Be advised: This chapter deals with Riddick's reaction to the events in the previous chapter as well as other things troubling him. The language, opinions and past history that is revealed are all definitely of a mature nature: underage sex, prostitution, and other subjects of a sexual nature are mentioned. There is some explicit sexual activity. However, the information it containers is important in understanding Riddick, at least my interpretation of Riddick. Those under 17 should not partake.
-
-
THE MOTHER LODE BY ABRAXIS
-
-
Chapter 25 - Beginning of What?
-
-
Riddick lay staring at the ceiling. Jenna lay curled against and partially across him. Her breath created alternating currents of warm and cool across his chest. He felt the same peaceful contentment that he had while holding her in hyper. Only now, without the mind altering energy field, his conscious mind wasn't letting him enjoy it undisturbed. In fact, with all the thoughts that were twisting through his mind like a pit full of snakes, he couldn't understand how he could be feeling it at all.
Very quickly after their mutual satisfaction, he had rolled away from her, instinctively following his usual pattern; get up, clean up and get out. Though sometimes he didn't even bother with the clean up. With whores, it was just part of the service as long as they weren't already counting the money from their next customer. But free lays, if you were stupid enough to think that anything was free, usually tried to make something out of the situation that it wasn't if you stuck around that long. After the first few experiences with that, Riddick had rarely found any woman tempting enough to risk the possible complications.
As he moved, she had murmured softly. Her hands had trailed across his chest to capture his neck and urge him subtly toward her. The soft, tender caress of her lips against his and her whispered "Thank you" cleared his mind of the last vestiges of satiated fog. It didn't matter what the old patterns told him to do. He was already totally over his head into those complications. It was time to figure out some new instincts.
As he returned Jenna's kiss, she tried to deepen it. While he couldn't think of anything he would rather do, he was sure that more sex wasn't a good idea for her. She might be feeling all right now but her body didn't need any added trauma before it had some time to adjust. He pulled back.
"Huh-uh. No more for now. We both need to clean up and get some rest while we have the chance."
Jenna had looked embarrassed and released her hold on him abruptly. Riddick was wondering how he had put his foot in it until she spoke.
"Oh! I've been so thoughtless. You let me sleep all the way back from New Mecca when you hadn't had any more sleep than I had the past few days and then I ...... I ......"
Riddick really hoped that Jenna never lost her ability to blush. The pleasure it gave him had escaped in a low rumble of laughter.
"You what? If I remember right, I walked in here under my own power. Now, get your sweet butt into the bathroom or would you rather go second?"
"Yes, please, you go first. Uh ......... you're staying here then?"
For a brief instant Riddick had wondered if he had misread what Jenna wanted. Then, he had understood that this was Jenna's insecurity, not his. Still, he had needed to be told that.
"Only if you want me to. Do you?"
No blush this time. A strange trepidation instead. Well, why not. Fucking the animal was one thing; feeling safe sleeping next to it was another.
"Yes, but not if you feel like you have to. Only if that is really what you want to do."
Ok. Now, not only had he felt about two inches lower than slime for that last thought but he had to decide exactly how he did feel about all this and then tell her the truth about it. He had voiced the first thought that came to him.
"Right now, I do. Is that enough?"
"Yes."
That much settled between them, he had picked his shorts off of the floor and headed for the bathroom. He had made the first swipe with the washcloth only to see it stained with the pink of diluted blood. Once he was finished washing up, he had left the bathroom to have her pass him, carrying the bedspread with her to put it into the sonic cleaning closet. There had been no question in his mind that, had he inspected that piece of linen, the stain would have been a much brighter crimson.
For the first time in his blood drenched life, he had found the thought of it disturbing.
He had pushed the feeling aside, walked past the pile of his now folded clothing on the bureau and crawled into the neatly turned down bed. After a brief wait, Jenna slipping in beside him dressed in some kind of long sleeveless sleep-shirt had finished the completely surreal scene. He had cuddled her close, pretending drowsy pre-sleep until her breathing told him she was truly asleep.
Now, he lay staring at the featureless ceiling trying to make some sense of it all.
There had only been two women, well one woman and one girl, that he had ever wanted to lay with this way. With Lindi, the girl, it had been impossible. They had been nothing but two unloved souls trying to find what neither of them knew how to give with quick, frantic gropings in whatever hidden niche they could find to protect them from discovery. But, of course, they had been discovered and separated; each sent to more controlled, gender segregated facilities.
The first night there, Riddick had beaten the shit out of an older boy to keep from getting raped. He had spent the next month in solitary; a primitive basement cell that gave him a taste of Slam long before he was ever sent there. His first night back in general population he escaped. Though he had run many times before, he always though of that as his first 'break out'.
It wasn't his last. The next three years were filled with breakouts, recaptures and tougher and tougher facilities. What time he didn't spend in solitary for escape, he spent in solitary for fights. But his ass remained his own property. Finally, he learned enough to make an escape work. He had managed to stay on the streets for almost four years before the system got their hands on him again.
It had been in those four years that he had known the other one, Beshue.
As reluctant or unable as they had been to see to his survival, the two gamete donors that had produced him had supplied a very desirable genetic code for doing just that on the mean streets. He was taller and bigger than he should have been for his twelve years. He was also a great deal stronger, a natural strength that grew as he did without requiring hours of pumping iron to enhance and maintain it. Hidden behind that 'dumb muscle' facade was a highly intelligent, sharply cunning mind and a natural talent for reading the hidden motives, desires and weaknesses of others. Within a few weeks of that escape, he had become a runner for the top gang in the city, protected from the juvie authorities and with eyes on him watching for other talents.
He was on a run when he heard the screams. A man had a woman, that Riddick assumed to be a street whore, pushed up against the wall of an alley and was pounding her with his fists. If it had been her pimp, no problem; but it wasn't. The slime was obviously an outsider, a 'john'. Riddick had taken a quick look around, finding no one else on the street. Where in the hell was the bitch's pimp? He had still believed that street took care of street and had done the only thing he could do. He had launched his whole body at the much larger man. The man had beaten him bloody before his hand had fatefully found that metal shard on the alley floor and the then thirteen year old Riddick made his first kill.
As a result of that night, Riddick had taken a giant step up in the gang. While he still did runs, they were only the most important and valuable ones. The rest of his time was taken up by his new position of Enforcer-in-training and, to his total surprise, his new business.
Beshue, it turned out, was not a street whore. She had been high class stock whose age, in her late twenties, had begun to catch up with her. Rather than waiting until her clientele and reputation started slipping away, she had opted for a new stage in her profession. Newly relocated to the area, she hadn't even been on the stroll when the john, not finding anything else out, had decided that she was going to take his business whether she wanted it or not.
She had, in fact, been checking out the area for a good location to start her own house before approaching the local boss for permission and the proper protection agreement. Before his bruises, cuts and abrasions had even scabbed and greened, much less healed, Riddick had found himself a quarter owner in a whore house and receiving Beshue's personal attention in the two areas of life she considered important; business and sex.
It was a gross over payment for the debt Beshue owed him but there was no altruism to it. Beshue had seen the same future value in him that the under-bosses had and was making a very canny investment in that future. He was going to end up, if not at the top, very near it. Cultivating him at this early stage could reap very valuable patronage from him later.
The business had come first. Beshue hadn't wasted either her money or her off time during her past employment. What she didn't know about keeping and cooking a set of books, didn't exist. The same held true for investing the profits to make even more and totally clean money and keeping legally ahead of the tax men. It was also under her tutelage that Riddick's love of reading was solidified and satisfied to the greatest level in his life. To Beshue, knowledge was the only true power.
Riddick's sex education had started as just that; knowledge that was necessary to run the business and knowledge that gave power over others. After months of reading, lectures and discussions on the historical, psychological, and the political aspects of human sexuality in all it's variations and prostitution in particular and a through technical grounding in human anatomy, Beshue had finally decided he was ready for practical experience.
She gave him a choice of three of the women working their house to provide him with that. Whether it was a test or not, Riddick never knew for certain. However, Beshue made no argument with his opinion that, as an owner, it was bad business for him to fuck any of their own girls and he should continue this part of his education with her.
Years later, Riddick had realized that she surely knew that his real reason was his lack of trust in anyone but her. She was already privy to his naivete and inexperience. To show that weakness to someone else, to give a second person that kind of power over him, just wasn't happening if he could help it. She had taught him the psychological aspects of sex very well and reaped the reward for that diligence. As did Riddick.
Beshue was a whore but she was one who honestly enjoyed her profession. She taught the young Riddick the erotic possibilities of every part of the human body, male and female. But she taught him much more than that. She taught him the pleasures of being seduced and then the techniques and pleasures of being the seducer. And, in her own strange way, she taught him intimacy. The whore who had never had a pimp nor a lover, never allowed any man to linger in her bed, surrendered that privilege to the fourteen year old boy. For the two years after they first had sex until they were separated forever, Riddick rarely slept anywhere else. No matter the number of women he pleasured himself with, it was only Beshue's bed that he slept in; only Beshue that he held close in his arms for no other reason than comfort.
Then, at sixteen and already a veteran Enforcer, Riddick had made a run; a special favor for the boss. It had gone wrong; as wrong as it could go. The judge, unaware of the full extent of Riddick's criminal career and confections, had given him the choice of prison for twenty years or the Forces for twenty years.
Love, friendship; these were not in Beshue's admitted matrix of emotions. Respect and trust were the closest she would claim and those only for a very few. Yet, it was she who convinced Riddick to choose the forces, to try for better than the streets. She would have been right in that if the Forces General Staff had had half the integrity that she did. She had also gotten his signature on the papers returning his quarter interest in the house to her. But , then, business is business.
The last memory Riddick had of Beshue was a wicked smile and a taunt and a warning. The taunt: She had told him that no matter how long he lived or how many women he had, she would be the one he would never forget because she had been his first. The warning: For women that emotional attachment was far greater than for men and, unless he wanted that kind of attachment, he should be considerate enough to steer clear of virgins.
Beshue didn't deal in virgins. This was the first and only advice she ever gave him on the subject. He had followed that advice ......... until now.
And ......... the truth was, he hadn't intended for it to happen this time. Now, he had to understand why it had before he could decide what to do about it.
The first part of it was easy. He had mis-read Jenna. From her reaction to him that first night, he had know she was naive, inexperienced, un-awakened sexually until that moment but he had never believed that she was cherry. He had known one women, the wife of one of his superior officers, who had been married for years and had never gotten hot and bothered and climaxed until he did it for her. Shit! No woman Jenna's age, engaged for any length of time as she had been, would be cherry. While she was nervous around him at first, she was a lot less so that most women even whores. Hell, she was a lot less nervous around him than most men. Then, so quickly, she had been a great deal more eager than nervous.
The engagement thing became a little shaky as soon as he had seen the total door mat that David was. But, there was always the possibility of some pity-fucking and the rest of it still blinded him. Yet, he should have understood her better after traveling that killing circle with her at the compound. He should have understood that when Jenna decided to do something, no matter what it was, she was a certain and sure as bedrock and all conflicting emotions were smothered; that comparing her reactions to any general norm was a big mistake.
While all that was interesting and valuable information for future use, it didn't apply to the situation anymore. He had been certain that she was a virgin as he had stood beside this bed and it hadn't stopped him from crawling in beside her. That led to the second part of it; to him and what was happening to him.
As he had stared at that stranger's face on the main screen of the bridge of the Butch Cassidy, Riddick had felt ................... He didn't want to admit what he had felt but, fuck!, now was the time for truth. He had felt an emotion that he hadn't since he was a child; a small child clutching a paper bag of his belongings, being walked toward a new foster facility, wondering who he would have to be this time to keep from being sent away again.
Oh, it wasn't the same gut wrenching fear he had felt then. It was a creeping, twisting, unsettling anxiety. Added to it was an uncertainty that he hadn't felt even than. Not only did he wonder what part he had to play to be accepted by other people, he wondered what he had to be to be acceptable to himself.
For the last four years he had been telling himself that he was working to become an arrow-straight Joe-citizen because it was something that he owed, owed Carolyn. But, nothing had really changed. He had been more choosy about the contracts he took and changed his appearance but nothing else. Imam had been right about that. Down inside he was still Richard B. Riddick; murderer, escaped convict, unfeeling bastard.
Then he had taken this damn contract and stepped straight off of the streets into a righteous life. As soon as he had a new name ............ He suddenly wondered what Jenna would come up with. She had done a good job with the eyes. They felt right to him even now that he had his old face back. Anyhow, ....... with the new name, he would have the papers to prove that he was a legally licensed Keller and hyper pilot. He had an honest job ..... well, he could claim and the papers would back him up that it was honest; just a hired hand that didn't know nothing about nothing.
But he had gotten more than that. Mr. Sen regarded him as a 'propitious addition' to the group. Jeeter, who had always tried to become part of the wallpaper when he was around before, had regressed to some previous military experience and was relating to him as if he was a liked and respected superior officer; one that could be pushed a little if it was something as important as Jenna involved. Ben ........... shit, Jack II. Hell, even that semi-psycho Syrus, who probably would still dare him to kill him every once in a while, had accepted him as Jenna's choice enough to give them that little 'Garden of Eden' set up. Yeah, Syrus was a semi-psycho freaking romantic. And Jenna .................... Hell! what hadn't she given him.
He had taken it all. Taken it all without thinking about it. He had liked it, wanted it. Maybe he had regressed just like Jeeter; back to the gang, back to the Forces before it all blew up in his face. This being righteous was easy. Then they went to New Mecca.
Oh, Jack had been the same with him as she always had. He was her big brother, fellow street runner who understood what the others never would. But, after she had finished hugging him and crying all over him, there had been shock the first time she really looked at him. Then, there had been swift, sneaky glances as if she were wondering if he was really still who she thought he was. Imam ......... Imam hadn't even recognized him. Then, he had called him 'my boy' and said he was proud of him as Riddick carried him to the skimmer.
That started it and the face on the main screen had brought it to a head. Riddick had suddenly felt like a fraud. All these people with all their positive expectations and deep down inside he was still who he had always been. It was all a con game. Even if he played it until the day he died, when whatever was after that happened, something was going to look him in the face and tell him exactly that.
More important, when it came down to nothing but survival, everyone who trusted and counted on him was going to pay the price for it. At that point, Riddick survives and anyone else loses. He wasn't the one who saved Jack and Imam, Carolyn was. Imam knew that. His trying to wise Jack up, about who Riddick really was, was probably the reason she distrusted him. But, now, Imam had joined the suckers. He was proud of Riddick. Well, just how proud would Imam have been if he had known that the first though in 'his boy's' mind was to work on Sulleman with a shiv until he was nothing but a quivering, bloody lump of screaming agony.
Riddick had gotten Imam quickly settled in the infirmary and, after Jenna had informed them they could take down time, had volunteered to take the clothing from the bridge to the apartment level by himself while Jeeter made the last transfer of Nagia's plants. It was a way for both of them to be off duty sooner but Riddick had another motive. He wanted to get away from other people, even Jeeter, as soon as possible. He wanted to lock himself away in his quarters and deal with the implications of his recent revelation.
Walking down the corridor of the apartment level, Riddick, his habit of mapping his environment in full force, had noted the occupants of the quarters. On his left were unassigned apartments; on his right, first David's and Sasha's double and then Jeff's. He had passed four more unassigned on both the left and right sides before finding Ben's on the right and Mr. Sen's on the left. After that was Jack's on the right and Imam's on the left. Finally he reached Jeeter's on the right with Mira's opposite it, and dropped off the cart of Jeeter's clothing. Pushing the remaining cart on down the hall, he had come to his own quarters on the right with Syrus' opposite. There was a palm plate and a voice identifier. His palm didn't activated the door so he had tried the identifier using the title on the door display.
"First Officer Barrol. Open."
This had worked. The door slid open and he was requested by a computerized voice to return his palm to the plate for future identification purposes. After satisfying the computer and placing his bag and uniforms in his quarters, he had pushed the cart to the last two apartments in the hall. Jenna's was next to his and Nagia's opposite. He left the cart beside Jenna's door and returned to his quarters.
The place looked like a suite in a four-star luxury hotel; well, like the pictures he had seen of them. There was a large living room with very comfortable looking furniture and a state of the art entertainment center, separate den/office/library and a galley with a spacious dinning area. The bed room was large, as was the bed, and had a small sitting area furnished with two overstuffed chairs and a shared side table. There was enough closet space for a family of four. He unpacked. His uniforms and meager personal possessions looked lost in them.
But the bath was where the real luxury was: a huge, deep tub, both sonic and water showers, a sonic laundry and a separate cubicle for the john and bidet. As he placed his few personals in the niches of the vanity sink, they also looked lost in the over abundant space.
Though he hadn't thought about it then, his reverie was momentarily interrupted by the thought that Beshue would have approved of the bathrooms in these apartments. She had run a posh house and had always insisted on the amenities. But, this thought was only a brief reprieve.
He had stripped and placed the soiled uniform in the sonic cabinet. As he turned toward the showers, he was confronted by the 'stranger' again in the vanity mirror. He was beginning to really hate that face. He had grabbed his body soap and charged into the water shower. He was already dripping wet when he had realized that he had forgotten the shampoo. It was like the preverbal straw. His temper had flared. He had stomped back to the vanity, grabbed the built-in sonic depilatory and went to work with it.
Shit, it had been good to run his hands over his scalp and have it feel right. Just as good to look into the mirror and see himself again. He wanted to see how those positive reactions changed now that Richard B. Riddick was back. Even the new eyes worked. The eyes that Jenna had chosen ..............
That had brought him to the part of the fraud that bothered him the most. His first thought in the bar, after the pure lust, was that she was out of his league, a whore too fine for him to afford. Now, she wasn't a whore but she was still too fine for him, even more 'too fine' for him. But she didn't know that because she really didn't know him.
He had had a sudden image of the teenage psychiatrist/psychologist sitting in her ivory tower, studying the files of the badest of the bad, finding the shoddy work of the yoyos so infuriating that it blinded her to the rest of it; blinded her to the horror, the filth and the blood in those files. And she didn't look at the faces, didn't want to be influenced by anything but the data. Well, those faces were data. They were shaped, etched deep, with the realities of those files; the eyes full of the twisted, cold souls behind them.
Well, now she was going to see one of those faces. They had down time and she would expect him to come to her. That was exactly what he would do. Richard B. Riddick would come to her and she would see the truth, recoil from it, and that much of his problem would be over.
But, again, he had mis-read Jenna. She hadn't recoiled. She had understood. She had known exactly what he was trying to do and why he was doing it. "You were never anything but human to me." After that, an angel with a flaming sword standing in his way wouldn't have stopped him from crawling into her bed. Only Jenna could have done that and she didn't.
She had been so nervous, so unsure; unsure of herself, not of him nor of wanting him. That trust had put a hard pain deep inside him and he had known that the only way to ease it was to make this the best he could for her. So he pulled out the memories, every thing that Beshue had taught him. It hadn't mattered to him then if he got his or not. It was going to be all for Jenna.
She had been so hot-sweet, like good liquor on his tongue, in his belly, running through his veins. Knowing what he was doing to her, feeling it in the movements of her body, hearing it in her soft gasps and moans was the best he had ever had it. But, knowing he was the first to ever do that to her was even better. Beshue had warned him about what taking a virgin could do to the woman but she sure as hell hadn't warned him about what it could do to him.
Jenna's whispered "please Riddick ..... want me" had almost driven him over the edge of control. Almost, but not. He had maintained. He had given her a piece of what she wanted but not all of it. The beast was out of the cage but on a very short leash. Then, Jenna had changed the game. She had wanted, need, to touch him, to arouse him as much as to be touched and aroused by him. Again, he had given her what she wanted.
As she had maneuvered him to lay on his back and knelt beside him, the determined do-or-die expression on her face had amused him. Then it had turned into something else as she began to trace the pattern of his muscles; something that disturbed him until he identified it. It was the same open eyed awe that he had seen in her eyes at her first clear look at his shine. It was her "Beautiful" expression. Under the circumstances it had been a little embarrassing. Women had looked at him with lust, revulsion, fear and a lot of other emotions but never awe. He had closed his eyes against it and forced himself to relax and let her do whatever she wanted.
Her touches had been tentative at first and then became bolder. Then they became damn knowledgeable. But the slight pauses between a first touch and the continuation of it had told him that she was using his reactions to make sure she was doing it right. He had surrendered to it, had surrendered control to a woman for the first time since Beshue, and let his body tell Jenna whatever it wanted to tell her. When she had set her mouth to work on his nipples it was like lightning shooting through him and he had clinched his fists to keep from reaching for her. It had gotten harder and harder to remain passive.
When he had felt her fingers on the waistband of his shorts he had arched to let her remove them. He had expected her to immediately go for his cock but she hadn't. The touches had started at his feet; slow, deep touches that lulled him back to a relaxed state. But, it hadn't stayed that way. She had slowly, so freaking slowly, moved up his legs. The touches themselves had aroused him but the anticipation had been even worse. His whole body had been taut and vibrating and his cock aching before she had reached it.
The first touch of her tongue had sent him arching off the mattress. He had fastened his hand on her thigh. He had known that his grip was too hard, was painful, but he had needed that grounding to keep his control. Even at that, as she had continued licking him, he hadn't been able to keep from flexing his hips, pressing himself against her lips to urge her to do more, urge her to suck him.
Then, she had; first pulling him deep into her mouth and then trying to do everything to him at the same time. Experienced; no. Enthusiastic; oh, fuck yes. She had begun making small pleasure sounds that had eventually merged into a rolling purr that transferred directly to his cock. No one had ever done that to him before. It was the most exciting, and arousing blowjob he had ever had and his control was soon reaching its limit again. Desperate for something to take his attention away from what Jenna was doing to him, he had maneuvered her over him and begun pleasuring her in return.
Riddick hadn't tasted a woman that way for a long time. He had liked doing it before but paid whores faking their pleasure had turned him off of it. Jenna's surprised squeaks and appreciative gasps had made it feel new and even sweeter than he remembered. The smell and taste of her, the feel of her soft outer and inner lips and the stiff nub of her clit against his lips, tongue and teeth; it all had seemed perfect to him, as if her cunt had been made just for his mouth to enjoy.
It had not taken long to arouse her to the point that she couldn't do anything but pant over his cock. In control again, he had reversed their positions. Without the distraction of her mouth on him, he had buried himself in the experience of plundering her and the ecstasy of her reactions to it. When she had climaxed, it had taken every shred of his control not raise up, plunge into her and finish himself as well. Instead, he had continued licking and sucking her, extending her climax to its limit; not only to give her the maximum pleasure but leaving her, he hoped, somewhat numbed to the sensation of the pain that would come next.
As she returned from it, he had positioned himself and then waited; giving her one last chance to come to her senses and stop him. "Yes". Somewhere deep in his own mind, someone screamed 'no,don't do this to her' as he flexed and entered her. That same someone had looked out of his eyes searching for the evil he had done her. It had also pulled her close and asked "Why?" when she had refused the concern and impaled herself on him. It was also the reason being buried to the hilt in her tight heat hadn't caused him to come immediately.
Then Jenna had stoked his head and pulled him into a kiss. That kiss seemed to offer up her soul to him and the totally novel feel of her soft, supple fingers on his newly shorn scalp made him want to devour it whole. He had had to drag his mouth from hers to keep enough conscious thought to finish this for her the gentle way it should be finished. But, again, Jenna changed his plan.
He had given her his shoulder to help ease her pain. Instead, she had taken the pain as if it were as much of a gift as the pleasure had been. Then, when the sweet heat of her had molded to him, massaging and sucking him almost beyond endurance, she had drawn his blood in pure passion. She had called out the beast and this time there was no leashing it. When he came it was like dying, the soft body under him promising heaven instead of the hell he deserved.
But, now, he was facing the reality of it. What did he do now? What did he want to do now? Damned if he knew! ............ Except for one thing. He knew he didn't want to be a fraud any more! He knew didn't want to play Jenna; letting her think he was whatever she wanted him to be and then disappearing as soon as he got the id and money for the contract. But how was he going to make sure that he didn't let her think he was promising things that he wasn't? He had already found out how bad he was at understanding her.
He finally decided that there was only one way to handle it. For once in his life, he was going to have to open up and let someone else inside his head. Instead of keeping himself hidden until he found out where the other person was at and how to use it, he was going to have to take the chance of being used himself. He and Jenna were going to have to talk. With this thought on his mind he finally fell asleep.
He woke up with that same thought in his mind; woke up to the smell of coffee and the sight of sunshine-sea eyes. Jenna was already dressed for duty and handed him a steaming cup.
"Jeeter just took the bridge watch. You and I will cover the next one together so we can make out the schedules for ship's duty and weapons training. I'm going to a meeting with Mr. Sen now. You can come along or rest more and view the log of it later."
Riddick knew that if he didn't act on his decision now the business of the ship and the group would bury it. It would bury it because he would loose his nerve and let it.
"I'll go with you. But, first, I want to know something. What do you expect this ... this thing that we just started between us to be?"
There! It was done. No going back. He didn't know what reaction he had thought he would get from her but the wide smile she gave him was not one that he ever would have.
"I expect it to be exactly what you want it to be. No more. No less. Now, drink your coffee and then get dressed. I told Mr. Sen I'd be there in twenty minutes."
Riddick watched, in stunned silence, as Jenna walked out of the bedroom.
What the fuck had she meant by that?
-
-
THE MOTHER LODE BY ABRAXIS
-
-
Chapter 25 - Beginning of What?
-
-
Riddick lay staring at the ceiling. Jenna lay curled against and partially across him. Her breath created alternating currents of warm and cool across his chest. He felt the same peaceful contentment that he had while holding her in hyper. Only now, without the mind altering energy field, his conscious mind wasn't letting him enjoy it undisturbed. In fact, with all the thoughts that were twisting through his mind like a pit full of snakes, he couldn't understand how he could be feeling it at all.
Very quickly after their mutual satisfaction, he had rolled away from her, instinctively following his usual pattern; get up, clean up and get out. Though sometimes he didn't even bother with the clean up. With whores, it was just part of the service as long as they weren't already counting the money from their next customer. But free lays, if you were stupid enough to think that anything was free, usually tried to make something out of the situation that it wasn't if you stuck around that long. After the first few experiences with that, Riddick had rarely found any woman tempting enough to risk the possible complications.
As he moved, she had murmured softly. Her hands had trailed across his chest to capture his neck and urge him subtly toward her. The soft, tender caress of her lips against his and her whispered "Thank you" cleared his mind of the last vestiges of satiated fog. It didn't matter what the old patterns told him to do. He was already totally over his head into those complications. It was time to figure out some new instincts.
As he returned Jenna's kiss, she tried to deepen it. While he couldn't think of anything he would rather do, he was sure that more sex wasn't a good idea for her. She might be feeling all right now but her body didn't need any added trauma before it had some time to adjust. He pulled back.
"Huh-uh. No more for now. We both need to clean up and get some rest while we have the chance."
Jenna had looked embarrassed and released her hold on him abruptly. Riddick was wondering how he had put his foot in it until she spoke.
"Oh! I've been so thoughtless. You let me sleep all the way back from New Mecca when you hadn't had any more sleep than I had the past few days and then I ...... I ......"
Riddick really hoped that Jenna never lost her ability to blush. The pleasure it gave him had escaped in a low rumble of laughter.
"You what? If I remember right, I walked in here under my own power. Now, get your sweet butt into the bathroom or would you rather go second?"
"Yes, please, you go first. Uh ......... you're staying here then?"
For a brief instant Riddick had wondered if he had misread what Jenna wanted. Then, he had understood that this was Jenna's insecurity, not his. Still, he had needed to be told that.
"Only if you want me to. Do you?"
No blush this time. A strange trepidation instead. Well, why not. Fucking the animal was one thing; feeling safe sleeping next to it was another.
"Yes, but not if you feel like you have to. Only if that is really what you want to do."
Ok. Now, not only had he felt about two inches lower than slime for that last thought but he had to decide exactly how he did feel about all this and then tell her the truth about it. He had voiced the first thought that came to him.
"Right now, I do. Is that enough?"
"Yes."
That much settled between them, he had picked his shorts off of the floor and headed for the bathroom. He had made the first swipe with the washcloth only to see it stained with the pink of diluted blood. Once he was finished washing up, he had left the bathroom to have her pass him, carrying the bedspread with her to put it into the sonic cleaning closet. There had been no question in his mind that, had he inspected that piece of linen, the stain would have been a much brighter crimson.
For the first time in his blood drenched life, he had found the thought of it disturbing.
He had pushed the feeling aside, walked past the pile of his now folded clothing on the bureau and crawled into the neatly turned down bed. After a brief wait, Jenna slipping in beside him dressed in some kind of long sleeveless sleep-shirt had finished the completely surreal scene. He had cuddled her close, pretending drowsy pre-sleep until her breathing told him she was truly asleep.
Now, he lay staring at the featureless ceiling trying to make some sense of it all.
There had only been two women, well one woman and one girl, that he had ever wanted to lay with this way. With Lindi, the girl, it had been impossible. They had been nothing but two unloved souls trying to find what neither of them knew how to give with quick, frantic gropings in whatever hidden niche they could find to protect them from discovery. But, of course, they had been discovered and separated; each sent to more controlled, gender segregated facilities.
The first night there, Riddick had beaten the shit out of an older boy to keep from getting raped. He had spent the next month in solitary; a primitive basement cell that gave him a taste of Slam long before he was ever sent there. His first night back in general population he escaped. Though he had run many times before, he always though of that as his first 'break out'.
It wasn't his last. The next three years were filled with breakouts, recaptures and tougher and tougher facilities. What time he didn't spend in solitary for escape, he spent in solitary for fights. But his ass remained his own property. Finally, he learned enough to make an escape work. He had managed to stay on the streets for almost four years before the system got their hands on him again.
It had been in those four years that he had known the other one, Beshue.
As reluctant or unable as they had been to see to his survival, the two gamete donors that had produced him had supplied a very desirable genetic code for doing just that on the mean streets. He was taller and bigger than he should have been for his twelve years. He was also a great deal stronger, a natural strength that grew as he did without requiring hours of pumping iron to enhance and maintain it. Hidden behind that 'dumb muscle' facade was a highly intelligent, sharply cunning mind and a natural talent for reading the hidden motives, desires and weaknesses of others. Within a few weeks of that escape, he had become a runner for the top gang in the city, protected from the juvie authorities and with eyes on him watching for other talents.
He was on a run when he heard the screams. A man had a woman, that Riddick assumed to be a street whore, pushed up against the wall of an alley and was pounding her with his fists. If it had been her pimp, no problem; but it wasn't. The slime was obviously an outsider, a 'john'. Riddick had taken a quick look around, finding no one else on the street. Where in the hell was the bitch's pimp? He had still believed that street took care of street and had done the only thing he could do. He had launched his whole body at the much larger man. The man had beaten him bloody before his hand had fatefully found that metal shard on the alley floor and the then thirteen year old Riddick made his first kill.
As a result of that night, Riddick had taken a giant step up in the gang. While he still did runs, they were only the most important and valuable ones. The rest of his time was taken up by his new position of Enforcer-in-training and, to his total surprise, his new business.
Beshue, it turned out, was not a street whore. She had been high class stock whose age, in her late twenties, had begun to catch up with her. Rather than waiting until her clientele and reputation started slipping away, she had opted for a new stage in her profession. Newly relocated to the area, she hadn't even been on the stroll when the john, not finding anything else out, had decided that she was going to take his business whether she wanted it or not.
She had, in fact, been checking out the area for a good location to start her own house before approaching the local boss for permission and the proper protection agreement. Before his bruises, cuts and abrasions had even scabbed and greened, much less healed, Riddick had found himself a quarter owner in a whore house and receiving Beshue's personal attention in the two areas of life she considered important; business and sex.
It was a gross over payment for the debt Beshue owed him but there was no altruism to it. Beshue had seen the same future value in him that the under-bosses had and was making a very canny investment in that future. He was going to end up, if not at the top, very near it. Cultivating him at this early stage could reap very valuable patronage from him later.
The business had come first. Beshue hadn't wasted either her money or her off time during her past employment. What she didn't know about keeping and cooking a set of books, didn't exist. The same held true for investing the profits to make even more and totally clean money and keeping legally ahead of the tax men. It was also under her tutelage that Riddick's love of reading was solidified and satisfied to the greatest level in his life. To Beshue, knowledge was the only true power.
Riddick's sex education had started as just that; knowledge that was necessary to run the business and knowledge that gave power over others. After months of reading, lectures and discussions on the historical, psychological, and the political aspects of human sexuality in all it's variations and prostitution in particular and a through technical grounding in human anatomy, Beshue had finally decided he was ready for practical experience.
She gave him a choice of three of the women working their house to provide him with that. Whether it was a test or not, Riddick never knew for certain. However, Beshue made no argument with his opinion that, as an owner, it was bad business for him to fuck any of their own girls and he should continue this part of his education with her.
Years later, Riddick had realized that she surely knew that his real reason was his lack of trust in anyone but her. She was already privy to his naivete and inexperience. To show that weakness to someone else, to give a second person that kind of power over him, just wasn't happening if he could help it. She had taught him the psychological aspects of sex very well and reaped the reward for that diligence. As did Riddick.
Beshue was a whore but she was one who honestly enjoyed her profession. She taught the young Riddick the erotic possibilities of every part of the human body, male and female. But she taught him much more than that. She taught him the pleasures of being seduced and then the techniques and pleasures of being the seducer. And, in her own strange way, she taught him intimacy. The whore who had never had a pimp nor a lover, never allowed any man to linger in her bed, surrendered that privilege to the fourteen year old boy. For the two years after they first had sex until they were separated forever, Riddick rarely slept anywhere else. No matter the number of women he pleasured himself with, it was only Beshue's bed that he slept in; only Beshue that he held close in his arms for no other reason than comfort.
Then, at sixteen and already a veteran Enforcer, Riddick had made a run; a special favor for the boss. It had gone wrong; as wrong as it could go. The judge, unaware of the full extent of Riddick's criminal career and confections, had given him the choice of prison for twenty years or the Forces for twenty years.
Love, friendship; these were not in Beshue's admitted matrix of emotions. Respect and trust were the closest she would claim and those only for a very few. Yet, it was she who convinced Riddick to choose the forces, to try for better than the streets. She would have been right in that if the Forces General Staff had had half the integrity that she did. She had also gotten his signature on the papers returning his quarter interest in the house to her. But , then, business is business.
The last memory Riddick had of Beshue was a wicked smile and a taunt and a warning. The taunt: She had told him that no matter how long he lived or how many women he had, she would be the one he would never forget because she had been his first. The warning: For women that emotional attachment was far greater than for men and, unless he wanted that kind of attachment, he should be considerate enough to steer clear of virgins.
Beshue didn't deal in virgins. This was the first and only advice she ever gave him on the subject. He had followed that advice ......... until now.
And ......... the truth was, he hadn't intended for it to happen this time. Now, he had to understand why it had before he could decide what to do about it.
The first part of it was easy. He had mis-read Jenna. From her reaction to him that first night, he had know she was naive, inexperienced, un-awakened sexually until that moment but he had never believed that she was cherry. He had known one women, the wife of one of his superior officers, who had been married for years and had never gotten hot and bothered and climaxed until he did it for her. Shit! No woman Jenna's age, engaged for any length of time as she had been, would be cherry. While she was nervous around him at first, she was a lot less so that most women even whores. Hell, she was a lot less nervous around him than most men. Then, so quickly, she had been a great deal more eager than nervous.
The engagement thing became a little shaky as soon as he had seen the total door mat that David was. But, there was always the possibility of some pity-fucking and the rest of it still blinded him. Yet, he should have understood her better after traveling that killing circle with her at the compound. He should have understood that when Jenna decided to do something, no matter what it was, she was a certain and sure as bedrock and all conflicting emotions were smothered; that comparing her reactions to any general norm was a big mistake.
While all that was interesting and valuable information for future use, it didn't apply to the situation anymore. He had been certain that she was a virgin as he had stood beside this bed and it hadn't stopped him from crawling in beside her. That led to the second part of it; to him and what was happening to him.
As he had stared at that stranger's face on the main screen of the bridge of the Butch Cassidy, Riddick had felt ................... He didn't want to admit what he had felt but, fuck!, now was the time for truth. He had felt an emotion that he hadn't since he was a child; a small child clutching a paper bag of his belongings, being walked toward a new foster facility, wondering who he would have to be this time to keep from being sent away again.
Oh, it wasn't the same gut wrenching fear he had felt then. It was a creeping, twisting, unsettling anxiety. Added to it was an uncertainty that he hadn't felt even than. Not only did he wonder what part he had to play to be accepted by other people, he wondered what he had to be to be acceptable to himself.
For the last four years he had been telling himself that he was working to become an arrow-straight Joe-citizen because it was something that he owed, owed Carolyn. But, nothing had really changed. He had been more choosy about the contracts he took and changed his appearance but nothing else. Imam had been right about that. Down inside he was still Richard B. Riddick; murderer, escaped convict, unfeeling bastard.
Then he had taken this damn contract and stepped straight off of the streets into a righteous life. As soon as he had a new name ............ He suddenly wondered what Jenna would come up with. She had done a good job with the eyes. They felt right to him even now that he had his old face back. Anyhow, ....... with the new name, he would have the papers to prove that he was a legally licensed Keller and hyper pilot. He had an honest job ..... well, he could claim and the papers would back him up that it was honest; just a hired hand that didn't know nothing about nothing.
But he had gotten more than that. Mr. Sen regarded him as a 'propitious addition' to the group. Jeeter, who had always tried to become part of the wallpaper when he was around before, had regressed to some previous military experience and was relating to him as if he was a liked and respected superior officer; one that could be pushed a little if it was something as important as Jenna involved. Ben ........... shit, Jack II. Hell, even that semi-psycho Syrus, who probably would still dare him to kill him every once in a while, had accepted him as Jenna's choice enough to give them that little 'Garden of Eden' set up. Yeah, Syrus was a semi-psycho freaking romantic. And Jenna .................... Hell! what hadn't she given him.
He had taken it all. Taken it all without thinking about it. He had liked it, wanted it. Maybe he had regressed just like Jeeter; back to the gang, back to the Forces before it all blew up in his face. This being righteous was easy. Then they went to New Mecca.
Oh, Jack had been the same with him as she always had. He was her big brother, fellow street runner who understood what the others never would. But, after she had finished hugging him and crying all over him, there had been shock the first time she really looked at him. Then, there had been swift, sneaky glances as if she were wondering if he was really still who she thought he was. Imam ......... Imam hadn't even recognized him. Then, he had called him 'my boy' and said he was proud of him as Riddick carried him to the skimmer.
That started it and the face on the main screen had brought it to a head. Riddick had suddenly felt like a fraud. All these people with all their positive expectations and deep down inside he was still who he had always been. It was all a con game. Even if he played it until the day he died, when whatever was after that happened, something was going to look him in the face and tell him exactly that.
More important, when it came down to nothing but survival, everyone who trusted and counted on him was going to pay the price for it. At that point, Riddick survives and anyone else loses. He wasn't the one who saved Jack and Imam, Carolyn was. Imam knew that. His trying to wise Jack up, about who Riddick really was, was probably the reason she distrusted him. But, now, Imam had joined the suckers. He was proud of Riddick. Well, just how proud would Imam have been if he had known that the first though in 'his boy's' mind was to work on Sulleman with a shiv until he was nothing but a quivering, bloody lump of screaming agony.
Riddick had gotten Imam quickly settled in the infirmary and, after Jenna had informed them they could take down time, had volunteered to take the clothing from the bridge to the apartment level by himself while Jeeter made the last transfer of Nagia's plants. It was a way for both of them to be off duty sooner but Riddick had another motive. He wanted to get away from other people, even Jeeter, as soon as possible. He wanted to lock himself away in his quarters and deal with the implications of his recent revelation.
Walking down the corridor of the apartment level, Riddick, his habit of mapping his environment in full force, had noted the occupants of the quarters. On his left were unassigned apartments; on his right, first David's and Sasha's double and then Jeff's. He had passed four more unassigned on both the left and right sides before finding Ben's on the right and Mr. Sen's on the left. After that was Jack's on the right and Imam's on the left. Finally he reached Jeeter's on the right with Mira's opposite it, and dropped off the cart of Jeeter's clothing. Pushing the remaining cart on down the hall, he had come to his own quarters on the right with Syrus' opposite. There was a palm plate and a voice identifier. His palm didn't activated the door so he had tried the identifier using the title on the door display.
"First Officer Barrol. Open."
This had worked. The door slid open and he was requested by a computerized voice to return his palm to the plate for future identification purposes. After satisfying the computer and placing his bag and uniforms in his quarters, he had pushed the cart to the last two apartments in the hall. Jenna's was next to his and Nagia's opposite. He left the cart beside Jenna's door and returned to his quarters.
The place looked like a suite in a four-star luxury hotel; well, like the pictures he had seen of them. There was a large living room with very comfortable looking furniture and a state of the art entertainment center, separate den/office/library and a galley with a spacious dinning area. The bed room was large, as was the bed, and had a small sitting area furnished with two overstuffed chairs and a shared side table. There was enough closet space for a family of four. He unpacked. His uniforms and meager personal possessions looked lost in them.
But the bath was where the real luxury was: a huge, deep tub, both sonic and water showers, a sonic laundry and a separate cubicle for the john and bidet. As he placed his few personals in the niches of the vanity sink, they also looked lost in the over abundant space.
Though he hadn't thought about it then, his reverie was momentarily interrupted by the thought that Beshue would have approved of the bathrooms in these apartments. She had run a posh house and had always insisted on the amenities. But, this thought was only a brief reprieve.
He had stripped and placed the soiled uniform in the sonic cabinet. As he turned toward the showers, he was confronted by the 'stranger' again in the vanity mirror. He was beginning to really hate that face. He had grabbed his body soap and charged into the water shower. He was already dripping wet when he had realized that he had forgotten the shampoo. It was like the preverbal straw. His temper had flared. He had stomped back to the vanity, grabbed the built-in sonic depilatory and went to work with it.
Shit, it had been good to run his hands over his scalp and have it feel right. Just as good to look into the mirror and see himself again. He wanted to see how those positive reactions changed now that Richard B. Riddick was back. Even the new eyes worked. The eyes that Jenna had chosen ..............
That had brought him to the part of the fraud that bothered him the most. His first thought in the bar, after the pure lust, was that she was out of his league, a whore too fine for him to afford. Now, she wasn't a whore but she was still too fine for him, even more 'too fine' for him. But she didn't know that because she really didn't know him.
He had had a sudden image of the teenage psychiatrist/psychologist sitting in her ivory tower, studying the files of the badest of the bad, finding the shoddy work of the yoyos so infuriating that it blinded her to the rest of it; blinded her to the horror, the filth and the blood in those files. And she didn't look at the faces, didn't want to be influenced by anything but the data. Well, those faces were data. They were shaped, etched deep, with the realities of those files; the eyes full of the twisted, cold souls behind them.
Well, now she was going to see one of those faces. They had down time and she would expect him to come to her. That was exactly what he would do. Richard B. Riddick would come to her and she would see the truth, recoil from it, and that much of his problem would be over.
But, again, he had mis-read Jenna. She hadn't recoiled. She had understood. She had known exactly what he was trying to do and why he was doing it. "You were never anything but human to me." After that, an angel with a flaming sword standing in his way wouldn't have stopped him from crawling into her bed. Only Jenna could have done that and she didn't.
She had been so nervous, so unsure; unsure of herself, not of him nor of wanting him. That trust had put a hard pain deep inside him and he had known that the only way to ease it was to make this the best he could for her. So he pulled out the memories, every thing that Beshue had taught him. It hadn't mattered to him then if he got his or not. It was going to be all for Jenna.
She had been so hot-sweet, like good liquor on his tongue, in his belly, running through his veins. Knowing what he was doing to her, feeling it in the movements of her body, hearing it in her soft gasps and moans was the best he had ever had it. But, knowing he was the first to ever do that to her was even better. Beshue had warned him about what taking a virgin could do to the woman but she sure as hell hadn't warned him about what it could do to him.
Jenna's whispered "please Riddick ..... want me" had almost driven him over the edge of control. Almost, but not. He had maintained. He had given her a piece of what she wanted but not all of it. The beast was out of the cage but on a very short leash. Then, Jenna had changed the game. She had wanted, need, to touch him, to arouse him as much as to be touched and aroused by him. Again, he had given her what she wanted.
As she had maneuvered him to lay on his back and knelt beside him, the determined do-or-die expression on her face had amused him. Then it had turned into something else as she began to trace the pattern of his muscles; something that disturbed him until he identified it. It was the same open eyed awe that he had seen in her eyes at her first clear look at his shine. It was her "Beautiful" expression. Under the circumstances it had been a little embarrassing. Women had looked at him with lust, revulsion, fear and a lot of other emotions but never awe. He had closed his eyes against it and forced himself to relax and let her do whatever she wanted.
Her touches had been tentative at first and then became bolder. Then they became damn knowledgeable. But the slight pauses between a first touch and the continuation of it had told him that she was using his reactions to make sure she was doing it right. He had surrendered to it, had surrendered control to a woman for the first time since Beshue, and let his body tell Jenna whatever it wanted to tell her. When she had set her mouth to work on his nipples it was like lightning shooting through him and he had clinched his fists to keep from reaching for her. It had gotten harder and harder to remain passive.
When he had felt her fingers on the waistband of his shorts he had arched to let her remove them. He had expected her to immediately go for his cock but she hadn't. The touches had started at his feet; slow, deep touches that lulled him back to a relaxed state. But, it hadn't stayed that way. She had slowly, so freaking slowly, moved up his legs. The touches themselves had aroused him but the anticipation had been even worse. His whole body had been taut and vibrating and his cock aching before she had reached it.
The first touch of her tongue had sent him arching off the mattress. He had fastened his hand on her thigh. He had known that his grip was too hard, was painful, but he had needed that grounding to keep his control. Even at that, as she had continued licking him, he hadn't been able to keep from flexing his hips, pressing himself against her lips to urge her to do more, urge her to suck him.
Then, she had; first pulling him deep into her mouth and then trying to do everything to him at the same time. Experienced; no. Enthusiastic; oh, fuck yes. She had begun making small pleasure sounds that had eventually merged into a rolling purr that transferred directly to his cock. No one had ever done that to him before. It was the most exciting, and arousing blowjob he had ever had and his control was soon reaching its limit again. Desperate for something to take his attention away from what Jenna was doing to him, he had maneuvered her over him and begun pleasuring her in return.
Riddick hadn't tasted a woman that way for a long time. He had liked doing it before but paid whores faking their pleasure had turned him off of it. Jenna's surprised squeaks and appreciative gasps had made it feel new and even sweeter than he remembered. The smell and taste of her, the feel of her soft outer and inner lips and the stiff nub of her clit against his lips, tongue and teeth; it all had seemed perfect to him, as if her cunt had been made just for his mouth to enjoy.
It had not taken long to arouse her to the point that she couldn't do anything but pant over his cock. In control again, he had reversed their positions. Without the distraction of her mouth on him, he had buried himself in the experience of plundering her and the ecstasy of her reactions to it. When she had climaxed, it had taken every shred of his control not raise up, plunge into her and finish himself as well. Instead, he had continued licking and sucking her, extending her climax to its limit; not only to give her the maximum pleasure but leaving her, he hoped, somewhat numbed to the sensation of the pain that would come next.
As she returned from it, he had positioned himself and then waited; giving her one last chance to come to her senses and stop him. "Yes". Somewhere deep in his own mind, someone screamed 'no,don't do this to her' as he flexed and entered her. That same someone had looked out of his eyes searching for the evil he had done her. It had also pulled her close and asked "Why?" when she had refused the concern and impaled herself on him. It was also the reason being buried to the hilt in her tight heat hadn't caused him to come immediately.
Then Jenna had stoked his head and pulled him into a kiss. That kiss seemed to offer up her soul to him and the totally novel feel of her soft, supple fingers on his newly shorn scalp made him want to devour it whole. He had had to drag his mouth from hers to keep enough conscious thought to finish this for her the gentle way it should be finished. But, again, Jenna changed his plan.
He had given her his shoulder to help ease her pain. Instead, she had taken the pain as if it were as much of a gift as the pleasure had been. Then, when the sweet heat of her had molded to him, massaging and sucking him almost beyond endurance, she had drawn his blood in pure passion. She had called out the beast and this time there was no leashing it. When he came it was like dying, the soft body under him promising heaven instead of the hell he deserved.
But, now, he was facing the reality of it. What did he do now? What did he want to do now? Damned if he knew! ............ Except for one thing. He knew he didn't want to be a fraud any more! He knew didn't want to play Jenna; letting her think he was whatever she wanted him to be and then disappearing as soon as he got the id and money for the contract. But how was he going to make sure that he didn't let her think he was promising things that he wasn't? He had already found out how bad he was at understanding her.
He finally decided that there was only one way to handle it. For once in his life, he was going to have to open up and let someone else inside his head. Instead of keeping himself hidden until he found out where the other person was at and how to use it, he was going to have to take the chance of being used himself. He and Jenna were going to have to talk. With this thought on his mind he finally fell asleep.
He woke up with that same thought in his mind; woke up to the smell of coffee and the sight of sunshine-sea eyes. Jenna was already dressed for duty and handed him a steaming cup.
"Jeeter just took the bridge watch. You and I will cover the next one together so we can make out the schedules for ship's duty and weapons training. I'm going to a meeting with Mr. Sen now. You can come along or rest more and view the log of it later."
Riddick knew that if he didn't act on his decision now the business of the ship and the group would bury it. It would bury it because he would loose his nerve and let it.
"I'll go with you. But, first, I want to know something. What do you expect this ... this thing that we just started between us to be?"
There! It was done. No going back. He didn't know what reaction he had thought he would get from her but the wide smile she gave him was not one that he ever would have.
"I expect it to be exactly what you want it to be. No more. No less. Now, drink your coffee and then get dressed. I told Mr. Sen I'd be there in twenty minutes."
Riddick watched, in stunned silence, as Jenna walked out of the bedroom.
What the fuck had she meant by that?
