Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.
WARNING: This chapter is almost nice, but don't be fooled. Still rated Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.
Notes: Some of you in your reviews have expressed some curiosity about Riddick's state of mind, so I'll give you a little rundown on how I see him. (And this is based on my experience working in an offender treatment program at a domestic violence organization.) He doesn't really want Jack to kill him. Emotionally, he's like a neglected toddler, which he probably was at some point. He wants attention and so he engages in negative attention-seeking behavior. His worst fear is that Jack doesn't feel as strongly about him as he does about her. That's clearest, I think in Chapter 8, when you see his anger at her seeming indifference. He'd rather she hated him than felt nothing. This is fairly common among abusers. Without any belief that they deserve love or are capable of earning love, they settle for whatever powerful emotion they can arouse in people. And in Chapter 1, Riddick's already dismissed love as a flimsy, romantic idea. That leaves him wanting her to hate him. So in Chapter 10, to have her angry enough that she's trying to choke him--he considers that proof that she has strong, if negative, feelings about him.
Thanks for continuing to read and review.
ELEVEN
The Council had been in session for nearly two hours before Jack realized what Riddick had done. She was perfectly prepared to give a brief report on peace talks in the Amperi system, which were going nowhere, but when she got to her feet, the Council Speaker said, "Special Representative for the Ministry of Defense, Jack Riddick." She sat back in her chair. When she glanced at the Speaker, he looked at her expectantly. She reached out and turned her name placard around. Not Jack Parnell anymore, the sign she'd had made on his insistence. Jack Riddick, it said.
"Who did this?" she said and the mic picked up the venom in her voice, transmitted it live. Her whole abdomen felt hot and tight, her lower back throbbed.
The Speaker put his hand over his own mic and said, "It was delivered by a courier for the Ministry of Defense."
Resting both hands on the table, Jack stood and began her report on Amperi. She went on speaking in a steady voice as a horrible squeezing pain wound around her belly. When she was done, she sat down and clutched her arms across her stomach, struggling to maintain her composure until the morning's recess.
By the break, the pain was a dull, throbbing thing, and in the restroom cubicle, she pulled down her pants and found blood smeared on her thighs. Blood leaking out of her. Not the fresh, bright blood she knew so well, from some vaginal tear or abrasion. It was dark, clotted, viscous blood. She stared at it in horror for several minutes, trying to guess at what was causing it. He hadn't done anything to her since the night of the opera and that hadn't made her bleed. She wiped it away and considered calling for the attendant. Calling for a doctor.
Then she remembered what it was, what it was for. How long had it been? Not at all when she was with the Necromongers, and after that? A year in stasis. More than a year now she'd been out of stasis. Had gained some weight, was in decent health, her doctor said. Considering.
"Fuck," she said. "Fuck. Motherfucker. Motherfucker!"
"Councilor?" the attendant said softly.
Jack didn't know the attendant's name, wouldn't have recognized her on the street, but she was like a friend. The poor woman had stood outside of that same toilet cubicle, listening to Jack cry so many times. Had stood outside and said the same useless but comforting words over and over: "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Although there would have been money in it, she had never even spoken to the news shows, had never told anyone about Jack's bad days.
"I've got my period. Do you have a tampon or anything?"
"Sure, honey. I'll get one for you. Snuck up on you, huh?"
Going back to the Council room, Jack wished for the day to be over. To be able to go home and be miserable. No, that wouldn't happen. He would request her presence her at the end of the session. Of course he would. He had impeccable timing for her misery. As she entered the Council room, the first thing she noticed was the silence. No one was chatting, the way they normally did between sessions. They were all standing at the side of the room, staring at a vid screen that recessed into the wall.
She saw it with no preparation. No warning.
The screen showed news footage of the main transportation dock at the Ministry of Defense. Riddick strode across the deck from his transport, flanked by a dozen Bayorn guards. The camera ran ahead of him, to watch his approach to the main doors of the Ministry's grand foyer, where soldiers lined the walls, with their guns held at attention across their chests. They stood there, unmoving, as they did every day, changing in shifts of four hours. Riddick entered, managing to emit brooding darkness even through a digital medium.
It was essentially the same footage the news showed every time he returned from some important trip. Except it wasn't.
When Riddick had nearly reached the camera, some of the soldiers lining the entrance raised their guns and fired. More joined the fray and men fell all around Riddick in a storm of bullets and pulse-emissions. He stayed on his feet, even as the bullets hit him, as the Bayorns around him went down. By then it was hard to tell who was firing at whom, if some of the soldiers were returning fire on their comrades.
Then it happened.
What had happened on Crematoria.
Black energy formed around him and bloomed like a star going supernova. Compared to that first demonstration of his ability, this one was massive, consuming the entrance in an instant, roaring through the men standing around him and obliterating the news camera. The screen went to static for five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds. Jack stared, her eyes burning with the grey-white snow, and then with a sudden blip, the film returned to the beginning of the footage. Riddick again walking toward the ministry, frowning behind his goggles, soldiers bunched around him.
The loop was no more than two minutes in length and Jack watched it a second time and then a third, staring in disbelief. Finally someone said, "Jack." She looked away from the screen, to find Aereon, the other Councilors, the Recorders, the news vidogs, all watching her.
Without considering it, she turned and walked out of the Council chamber, moving toward the transportation dock, with her guards jogging to keep up. When she reached her transport, she found her pilot leaning over his nav board, staring intently at the vid screen. He jumped when she stepped onto the deck.
"Councilor? You heard there was some sort of attack at the Defense Ministry?" he said.
"They'll take him to the med center at Terullus Base. Take me there," she said and sat down in the co-pilot seat, where she had never sat. She spent the flight watching the same news loop, trying not to listen to the hysterical chatter of the news presenters.
"Apparently, this was some sort of coordinated assassination attempt. You notice, you see how it's at least two dozen soldiers who fire. They've clearly timed it, planned it," said the news reader. "The Ministry has not issued any statement yet, but we are trying to reach Lord Marshal Riddick's representative to the Council to hear her reaction."
Her reaction. As though she had only one.
Jack went through them helplessly, unable to grasp at any one for more than a moment. Shock, fear, horror, relief, regret, despair, agitation, anger. If he was dead, was she free? Was she even necessary? Did she exist without him? Did she want to?
She wanted him to be dead. It would all be over then. She would never have to look at him again. He would never hurt her again. The world would be safe. From him, at any rate.
She wanted him to be alive. The thought of his absence seemed like the prospect of learning to breathe water instead of air. More than half her life had been in his orbit. He had saved the world from the Necromongers. For her. Because she asked him to.
At the base, she passed through a clutch of security that struck her as ridiculous. Hundreds of Defense Officers—the same as the ones who had attacked him—stood outside the main medical building, but inside the guards were all Bayorn. They looked uneasy but vigilant. No one questioned Jack's right to be there, until she reached the door of the secured medical bay, where two guards stopped her, saying, "No one's cleared to enter."
"Let her in. She's had enough chances to kill me if she wanted to," Riddick said on the other side of the door.
He was alive.
One of the guards opened the door, but when Jack tried to take a step, she went down to one knee, her chest feeling hollow. Was that relief or disappointment? Maybe it was both.
"Jack?" he called. "Don't just stand out there where I can smell you. Come in here."
Grasping the door frame, she made it back to her feet. The guard pulled aside the curtain and Jack entered the room on unsteady legs.
Riddick stood with his back to the door, naked, and she counted a dozen bullet wounds, oozing blood, most on his torso, but several running down his buttocks and thighs. Centered on his spine was a pulse burn ten inches wide. Point blank circumference—the sort of thing that pulverized bone and liquefied organs. A doctor stood staring at a screen showing scans of his body, while two medical technicians flanked Riddick, both armed with a pair of forceps. While she stared, one dug into the back of his thigh and pulled out a bullet, flattened to nothing, and dropped it into a tray.
"I shouldn't be here," she said. It only occurred to her then that he might not want her to witness this. "I'll leave."
"No, I want you here." He turned around and there were even more injuries on his chest, belly, and limbs. A pulse burn spread up his neck to his jaw, and a long open gash across his scalp was from a bullet graze, she guessed.
"Are you—are you okay?" she said dumbly. He grimaced as he crossed his arms and dug a bullet out of his left biceps with his fingers.
"Come here," he said and when she approached he put the bullet into her hand. "A souvenir."
"I think I'll remember this just fine."
He put a hand to the back of her neck and pulled her toward him, kissed her deeply. Still in shock, she returned the kiss, put her arms around him, and felt his blood seep through her shirt.
One of the technicians said, "Sir? Two more."
Jack stepped back and had a moment of simultaneous embarrassment and fear. Riddick, however, stood there unashamed of his erection and let her move away from him.
"So, rough day today. You saw it on the news vids?" he said, as the technicians removed the other two bullets and began disinfecting the wounds. She wondered if given a chance, whether his body would have expelled the bullets on its own. The wounds were already puckering and drying, sealing themselves.
"That's why I came," she said.
"You came on your own? So who do you think planned it?"
"All I know is it wasn't me."
He laughed with real pleasure, then dropped his hand to his cock and stroked it. "Get me some clothes. I'm ready to go."
"We'd like to keep you over night," the doctor said. "Run some tests. A lot of tests. This isn't—."
"I'm not fucking her on a hospital bed," Riddick said, as though that answered everything. He pulled on the clothes they brought him, military fatigues and boots, while the doctor watched him in disbelief.
At the gate to the base, throngs of news crews waited for word, and Riddick obliged them. With no security, he walked to the end of his transport ramp and looked down at them.
"I'm fine," he said, and walked back up the ramp to a roar of questions.
On the flight back to the Ministry of Defense, Jack rode next to him in a jump seat on the troop deck. At one point, he reached out and took her hand. He stared straight ahead for most of the flight, while Jack stared at him. He looked alien, almost normal, in the camouflage uniform.
At the Ministry, the main entrance was still smoldering, the doors ruptured outward.
Four stories down in his hot stone room, Riddick pinned Jack to the wall and kissed her like he was drinking water in the desert. Against her belly, his cock burned, hard again or hard still. It surprised her that he had waited. That he hadn't done anything in the transport on the way there.
For a moment, he let her up for air and she gasped, "I'm asking you not to hurt me this time."
"Has that ever worked?" he said, breathing hard.
"I don't know if I ever tried it before," she said. She'd begged him plenty of times, but had she ever asked him not to?
"I'll tell you what. If you say my name when you cum, I won't hurt you. Promise."
There was a terrible silence into which she blurted, "But I don't—do you—do you just want me to … pretend?"
"The way you smell, I guarantee you won't need to pretend," he muttered in her ear. "I haven't smelled you like that since you were a little girl, but I could smell your blood when you came through the gate at Terullus."
She had forgotten, felt exposed to know he smelled it on her. He pushed her down on the bed and kissed her ravenously. Bit her neck, sending a shiver down her, making her nipples hard. His hands were rough on her breasts, stroking and squeezing but not bruising, so that by the time he got her pants down, she was cautiously optimistic that he might not hurt her much. What cut into her optimism was her own arousal, making her heart stutter and her throat tight.
He made his way down her belly with a mix of kisses and bites, and when he opened her thighs, she said, "Wait. I've got to take out—I've got—."
"This?" he said. With a deft movement, he wound the string around his finger, tugged the tampon out, and tossed it aside.
She felt panicky and desperate to separate herself from the moment. The difficulty was that when he slipped his tongue into her, lapping at her blood, it felt good. Too good. The kind of thing that was a prelude to the infliction of pain. Or just another kind of force. Another way to manipulate her, and she already felt emotionally jagged. Torn apart and barely put back together.
She put her hands on his shoulders, pushed hard, but he didn't stop. Putting a hand to his forehead, she tried to force him away. He reached up and grabbed that hand, pinned it next to her hip, so they were tangled together, their arms threaded under her leg. To keep some freedom, she kept her other hand away from him, trying to figure a new escape. He went on licking her, his tongue quick and slow, soft and hard, like an experiment or a demonstration of what he could do to her.
Looking at him between her legs in those strange clothes, she knew it was madness to trust him. He'd only done what he did at the opera to make a point. She wasn't sure what point—to prove he could do that to her, to shame her, to show her whatever he meant to show her about himself. Or about herself.
"I changed my mind," she said.
"Meaning?" he said and didn't stop.
"I'd rather you hurt me."
He paused, looked up at her curiously and then gave her a bloody grin. She shivered when he slid his free hand up her belly to her breast.
"We had a deal."
"I don't want it anymore," she said. "Just do whatever fucked up thing you want to do."
"Whatever I want to do? This is interesting, Jack, in a headachy kinda way. See, some people tried to kill me today, and here I am eating your pussy—I've heard a lotta girls like that—but you're saying you'd rather I do whatever I want?"
"Yeah," she said dully and looked away from him. She needed him to be angry and that always made him angry.
He was still stroking her breast, and when he began to polish her nipple with his thumb, she felt a sharp answering twinge between her thighs. Anticipation. She shoved at his hand, tried to force it away. A mistake.
Like a spider on a fly, he grabbed her wrist and jerked it down to her side. Then she was trapped.
"This is the fucked up thing I want," he said and returned to it heatedly. Once she tried to pull away, to use the leverage of her legs against him, but only succeeded in opening herself more. Gave him better access.
After that, she lay still, trying to find emptiness, to be empty, but she couldn't.
When he stopped, she trembled with relief and disappointment, the same as she had felt thinking he was dead, thinking he wasn't dead. He kissed the inside of her left thigh and then the right.
"It's okay, Jackie. You don't have to look at me. I know you're paying attention to this," he said.
After that, the worst part was that it felt like something she was doing to herself. Pain he could inflict, but the pleasure was her fault. Her failure to control that little bit of flesh he trapped under his tongue, stroking it until she wanted to scream. He worked his tongue in and out of her, like he was fucking her with it, and it felt like a spring in her being tightened. Her eyes filled with tears, excitement and shame competing.
She twisted against him restlessly, still trying to stop that moment. When it came, when everything in her clenched and shuddered, when the spring unwound with a snap and sent hot tendrils of pleasure through her, she denied him anything. Clamped down on her lip to stay quiet and pressed her hips hard against the bed to keep from pushing against his tongue. Still she felt how wet it was, how her body was completely willing to give him that satisfaction.
"You forget our deal?" he growled and bit the inside of her thigh.
"I told you I don't want it."
"You already made it, so we're gonna try this again." He made his voice dark, but he was smiling and that was more frightening.
She knew he would go on doing it until she submitted. He wanted to break her, and when he brought her there the second time, she felt like a cesspool of disgust and anger, with hysteria boiling under the surface. She strained against him at the last moment, still trying to fight, and gasped, "Fuck you, Richard."
He crawled up the length of her, looking ready to devour her. Pink-tinged saliva leaked out of the corners of his mouth. He wiped it away and licked at her tears, exhaling the hot stink of blood in her face.
"That was pretty goddamned sly, Jack. Gave me the chills. Nobody's called me Richard in a long time."
Defeated and already regretting her defiance, she said, "Is it okay? Will you still keep your promise? Please, Riddick?"
He smiled at that, softened a little, although his eyes were still dangerously hot. "Yeah, I'll let it slide this time."
He was good to his word. Rough and ready, into her fast and hard, but when he struck her cervix and she winced, he backed off, slowed down. She felt the thrumming energy of his restraint, how he had leashed himself. It didn't hurt at all but it was scary to think that if she weren't afraid of having him inside her, she might have enjoyed it. Mostly she was relieved to get him to orgasm without needing medical help after.
He lay on top of her for several minutes after and whispered in her ear, "We should try that again some time." After he rolled off her, he lay so still that she thought he had fallen asleep. Surviving an assassination attempt probably made for a long day. Sitting up, she scooted down the bed, unlaced the combat boots and took them off. For as big as he was, his feet were thin. The weakest looking part of him.
"What are you doing?" he said.
"Making you comfortable. Get you out of these weird clothes." He didn't say no, so she grasped the waist of the pants, where they rested at mid-thigh, and pulled them off. When she unbuttoned the fatigue jacket, he half sat up and shrugged out of it, before lying down again. She looked at him naked on the bed and even the pulse gun wounds were nothing more than raised welts now. When she touched one, he caught her hand, frowning.
"Does it hurt?" she said.
"No. And I'm not ready to sleep yet either." He guided her hand to his cock, which was tacky with her blood.
"Relax," she said, making an exploratory caress across his chest. She wanted him to be still, to be spent again quickly.
"What are you doing?"
"Just trying to—."
"You don't ever touch me."
"I won't if you don't want me to."
"Go ahead," he said, tucking one hand under his head, watching her.
She petted him as much as she thought he would allow. Ran her hands over his chest, his belly, up his thighs, hardly looking at where her hands traveled, aware of his gaze on her. She stroked her thumb over his nipple and drew it into her mouth. He laughed, but didn't stop her from sucking on it until it was a small, hard bead under her tongue. She did the same to the other, but more than that might be asking for trouble, so she moved down to his cock, half hard and bloody. She hesitated. She had always thought of menstrual blood as different from the blood in her veins. Darker, more dangerous somehow. Of course he liked it.
"Don't be shy," he said. She glanced up at him, embarrassed, and lowered her gaze before licking up the length of his cock. When she took him into her mouth, he put his hand on her cheek and said, "No, look at me." He stroked her hair back, watching her, not forcing her. Even when he was reaching the end, when he normally exerted enough force to gag her and to scrape himself on her teeth—a thing he seemed to like—he only held his hand on the back of her neck to set the rhythm of it.
Afterward, she lay between his legs and rested her head on his belly, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath. He wasn't asleep but he was heading there. Half a dozen bullet wounds lay in her field of view. Bullets intended to tear into his guts, his lungs, his heart. She shifted her head and two more injuries came into view. A new one from a pulse gun and one that was from another life. His nakedness was new to her, still surprising, and she stared at the scar for a long time before she understood what she was looking at.
It was old, long faded to white, and lay above his left hip: a thin line, a few inches long, with one ragged end. Without thinking, she ran her finger over it.
He sat up and caught her hand, squeezed it in his until she thought he meant to crush it. Looking into his eyes, she saw fury, killing rage, and then he grabbed her throat and shoved her away. She tried to catch herself, but failed, slid off the bed and struck the floor with her hip and elbow.
He stood over her and growled, "Get the fuck out of here. I'm done with you."
"Really?" she said, couldn't help the spark of hope that gave her.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, not done with you for good. Not by a long fucking shot, Jack. Just done with your stinking cunt for tonight." He dragged her to her feet, and she tried to back away from him, tried to obey him, but he held her arm tightly. Held her arm to steady her as he punched her. The blow knocked her back, pain blooming across her cheek, but he kept her standing and punched her again, creating another spike of pain in her eye. The third blow was in her gut and as she doubled over, gagging, he picked her up and carried her to the door. When it slid open, the sentries stood with their usual cautious looks, ready for anything. He dropped her on the floor in the hallway and as she lay there trying to catch her breath, he gathered up her clothes. He tossed them at her and closed the door.
She sat up unsteadily, her head throbbing.
"Councilor, do you need the doctor?" one of the guards said.
"No," she said. She faced the guards to dress. To turn her back on them, she would have to face the surveillance camera.
The look on her face makes me want to do a lot worse than punch her. Done with her? Hoping I'm done with her? If I was done with her, would she kill herself? Or would she figure there was something worth living for if I was done with her?
That scar. Fucking thing burns under my hand, like it did when it first happened. She did that, touched it and made it like it was new again. For a while I wish I hadn't sent her away. I wish I'd kept her here and … what? I promised not to hurt her. Almost kept it, too.
Makes me wish I had another shot with Jesper. I was young and careless. Killed him way too easy. He deserved to die slow.
Anybody who would do that deserves to die a slow and painful death, but I managed to walk away.
Jack may not be hard anymore, but she's tough. Two hours later she goes to an emergency Council session to give an official report on what happened. She goes with her face messed up, doesn't even try to hide the black eye, the bruises, and she manages to act like there's nothing wrong. Oh, other people stare at her and the stupid news people chatter about it, replay this crazy montage of footage: me getting shot, me fondling her at the opera and her banged-up face. I guess it turns everybody else on as much as it does me, or they wouldn't show it so many times.
Jack, though, she acts like everything is okay. She reads the official report about the assassination attempt and manages not to look disappointed when she says, "The Lord Marshal is fine. I spoke with him in person two hours ago and he is in perfect health following the failed assassination attempt."
The rest of it is nothing like what I would say, but hers sounds better: "The Ministry of Defense deeply regrets that in addition to the would-be assassins, an additional one-hundred and ninety-four employees of the Ministry, and six civilians, died in the attack. The Ministry offers its sincere condolences to their families and is making plans to offer appropriate compensation for their loss."
From the news vidogs, she answers two questions.
"The blast in the final frames of the footage—what kind of weapon is that?"
"Like all weapons development, that is classified," Jack says.
"What happened to you? Were you injured in the attack, Councilor?"
"No," Jack says, and then she picks up her telereader and walks away from the cameras.
The next morning, the Council spends the first half of the session rehashing the whole business, when it's already taken care of. The guys who did it are already dead and everybody they knew is under arrest for interrogation. If it's bigger than them, I'll know soon enough. I don't even care. Big deal. Some people got an idea that they'd kill me, because they thought it was a good way to get power. Or because they thought they'd be doing everybody a favor by snuffing me, even though I'm the one protecting them. As far as I'm concerned, they did me favor with that little stunt. Now everybody else who has the same idea knows it's not going to be that easy.
After a couple hours on that topic, the Council finally moves on to something that interests me: a proposal to build a subterranean permanent max detention center. I watch this one little clip about a hundred times. The Speaker's just recognized Jack, who looks like she's spoiling for a fight. She doesn't waste time, just says, "If we have no intention to rehabilitate, precisely what is the difference between this detention center and the death penalty? From a humanitarian perspective? Is there a difference? Having spent some time in a prison like this, I can assure the Council that there's no real difference between a life sentence there and a death sentence. We might as well spend the money on bullets. Or if you want to avoid that expense, perhaps we could line the prisoners up and let the Lord Marshal slit their throats. He's efficient and he's already on salary."
That's how she talks about me to other people. Like I'm a killer she used to love.
Her eyes are hot and piercing, remind me of how bad I need her to look at me sometimes. How bad I want her to look away sometimes. Makes me sorry I punched her, because I'm not ever going to get to watch this moment when she's so riled up but not bruised from my fist.
Kindly readers: Now you know Riddick's dirty secret. He wasn't always a bad motherfucker. He was just as vulnerable as our Jack.
