In Consequence

FOURTEEN


Jack didn’t know what the hell was going to happen to her. She’d never seen Riddick so upset. He was so controlled, even when he was fucking around with her head, even when he was angry with her. That anger was controlled to a degree. But the man she had just seen wasn’t controlled at all.

Her own admission had shocked the hell out of her. She tried to hide from it, but there it was: a freakish desire to be with this monster, her captor. She didn’t understand it any better than he seemed to. What was this, a match made in hell?

~*~

The murderer opened his eyes and thought calmly that drudging up that part of himself was easier than he’d thought it would be. He hadn’t realized that Richard, the man he once was, had been so close to Riddick’s psyche. It was odd… the animal side of him felt further away than it had in years.

The animal had been threatened on the planet, but Riddick had shoved the man back down where he belonged. Couldn’t have him, with all of those emotions and shit, getting in the way of his own survival.

The animal snarled and raged, but the man was in control for now. He knew it wouldn’t last long, but he had to try and figure out what the hell he was going to do about Jack.

He got off the bed and approached the door. “Jack,” he called. There was no answer. He ground his teeth impatiently. “Jack!”

“What, Riddick?”

Suddenly she was there, and he once again felt the urge to throw her beneath him and claim her completely. In that moment, he understood something—the animal and the man were truly the same being, with the same motivations and desires.

He didn’t know quite what to say. He didn’t know how to fix anything.

~*~

Riddick stood there looking at her with an odd cast to his features. She wished then, more than ever before, that she knew what was going on in his head. He was so damn impenetrable! She didn’t think anybody would ever get inside that big bald head of his. And he wanted her to let him in? Impossible.

He gestured for her to approach him. She did so with nervous, hesitant footsteps. What did he want now? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? Why did he have to reappear at all?

Because he’s Riddick, and what he wants, he takes. End of story.

He was still just… looking at her. She could feel herself getting impatient. What did he want from her?

Finally, he spoke. “Jack.” His voice was hoarse. It took her by surprise. She didn’t know what to make of it. “Jackie….”

“What do you want?” she snapped, then immediately regretted it. She was just beginning to learn how to handle the old Riddick. This new Riddick was someone different, somehow. She didn’t know how to deal with him. She suddenly felt more out of her depth than ever.

"I….”

He paused again, and Jack tried not to let her frustration show. She was trying to tread carefully around Big Evil. Provoking him was something she did NOT want to do. Showing her irritation was a sure way to do just that.

“Sit down,” he said, pointing to the bed.

Feeling rather awkward, she did as she was told. She didn’t know what to expect next, but it wasn’t anything like what actually happened.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said, joining her. “Connect with someone.”

His voice was still hoarse. Something told her to just sit still and listen.

“I want you. I want you here with me. And you said you wanted to be here, too. I’ll admit, that one really threw me. Thought you hated my guts.”

“I do,” she muttered before she could stop herself. Even as she did so, she wondered how true it was.

He shot her a sharp look, but went on, “I am the way that I am. When you were a kid… you know…. What did you see in me? I was as much of a monster then as I am now.”

Jack opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He had been so… fascinating. He was everything she wanted to be—strong, tough. Nobody wanted to fuck with him, and she wanted to capture a part of that and take it into herself. And she was just starting to really notice the opposite sex, and on a purely carnal level, a level she didn’t understand when she was that young, he was the most beautifully intoxicating man she had ever seen.

Now he was just the monster he claimed to be.

~*~

Fuck. This wasn’t going the way he intended it to go. Of course, it wasn’t like he had a plan or anything. He was at a loss. He loved scaring her. He loved that power. It made him feel so strong. But he didn’t want to break her. He just wanted… fuck, he was obsessed. It wasn’t love, he knew that. He wasn’t even capable of love. That, at least, was a certainty.

Oh, hell. When he sat down and tried to pick it apart, he wasn’t even sure why he had stolen her in the first place. It had seemed completely logical at the time. He’d gone through all that effort of getting the collar, of tailing her, of lulling the holy man into a sense of complacent trust with his steady checkups on the girl… and now he had what he wanted, he claimed her. The thing was, the end result wasn’t what he wanted at all.

The solution kept nudging him in the back of his head, but he ignored it. No way. He wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. He couldn’t give that much of himself.

A second thought joined the first, and it kept badgering him as he sat there and thought. Finally he allowed himself to register it. Maybe then it would go away. But that horrible little thought….

What was he afraid of?

Nothing. He wasn’t afraid. The very idea was ludicrous. Afraid of what? A volatile seventeen-year-old girl? Come on.

But he always lived by that old saying: keep control of everything he could. Control anything and anyone remotely close to him. What was that if not fear? Fear of letting anything too close because it made him vulnerable.

But, with his life, he had a perfect right to be paranoid. Throwing a slave into the mix—was it all a big mistake? Would she have been better off if he had left her alone?

This new concern for someone other than himself downright terrified him. This was why he had shoved his human side so far down. Humanity, by its very nature, was a lesson in vulnerability. What the hell had he been thinking, taking a slave? It didn’t make any sense. It had seemed perfectly logical at the time. He wanted her, so he took her. But equally logical was the need to stay far, far away from anybody. Did he think that she would be a robot, there for his amusement whenever he wanted her, then able to be put away whenever she became irritating or inconvenient?

She was a human being, and if he wanted her to be herself—and that was who he was after in the first place, wasn’t it?—she had to be treated like one. He was in serious danger of warping her permanently. There was no balance. She couldn’t be treated like a slave without becoming one, because with him as a Master, if he allowed himself to lose control, he’d most likely kill her.

He wanted her to be his. All his. But he wanted HER, not another Giselle. Finally he understood his anger when she became too submissive. When she was doing that, she slipped away, further and further. But when she was herself, it amused him at the same time as it pissed him off to the point where he put her back in her place. Which made her submissive, which made him angry… what the fuck had he been thinking? How could he fix it? Could it even be fixed?

She was still sitting on his bed, watching him as he stared at her. What was going on in her head? He reached a hand toward her. She flinched. Fuck.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said softly.

“Right,” she snorted, eyes widening when his hand still approached. She was scared of him. It made the animal growl contentedly. But the man—the fucking man that he still was, deep down—was frustrated at her denial, at her rejection. He reached for her again.

No wonder the slam shrinks could never analyze him. He didn’t even understand himself.