in front of the cryo-locker of the policeman Johns. He walks away more stoic-faced than ever, and I’ve learned to recognize that as the sign of a really foul mood. I avoid him during those times, hiding on the flight deck and watching the news flashes or using grooming as an excuse. I’ve never taken so many showers in my life. From the sardonic tilt of his lips, I know he knows I’m dissembling. But he lets me, and as far as I can tell, he doesn’t follow me or watch me in the shower.

I’ve stopped jumping at every small noise.

He’s also spent a good deal of time going through the passengers’ luggage. There’s a lot of it in the storage spaces. Some of the geese are headed beyond New Mecca, into the Deep Frontier. Like their ancestors, they’ve brought the whole wagon train with them. Riddick won’t show me what he’s taken out of the passengers’ luggage, but his selection of briefs seems to have expanded. He’s found a tight white silk pair with little red lips all over. I hate them. They remind me of the blow-job I owe him. Wearing them amuses him endlessly. But on the bright side, he’s brought me a portable viewer with a good selection of pre-programmed vids to keep me entertained while he watches the news flashes, or glares at Johns.

Then there are the mornings. No matter how much distance I’ve put between us when we go to bed (and hearing me scoot to the edge of my side of the bed often fills the darkened room with Riddick’s evil chuckle), we don’t wake up that way. On the mornings I wake up first, I find myself wrapped around Riddick. Often in a position so indecent it makes me blush even though he’s still asleep. Yesterday morning I woke up on top of him, dry humping him through my shorts. What’s wrong with me? I haven’t wanted to even be near a man in years. Now I start each day in a state of arousal. Even after we rise, small things – bumping his arm with my breast, the brush of my underwear against my pubic hair – flush me with heat.

And my dreams. Dear God.

On the mornings like today, when Riddick wakes up first, I wake a few minutes later, shivering with the loss of his body heat, hearing his labored breathing in the ‘fresher. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep the first couple of times, but it’s impossible. My mind fills with images of what he’s doing. I keep imagining what . . . it . . . looks like.

I’ve seen him naked many times, every day practically. I try not to stare at his body, but it’s difficult. His shoulders in particular. They’re almost sculptural in their perfection. And of course I know what his thing looks like. Thick. Faintly purple. Uncircumcised. But I’ve never seen it, well, angry. My own curiosity embarrasses me. Why should I be interested in what Riddick’s dick looks like erect? But I am.

He never shuts the ‘fresher door. Even when he’s masturbating he’s on guard, alert. But I take it as an invitation to scoot to the bottom of the bed and peer into the ‘fresher. He stands with his back to me. I can’t see his penis, engulfed by his huge hand. But I can watch what he does. He uses long, slow strokes, his shoulder flexing with each one, not the quick jerks I expected. And he takes a surprisingly long time, working himself slowly up to an orgasm that leaves him gasping, bracing himself against the wall of the ‘fresher. He stands with his legs apart and when he comes, I see him spray into the commode. It looks like gallons. Surely Neils never came that much.

Sometimes he turns and walks back into the bedroom after he’s done, so I have to scramble up and out of the bed quickly. I’m not sure what he’d do if he caught me watching him. More often, he masturbates again. I’ve never seen a man climax as often as Riddick does. Neils always fell asleep right after he came. Then again, I’ve only known three men in the biblical sense, so maybe that’s too restricted a universe.

I know more about Riddick’s sexual life than I ever knew about my husband’s. I know that waking up with me rubbing against him turns Riddick on. To be fair, I suppose any physical contact would be arousing if you’ve been deprived of it for as long as he has. Even for as long as I have . . .

I know he fantasizes about sex with me. I hear him whispering my name when he’s masturbating. And I can’t control the curiosity it arouses in me. What is he thinking? What’s happening on the viewscreen of his mind? Sex, of course . . . but, what exactly? What does he think about when he touches himself and says my name? I’m desperate to know, but I’m also terrified of what he’ll say.

What I don’t know, what I don’t understand, is why he hasn’t forced himself on me. He’s in control; there’s little doubt about that. There’s nothing I could do if he forced me. He proves every day when we spar that he’s stronger and faster than I am. I know he wants sex, craves it maybe. But other than teasing me, he hasn’t done anything to initiate it. He hasn’t even mentioned the blow-job I owe him in the days since the Nectar jump. I really don’t understand him.

The harsh breathing in the bathroom approaches a second climax. I watch as he pours himself into the commode. He pauses for a minute, and then starts again. Dear God, is he going to do it a third time this morning?

*

I can feel the heat of Carolyn’s gaze on the back of my neck this morning as I jack off. I slow down my strokes, playing them out for her, imagining its her wet little mouth working up and down my cock instead of my hand. These fantasies of her are the best I’ve had in years. I come, working my fingers down my cock, pushing out the last few drops. I rest my head against my hand, braced against the wall above the commode. My forehead throbs against the back of my hand. I still feel as hot as when I woke up, my cock pushed tight between the cheeks of Carolyn’s ass. My balls are still throbbing.

I wrap my hand around the base of my cock and start pumping again. Maybe a third orgasm will relieve the incessant pounding in my nuts. And it’ll impress the hell out of Carolyn.

I know she watches me. She’s been watching practically every morning since that first time when she caught me jerking off. Her voyeurism doubles my enjoyment. I’ve had some rich fantasies about her rising off the bed, walking up behind me and replacing my hand with hers. Those fantasies usually end with me banging her against the wall above the commode, holding her slender legs in the crooks of my elbows as I pound into her. That’s a position I’ve always wanted to try. And she’s the perfect size for it, small and light and very fuckable. But today my mind slides to thoughts of her round white ass in my hands, pressing back against my pelvis as I ride her.

I groan her name as I envision that sweet ass in my hands. I often do. The first few times she watched me, I kept silent, afraid of spooking her. But then I let her name slip once and heard her breathing quicken, smelled the faint salty musk of her arousal. Now I do it routinely, just to hear her breathing change, smell her excitement. It turns me on almost as much as imagining fucking her.

This morning I can’t get the sight and feel of that round ass out of my head. Waking up this morning with it pressed into my groin for what feels like the hundredth time has sent me into a fever. I know every contour of her ass. I know how it feels in my hands, against my cock. So I imagine taking her from behind. I don’t think she’d actually ever let me do her doggy-style. Too submissive for her. But the fantasy of making her come in that position, of holding her hips and balling her that way, slamming my pelvis against her ass, until she bucks and screams and begs, sends me over the edge.

I brace myself against the wall until I’m not seeing spots from coming so often. Then I wash my hand and turn into the bedroom.

Carolyn’s fussing with the wall valet, the way she often is when I finish jerking off. I like this game she plays, pretending she just woke up and wasn’t watching me. The hectic color in her cheeks would put the lie to that one, even if I hadn’t felt her eyes glued to my ass for the last forty minutes.

I rummage for a fresh set of briefs in the dresser I’ve appropriated. My favorites, the ones with the red lips on them – the ones that make Carolyn blush every time I pull them on – need a wash, so I pull out some dark fabric ones instead. Then I look down at my cock. Despite the long work out, it’s still hard, still red and swollen. What the hell? Maybe it’s the sight of Carolyn, standing with her back to me, her fine round ass filling out those little boy shorts. Or maybe it’s this strange feverish heat in my blood that all that jacking off hasn’t diminished.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. My vision blurs into a red and purple smear.

"Riddick?" I hear Carolyn say. Her voice sounds distant. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Are you ready for breakfast?"

I roll my shoulders against the ache tightening my back. "In a minute." I lie back onto the bed. The smell of sex billows up around me. The sheets under my back feel clammy. I shiver. Am I lying on the wet spot? Did I fuck Carolyn after all?

"Riddick?" Her voice rings in my ears, then fades as grayness closes in.

*

I’ve never known him to go back to bed once he’s gotten up. He’s so institutionalized that he keeps to his routine even though there’s no need here. He could sleep all day if he wanted. I’m certainly not going to stop him. But he keeps to a strict routine. Up at 5 a.m. central time, bed by 10 p.m. He’s never varied from the routine in the last three and a half weeks. Until today, when at 5:43 a.m., according to the clock implanted in my retina, he flops back onto the bed.

I circle the bed and stand to one side, where his legs overhang the mattress. And there I finally get a good look at him. His briefs are still around his ankles. His penis rises from that sculpted body. It’s so long it shadows his navel. So thick I couldn’t close my hand around it. Pumped full, it’s a lustrous purple color that draws the eye. I can’t help but stare at him for several seconds.

Then it spurts a thick pinkish fluid all over his stomach. Disgusting.

I’ve seen him come many times. His ejaculate is an opaque white, even in the low emergency light. This isn’t right. He groans, tosses his head. I bend over him and touch his chest for reassurance. My fingers come away sticky. Pink.

I run for the crew storage areas.

The autodoc powers up slowly. I chew on my thumbnails as I wait for it. A terrible sense of foreboding tightens my stomach. I’ve never seen Riddick anything but one hundred percent alert, aware. The idea that he’s human, fallible, makes me queasy, even though it’s what I’ve hoped for for weeks.

Even before the autodoc’s monitor glows green, I drag it to the sleeping quarters and hook it up over the bed. It flicks an infrared beam over Riddick, but he’s in the wrong position, sprawled sideways across the edge of the bed. I know it will blink ‘inconclusive’ even before the message displays.

I try to shove Riddick up onto the bed. Dear God, he’s heavy. It’s all I can do to get his legs on the bed and roll him onto his side. I hope it will be enough.

The red beam flicks down his long body again. This time the autodoc cycles instead of immediately displaying a message. I hover over Riddick, rubbing his bare back when he begins shivering.

‘Severe cryocitosis’ displays across the autodoc’s monitor.

Cryo-sickness. It’s taken a long time to manifest. And it can be fatal.

The autodoc’s display blinks.

Treat? it asks me over and over.

I could hit no, and he’d probably die in less than a day. I could change the course headings for the nearest station, climb in my cryo-tube and leave him. I wouldn’t have to watch him die. I wouldn’t even have to know one way or the other. By the time I woke, the Company would have taken care of whatever was left of him.

I stare at the display for a long time before I tap the screen.

The autodoc lowers a thin arm to Riddick’s huge shoulder and injects him with something that should help with the extreme fluctuations in his core temperature. I gather blankets from the storage lockers and other bed to pile on him. Riddick’s skin is clammy, which means he’s in a low. His temp will spike over the next forty-eight hours as his body expels the cryo-drugs, then drop dangerously until his hypothalamus starts regulating his body temperature again. If I’m remembering my training correctly.

For the next thirty hours, all I do is mop and hold him. When I’m lucky, he vomits in the pail I’ve found. When I’m not so lucky, he vomits on the bed, on the floor, on me. The ship’s automaid gives up after twelve hours. I’m lucky to have the wall valet, which spits out fresh sheets almost as fast as Riddick soils them. The sickly smell of the cryo-drugs stops nauseating me after a while. The feeling of Riddick sweating them out all over my skin stops making me shiver. I risk a shower during a period when his temperature spikes and he stops vomiting. But I return to find him convulsing. His core temperature has dropped below ninety degrees. I pile the blankets back on him, but it’s not enough. Stripping to the skin, I climb on top of him. His convulsions wear down to faint shivers and I fall asleep on top of him, exhausted, covered in sweat and the pearl-pink pus he’s excreting from every pore.

When I wake the autodoc tells me that he’s critically dehydrated, and for the next eight hours I drip water into his mouth by the teaspoonful between rounds of mopping. It gives me more to mop, but at least it quiets the autodoc.

When the autodoc tells me he’s stable, I risk another shower and stumble to the flight deck to check on our status. When Riddick went down, we were on course and eight days from Terra Unnova, the water world I’ve selected as a refueling site. Now, we’re still on course, and five days out.

I tap up the link from the autodoc and confirm that Riddick’s still stable. Then I bring up the ship’s in-flight recorder. Something’s been bothering me since the autodoc’s diagnosis. Something I should have wondered about weeks ago, but never did.

I dial back through the days and weeks to the pre-flight. I watch the policeman bring Riddick aboard, parade him in the blindfold and bit and chains in front of Captain Mitchell and Owens like a circus freak. Where was I?

I flick the display, quarter it, and see myself alone on the flight deck, running through the pre-flight protocols. Yes, I remember now. Pete disappeared for a half-hour. Unusual for pre-flight, but I assumed he was showing Owens something. And he was, as it happened, just not what I thought.

The quartered display continues to show its schizophrenic montage. The passengers putting on their sleeping robes and monitoring patches in the lounge. In the corridor, the policeman taunting Riddick with a shock baton while Captain Mitchell and Owens watch with expressions of obscene interest. Riddick stands impassive, unmoving, even when the baton’s glowing tip leaves red weals on his dusky skin. On the flight deck, my own image going through the pre-flight by the numbers. How could I have been so oblivious to what was happening just down the hall?

The policeman herds Riddick into the secure pod. I watch intently. What went wrong? How did Riddick escape? I assumed he’d never gone into cryo-sleep. That he’d been loose during the entire trip and only decided to wake me up when he wanted to change our course. But now I realize I was wrong. He didn’t know the ship. He hadn’t been sleeping in the crew quarters or on the flight deck. He’d only just killed the Captain and Owens when he woke me. He must have been awake for weeks in his pod, ingesting all those cryo-drugs, while the rest of us slept. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cryo-sickness.

Guilt curdles my stomach. The geese, all of them, even Riddick, are the crew’s responsibility. We left Riddick awake in stasis for weeks. It’s amazing he’s sane. People have developed disassociative psychosis when the cryo-systems failed and they were trapped for more than a few hours in their pods. Stasis is like sensory deprivation. It must have been more so for Riddick with the blindfold on. How could we have left him like that? What happened to the fail-safes? An alarm should have gone off when Riddick’s EEG still registered waking brain activity after an hour on the cryo-drugs. Another alarm should have alerted us when his pod opened. What went wrong?

I see nothing out of the ordinary as the policeman secures Riddick in his pod. After the policeman leaves him, Riddick shifts uncomfortably against his bonds. He flexes his jaw against the bit. I rub the corners of my own mouth sympathetically. The bit looks painful. Why did the policeman leave the bit in after locking Riddick down? It seems pointlessly cruel.

On the viewer, Riddick tests the right wrist rope, tests it again. I remember that the policeman was unhappy about having to use the ropes. He’d wanted chains around Riddick’s wrists. But the manacles interfered with the cryo connections, so he had to make do with the ropes. Was it the ropes that failed to hold Riddick? Was that how he escaped?

Riddick bows his head and goes perfectly still. I recognize that posture. I’ve seen it many times when we’ve sparred, when he was waiting for me to come at him. He’s told me it’s a moment of stillness. Of waiting until the perfect moment to strike. And so he must have waited, for day and weeks, until that perfect moment when the wrist rope was loose enough, and he could strike.

I zip through the rest of the pre-flight images. As far as I can tell from the grainy viewer images, nothing unusual happened when Riddick was put in his pod. I skim through the take-off. It was routine as far as I remember.

On the viewer, I rise from my flight chair, a step behind Captain Mitchell. Pete rode shot-gun, as he usually did. But he didn’t actually do anything during take-off other than watch. Pete and I were never friends, but he respected my abilities as a pilot. He stayed out of my way when I was doing my job. In the quartered image, I see Owens still sitting in the navigation bubble over the cockpit. Mitchell and I touch our hands to our earpieces as Owens tells us he wants to recheck our approach to New Mecca. Pete winks at me. I remember his amusement at Owens’ eager beaver first-flight behavior.

Mitchell and I climb into our tubes and hook ourselves into the cryo-system. I watch my own face go slack as the drugs begin to take effect.

In the top right image, Owens stretches and slides out of his chair. There’s something about his expression that reminds me of when he was watching the policeman taunt Riddick. The small hairs on the back of my neck rise. Owens passes through the quartered images, moving from the flight deck towards his own cryo-locker. He doesn’t climb into it, though. Instead, he walks slowly down the row of sleeping passengers. He peers into various tubes. Finally, he stops in front of one of them.

He pops the cover of the tube, revealing a pretty, dark-haired woman sleeping within. Owens reaches across her and opens the loose cloth wrap that all the passengers wear into cryo-sleep. He leans over the pod, first ogling and then groping the woman’s round, white breasts. My gorge rises. What is he doing?

Owens shucks off his trousers, revealing skinny, pallid legs. He climbs into the passenger’s tube and crouches over the woman. With one hand he fondles the sleeping woman, and with the other he works his little red member. His harsh breathing echoes through the still ship. I cover my mouth with my hand. I want to scream at the viewer. But some small, logical piece of my mind knows this all happened months ago. There’s nothing I can do but watch.

An alarm sounds, causing Owens to jump. Snarling, he climbs out of the passenger’s tube and walks down the row. Riddick’s alarm has finally gone off. Two lockers over, I toss my head as the system begins to wake me to deal with the emergency.

His reddened face wrinkling with consternation, Owens slams his hand into the controls on the side of Riddick’s pod. He hastily taps in the crew override code, shutting down the fail-safes. The alarm goes silent. My eyelids flutter, but I stop moving. Owen smiles, a ratlike baring of yellowed teeth that makes my stomach turn over. Then he walks back down the row of cryo-tubes and climbs into the passenger’s tube again.

Watching Owens’s pumping white buttocks does what Riddick’s threats and innuendoes never managed. I lean over the arm of my flight chair and vomit up the coffee and toast that are all I’ve eaten today. Wiping my mouth, I sit back in the flight chair. The overworked automaid sluggishly sprays and vacuums up my vomit while I watch Owens finish and climb out of the passenger’s tube. He wipes the dark-haired woman’s stomach with a cloth. He must have pulled out of her before he came. The calculation of his assault sends a fresh wave of nausea through me. With the disorientation and general soreness after cryo-sleep, and without any tangible evidence of Owens’ violation, the woman would probably never be certain that she’d been raped. Even if she did, Owens was responsible for the in-flight recorder. He could have altered the record long before the woman made any accusation.

On the screen, Owens closes the woman’s locker and walks back to his own. He pauses next to my tube and runs his fingers down the cover.

"I’ll save you for next time, bitch," he says.

I dry-heave into my hand. Dear God. He was planning to rape me, too.

Owens climbs into his tube and connects himself to the system. With all of the passengers and crew hooked up, the cryo-cycle starts. The covers of the tubes frost. On Riddick’s pod, a yellow alarm light blinks silently. Inside, Riddick breathes through his bit in puffs of vapor. Owens didn’t cancel the fail-safe override before he went into cryo. He left Riddick awake while he raped one of our passengers and then went to sleep.

I turn off the viewer and sit in my flight chair, shaking and sickened. I was right in thinking there was a monster onboard. I just didn’t realize who it actually was.

I rise and walk down the row of cryo-tubes. Inside the first two, Mitchell and Owens are bloated and black. I’m glad the lockers contain the stink of their decomposition. I want to open Owens’ tube, cut off that disgusting bit of meat hanging between his legs and ram it down his throat. But it’s pointless. Riddick avenged the dark-haired woman, even though he didn’t know it at the time.

I walk onwards down the row. In front of the policeman’s tube, I stop and stare at him, as I’ve seen Riddick do so many times. For weeks I’ve thought of the policeman as my savior. The half-formed plans I’d made to subdue Riddick before we reached Kelsin all involved waking the policeman and having him help me. But now I’m not sure if he’s even on my side. Wounding Riddick while he was chained and helpless, leaving in the bit for no reason, those actions mark the policeman as a coward. Maybe I don’t want Johns awake, any more than I want Owens alive.

I return to the sleeping quarters. The stink of pus, sweat, urine, vomit, feces greets me when I open the door. A very human stink. I smile a little. At least something about Riddick is human. I turn on the fans to vent the room before climbing into bed next to him. Looking down into his square, unhandsome face, I mull over what I’ve seen.

I am among monsters. But maybe he’s not one of them.

*

When I wake, I’m wrapped around Riddick again. His skin is warm against mine, but not feverish, not sweat-soaked. I glance up at the autodoc. Reassured by the message on its display, I settle back against Riddick. Sleepily, I stroke his stubbly head, nestled between my breasts as we lie facing each other. Riddick grumbles in his sleep. He’s barely made any sound in the last two days, except a gagging noise just before he vomited. I take this noise as a good sign and let myself drift, still running my fingertips over Riddick’s rough velvet scalp.

Riddick rubs his cheek against my breastbone. After two days of not shaving, his stubble makes me wince. I should have put my underwear back on before climbing into bed. I’ve been going naked for the last twenty-four hours. Pus and vomit are easier to rinse off bare skin than cloth. Now I groggily deliberate getting out of the warm bed and putting on my underwear.

As I’m still deliberating, my eyelids drifting closed, Riddick turns his head and latches on to my breast.

My eyes fly open. I start and try to pull away, but Riddick tightens those massive arms around me. One arm pins my breasts against his face. The other wraps around my hips, locking my groin against his stomach. His huge hand closes on my buttock, kneading and squeezing. He pulls my nipple deep into his mouth and begins suckling.

Shocked, both by his actions and by the sensations spiraling through me, I say his name, softly and then louder. He doesn’t respond, continuing his slow sucking on my breast, his gentle kneading of my ass. His eyes are closed. His breathing is even and deep. I’m not even sure he’s aware of what he’s doing. I don’t think he’s awake.

I struggle a little, but he’s got me trapped against him. Even after his illness, he’s so strong I can’t escape his grip. And I’m afraid of him biting down if I startle him awake. He nuzzles my breast, rolling my nipple in his mouth, furling his tongue around it and then sucking hard with the back of his throat. It reminds me of something and after a moment I place it. I’ve seen refugee infants nurse on flashes. Is that what Riddick’s doing? Is he trying to nurse?

I don’t want to enjoy what he’s doing, but somehow the idea of Riddick nursing is less offensive than him groping me in his sleep. I relax in his arms and begin stroking his head again. Maybe he’ll stop if I comfort him a little.

He makes that low grumbling noise again. It shivers across my skin from my breast to my belly. Fire is pooling there, flaring hotter and hotter with each tug of his mouth on my breast. His hand massages my ass, pressing me firmly against him. I slide my thigh over his hip to relieve the pressure on my pelvis. But that only puts pressure on a different spot. Fire licks upwards, too. I writhe in his arms at the onslaught of sensation.

He releases my nipple with a small pop. I sigh with relief. Now he’ll fall back into deep sleep and stop touching me. But he doesn’t. Instead he rubs his face between my breasts again and mouths his way across my skin until he finds my other breast. His hot tongue swirls around my nipple and aureole. He sucks hard on my breast, his throat and tongue and lips working like he’s eating me. I can’t stand it. I moan and wriggle, trying to escape or to press myself closer to him, I’m not sure which.

His hold only lets me move fractionally. Wriggling only makes it worse, makes my skin slide on his, hot and sticking with sweat. Each pore of his skin seems to lick mine when I move. So I stop moving. Except my hips. I can’t seem to keep them still. His hand kneading my buttock encourages a slow rolling of my hips against his. He moves me against him in counterpoint to the tugging of his mouth on my breast.

I’m burning, burning inside. It’s a fiery ache that pulses with every pull of his mouth, every clench of his fingers. I can’t stand it. And I can’t stop it. I’m caught in his powerful embrace, within the inferno of his touch. He keeps sucking, licking, tugging at my breast, grinding my pelvis against his hard stomach. The fire within me expands, burning through blood and bone. I have to quench this ache before I go mad. I’m screaming inside, my body needing something so fiercely I’ll implode if I don’t have it.

I know what I need. I feel the hot length of it against my leg. The tip brushes against my wet thighs as I writhe in his arms. Oh, just a little higher. Just rub along me a little and satisfy this ache.

I stretch, flexing my back, and work down in his arms just a fraction until his tip rubs across my slick labia. The fire inside me leaps. Yes, that’s what I need. His thick head parts me, slides along the aching, burning, wanting flesh within. Just a little more. I’m going to die if I can’t have a little more. I roll my hips against him, bucking the pressure of his hand on my ass. And finally, finally, his tip enters me. I cry out with the pleasure of it. With the relief my body finds with just that brush of his flesh against mine. The fire in my belly races through me, licking through my marrow like his tongue licks against my sensitized nipple.

Oh, but it’s still not enough.

I ache deep, deep in my core. That’s where I need him. I twist, writhe, grapple him with my hands on his hard buttocks, my leg over his thighs, and centimeter by centimeter I work down onto him. Centimeter by centimeter that steel-silk hardness pushes into me. I’m so wet and ready that I take him in effortlessly, despite his size. And he fills me. Oh, God, he fills me. I feel him all through me. His head pushes against the deep barrier of my body and fire ripples through me again. I’ve never been so aroused, never needed a man’s penetration so desperately.

I work my hips against him, gasping and pleading even though I know he can’t hear me. I need him to ride me, to fill me over and over. To satisfy this fiery ache that builds and builds with each fractional movement of him inside me. I’m screaming silently, clawing at him in desperation. He moves, a quickening surge within me, a contraction of that massive hand on my ass. I’m squeezed between those two immovable forces, and his cock pushes further into me than ever.

I do scream then.

A firestorm bursts through me. My body contracts tighter and tighter around him as he rocks deep in me. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can only feel him moving in me, through me, stoking the tsunami waves of pleasure higher and higher until I shatter.

I wake shaking, slowly pulling myself back from the far stars where I’ve been flung. I open my eyes to that liquid quicksilver gaze.

*

Consciousness returns by slow degrees. Sensation by sensation. And they’re curious sensations. Cool sheets under me. Warm skin against mine. My skin feels prickly and tight. I have vague memories of burning and freezing, of sweating out maggots and leeches, and, the strangest of all, of puking white blood into Carolyn’s cupped hands. That can’t be right.

And then there’s what’s in my mouth. Curiouser and curiouser. It’s not the hard metal of the bit. It’s not just the familiar thickness of my own tongue. It’s firm but yielding, and it tastes, ah, it tastes wonderful. It tastes like Carolyn smells, of salt and musk and apples. I draw it deeper into my mouth, work my tongue around it, and finally place the shape and texture. Mmm, Carolyn’s breast. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have in my mouth. Except maybe her clitoris, but there’s time for that, too.

She wriggles in my arms, says my name, but she’s not going anywhere. This time I’ve got her. She’s naked. She’s pressed against me so tight I can feel each individual curl of her mound. She’s got her breast in my mouth. She may be shy, but this is an invitation if there ever was one.

Her supple fingers stroke my head, turning my scalp into one long erogenous zone. Pleasure spirals down my spine. She’s accepted her fate. She knows she’s not getting away. I nuzzle her, releasing one breast only because I want to taste the other. To find out if it’s just as sweet.

It is. Her nipple pebbles against my tongue. I work it into my mouth, sucking until it stretches across my palate. Licking, sucking, rubbing her with the soft inner tissues of my mouth. Carolyn’s moaning now. Her hips are rolling against my stomach. Her little round thigh grips my waist. She works her way down me and I let her, still holding her tight, still sucking and sucking on that sweet, soft breast. She rubs herself against my head. She’s soaked: her curls wet, her thighs slippery. I don’t even have to work to enter her. She does everything, pushing herself down on me frantically, as if she can’t stand the waiting any longer.

That tight wet heat encloses me. It’s better than I imagined. Like wet velvet. She’s small, but she pushes and pushes until she takes me all the way to the hilt. I smother a groan in her breast. Not many women can take me all the way in the first time. I’m so deep in her I can feel the satin-smooth surface of her cervix rub against my glans. She’s moving wildly, her hips jerking against mine. Her hands scrabble across my back. She’s moaning my name, clutching at me with her hands and leg and strong internal muscles. I release her breast and straighten my back so that I can move in her. She’s so far gone in the pleasure of our fucking, she doesn’t even notice.

This is exactly the way I wanted her. Her body pressed against the length of mine. Her leg over my hip. My cock sunk deep in her. Her round ass filling my hands as I rock her back and forth. I slide easily almost all the way out of her and then all the way back in. Her cries fill my ears; her voice gone husky with pleasure. That’s the way I wanted to hear her.

Her body grips me, her internal muscles swelling and rolling along my length. That unique tidal movement of a woman’s body as she nears orgasm. I’ve only felt it a few times, but it’s unmistakable, unforgettable. Hard shivers run through her, pull me deeper, pull me towards the climax that’s building between us. I let go, pounding hard into her as she screams, as her body tightens around me like a fist, milking me as I pour myself into her.

I move slowly in her afterwards, prolonging the pleasure. Sliding one hand around from her ass to her stomach, I press gently. A Company hooker showed me that when I was still with the Rangers. She claimed a woman could come again if you rubbed her right after a good first orgasm. I haven’t managed it yet, but I’m happy to keep trying. I can feel Carolyn’s little womb contract under my palm as I stroke her. She moans softly and goes limp against me. Her head rolls back on my arm. The whites of her eyes show under her nearly closed lids.

I’ve fucked her unconscious. That’s a first. Guess it was good for her, too.

I stroke her as she sleeps in my arms. My hands find her heart-shaped curves, the fine texture of her skin, the fuzz of hair that covers her skin like the down on a ripe peach. I’ve looked at what I’m touching now so many times. But I didn’t dare give in to the desire to touch her for fear of spooking her. What’s changed? What’s gotten her over her fear? Why has she finally given herself to me?

I’m puzzling over this when her eyes flash open. Relief is the first thing I see in those expressive eyes. So it was a near thing, then. My head’s clear enough to sort real memories from fever dreams now. I didn’t sweat maggots or leeches, but I was sweating out some foul-smelling shit. And I did puke into Carolyn’s hands, among other places. The smell of it lingers in the room, along with the faint stink of blood, piss and shit. Poor Carolyn, she’s seen me at my worst. And she still wanted to fuck me.

Then something else floods into her eyes. Remorse. Soul-shriveling regret. Fuck. That’s not the emotion I expected. The sex was so good I thought it would wipe out any second-thoughts she might have. I know it was good for her. You can’t fake what I felt when she came.

"Carolyn—" I begin.

She throws herself out of my arms and runs into the bathroom. I hear her retching as I rise stiffly out of the bed. Fuck and fuck. That’s not the reaction I expected, either. I thought she’d want to cuddle afterwards, to talk, maybe to fuck again if she wasn’t too sore. I didn’t expect her to puke after such a great screw.

She’s sitting on the closed commode, her head down, her arms stretched into the sink, cold liquid running over her wrists.

I lean against the ‘fresher doorway, in part because standing up unaided is making me see spots. After a minute, she looks up. Shame has replaced remorse in her eyes.

"Riddick, I’m so-so sorry."

Me, too. I thought I could take the girl out of the convent, but I can’t seem to take the convent out of the girl. Not even by fucking it out of her.

"Forget it." I shrug. "We were both half asleep." That’s a lie. I feel preternaturally alert. Hyper-aware of her every movement.

"No. No, I wasn’t." She shakes her head and a tear slides down her cheek. "I was awake and I knew what I was doing and I couldn’t stop myself. I-I forced myself on you. Just like Owens did to that poor girl. And you-you’ve been so sick. God, Riddick, I’m just so sorry." She hangs her head, her shoulders heaving.

She forced herself on me? Hell, Carolyn, you can force yourself on me any time you want.

I settle onto my haunches in front of the commode, trying to parse through what she’s said. How she’s managed to fuck herself up in the head quite this much, I don’t know. But clearly she believes everything she’s said. Her expression is shattered, destroyed; tears stream down her cheeks.

"Want to start at the beginning?" I ask her in the gentlest tone I can manage.

She wipes her face with a wet hand. "Wha-what?"

"How long have I been down?"

Her eyes unfocus for a second as she checks some internal chrono. Nice wetware.

"About two days," she says.

"What happened?"

"You-you collapsed on the bed." Color flares into her pale cheeks. What about me passing out could embarrass her? "The autodoc said you had severe cryo-sickness."

Bad way to go. Messy.

"But you pulled me through." I smile at her, a genuine smile. She could have let me die. It would have been an easy out for her. In fact, why didn’t she? There are a host of unanswered questions here. But I tuck them away for later. When she doesn’t look like all the light has gone out of the universe.

"Riddick, I–" She hangs her head. "I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t have done."

I doubt that. I wasn’t imagining puking into her hands. "That ain’t how I remember it."

"What do you—? No, you were out the whole time."

I shrug. "I remember bits and pieces."

Carolyn shakes her head and wipes her eyes again. Whatever’s rattled her so bad, we haven’t gotten to it yet.

"And I remember all of this morning," I tell her. She hangs her head. "How’d that happen?"

"I-I, uh—" She covers her face with her hands. This is it. This is the root of it. It’s just fucking me that’s her problem.

I ease up off my haunches. Squatting like that’s making my back ache. And now that the initial rush of adrenaline has passed, I’m feeling light-headed. I want to lie down.

"Carolyn, I donnow what you think happened. But you didn’t force yourself on me. I was a willing victim." I pause in the doorway of the ‘fresher. "You can sit in here cryin’ over whatever you think you did wrong. Or you can come back to bed with me."

I turn my back on her and walk unsteadily to the bed. My head is spinning. Lying down is better. Lying down with Carolyn would be even better. But she doesn’t join me. I lie there and listen to her sniffle in the bathroom for a few minutes.

"Carolyn, come here," I finally say.

The water goes off and she appears in the doorway. "Riddick—"

I don’t really want to hear whatever delusion she’s trying to talk herself into. "Just come here."

She shuffles over to the bed, still wiping at her nose. I should be worried about what’s going on in her head. But it’s hard to concentrate on anything other than the slide of the dim emergency light over her pale skin as she moves. It highlights the muscles flexing in her thighs, the curves of her soft belly, the dark tips of her breasts. There’s no way I’m keeping my hands off her if she gets back in this bed. But maybe that’s a good thing. We seem to understand each other best when we’re touching.

She slides in next to me. She doesn’t touch me, and I can feel her shivering. I roll onto my back and stretch out an arm. After a minute, she scoots back against my side.

"You-you’re really not angry?"

What goes on in that fucked-up little head? Did she somehow miss that I whack off every morning fantasizing about her? She’s heard me say her name while I jerk off dozens of times. It gets her hot even if she doesn’t want to admit it. So why would she think I’d be angry about finally getting what I’ve wanted for so long?

"No," I say. The understatement of the millennium.

"Riddick—" She turns hesitantly and slides her arm across my chest. She stares up at me, emotions flickering through her eyes so fast I can’t read them all. "How are you feeling?"

That’s not what she wanted to ask, but I have a sense we’ll get back to it. Whatever’s going on in her head, it’s a powerful mind-fuck, and it’ll be back to haunt her later. I’m just hoping she doesn’t puke after every time we screw. ‘Cause we sure as hell aren’t going back to those blue-ball platonic snuggles now that I’ve found out what a good lay she is.

"Better." That’s mostly the truth. My back’s a fucking knot again and if she wasn’t still on the edge of hysterics, I’d ask her to rub it. But for the moment, lying here touching her is enough.

"Have you ever had cryo-sickness before?" Her voice is steadier now. She’s found safe ground.

"Nope." Never having it again either if I can help it. I’m slashing through John’s life-support as soon as I can stand up. It’s too easy a death for him, but I’m not risking him putting me back in cryo ever again.

Then something cold trickles down my spine. Johns . . . she’s been awake and had the run of the ship for two days while I’ve been down. What’s she done in those forty-eight hours? Is she feeling guilty just for fucking me, or because she’s fucked me over?

"Where are we, Carolyn?" I ask, as neutrally as I can manage.

"About eighty hours from Terra Unnova." She yawns, stifles it with the back of her hand. "We’ll pick up fuel there."

I’ve never heard of it and tell her so.

She shrugs. The movement tucks her a little closer against my side. If I wasn’t so worried about Johns bursting in and clapping me back in manacles, I’d really be enjoying this. Cuddling after sex is something I’ve missed for far too long.

"It’s not settled," she says. "That’s why I picked it. There’s a ‘do not land’ prohibition. Something about hostile life forms. But all we need to do is siphon up some water into the fuel tanks, so we should be fine."

If that’s all that’s happened in the last two days, yes, we should. So we’re still on course. She stuck to the plan. But what about Johns? Has she woken him? Has she figured out a way to send out a distress call? Will there be mercs waiting for us at Brevin? I mull over how to ask her without alienating her completely. She’s so warm and soft against me. I don’t want to ruin this. But I need to know.

"What else have you been up to?"

She tenses. So she was up to something.

"Wh-what makes you think I’ve been doing anything but taking care of you?"

‘Cause you nearly jumped out of your skin when I asked the question. "Just wondering."

"You’ve kept me pretty busy."

Not so busy that you weren’t up to something. I roll onto my side, slide my other arm around her and look down into her expressive eyes. They’ll tell me what I want to know.

She stares up at me, her eyes raw, naked. I swallow what I was going to say. There’s something wounded deep in her eyes. Something that broke her trust in people and made her guard her body as fiercely as she does her heart. Anything I ask her now, any indication of distrust, will reopen that wound. I’ll have to bide my time and find out if she’s betrayed me another way. Asking her now, fresh after she’s given herself to me, will break whatever fragile trust we have.

"Wh-what now?" she breathes. Face to face, her breath is foul.

"Now I’m gonna kiss you, Carolyn." I smile gently. "But first you gotta brush your teeth."

*

Kissing her turns out to be almost as erotic as sucking her breast. But I don’t find that out immediately, because as she’s brushing her teeth, the red-eyed globe she’s hung over the bed announces that I’m dehydrated and malnourished. Carolyn races back into the bedroom, her mouth still full of foam, when the autodoc goes off.

"I’ll get you a tray from the galley," she says around the foam.

I shake my head. Getting up and stretching out my back seems like a good idea right now. And as long as I take advantage of my invalidism, I can do it and keep touching her. A win-win situation, you might say.

"Finish brushing your teeth and we’ll go together. I’m ready to get up."

Disappointment creases her forehead for a second, quickly wiped away. I hide a smile. So she was looking forward to coming back to bed, despite whatever’s screwing her head around sideways. Good. Don’t worry, Carolyn, we got plenty of time for everything.

I play weak, and she actually suggests supporting me before I do. Good ploy. I lean on her, my arm over her shoulder, her arm circling my waist, as we walk the few steps to the galley. Her soft breast presses against my ribs; her other breast is just under my hand. It’s tempting to reach down, brush my palm against her nipple and feel it furl. But that would give away the game.

Carolyn’s so eager to make me comfortable, to make sure I have everything I need, it’s almost laughable. Despite my silence, she eats a big plate of food herself, more than I’ve seen her eat since the start of our little odyssey.

"You were hungry," I observe as she finishes what has to be her fifth sausage.

She nods. "I didn’t have time to eat while you were sick." Her voice is steady, but there’s faint heat in her cheeks. Hmm. She’s not lying, but she’s not telling me the whole truth, either.

She looks at my tray and then up at me anxiously. Such a good little Florence Nightingale. "Have you eaten enough? Do you want anything more?"

I want more, but not food. My belly’s full, and that pleasant fullness soothes away the last sense of sickness. I feel good, strong. But not satiated. Definitely ready for more.

"I’m full." I rub my hand across my forehead as though my head’s spinning. "Think I should lie down, though."

Carolyn jumps up so fast she knocks over her chair. "Okay. Okay, let me help you." She fumbles, trying to right her chair and support me at the same time. As if I’m going to suddenly fall out of my chair. I have to swallow a chuckle.

Once she gets her chair righted, she pulls my arm over her shoulders again and tries to lift me. She’s gotten stronger since we started sparring, but she still can’t budge me. I rise, gripping the table with one hand as though I need the support.

"It’s just a few steps," she says encouragingly. I keep my head down to hide my grin. She wouldn’t appreciate knowing how much this tickles me. No one’s ever been so eager to help me do anything.

Back in the sleeping quarters, I turn towards the ‘fresher instead of the bed. "Just a second. I need the john."

It’s tempting to make her help me there, too. Having her hold my cock while I piss could be all kinds of amusing. But she’s already had to clean me up plenty, so I figure I’ll give her a break and do it myself.

"Okay. I’ll just change the bed," she says as I take a shuffling step towards the commode. I hear her whipping the sheets off the bed as I empty my bladder. Standing in the small ‘fresher, I can smell the sour odor of my body. She did a good job cleaning me while I was sick. The smell is nothing more than sweat. But even that’s offensive. For years I couldn’t clean myself when I wanted. Now I’m free, and I can shower whenever I fucking well like.

I step into the shower, only to have her join me a moment later. She looks up at me without guile, all earnest desire to help. "Are you okay? Do you want me to help?"

Do I want her little naked self in the shower with me? No . . .

"Could use some help with my back," I say, turning it to her to hide my grin.

She soaps my back thoroughly, then rubs her thumbs across my shoulders and down my spine. I groan. My knees go weak and I grab on to the wall of the shower to keep from collapsing. She gives such good back.

"Riddick? Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Don’t stop."

"Does your back hurt? Here." She presses her knuckles into my lower back, working down the long, tight muscles there. I rest my forehead against the shower wall and close my eyes. That feels so good. It’s almost better than sex. Well, no, not better than sex with Carolyn.

She works down over my ass, pressing deep into my twinging sciatic nerve. Relief pours through me, almost orgasmic in its intensity. My cock rises and brushes the wet wall. I have a sudden image of picking up Carolyn, slamming her against the wall and sinking to the balls in her. I could do it. I don’t think she’d fight me now. But it’s not worth stopping what she’s doing to my back.

She works her thumbs up and down along my spine until my back feels as fluid as the blue liquid running down it. Fucking her with my back this loose would be glorious. Will be glorious.

She reaches the top of my neck and stops, her hands lingering on my skin, uncertain.

"My front needs soaping, too." I turn, rolling my head along the wall. When I’m facing her, I arch my back, flexing my chest and stomach for her. My cock rises between us and brushes her soft stomach.

She stares up at me. Something shifts in her eyes. She’s beginning to realize that I’ve been playing her. Will she play along or play pissed off?"

"Are you teasing me?"

"Yeah," I admit. "But I really could use help with the soap."

Carolyn smiles. She runs a soapy hand over my chest, down my stomach. I suck in a breath at the sensation. She glances up at me. Now there’s guile in those expressive eyes. She’s decided to play along. And she can tease, too.

Her hand drifts lower. Her palm slides across my glans.

"Does this need soaping, too?" she asks. Ah, she really can tease. I suck my lower lip into my mouth.

She smiles again, a siren’s smile, seductive and sweet. Her slippery hand closes on my cock. She works it gently, her thumb gliding over my tip the way it glided over the muscles of my back. I lean back against the cool shower wall and give myself over to the motion of her hand. She strokes me slowly, soaping me from base to tip, and I recognize the rhythm. She’s seen me jerk off so many times she’s memorized the way I do it.

Her hand slides down my base, her fingers slipping over my balls. I sigh, suck in my lower lip. Having a woman stroke my nuts is one of my all-time favorite things. I’ve missed it for so long I’d almost forgotten.

Carolyn’s hand strays to my thighs and I glance down at her in mock-protest. She grins up at me. The light in her eyes is wicked. She’s going to torment me, and for these few minutes, I don’t mind playing by her rules.

She rubs soap into my legs, working slowly all the way down to my toes. Her touch thrums through me, a counterpoint to the pulsing of my cock, the pounding of my balls. She runs her hands up the backs of my legs, kneading my calves. Kneeling, her face is almost level with my cock. She knows it, too. She ducks her head so that her wet curls brush my thighs. Hot, shivery expectancy of the feeling of her mouth on my cock rushes through me. Oh, Carolyn, you are such a good tease.

She works her way up, her hands sliding up the backs of my thighs. Her supple fingers cup my ass. She slips a finger into my crack and I start. I didn’t expect that from her. But I like this hint of wildness. I widen my stance against the wall, opening myself to however she wants to touch me. She strokes me, working soap along the crack of my ass. Then she circles her finger over the tight closure of my rectum. I shift. This is beginning to remind me uncomfortably of my early days in slam.

Carolyn must sense my discomfort, because she gives my ass a final squeeze and rises. Good. Having her on her knees, giving me head, would be a little too reminiscent of slam right now, too.

She leans into me. Her flesh is slick, cool, like some exotic sea creature. The points of her nipples press against my chest. She reaches up and rubs her fingers over my stubbled scalp.

"Let me shave you," she whispers.

I start to shake my head. I’ve never let anyone near my throat with a razor. But this isn’t slam. There are no razors here, just an efficient chemical whisker that Carolyn plucks from its pocket in the shower column.

When I nod, she runs it over my cheeks and jaw, and then over my scalp. I stand still under her ministrations. When she clicks the whisker off and replaces it in the column, I lift my freshly-shaven head and find her looking at me. Her eyes are filled with such heat it rocks me. I knew there was a warm woman under there, but I had no idea she was hiding such passion.

She steps against me, slides her arms around my neck as she goes up on tiptoe, and kisses me.

She kisses like she means it. Pressing her mouth against mine softly at first, then deeper and deeper until we could be eating each other. Our lips and tongues meet, catch, tug, part only to press together again. Her kisses stir me. I haven’t kissed many women. Hookers won’t let you and strays don’t want to. But Carolyn clearly likes to kiss.

I pull her tight to me, until her body is locked into mine. Slamming off the shower with my elbow, I lift her against my chest. I’m clean, and I’m very ready for bed.

Carolyn giggles as I carry her through the ‘fresher and into the bedroom. I smile against her mouth, suck on her lower lip until she’s too breathless to laugh. I like her playfulness. Everything up to now has been all hot urgency. There’s been no time for play. And not enough trust for it, either.

Now there’s both.

We lie on the clean sheets, touching and kissing until we’re both dry on the outside, wet where we join at mouth and groin. She’s taken me inside her, but I’m not moving in her yet. I’m just lying inside her, held deep in her soft body, while we explore each other. I’ve never been like this with a woman. With anyone.

She touches me gently, reverently. Her fingers trace the lines of my body: my smooth scalp, the long muscles of my neck, the curves of shoulder and arm and back. I seek out her erogenous zones in return. She loves to be kissed. I didn’t realize until I was inside her just how much she likes it. Her body ripples around mine whenever my mouth finds her skin. I kiss and suck her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, the delicate skin of her inner wrist and elbow, until each point glows with heat in my vision. Her breasts are exquisitely sensitive. No wonder she went so wild the first time we fucked. I keep my mouth off them this time, exploring with my fingers instead, feathering my fingertips across the white skin of them until her flesh goosebumps, tracing the roundness of her aureole. She shudders, throwing her head back, when I roll her nipples between my fingers.

"God, Riddick, yes."

I like the way she says my name when she’s excited. Husky and sweet. I like it even more that she says it with me inside her, as her body contracts around mine. I know this isn’t a casual fuck for her, but somehow it’s all the more intimate when she calls my name.

Playing with her nipples finally sends her over the edge. She wraps her legs around me and bucks her hips. I roll her onto her back, catch her hands with mine, stretch them both above our heads, so that I’m looking directly down into her face as I begin to move inside her. Her face is soft, her eyes glazed, her cheeks flushed. There’s none of that hard-faced, ‘fuck me’ expression that hookers wear. Her expression is almost . . . loving.

I thrust slow, deep, bumping my glans against the smooth closure of her cervix with each thrust. She moans softly, biting her lips. Her head arcs back again, her eyes half-closed. But she’s still looking up at me, still holding my eyes as she moves under me, her hips rocking to my rhythm, her body clenching around my cock. I feel her tidal surge and let it wash over us. Pumping slow and hard into her orgasm. Kissing her throat to feel her scream my name as well as hear it. Finally letting go and ramming home when I climax, flooding her with my heat.

My orgasm goes on and on. Each time I expect it to end, another spasm hits. I feel like I’m coming eternally in her, and her body keeps pace with mine, contracting around me, milking me, until we finally collapse together, shaking and spent.

I roll onto my side to keep from crushing her as we relax into the aftermath. She slides her leg over my hip and pulls me tight against her. She likes to hold me inside her afterwards, so I let her, and I drift off still inside her, still cradled by her body, thinking that there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

*

I wake chilled, missing Riddick’s warmth. Harsh breathing echoes through the small quarters. Is Riddick back in the ‘fresher? Why? Wasn’t he satisfied? I know he came. At least, I think I remember him coming. There was that wild motion at the end . . .

A faint smell drifts through the sleeping quarters. I sniff, trying to place it. My nose wrinkles as it gets stronger. It’s the sickly-sweet smell of decomposition. Of rotting flesh. The smell washes over me in ghastly waves, leaving me sick, shaking. I reach out. What is that smell? And where is Riddick?

A black tether at my wrist restrains my movement. I stare up at the binding. Each of my wrists is bound to the bed. And I recognize these tethers. They’re what the policeman used to restrain Riddick in his cryopod. Has Riddick tied me up with his own ropes? Why? I wouldn’t try to get away from him now.

A hissing noise at the end of the bed draws my attention away from the bindings. I raise my head as far as I can, straining my neck. It’s dark in the sleeping quarters. A little light from the ‘fresher falls across the bottom of the bed. There’s something moving in the shadows there. I squint. Is that the slide of light on caramel skin?

No. There’s a dragging noise, and Riddick never makes any noise when he moves. Then the thing making the noise steps into the light and I scream.

"Hello, Carolyn."

It’s Owens, bloated and black but somehow alive, terribly, terribly alive. He grins at me, discolored teeth glinting in the low light. His arm works as he stares at me. I strain my neck further to see what he’s doing. My gorge rises when I see his hand wrapped around the base of his dick, tugging and tugging at it. But it’s not the little red thing I saw on the ship’s recorder. It’s massive – a huge tapering spear of flesh that hangs down below his knees. And it’s albino white, pallid and writhing like a slug. He takes another shuffling step forward and I gag as his stench rolls over me again.

"Ready, Carolyn? I saved this just for you," Owens says.

I scream, pulling futilely at the bonds on my wrists. Kicking at him as he climbs onto the bottom of the bed. He bats my legs aside the way Riddick does when we spar and worms up between them, until the tip of his massive penis slides across my thighs. It’s cold and slick, like meat out of a freezer. Owens’ bloated face fills my vision. He’s chuckling, leering as he leans over me, ready to stick that grotesque white thing into me. God help me! Don’t let this happen to me! Where is Riddick?!

"Right here. Wake up, Carolyn," he says gruffly in my ear.

I bolt upright, a scream catching in my throat. Nausea doubles me over. I hug my stomach and rock back and forth, curled over my knees.

Riddick’s huge hand rubs up my spine. The warmth of his hand chases away the chills running down my back.

"You okay?"

I nod, but it’s a lie. I may never be okay again.

Riddick sits up next to me. He puts his arm around my shoulders and tucks me against his side. "Some nightmare."

I nod again, lick my lips with a tongue that feels thick and furry.

"Wanna tell me about it?"

I shake my head. Riddick can’t understand. He’s a man, a big man, who’s never had to fear rape. And my throat closes when I even think about trying to explain about Owens, to admit that I so miserably failed to protect the passengers, including Riddick himself.

"C’mere, Carolyn." Riddick stretches back out on the bed and draws me down beside him. His warmth sinks into me, stops my shivering. I cuddle to his side, resting my head on his broad shoulder. The heat of his body beats through me in soothing waves. His breathing bellows deep and even under my ear. By slow degrees, his body soothes me and I relax against him.

His big hand strokes my hair. "Ever been raped, Carolyn?" he asks, his deep voice so low and quiet it’s just a hair above a whisper.

I shake my head against his shoulder.

"How did you know?" I ask.

"Heard what you were screamin’." He strokes my hair in silence for a few moments.

Then he says softly, "Take it from someone who’s been there. Rape’s not something to be feared. Avoided, sure. Endured when you have to. But it’s not something to live in fear of. It doesn’t kill you. Doesn’t even break you if you don’t let it. It’s like any other injury. You heal."

He looks down at me with his silvery eyes. I can’t read them. I can see from his face that he’s serious, earnest. Is that – compassion – in those quicksilver eyes?

"Your fear of being raped’s so large, every man you come across can smell it," he says. "Taste it. Almost rub it between his fingers. I could within a coupla minutes of meeting you. You gave me the keys to controlling you with just the fear in your eyes, Carolyn. Someday someone is gonna roll you just to use that fear against you. You got to conquer it before it eats you."

I swallow hard. "You’ve been there?" I whisper, incredulous. But it’s clear he’s being completely honest with me.

"Yeah. Every new fish in slam gets speared at least once. ‘Specially if they’re like me. Half of nothin’."

"Bu-but, you’re so big!"

He chuckles. "Always someone bigger, Carolyn."

"And you were . . .?"

"I got the shower initiation. Just like everyone else. I endured it. Fought back when I could. Kept it from happening again. But I always knew it could. Anytime. I lived with it. And I never let the fear rule me, Carolyn."

I rub my hand across his chest. I thought he wouldn’t understand. But he’s the only man I’ve ever met who does. Perfectly. And he’s right. I’ve let my fear of a man’s violation rule me, all the way back to my miserable marriage.

"I-I saw something while you were sick," I say, fumbling for the words to explain the source of my immediate horror.

"Yeah?" he asks. His deep voice is so gentle it’s almost a caress.

"I looked at the flight record. I-I was trying to figure out why you had cryo-sickness. I’d assumed you’d been loose for the whole flight. I thought the policeman didn’t lock you down right. So I watched the flight record to see what happened at take-off."

"And what’d you see?"

"I saw Owens rape one of the passengers. When everyone was unconscious. Before the freezers kicked in. Ow-Owens raped a woman while we were all sleeping."

"Mmm." He rumbles deep in his chest. It’s an encouraging sound, meant to be soothing, to give me space to go on.

"And . . . and after he finished, he came back to my cryopod and he said, ‘I’ll save you for next time.’"

Riddick strokes my hair again. "Near miss."

"And then-then I came back here and—"

"Yeah, I see. You came back here and had sex with me after just watching the rape. Hard to watch, isn’t it?"

"Yes." I turn my face into his shoulder at the memory, but something inside me unwinds. Some knot of fear and shame and remorse. He understands. And there’s no hesitancy as he strokes my head. He doesn’t blame me.

But there is an undercurrent of tension in his body. It’s not the tension of anger. What is it? What has he had to witness during his years in prison? I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to hear about it. But he’s listened so sympathetically to me. Can I do any less for him? Who else has he had to tell about all the horrors he’s seen? Who has held him after he wakes from his own nightmares?

"Who did you have to watch?" I ask.

He glances at me, his eyes neutral, but a tiny frown creases his brow. Then he rolls his neck until it pops.

"I’ve had to watch a coupla times," he says, looking up at the ceiling. "Once in slam when I couldn’t stop it. Twice outside. The worst was Novalis. Johns made me watch when he did Annie and her two kids."

I blink at him, unbelieving. "The policeman—?"

Riddick smiles humorlessly, and if we weren’t lying so close, with his arm around me, his great heart beating slowly under my cheek, I’d be afraid. Not of him, exactly. Maybe for him. For the damage the things he’s seen has inflicted on his soul.

"Johns ain’t a cop," he says. "He’s got himself that nickle-slick badge. And that blue uniform. But he’s just a merc. Only rules he plays by are the ones he makes up as he goes along."

"Bu-but why—?"

"Why rape Annie and Zack and Stazie?" He shrugs. "Couldn’t tell you. I’m not wired that way."

The horror of it, and of knowing that Riddick had to watch while Johns raped a woman and two children that Riddick obviously knew and cared about, squeezes tears out of my eyes. I wipe them on his skin.

"Carolyn, you’re a real soft touch," he says. But there’s none of the disgust I expect to hear in his voice. He says it as though he doesn’t mind.

"And you’re such a hardcase," I sniffle.

Riddick shrugs. "My reputation’s useful. Just not very accurate."

"You didn’t kill anyone?"

"No, I did. Not the way they said, or why. But I am a killer. Make no mistake about that."

"How did it happen?"

"On Tiorine? My squad scragged our field commanders when we realized the Zenos we were clearing out of the mines were sentients, just protecting their food source, not trying to kill us or the miners."

"I don’t understand."

Riddick shrugs again. "It’s ancient history."

"I’d still like to hear it."

He sighs, a great whoosh of air through the chest under my cheek. "I was part of a Ranger squad sent to Tiorine to protect Company miners from tunnel-bugs. You know what those are?"

I nod. "I’ve seen the flashes. They look like roaches."

"Three meter long roaches that spit acid and can cut a man in full nano-armor in half with their mandibles."

I swallow. He has seen some things that would give me nightmares.

"You fought them?"

"For three years. Then two men outta my company got trapped in a cave-in with one of them. When they came out, Will and Schrodie could hear the bugs in their heads. They could tell us what the bugs were thinking. That the bugs were thinking."

"But then the fighting should have stopped. The extermination of sentients is banned—"

"The Company doesn’t give a shit for the Tau Epsilon Accords, Carolyn. They wanted the titanium on that rock and they didn’t care who died to get it. Will and Schrodie were shipped out. Extreme field trauma, the medics said. But I’m betting their families were told they died in action. And we were ordered back in."

"So you killed your commanding officers?"

"Uh-huh. And the on-site Company skags."

"Surely there was another way."

"Were you there, Carolyn?" he asks, a cool edge to his voice.

"N-no. I mean, that seems very extreme."

"It was. We were dying down there. A man or two every day. Good men who deserved better than to die that way. We were losing ground against the bugs. We knew we were in the wrong. And they ordered us back in anyway. Pretty fucking extreme."

I rub his chest, feeling foolish. I only know what the flashes reported about Tiorine, and it clearly wasn’t the truth.

"I’m sorry, Riddick. I didn’t know."

"No one does. Why d’you think the Company shipped us off to a civvie slam instead of a military prison? They buried us and their dirty secrets and closed Tiorine so no one would ever know."

He’s staring at the ceiling again, his silver eyes shuttered and cold. I wish he’d look at me. I wish his eyes would warm again, the way they did when he talked to me about conquering my fear. Before I made him dredge up the horrors of his past.

I slide up his chest so I can look down into his eyes. Touching the tips of my fingers to his mouth, I say, "I’m sorry, Riddick. I’m sorry for everything. I wish I could undo it all."

He looks at me and the glacial blue of his irises softens. "Just get me to Kelsin."

"I will," I promise. And I mean it. Whatever half-formed plans I’d made to turn him in, to wake the policeman Johns, I discard them. He deserves better. He’s been among monsters, too. Perhaps for so long that he’s come to look a little like them in self-defense. But he’s not a monster, and he deserves to be free of them.

*

I wake without the sense of Carolyn, without her weight on me, without her soft skin sticking to mine. Where is she? I fell asleep inside her earlier and that’s where I want to be now. I’m so used to having her on me when I wake that it’s unnatural to be without her.

Her scent’s all around me. She’s close. I crack open an eye and find her next to me in the bed. She’s lying on her back, her arms up over her head. She sleeps like an infant.

I roll up onto one elbow and look down at her. Awake and clothed, she’s pretty. Asleep and naked, she’s beautiful. Pale, tousled curls frame her fine-boned face. Her skin’s like cream poured over the muscle and bone underneath. Her breasts rise gently from her ribcage, two soft globes tipped with rosebud nipples. They cry out to be touched, fondled, kissed, sucked.

I lean across her to take one of those little buds into my mouth. It hardens against my tongue as I lick it and Carolyn sighs in her sleep. Her gentle hands slide up to cradle my head. Her back arcs slightly, tilting her breasts up to me.

I smile against her skin. She’s so responsive, even in her sleep. Moving over her, I lie between her legs, resting my weight on one arm so I’m not crushing her. She never complains, but I know I’m heavy.

Her knee comes up and her leg slides down my back. Her body opens under me. I can feel her wetness against my stomach. I slide down further to look at what I’m feeling. The soft, secret opening of her body. In my night vision, it’s a montage of silver-grays. I run my thumb along her labia, swollen and still wet from our fucking. They part naturally to let me see the tender nub of flesh at the top, the furls and folds within. At my touch, she moans and rolls her hips. I smile, watching her.

What a bundle of contradictions Carolyn is. With my head between her legs, my fingers stroking her, I look up at her face and wonder again what goes on in her mind. She’s tough enough to stand up to me, but so soft-hearted that the pain of strangers wrings tears out of her. She’s so terrified of forced sex that I could control her with the mere threat of it, but she gave herself to me willingly once she understood I wouldn’t force her. She’s all cool professionalism on the outside, but underneath that veneer there’s passion and almost bottomless need. Her unabashed desire humbles me. She holds nothing back when we’re in bed, even once we’re finished fucking. She’s completely honest, completely open.

I’ve never been with a woman like Carolyn Fry. I didn’t know there were women like her. She warms something in me. Something I didn’t know was cold. I drop my head to that tender female flesh under my fingers to share the heat she raises in me.

*

I slide out from under Carolyn. My stomach’s rumbling. Time to find some food. The sheets under me are soaked from our fuck-fest. I’ve lost track of time, lost track even of how many times I’ve come while Carolyn and I have been humping like bunnies, but I don’t think we’ve been out bed for a day or two.

The sheets need changing anyway, so breakfast in bed seems like a pretty good idea.

Carolyn murmurs sleepily and I lean back over the bed to brush my lips gently across her forehead.

"I’m bringin’ back breakfast."

She slides a hand around my neck and brings me back down for a deeper kiss. "Don’t be long," she whispers. Her voice runs through my blood like fever. She can turn me on with just a few words.

I smooth my hand over her hair and ease her back down onto the bed. She closes her eyes and nuzzles the pillow.

When I return with eggs, bacon, toast, sausage and fruit, Carolyn’s sitting up in bed. She’s wearing her halter top and skivvies. From the absence of stink, I can tell she’s changed the sheets. Tidy woman, even naked in wet sheets. I like her habits. Easy to live with.

I put the tray across her knees and hand her one of the cups of coffee I’m carrying.

"Thought we’d save makin’ the bed for after breakfast."

She shrugs. "The sheets were soaked."

I give her a wide grin, which broadens when she blushes. She’s still so easy to tease.

I sprawl across the bottom of the bed. "So, whaddo you want to do today?" I run two fingers up the curve of her calf.

She lifts a pale eyebrow at me. "Practice the refueling run."

I slide my hand over her knee and up her thigh with a soft chuckle. She shivers a little.

"Sure, Carolyn."

"I mean it, Riddick. We’re two days away from the planet and you don’t even know how to operate the pumps yet."

"I’ll be ready when the time comes." I take a couple of bites of toast. "But this morning I’ve got other plans."

She looks at me over the edge of her coffee cup. "Oh?"

"Yeah." I push the trays out of my way and take the cup from her. She giggles when I pull her under me. Her willingness to play along, her evident delight in our fucking, excites me beyond anything I’ve known. All Carolyn has to do is look at me with those eyes of hers, those eyes full of bottomless need, and I’m ready to go all over again. I can’t get enough of her. And from the look in those expressive eyes of hers, I think the feeling might be mutual.

*

"Entering the troposphere," Carolyn says, her voice tinny in my ear-piece. "Five minutes to touch-down."

"Check," I acknowledge. I’m blind, deaf and dumb here in the closed, cramped space above the pumps. Not even my eyes can penetrate this darkness. But my other senses are filled with Carolyn. Her voice in my ears, her lingering scent in my nose. The smell of her is so strong in this small space that it’s almost tangible. I can almost feel her under my fingers. And the memory of fucking her in here while she was trying to teach me the pump sequence is so fresh I can still taste the sweetness of her mouth.

I smile and focus on the task at hand.

Pop the airlock, drop the nozzles into the water, switch on the pumps, suck up the fuel, cut and run. Sounds simple, like every plan.

But I have a bad feeling about this already. It’s too simple. And simple plans inevitably go down the crapper. I’ve kept my doubts to myself, though. Carolyn’s worried enough about the refueling as it is. She made me practice the pump sequence fifty times – even after I distracted her against the wall for an hour – and even though it’s so simple a merc could do it.

Well, maybe not Johns.

"One minute, Riddick," Carolyn says in my ear. "Mask up. I’m opening the lock."

I tap the wrist controls on my borrowed flight suit. Gel rises around my neck, over my chin. Within a second, it slides over my scalp. A slippery, silky feeling. Not so different from the touch of Carolyn’s fingers. I hold my breath, the way Carolyn’s taught me, until I can feel the goo push up my nose. Then I let out a breath. The gel puffs around my mouth, and on my inhale, my lungs fill with oxygen. I have to stop myself from blowing my nose. Feels like my head’s full of snot. But I can breathe, and that’s all that matters.

At my feet a circle of light dials open. I’ve got my goggles on under the breather. We’ve landed on the edge of daylight, when the planet’s inhabitants are supposed to be dormant. Although I knew what to expect, the light’s still painfully bright after weeks of comfortable dimness. I squint down at the blowing, rippling blue below.

Water appeals to some primitive sense. Something in me knows it’s the source, the primordial soup from which life began. No matter what’s in it, no matter how poisoned or deadly, water still calls forth something deep and undeniable. I’ve never seen so much clear, blue water in one place. My chest aches with the beauty of it.

That’s my excuse, anyway, for not spotting them before the first ones were on us.

"Riddick!" Carolyn shouts in my ear-piece.

"Yeah, starting the pumps now."

"No, I’m closing up."

"What’s wrong?"

"Multiple alien life forms. They’re right under us. Can you see anything?"

All I can see is the rippling blue spreading in all directions, the silver-gold flash of fading light on the waves.

"There’s nothing down here," I say. "Wait—"

I squint into the glare, and see a silver-gold bubble rise off the disturbed surface of the water. I kneel to watch its progress. The bubble brushes across the ship’s underbelly, bobbing gently across the hull-plates. With a squelching sound, small and soft over the mic, it attaches to the hull, like a soap bubble clinging to a leaf.

A klaxon immediately sounds in my ear.

"Hull integrity compromised," the ship’s mechanical voice says.

"Riddick! What’s going on?"

"We got one on the hull."

Over the klaxon, I hear scrambling sounds. The ship shudders, then steadies out. "Stay on station, Riddick. I’m coming down."

Keeping one eye out for more bubbles, I hit the sequence to lower and start the pumps. A huge bellows drops from the ceiling down towards the hole. Four accordion hoses unravel from the bellows and plunge into the water below. A steady chugging fills the small space. A gauge on the pump controls begins to rise.

A snick of the airlock behind me. Carolyn steps through into the small space. Her eyes flash at me through the gel of her breather. She hauls on something and pulls it through the airlock: a wheeled canister that she’s dragging by a hose wrapped over her shoulder.

"Stand clear," she says, her voice unnaturally crisp over the suit mic.

She kneels carefully next to the dangling hoses and peers through the hole. Even before she pulls back up, she’s shaking her head.

"No good. I can’t get a clear shot at it with the pumps down. I’m going to have to open up the main cabin ramp and see if I can get it from there."

And let those things into the main cabin? I don’t think so.

"Let me try."

Carolyn eyes my suited shoulders as if she’s never seen me before. As if she hasn’t spent hours stroking and kissing the breadth she’s now ogling.

"You’ll never fit, Riddick."

I eye the space between the hoses and the rim of the opening. She’s right; I won’t.

I kneel next to her, holding the hoses aside so I can look through the aperture at the bubble. Carolyn’s breath hisses in my ears at my casual handling of the pumps, but I’ve handled them more than I’ve handled her over the last twelve hours, and I know what they can take. I gauge the angle, the distance to the bubble. Then I pull my head back through the hole.

"Ever seen the circus?"

Carolyn shakes her head.

"Today’s your lucky day, then." ‘Cause she’s about to become the girl on the flying trapeze.

She frowns, her gesture rippling the breather. "Riddick, what are you talking about?"

"I’m gonna hold your legs and lower you through. You shoot the bubble with whatever you got in there." I nod at the canister. "Good angle. Clear shot."

Those expressive eyes look dubious.

"Or you can open up the main hold and risk letting a bunch of those things in here."

Carolyn hitches one shoulder. I know that gesture. She’s debating. I still don’t know what goes on in that little head, but I can tell when it’s happening now.

"Okay, let’s give it a go." She leans over the canister and flips switches until a control panel lights up. Then she pulls a handle up from the top of the canister and pumps it. One, two, three strokes.

"Ready." She tucks the hose under her arm and looks at me expectantly. I shift around behind her, spreading her legs so I can kneel between her calves. Then I wrap my arm around her hips and with the other hand guide her head down into the hole.

She goes over my arm completely relaxed. Trusting. I brace my free hand on the rim of the hole and bend over, my face in the hoses. My back seizes from the awkward position and the pull of Carolyn’s weight. She’s going to owe me one long backrub after this.

Carolyn’s knees slide backwards on the deck until her legs lie flat and her entire torso is hanging through the hole, held from the fall into the water below only by my arm around her waist. I can’t see anything with my face in the hoses, but I can feel her moving. I can hear the whoosh of what I figure is a flamethrower.

And then I hear Carolyn scream.

I yank her back through the hole so fast her elbows slam into the rim and she drops the flamethrower’s nozzle. Then she’s in my lap, facing me, her head down, twisting, clawing at her own sides. I spin her around.

A small silvery bubble is attached to her back. Her suit has already started to char around the bubble’s edges. I can see Carolyn’s pale skin through spreading holes in the blackened fabric.

I turn her back around. Her eyes meet mine for a second, wide with shock and pain. I grab the front closure of her suit and rip it open, stripping her the way she probably always feared. She helps me, her gloved hands tearing at the waist seal. I yank the suit down her arms and as soon as she’s free of it, I grab her by the neck and shove her towards the airlock. The suit’s all that’s keeping her from decompressing in the planet’s thin atmosphere.

The airlock hisses as it dials open and Carolyn stumbles through.

I toss her pressure suit out into the rippling blue. It falls through a rising wave of silver bubbles. Not good.

I lunge for the pump controls, and when they retract the hoses too slowly for my liking, I grab both sets of hoses, flamethrower under one arm, the pump hoses under the other arm, and yank them back through the hole.

The hoses flail around me, creating chaos in the small space. I hang on to them grimly as their accordion tubing continues to contract under my arm. With the other hand, I keep the flamethrower pointed at the aperture, bathing the rising bubbles in orange flame. They make no noise as they char and fall, but I can feel them, tiny ripples of pressure that break over me. Smiling at each small pop, I bathe the hole with spurts of flame until it dials closed.

In the resulting stillness, I kick the flamethrower off.

Carolyn.

*

She’s lying in the corridor, one arm stretched out, her fingers driven into the metal grating of the floor. Her back, ashy and blistered, heaves as I approach her.

I kneel next to her and carefully unlock her fingers from the floor. Her fingers are torn, bleeding. She’s dragged herself nearly half the length of the ship.

I pick her up as gently as I can, sliding my arms under her shoulders and hips and lifting her face-down. Her weight is distributed all wrong like this, with her arms and legs hanging down. But I can’t touch that terribly burned back. My own back seizes as I push upright. Fuck. And she’s not going to be in any condition to rub it for a long time.

I take a step towards our bedroom, where the silver autodoc still hangs over our bed. She whimpers.

"S’okay, Carolyn. I got you."

"The levels, Riddick . . . I need to see the fuel levels."

I eye the distance to the flight deck, still about thirty meters away. A long way to carry her like this. But how can I do any less? How can I fail her a second time? Inhaling hard through my nose, I begin the long walk, one slow step at a time, trying not to jar her.

I’m slick with sweat by the time I reach her flight chair, my back screaming. Shaking salty drops from my eyes, I read the gauge for her through gritted teeth, so she doesn’t have to twist her head around.

She shakes her head slightly, freezing in my arms when the movement causes her more pain. "Not enough. We need . . . eighty percent to make the jump."

"Then we circle back and get more."

Her body jerks in my arms and I can’t hold her any longer. I ease her down so she’s sitting on the arm of her chair. She makes a tiny sound, half sob, half moan. Her head lolls back, her eyes rolling to white. I catch her, my hands carefully at the small of her back and the nape of her neck, before she falls back into the chair.

"Carolyn, stay with me."

She blinks and looks up at me, eyes fogged with pain. "We need to come in full throttle, the engines burning. That might scare them off."

I glance over at the bewildering array of lights and switches and buttons on the console in front of us. I’ve never flown a star jumper. I don’t know where to start. We went over and over the pump procedure, but she never taught me how to maneuver the ship. That was her job. We thought of everything, but not this.

I glance down at her. Her eyes are flickering, rolling and then refocusing as she clings to consciousness.

"Think you can talk me through getting us up to orbit?"

She blinks woozily. "Orbit? Why?"

"Give you some time to recover before we try again." Days. Maybe weeks. It’ll take a while for those burns to heal.

She shakes her head. "I can do this . . . you just man the pumps."

"Carolyn, you couldn’t run the autopilot right now."

Her hand rises, even though she hisses with pain, and she pushes her fingers into my chest. "Put me in that chair, Ric-Riddick."

"Only place you’re going is bed."

She pushes again, more forcefully. "I have to pilot us out of the atmosphere. We can’t stay here with those things . . . whether I take us straight out or down again first makes no difference. I have to get in that chair either way."

I lean forward and press my mouth to her forehead. So brave, my little Carolyn. I’ve fought with men who’d have folded under the kind of pain she’s in.

I shift her around into the chair as gently as I can. She grabs the arm-rests and eases herself down. But she can’t control a cry of pain when her back brushes the padded seat. A tear streaks down her cheek, and she doesn’t brush it away.

"Carolyn—"

"I’m okay," she says, but her voice shakes. She’s holding on by her fingernails again.

I sink down next to her chair, so that I’m at her eye-level. Those expressive eyes will tell me if she can do this.

"Carolyn, look at me."

She does, a crystalline flash. After holding her eyes for a second, I straighten and head back towards the engineering spaces. The tears are of pain, but underneath them is strength, that indomitable spirit of hers. She’s not going to fail.

Back in the glowing darkness, I feel the ship bank, circling over the water, igniting the bubbles with the engines’ fiery backwash. Her voice in my ears, tight with pain, speaks only my name. Once to start the refueling and once when it’s complete. It goes off without a hitch this time, the way it should have the first time, if I’d been paying attention. I’m still retracting the nozzles when Carolyn fires the engines, slamming us up through the planet’s thin atmosphere. She’s not taking any chances this time.

I stow the pump equipment, throwing the hoses into their compartment. I’ve barely cleared the engine room’s airlock when the ship shudders through the upper atmosphere. The deck under my feet tilts so sharply I have to grab the walls to keep my footing. Then I have to grab the walls again to keep from hitting the ceiling as the artificial gravity cuts out. I don’t have much experience in zero-gee, but I know enough to hold on.

I hang parallel to the decking. She’s bringing us up almost vertical, shooting us up into space like a rocket. I wouldn’t have thought an old tug like the Hunter-Grazner could pull off such a maneuver. But Carolyn manages it.

I hang suspended for several minutes. A curious sensation, zero-gee, an almost vertiginous weightlessness. My stomach feels like it’s spinning several meters outside my gut. Not a good feeling. I cling to the hand-holds I’ve found and wait for the ship to steady out.

Finally, my feet drop back towards the decking. When my toes touch the gridded floor, I race for the flight deck.

Carolyn’s unconscious, her body limp in the chair. But the viewer in front of her is filled with the star-studded blackness of deep space. In a smaller screen on the console, the three points of the Brevin pulsar cluster twinkle.

She did it.

I lift her out of the chair as gently as I can, rolling her forward into my arms so I can carry her without touching her back. The movement rouses her. Her hand grips my wrist for a moment, and then falls against my side.

I carry her back through the ship to our bedroom. One slow step at a time. Getting her down onto the bed, trying to bend mostly with my knees, leaves me with a back full of ground glass. But the autodoc is there, and as soon as I slide Carolyn onto the cool sheets under it, a red beam flicks over her. Thin silver arms drop from the silver ball. They cut away her charred flight suit and spray a sticky fluid over her blistered skin. The fluid congeals to a dark reddish crust.

Carolyn sighs in her sleep. Her hands, balled into fists at her sides, straighten. Seeing her relax, a tension I didn’t know I carried runs out of me. I carefully remove the rest of her flight suit, peeling it down her arms and legs. Then I pull the sheet up over her. My fingers linger on her bare, uninjured shoulder, stroking her soft skin. It’s a relief to touch her and not see her flinch. I didn’t realize how much that bothered me until now.

"Sleep well, sweetheart." I run my hand over her soft head before I leave her to sleep. I want to slide into bed next to her and hold her while she heals. To keep her warm and safe the way I should have from those innocuous-looking bubbles. But being in my arms didn’t keep her safe then, and being in my arms now will only cause her more pain if I jostle her in my sleep.

So I rise and walk slowly into the other bedroom.

*

When I wake, the bed is cold and my skin aches with Carolyn’s absence. My back clamps down tighter than a magnecuff when I try to rise. I have to stretch for a long time before going to check on Carolyn.

She’s still out for the count. I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her. Her sleep is easy, her face and body completely relaxed.

Watching her, I’m hit again by her beauty. The smoothness of her skin. The clean lines of her body. It’s natural, without artifice. She has no enhancements or augmentations. She wears no makeup or jewelry. There’s a mole between her eyebrows that I’ve noticed before; it’s not disfiguring, but most women would’ve had it removed. Not Carolyn. Even her clothing is utilitarian.

Carolyn doesn’t want to be beautiful. She doesn’t want men to notice her. She wants everyone to see cool, androgynous competence. She projects distance. Part of it is that fear that rules her. But there’s something else, too. Some deep wound that’s made her hide behind that veil of professionalism. She’s buried all passion, all need.

Until she gave herself to me. All that fierce passion, that tender need flooded back to the surface. She’s held none of it back. But she hasn’t revealed the wound. I glimpsed it when she came back to bed after the first time we fucked. That fragile trust in her eyes, so easily broken if I asked the wrong question. So I didn’t. But I didn’t ask the right one, either. The question that would have opened the wound and drained out the pus still festering there, and let it heal.

I didn’t know what the right question was. I don’t know what it is now. Reaching out and stroking her hair with just my fingertips so I don’t disturb her, I wonder if I have the right to ask it, even if I can figure it out. We're on the way to Brevin, which means that in three weeks or so, we'll have reached my destination. And I'll be getting off this slow train. Back to life on the run. What I know best. And back to life without Carolyn.

Despite my care, she stirs in her sleep. Her face tightens in pain and a silver arm immediately drops from the autodoc. A hypodermic hiss, and she settles. I withdraw my hand. Let her sleep.

I have other things to do. A date to keep with Johns. And while Carolyn’s out for the count seems like a good time to do this dark piece of work.

*

I stand in front of John’s pod for a long time, staring at him and remembering. What I’ve settled on doesn’t fully satisfy the cold rage that still fills me when I look at him. I’ve had acidic fantasies of reaming him with his own shock baton. Seeing what those two hundred volts do when they’re shoved up a man's ass instead of applied across his skin.

I want him to suffer the way Annie and the kids suffered.

But after being with Carolyn, after touching her and being touched by her, I don’t have the stomach for what I’d originally planned. She’s fucking ruining me.

I open the bag I’ve brought from the storage compartment. Finding the specimen bag in the Colonists’ luggage was what gave me the idea. I pop the capsule and wait for the preservative gel inside to warm. Then I reach around and pull the emergency release on John’s pod. A klaxon sounds and a woman’s voice warns me that the release sequence has been activated.

No shit.

I glance down the corridor at the crew tubes. The Captain and First-Mate are still deader than dead. And Carolyn’s certainly not coming to help Johns.

"So you’re just shit out of luck," I say over the klaxon.

I wait until the pod’s cover opens. Johns is still unconscious. He’s not really thawed and it will take several minutes for him to come out of hibernation. Time to get to work.

His circulation is still slow, his heart only beating a few times a minute, so there’s not much blood as I slice through the flesh around the second knuckle of his right thumb. It’s the work of another second to snap the joint. His severed thumb falls into the waiting capsule while I spray the oozing stump with newskin. Wouldn’t do for him to bleed to death before I freeze him back down.

Johns’ left thumb follows his right. I don’t know which thumb contains his credit chip. So I’ll just take them both. I close the specimen capsule and give it a shake to distribute the gel around the severed digits. I don’t want them to rot before I can get them to a chop doc and have the chip removed. Johns is cheap enough to have an older model chip that doesn’t go dead when the tissue around it dies, but I’m not taking the chance.

I give Johns a pat on the cheek before closing the cover of his cryo-pod. The lights on the side of his pod are going crazy, blinking and flashing in a vain attempt to gain human attention. I push the emergency handle back up and the pod frosts, freezing the merc down.

There’s no outward sign, no panicked flash of eyes, no silent scream, to show what I’ve done to him. But the lights continue to dance like maddened fireflies, reassuring me that the pod’s human occupant is going into shock. I give the cold cover a final pat before I tuck the specimen capsule under my arm and turn down the corridor towards the sleeping quarters.

I don’t know exactly what will happen to Johns, but I’ve heard stories about interrupted cryo-sleep, and injuries sustained during the interruption. The body can’t deal with the shock. Critical systems collapse upon thawing. I hope Johns enjoys life as a vegetable. An eight-fingered vegetable at that.

I put the capsule with the other things I’ve taken from the Colonists’ luggage and slide into bed next to Carolyn.

*

I work my jaw, try to work spit into a mouth that’s gone dry as Kelsin’s blowing sand.

"Come with me," I finally say.

Those expressive eyes widen, soften.

"Oh. . ." She smiles and a tear slips out of the corner of her eye. "I didn’t think you’d ask." She lays one soft hand against my cheek.

"Thought you wanted me to." I wipe away her tear with my thumb, lick her body’s salt off my skin.

Her smile lights up the void.

"I did. I do," she whispers. "I can’t come with you, though."

My chest tightens until it feels like the entire gravity of the little planet is sitting on my breastbone. What did I expect? That she’d give up everything – her years of hard work and her good job and her nice normal life – to go on the run with me because I fuck her just right?

"Yeah—"

Her fingers flex on my face, holding me so she can look right into my eyes.

"I have a responsibility to these people," she says. "To get them back safely. Not to leave them adrift so some salvage team or merc ship can ransom everything they own back to them. Let me take them back. I’ll jump from the Perseus binary to Scavella. There’s a station there where I can leave them safely. And then I’ll come find you."

I shake my head. "No one’s finding me this time."

She looks up into my eyes. Hers don’t flinch. "Trust me. Tell me where you’ll be in six months and I’ll meet you there."

"Why six months?" I ask grudgingly.

"It’ll take me two months to get to Scavella. Two more months to get back or go in whatever direction you’re headed. Maybe more if you’re going the other way. And a month for the inquiry. Two dead. One brain-dead. A notorious murderer on the loose. All on my watch. There will be an inquiry. I’ll be lucky to keep my license. Give me six months and I’ll meet you wherever you want."

She could meet me with a ship full of mercs, all fighting to be the one who claps cuffs on me and gets the bragging rights. But I don’t think she will. I don’t understand what she sees when she looks into my eyes, like she is right now, but I know what I see when I look back. Carolyn’s expressive eyes. Filled with more warmth and hope than I thought was left in the entire dark, dirty universe. No, she won’t bring anyone. But will she come herself?

"Mack’s Planet. Sa’leone system. You can make it in three months from Scavella. If you’re coming."

She rises up onto her tiptoes and presses her mouth against mine. "I’m coming. Where? I’ll never be able to find you if you’re in disguise like this."

Is that why she got so grumpy when I showed her the disguise? Because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find me? Was she going to come after me even if I didn’t ask?

"O’Malley’s. Near the spaceport," I say. My voice has gone gruff with some emotion I don’t want to think about.

"O’Malley’s," she repeats. "I’ll be there."

I crush her to me and hold her for a long time. Longer than I have. The first sun is rising and I have to get underground before the second one rises and bakes everything on the surface to cinders.

She’s the one who finally steps back, her hand still on my cheek.

"I love you. I’ll see you in six months." She grins wickedly. "Behave yourself."

She reaches up and flicks the controls of the ramp. I step off it, into the burning sands of Kelsin. My last image of her is her eyes, glowing in the light of the rising suns, as she rides the ramp up into the ship.

*

I wait for her at the bar on Mack’s Planet for three weeks.

‘Give me six months,’ she said.

I’ve given her nearly seven. Seven long and lonely months. I was fine with solitude until Carolyn taught me what it is to share time with someone. Fine with buying myself a half-hour of relief when I felt the need for human contact until I made love with Carolyn and learned the meaning of the word. Fine with running without knowing or caring where I was going and never looking back until Carolyn said she loved me and fixed the entire universe around that one point in time and space when I’d be with her again.

So it’s been seven months of waiting. Of counting the days. Of watching the flashes to see if there’s a suggestion of her. But there’s been nothing. Not even a report that I’ve escaped again. I made the "Universe’s Most Wanted" within a week of breaking out the last few times. But this time there’s nothing. Just seven long months of wondering what’s happened to her, what she’s told them that’s kept my name out of the news. Seven months of wondering whether she’s changed her mind and gone back to her nice normal life, whether she’s coming after all.

I can’t afford to stay on Mack’s Planet for much longer. It’s on the opposite end of the Ten-Year Border from Kelsin, but that doesn’t mean my face isn’t known here. Doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for me. Mack’s Planet is full of criminals like me, but that doesn’t mean one of them wouldn’t turn me in for the bounty on my head.

I’ve approached a short-hopper about shipping out with him on his next run. I’m not sure what he’s more excited about, my muscles to help with the loading or company on the run. He’s going to be disappointed in my conversational skills. The BorderRunner leaves in three days. I’ll be back on Mack’s Planet four weeks later. I can only hope I don’t miss her during that month. I hope she’ll wait for me.

If she’s coming.

A new ship docks the night before I ship out. I wander down to the spaceport after securing some late-arriving cargo aboard the hopper. Under the huge pseudomuscles I wear as part of my disguise, my shoulders ache from moving containers. I rub one and think about Carolyn and her good backrubs as I make my way through the darkened docks.

The new ship is small, a little battered. The Strange Bedfellows. Another short-hopper. Not the Hunter-Grazner. I curse myself silently. What the fuck did I expect?

The dock-bot lights up when I approach the new ship.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Where’s the Captain?" I ask, cocking a thumb at the ship.

"She went into the ‘port, sir. Can I take a message?"

"No. You know where she went?" I ask because it’s become habit, but I’m not really interested. It’s not her.

"Yes, sir. A bar called O’Malley’s."

Now I’m interested. I remember to thank the ‘bot before I turn and run.

*

She’s sitting at the bar, close to the back exit and slightly turned on her stool so that she can see the whole bar. Good girl. She hasn’t forgotten what I taught her.

I know it’s her without seeing the clean lines of her face, despite the heavy coat she’s wearing that conceals her body, despite the unfamiliar length and darkness of her hair. I can smell her over the stale stink of the bar. Musk and apples. My Carolyn.

She glances at me when I enter the bar, but my disguise is better than hers, better even than my old one, and she looks away, not meeting my eyes. Then her eyes snap back to me. She looks past the hair and the fake holotattoos that scroll blackly over the tinted white pseudoskin and she knows it’s me. A tiny smile tips the edges of her mouth.

She turns back to the bar, turning her profile to me. She says something to the bartender, a battered ‘bot with a silver-studded patch over one robotic eye. The bot slides two glasses of amber liquid onto the bar in front of her.

I settle heavily into the chair next to her. The pseudomuscles over my shoulders and chest and thighs weigh a fucking ton, and they only partially pull their own weight.

"Can I buy you a drink, stranger?" Carolyn asks.

"Depends. What is it?"

"A sloe comfortable screw against the wall."

I grin under the mask of hair.

"If that’s the lady’s pleasure . . ." I trail off suggestively.

Carolyn grins back and sips the drink. "It is."

*

When position her against the wall of my room not an hour later, I see the new scar, reddish in my vision, just to the side of her navel.

"You had it taken out." I stroke the crescent-shaped scar with my thumb.

She looks up from staring at my cock with an expression that I could swear is hungry and smiles. "Yes."

"By a chop-doc."

She nods, but it wasn’t a question. No legit doctor would take out her conhibitor without the license her ex never got her. A license I can never get her.

"You really want to do this, Carolyn?"

"Make love with you? Absolutely. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you." She’s so eager she’s wriggling against me, trying to work her way down the wall to impale herself on me.

I smile but look down at her seriously. "All of it. Be with me. On the run."

"I love you." She grins at my expression. I’m going to make her say that a lot. "I want to be with you. Whatever that means."

"And if we have a baby?"

"Then we’ll be a family on the run."

 

[End]

 

 
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