Come With Me

Chapter 1.

He told himself that it wasn’t his conscience twisting at his insides. He’d killed that inner voice long ago, or so he insisted upon believing. Still, his gaze kept being drawn back toward the canyon. What if they followed him? What if she followed him?

What if he went back?

Useless. Pointless. Don’t even think it. They’re already dead.

His hand went yet again to the ramp’s controls, and hesitated once more.

He could still go back. With the ship lit up like it was, it would be safe from alien incursion. He could take the remaining lights and go back for them. For her, at least.

He honestly didn’t believe that the girl — Jack — had a chance in Hell of making it to the skiff alive. The creatures were nose-open for her, taking dangerous risks to come after her. And the Hoodoo… he couldn’t possibly care less if that one made it or not. The man was nothing without his God, and that God obviously had better things to do than come along on this trip.

But Carolyn…

He almost took a step down the ramp before he stopped himself.

She’s dead, too. She said she’d never leave them. You heard her say it. No way can she get here with that dead weight around her neck.

He forced himself to step back, despite the almost-physical pain, and close the ramp. Angry with himself, he smashed the lights against the wall. Now the whole debate was moot and that stupid, nagging, supposed-to-be-dead little voice would have to shut up.

He turned and stalked back to the pilot’s seat and began preparing for liftoff. Carolyn seemed to float around him as he did. The scent of her, the feel of her skin… The pain he’d inexplicably felt when she told Jack “I would never, ever leave you” and he knew she’d never make any such promise to him.

He growled and began to buckle himself in. Time to get off this rock. Get away from those thoughts. Get away from—

Carolyn.

She was standing in front of the skiff, caught like a Terran doe in the skiff’s headlights. In one raised hand she held what looked like one of the liquor bottles, filled with some kind of lambent blue substance. For a long moment, their eyes were locked, his filled with wonder, hers filled with hurt betrayal.

He deliberately powered down the skiff, unstrapped himself, and stood. Only then did she start to walk around toward the ramp. As he opened the skiff back up, he dialed up the lights and drew his goggles down over his eyes.

She stalked into the light under the skiff and stared at him. Her body was taut with fury and she was still breathing hard. It was a compelling image and he wanted to savor it.

“Strong survival instinct,” he drawled. “I admire that in a woman.”

“I promised them…” she gasped out. Still out of breath. Had she run the whole way? “…we would go back with more light.”

So the others weren’t dead. Yet.

“Did you?” He stretched, feeling the urge to taunt her a little. All those promises of hers. Never to him, no matter how much she wanted to use his skills. She hadn’t even offered him safe passage if he got that little herd of sheep off-planet.

“Hmmmm…” He let his amusement show. Go ahead and offer me something now, Carolyn. Let’s see if you’ve smartened up at all from your time in the darkness.

She hadn’t. Rage clouded her features and she threw the bottle down. “What, are you afraid?” she demanded loudly.

Strike one, babe. He threw back his head and laughed. “Me afraid?”

She watched him for a long moment, then began walking forward. He was impressed by how tough she could make herself look. “Come on, Riddick. There’s gotta be some part of you that wants to rejoin the human race.”

Interesting. Strike two, babe, I’ve never been invited. Not even by you.

He crouched down so that they were at eye-level with each other. This was too much fun. “Truthfully, I wouldn’t know how.”

Here’s your cue, if you’re paying attention. Invite me. Show me how. You can do it, Carolyn. Make me a fucking offer.

She blew it. In her anger over being left behind, she never even caught the subtext. “Well, then, just give me more light for them. I’ll go back by myself!”

Suit yourself, beautiful. “Okay,” he replied with a shrug, and tossed her the broken string of lights. “There you go.”

And that’s all, folks. Our little rookie just struck out.

She caught them but didn’t even look at them. Her expression was pained. Desperation was showing. “Please just come with me,” she whispered.

The begging almost got him. But there was no way he was going to risk his ass any further for a bunch of simps who couldn’t even be bothered to treat him like a human being. Even Jack, playing at hero-worship, flinched away whenever he was near. He was just a beast to them so they were just shit outta luck.

How far would Carolyn go, though? How many buttons were left to be pushed? Unbidden, the image of her on the ground, eyes filled with despair and humiliation after Johns spilled her little secret, came to him. He wondered if he could make her look like that.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he announced. “Come with me.”

She stared at him for a long moment. He watched her conflicting emotions play across her face, savoring each one. When she spoke, her voice was a little stronger, but still wounded. “You’re fucking with me, I know you are.”

Getting a little smarter, are we?

“You know I am? You don’t know anything about me.”

And you never really tried to find out, did you, Carolyn?

He fixed her with his goggled stare, willing her to believe him. “I will leave you here. Step inside.”

Privately, he had his doubts. He was starting to want her entirely too much. There was a very strong likelihood that he would drag her onto the skiff soon. But he wanted to see if she’d get on of her own free will first. He desperately wanted to break her, to own her. To pay her back for her flawed trust in him by making her utterly dependent upon him.

He was rewarded by the sudden pain in her face, the look of temptation and despair in her eyes as she sank down to her knees. “I can’t… I can’t…” she sobbed.

“Sure you can,” he informed her. “Here, I’ll make it easy for you.”

He stretched out one arm toward her, hand extended, open. All she had to do was reach out, herself.

“Take my hand,” he instructed. “Come on.”

She stared at his hand as if it might bite her.

He dropped his voice, cajoling, tempting. “Come on…”

She began to sob harder, face twisted with grief for the people she was about to leave behind. Her hand twitched in her lap, but she couldn’t bring herself to raise it.

“Look,” he told her, the voice of reason. “No one’s going to blame you. Save yourself, Carolyn.”

The face she turned up to him was a study in misery. It took all of her remaining strength to say one simple, pleading word. “Please…”

He had her now. He started to walk down the ramp. “Come on.”

She shook her head, sobbing, as he bent down over her. He put his hands on her waist, barely touching her, just enough to guide her forward. “Come on…”

Finally she began to crawl forward, off of the ground and onto the ramp of the skiff.

“That’s it… that’s it…” He helped her stand. Finally she took one hesitant, unsteady step forward, up onto the ramp, on her own.

“Good girl,” he told her, his whole being soaring with triumph.

She was his now.

Chapter 2

She walked unsteadily forward, dazed, feeling Riddick’s hand on her back guiding her. The ramp began to close behind them. She flinched when it slammed shut, pausing in her steps.

Riddick moved up behind her and she could feel the heat of him against her back. When had she gotten so cold? His hands slid onto her waist again, brushing over the sliver of bare skin between her pants and her top, then moving upward to rest against her ribs. He urged her forward once more, steadying her when she stumbled over the fuel cells.

He guided her over to the copilot’s seat and helped her into it, strapping her in. The seat was pushed away from the instrument panel and tilted back, positioned so that she couldn’t actually reach the controls. She felt far too inert to try, anyway.

There was a brief pause while he stared down at her, studying her face. His own was unreadable. Then he rose, dimmed the lights, and took his goggles back off. She watched him strap back into the pilot’s seat and begin running the power-up sequences.

Something was wrong. Something was missing, but she couldn’t think what. Thinking hurt. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples, trying to clear her head. Around and below her, the skiff’s engines roared to life.

She felt the sudden pressure of increased gravity against her as they achieved liftoff. It began to steadily increase as Riddick accelerated the craft to escape velocity. A detached part of her was impressed by his expert handling. He couldn’t just pilot; he could pilot well. Probably better than her.

For the briefest instant she felt the tug of zero-G on her body before the skiff’s artificial gravity system kicked in. Finally she opened her eyes again.

Riddick was leaning forward, studying the navigational data on one of the screens. After a moment, he gave a low whistle.

“Wow, Carolyn. We were way off-course before we hit. I’m impressed. Whatever kicked us out of our lane booted us good.” He glanced over at her with his eerie, silvery eyes, a smile playing across his lips. “Gonna take us a while to get back to any of the Sol Tracks. Good thing Imam’s boys loaded provisions before the eclipse started, huh?”

Imam. Oh god, she’d left Imam and Jack on the planet!

“We have to go back,” she gasped.

He didn’t say anything. He just watched her, that smile still ghosting his features.

She tried to sit up but the straps were still restraining her. She began clawing at them desperately. “Riddick, we have to go back! We can’t leave them there!”

“We already did, Carolyn.”

She got one of the straps free, then another. “Turn this fucking crate around! We have to go get them!”

“No.” He rose slowly to loom over her.

The last of the straps came free and she launched herself up at him. “Goddammit, I am the captain of this ship and I’m not leaving anyone with those fucking things, even if—”

Quick as lightning his hand clapped over her mouth and he shoved her back down, pinning her beneath him in the copilot’s chair. His shiv appeared in his other hand as if by magic; slowly, deliberately he brought it down to her throat. She could feel the cold, keen edge on her skin.

“You are not the Captain, Carolyn. You aren’t anything. I let you come with me. Don’t make me regret my decision.”

After a moment he lifted the blade away from her throat. It abruptly disappeared from his hand, back to wherever it had come from. Finally he uncovered her mouth.

“Please,” she whispered miserably. “I’ll do anything you want, just let me go back for them…”

He seemed to consider it, but the smile on his face was the same one he’d worn when he tossed her the string of broken lights. “Okay.” He stood up, then reached down and helped her to her feet. “Ship’s all yours. Plot our landing course.”

She’d actually gotten as far as strapping herself into the pilot’s seat before she realized what he meant.

She didn’t know where they’d taken off from. She had no idea where Jack and Imam were. There was a whole planet rotating below them and she didn’t have the faintest clue where to land. She didn’t know the latitude or longitude of the settlement and their compasses had never worked. She couldn’t home in on the Hunter-Gratzner, either, because its comms were shot. She didn’t even know the planet’s rate of rotation to try to calculate back from their current orbit.

She’d never be able to find them. They would perish in the darkness long before she could even guess where to land.

She buried her face in her hands and began to sob. She’d abandoned them, deserted them when they needed her the most. All to save her own pathetic ass.

After a moment she felt Riddick’s hands on her shoulders. He began rubbing them, his fingers moving to stroke her throat. He didn’t say a word, just continued massaging her shoulders and neck while she cried.

Some time later, she wiped at her eyes and undid the straps to the pilot seat. She felt completely empty. Riddick’s hand moved to her back and he supported her as she stood. He raised her arms above her head and she left them there, not understanding.

It took her a moment to realize that he was undressing her. Her top was already on the floor of the skiff and her pants had been drawn down to her knees before it truly sank in.

“What…?” She lowered her arms, confused, trying to figure out what had happened. Riddick was on his knees before her, unlacing her boots.

“Don’t say anything, Carolyn. Not yet.” He lifted one of her feet and pulled her boot off, then drew her pants leg down the rest of the way. Now her pants were hanging from one knee only. She watched as he took off her other boot and stripped her completely.

“But—”

The look he gave her was thunderous. “Not one word.” He stood and moved behind her, putting hiss hands on her ribs below her breasts. He walked her around to the back of the pilot’s seat and faced her forward.

His hand clasped her right wrist and he lifted her arm, putting her hand on the back of the seat. Then he lifted her left arm and rested her hand on the pressure monitor.

“Remember this, Carolyn? You were standing here, just like this… except for the part about not having any clothes, of course. And I was right… here…” He pressed his body against her back. His mouth was against her ear again.

“And I tried very, very hard to be a good boy for you, Carolyn. Kept my hands off of you the whole time. Not this time. This time I’m going to do everything I wanted to. So stay still and don’t make a sound. This is my game we’re playing now.”

His hands returned to her ribs, then slid up to cup her breasts. She couldn’t help gasping at his touch, as he began to roll her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers.

“Shhhh,” he breathed into her ear, and abruptly gave her nipples a slightly harder squeeze in warning. His mouth left her ear and moved down to the join of her throat and shoulder. He drew her sensitive skin into his mouth, tonguing it. His right hand left her breast and slid downward, over her belly and down to cup her vulva.

She gasped again and he jerked her back against him roughly. A warning. No noise. Not even a slight gasp… how was she going to stay silent when he was touching her like this? She wasn’t able to restrain her moan when his fingers began parting her labia. This time he simply moved his other hand to cover her mouth and continued his explorations.

“Carolyn, Carolyn,” he chided her. “You need to learn how to obey orders better. Did your last Captain have this much trouble getting you to do what you’re told?”

With his hand over her mouth, she couldn’t answer, and no answer was required, anyway. His fingers stroked her, spreading her inner juices. One traced a circle around her clitoris, making her shudder.

“Good. You’re learning. No noise. Maybe I’ll give you a nice reward.” He slid one of his fingers into her vagina and began stroking it in and out. “Do you like that?”

She nodded a little under his hand.

“Thought I told you not to move.” The menace was back in his voice and she shivered. He laughed softly at her response, then ran his tongue along the base of her neck, making her shiver again.

“Gotta say, last time we were alone like this, all I could think about was what you would taste like. You taste even better than I thought you would. Are you this sweet everywhere?” He inserted a second finger into her and began to speed up the rhythm.

She couldn’t stop herself from leaning her head back a little. Her eyes had half-closed and she felt dizzy. Riddick took this as an invitation and turned her face toward his. He took his hand off of her mouth and then covered it with his own.

Without thinking, she let her left hand drop away from the pressure monitor, reaching for him. He grabbed her wrist, growling, and twisted her arm behind her back. His mouth left hers. “I told you not to move.”

He removed the fingers of his other hand from her vagina, then lifted them to his mouth and licked them. “You know, I think you do taste sweet all over, Carolyn. But you need to learn how to behave yourself. Johns hid an extra set of chains in the skiff. You wanna wear them?”

She stared at him, afraid that if she said “no” or shook her head, he’d take that as defiance. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. She wanted him but she was afraid of him. She needed to feel him inside her again…

“It’s alright, Carolyn. You can speak. I’ll let you talk for a minute. Tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know, I…” she stammered.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” His voice was a low rumble that sent shivers through her body.

“Yes.”

“Will you do what I tell you to do?”

The most frightening thing of all was how much she wanted this, suddenly. “Yes.”

“Anything?” He still had her arm pinned between his stomach and her back. His other hand was stroking her throat. She closed her eyes, gasping for breath, and gave a small, jerky nod.

“Anything.”

“Good girl.” He released her arm, then reached in front of her and pulled on the back of the pilot’s seat, lowering it partway. When it was level with her waist, he put his hands on her hips and lifted her up, draping her body over the seat. He turned her onto her back. Finally she could see his face clearly.

An amused smile played across his features. “You can make as much noise as you want, Carolyn. For now.”

Dropping to his knees, he parted her dangling legs. He leaned forward and blew gently on her already-inflamed vulva. He chuckled when she gasped. “Very good. Good enough to eat…” He spread her legs wider.

She felt his fingers first, parting her outer labia, stroking her thighs. Then his tongue began to run along the inner folds, drawing abrupt shivers out of her body. He’d moved her legs so that her thighs rested on his massive shoulders and she could feel the muscles in her thighs twitching as he worked.

She moaned when he pushed three of his fingers back into her vagina and began pumping them roughly in and out. He was flicking at her clitoris with his tongue, in time with the rhythm of his fingers. His other hand slid down onto her belly and rested there, right above the spot where sensation seemed to be pooling. She couldn’t stop herself from crying out when his teeth grazed her most sensitive flesh.

Laughing softly, he drew one of her inner labial folds into his mouth and began to suck on it, still in time with his pumping fingers. The sensations flowing through her were overwhelming, exquisite pleasure and pain intermingled. She felt herself approaching orgasm when he suddenly stopped.

He removed his fingers from her vagina, drawing them to either side, keeping her open. Once more, he blew on her inflamed flesh, sending frissons through her body. Then he slid his tongue deep into her, sliding and wiggling it around.

The sensations began pooling again, much faster this time. She was unable to prevent herself from thrusting her hips up toward him, trying to bring herself even closer to his questing tongue and lips.

“Oh god, Riddick…” she heard her own voice, barely recognizable, gasping. “Please…”

He stopped abruptly once more, then rose to his feet. “Please what?” His mouth and chin glistened in the dim light with her juices.

“Please… I want you…”

“How?”

“Just…” She couldn’t seem to find the words.

“You want me to fuck you now?”

“Yes.” That was what she wanted.

“Say it.”

She was still panting, only half-coherent. She didn’t understand what he meant.

“Say ‘I want you to fuck me.’ I want to hear you say it.”

“I want… I want…”

His voice had gone hard and cruel. “What?”

“I want you to fuck me, Riddick.”

The smile on his face was pure triumph. “Good girl.” He undid his pants and let them drop, freeing his erection. He’d been holding her legs on the crooks of his elbows the entire time; now he moved forward and positioned himself to enter her, hands on her hips to steady her.

He’d angled the chair exactly right, she realized, so that he could take her standing comfortably. She could feel the head of his cock pressing against her—

He moved forward suddenly and impaled her in one fast, rough thrust. She couldn’t hold back the wail of pleasure that broke out of her. She began to thrash beneath him as he continued to slide in and out, hard and fast, relentless. She was climaxing, reaching a level of orgasm she’d never experienced before, and still climbing.

Finally the dam broke and she convulsed beneath him, almost losing consciousness under the relentless waves of pleasure unlike any she’d ever felt before. She didn’t know who or where she was. She didn’t know anything, just a world of overwhelming sensation.

Slowly, she regained her sense of self. Riddick was no longer inside her. She felt his hands on her waist and he drew her downward onto the pilot’s chair. He was standing at the foot of it now, looming over her head. After a moment he dropped into a crouch beside her. Bending over, he kissed her breasts, then her lips.

“You belong to me now, Carolyn. You’re mine, and you’ll do anything I want you to do. Isn’t that right?” He put his hand on her cheek, smiling at her.

“Yes…” she gasped, unable to imagine anything more rational. “I belong to you.”

“Good girl.”