Fry had read in books about how Terran snakes supposedly hypnotized their prey, paralyzing them with a simple gaze while they moved in for the kill. Suddenly she knew exactly what it must feel like to be that prey. She swallowed and forced herself to meet the implacable gaze of the man standing scant inches away from her, looming menacingly over her.

"You scare me, Riddick. That's what you want to hear, isn't it? Now, can I get back to work?"

It took every bit of courage she had to turn her back on him.

"I've been meaning to catch up with you alone," Riddick mused, and then his voice dropped suggestively, "unrestrained."

Fry's blood felt like it had suddenly frozen in her veins. She felt him moving up behind her until there was only a hairsbreadth of distance between them.

With one hand, he reached up and casually hooked his fingers around a ceiling strut. She could feel his breath against the top of her head as he leaned forward. She forced herself to look at the pressure gauges. Close to forty percent. Please, please keep rising, please don't let there be a problem. Don't give him time to... to what?

"Do you think Johns is a do-right man?" Riddick inquired casually. "Think I can trust him to cut me loose?"

He knows. Carolyn swallowed hard. "Why, what did you hear?" She was sure she was giving herself away.

Riddick exhaled. The breath ruffled her hair again, forcing her to restrain a shiver. "Well, I guess if it was trickeration, he'd just X me out, huh? He'd kill me." She felt him lean in closer, invading what little space she had left. "Then again, I am worth twice as much alive."

She stiffened, her eyes widening. The meaning of that danced tantalizingly at the edges of her awareness. She'd have figured it out even faster if she hadn't been distracted by the heat of his body against her back--

"Oh, you didn't know? Your Johns ain't a cop." He leaned yet closer, letting her hair brush against his face. He brought his mouth close to her ear. "He's got that nickel-slick badge..."

She shivered against him, responding in spite of herself.

"...and that blue uniform..." His voice seemed to shake a bit suddenly, and she could swear she heard him swallow. Was this turning him on?

A shiver washed through her and she hoped he didn't notice the twin bumps that had appeared through her shirt as her nipples hardened. She was being turned on by a convict, a dangerous killer who might do anything to her...

"But he's just a merc." His lip brushed her earlobe as he spoke and she started, another shiver running through her. He pulled back slightly, let her hair drift over his face again as he switched to her other ear. "And I'm just a pay-day."

Fry swallowed again, gritting her teeth. Don't let him manipulate you like this, girl, she told herself. He's trying to break down your defenses, thinks if you'll spread your legs for him you'll follow him anywhere...

Riddick continued on as if that wasn't his plan. "That's why he won't kill me, see?" His nose stroked her earlobe and she felt his breath on her jaw as his lips came within millimeters of touching her. "The creed is greed--"

Get control, dammit!

"Don't waste my time," she grated, and heard his small intake of breath. She knew a smile had appeared on his face. Bastard. "We're not gonna turn on each other no matter--"

That was when the alarm sounded.

"Shit," she muttered, Riddick forgotten as she hurried forward and climbed into the pilot's seat. Flipping the controls, she heard the thud of Riddick's steps as he approached, leaning against the chair to watch. She ignored him.

"Fuck!" she snarled after a moment of studying the readings.

"Right now?" His voice was full of amusement, only minimally suggestive. She turned and glared at him.

"Don't even start with me. We have a serious problem here."

He shrugged, an oddly graceful gesture for such a large man, and moved around her chair, taking a seat in the copilot's chair and pulling it forward. "What's the trouble?"

Of all of the people who could have been in the ship with her, she realized, he was the best one to have around at the moment. Riddick understood ships. Maybe Shazza would have been useful, too, she seemed to be an excellent mechanic, but Riddick knew ships.

"We have a hull breach. A small one. It showed up when the pressure differential hit 250 millibars." Fry scowled, punching in query after query. "I can't find the fucker!"

"And the pressure differential is going to be a lot higher than that when we're up in the vacuum," Riddick mused. "We'd better find it and lock it down or none of us are going anywhere."

"God DAMN Johns!" Fry seethed. However long this took, Johns wouldn't leave to get the cells until it was done. She glanced out at the horizon, hoping she wouldn't see the beginnings of an eclipse already. "Getting so fucking sick of all of these pissing contests..."

Riddick's hand on her knee startled her. She looked over at him, unsure what she was going to see in his face, and was surprised by the calm, almost sympathetic expression she found there.

"Nothing we can do about it now. Let's just get the problem fixed. There should be a hull scan program in the ship's memory. That's how they did it back when these babies were in common use. Takes a while, maybe, but we might get lucky and find the breach fast."

Fry nodded, hunting up the program he'd mentioned. How had he known it was there? she wondered, as she began to key it in.

"Mind my asking how you knew about this?" she queried after a moment. What the hell, right?

He chuckled. "You think prison transports are top-of-the-line? Well, the ones for guys like me usually are, at least in terms of security. But the ones for supplies and low-security passengers... they're even older than this baby. And I know Johns told you all about my escape. I rode out in something a lot like this."

Fry's mouth compressed. She continued punching in the search parameters. "Johns says you're planning on doing it again, and not taking any of us with you."

Another rumble of amusement from beside her. "You think?"

She hit "Execute" and turned to glare at him. "I think that a bunch of us could end up dead when the two of you finally go at it. I think neither one of you really gives a shit about the rest of us."

Riddick cocked his head. "Then you'd be wrong." He rose, smirking.

"First off, happens I like a lot of you. I admit, when things get hairy there's only one person I look out for, but we're not all that different that way, are we?" His smile was ironic.

Cold prickled through her as she realized what he was referring to. "How did you..."

"Oh, I was about four inches away from you, maybe less, when you told Johns," he replied with a smile. "The Great White Hunter of Convicts was less than a foot away from his quarry and he was fuckin' clueless. Don't you just love the irony? I know I do."

Fry stared at him, speechless. He loomed over her, then knelt down so that his eyes were slightly below the level of her own.

"You know what else I know, Carolyn? He's gonna spill your secret. Sooner or later, he's gonna tell the rest of the group. Some time when you cross him, or maybe when you two are at odds and someone else in the group says they believe in you more than in him... he'll spill it. His promises are worthless, Babe. I know that from long experience."

There was a hint of angry bitterness in his eyes for a moment and she wondered what Johns might have done to Riddick to inspire it.

She sighed. "So you're the good guy and he's the bad guy? Not that I'm surprised you want me to think so..."

Riddick smirked again. "I'm a multiple murderer, Carolyn. I've killed more people than you can imagine. Men, women, children... And I'll do it again sometime. You don't know anything about me."

He sat back down in the copilot's chair, that ironic smile still touching his lips. "But I ain't a liar and I ain't tryin' to connive you into anything."

He put his arms behind his head, leaning back. "Johns and I have a deal. I help you get off this rock, I go free. I'm stickin' to the deal. I'll get you all out of here in one piece... as long as he lets me."

His eyes fixed on hers again. She suddenly wished there wasn't so much light spilling in through the windows or he could have taken off the goggles. "If the deal goes sour, it'll be because of him, not me. I'm playing by the posted rules here."

Fry studied him for a long moment, still afraid of him but less so. Her gaze dropped to the piece of sharpened metal tucked into his belt and she glanced up at him pointedly.

"That's just some insurance. Not to mention the fact that it was a useful tool when I was patching the wings. You got a problem with me getting a home-grown Swiss Army Knife? Not gonna put it to your throat."

She shrugged. She didn't really have much of a problem with it. If it came down to a fight, Riddick could probably kill most of them with his bare hands. Not a pretty thought. She glanced at his hands and was startled a little. She'd expected to see the hands of a brute, with thick, stubby fingers. But his hands, although large, were long and fine-looking, with graceful fingers. Hands that could spend hours playing the piano, or coaxing music from another human's body...

WAKE UP! she roared at herself inside, shaking her head.

She turned away from him and began flipping switches. A glance at the control screen brought her up short.

PROGRAM CYCLING. TIME REMAINING: 1 HOUR 27 MINUTES.

"Fuck..."

She heard a creak as Riddick came up off of the chair. No other sound marked his approach until he was beside her, looking at the screen over her shoulder. "Something else wro-- oh."

"Damn it... this is going to take forever."

"No choice, Babe," he told her. Once again he was uncomfortably close to her... but this time she wasn't so uncomfortable, for some reason. "Gotta do it or we won't be able to take off. And we can't just abort it now, because if the eclipse is soon, we need to know where the breach is and get it patched as soon as we can. Better let it run."

"I know," she growled. "I just hate the waiting..."

With a sigh, she flung herself backward. Her intent was to land on the chair, but she'd somehow forgotten that Riddick's chest was in the way, until her back thumped up against it. He exhaled sharply and for a second she thought she'd winded him until she heard his breaths giving "voice" to a silent chuckle.

He had his arms around her waist a moment later. "Maybe we can do something to speed up the time," he suggested in a low, enticing voice.

Fry's eyes went wide as she realized what he meant. Worse yet, she could feel the stirring in her body that said she wanted to do it! Shit, why the hell did she always get drawn to the inappropriate men?

Riddick was leaning back against the seat, drawing her with him. One of his hands left her waist for a moment to skim along the controls, lowering the back of the chair a bit. Now they were lying almost prone, her back to his chest. His hand returned, resting on the strip of bare skin between her top and her pants.

Say something, she admonished herself. Do something. You're not supposed to be doing things like this, not with him...

But she knew it was already too late. Her awareness was already heightening as nerves all over her body became sensitized, wanting even the tiniest whisper of his touch. She sighed and swallowed as his hands gently tugged at her top, drawing it up over her ribs. She could feel his fingers tickling at the undersides of her breasts...

A throaty sigh escaped her and she let her head lie back against his shoulder. She closed her eyes, relishing the feel of his hands on her as he gently pushed the fabric of her top over her breasts, uncovering them. His fingers lingered on her nipples for a moment, delicately circling them, before he grasped her top once more and lifted it up the rest of the way, pulling it over her head and raised arms. She grasped it and drew it off of her arms, tossing it aside, now fully his accomplice. He'd turned his attention back to her breasts, stroking and fondling them.

"So soft," he whispered, making her shiver. "So sweet..."

Her nipples felt hard as rocks, now, almost aching with her arousal. Every time he touched them it sent a jolt down from her breasts to the matching ache between her legs. Her hips began to roll. He spotted that and chuckled. One of his hands stroked downward, across her ribs, down her belly, to rest at the edge of her pants for a moment.

Finally he slid his hand inside her pants.

"Why Carolyn," he murmured a moment later. "I believe you aren't wearing any underwear."

His hand slid down to cup her vulva and she felt a jolt pass through her, coupled with a rush of moisture against his fingers. She couldn't stop the moan that escaped her lips. A sound like a purr rumbled through his chest in response. He began to slowly stroke his fingers against her, moving them only a little as they were almost immobilized by the fabric of her pants, but it was enough to make her moan again.

He released her other breast and used his free hand to begin unzipping her leggings, peeling them away from her body. She sighed, lifting her hips to help him, kicking off her shoes. There was a moment of awkwardness as they got the pants past her lower legs, but then he had her lying down on top of him again, her back pressed against his chest and her now-bared buttocks up against his lap while he fondled her.

"Stay still, Carolyn," he whispered. "Been a long time for me, got a lot of catching up to do..."

His fingers were gentle on her as he caressed her skin, almost reverent in their touches. Funny... she'd had the weird impression in her mind that he was the kind who'd want to take a woman roughly. It never occurred to her that he would handle her so... exquisitely...

She whimpered as he slid a finger inside her and began to stroke it slowly against her nerve centers. Her hips began to roll, encouraging him. A full-bodied sigh passed her lips when she felt a second finger penetrate her.

"You are so wet," Riddick gasped. "God, that's sexy..."

Fry smiled, realizing that Riddick probably had been out of circulation for a long time. She slowly drew in one of her own hands and rested it on his large thigh, feeling the twitch of muscles beneath the fabric of his trousers. She let her hand slowly travel up until it reached his crotch. Sliding her hand under her own body, she rested it on the contained ridge of his erection, stroking gently.

"Oh shit, Carolyn..." Riddick gasped. His fingers went still within her and she heard him swallow hard.

A smile spread across her face. My turn, she thought. She was still aching between her legs with desire. She wanted him buried deep in her. But oh, did she know what else she wanted right now... and she was going to have it.

She drew his fingers out of her and turned around, straddling his thighs. He looked a little confused.

Lost the upper hand, Riddick? Don't worry, you're safe with me. She felt her lips curl into a smile and noted his tiny frown of concern. Reaching down, she began to unbutton his trousers.

"Why Riddick," she purred a moment later, her smile widening. "You're not wearing any underwear either!"

His cock was magnificent. She pushed his pants down around his knees as quickly as she could, wanting to get a better look at his engorged member. It was exactly the same caramel shade of the rest of his skin. Either he spent a lot of leisure time tanning in the nude, or this was as prison-pale as he ever got.

Somehow she knew it was the latter.

Large, too. Not monster-huge or anything, but Riddick was a man who was in no danger of losing the locker room contests her brothers had told her about. Large enough to go deep into her, reach places that rarely got enough stimulation during her brief flings at the way-stations...

She couldn't resist. She bent down and touched her tongue to the head of his cock. His moan in response made her shiver. A smile on her face, she turned and dragged her tongue slowly up his shaft, from the base to the head, enjoying the feel of engorged veins being pushed to the side as she did so. He let loose with another moan.

The moan became a full-bodied groan as she drew the head into her mouth and began to suck.

"Ooh yeah..." he managed after a moment, swallowing convulsively. His hands rested on her head for a moment, fingers lacing through her hair, stroking her hair, head and neck. "Carolyn..."

It thrilled her that he was thinking of her now, that she wasn't just some interchangeable hole to him. That had been the case with a lot of the fellow spacers she'd spent time with. He seemed totally focused on her. She felt another rush of wetness between her legs at the thought.

Me, she thought. He wants me!

She relaxed her throat and drew him in deep. For a moment she was afraid she was going to ruin the moment by gagging but the instant passed. She felt her lips touch down against the skin of his groin. She'd taken him in all the way. Slowly she withdrew, took a breath, and did it again.

"You... are... amazing..." he groaned.

Thank god for college bar bets, she thought with a moment's humor. She drew him all the way in again. She could hear his breathing picking up, becoming more rapid.

He let her draw him in four or five more times before his hands came to rest on her face and he drew her back. She sat up and smiled at him lazily, wondering what he would do with his turn in charge. The chrono on the ship was forgotten. The test was forgotten. All that mattered right now was the ways they could find to join their bodies together.

"C'mere," he rumbled, and put his hands around her waist. Lifting her up, he positioned her so that her legs straddled his neck. "This okay for you?" She could feel his breath against the tender, engorged flesh between her legs.

"Oh yeah..." She closed her eyes, wondering if she'd end up collapsing on him. The feeling of his lips on her drew out a long, shuddering groan. "Ooh..."

Her head lolled back as she concentrated on the movements of his lips and tongue against her. He was lapping at her, drawing his tongue from the opening of her vagina up to her clit in long, slow strokes. Sometimes he worked along the center of her, other times his tongue would stray to one side or another. Then he would swirl it around, weaving between soft folds of flesh as he coaxed shivers and spasms of ecstasy out of her.

Jolts began to pass through her body and her hips were rocking in time with each stroke of his tongue.

"Oh Riddick..." She gasped, realizing how much it was about him. He was no more interchangeable for her; he was who she wanted. Even with her eyes closed she could see him, could see his face and his body ministering to her needs.

Why hadn't she figured it out sooner?

He waited until she was almost at the brink of one of the most shuddering orgasms of her life before he paused. He let her come down a little, enough to give him a quizzical look, before he lifted her up a little and drew her down his body until she was poised over his cock.

"I can't wait any longer, Carolyn," he told her huskily. Still about her. Still about them. She stared at him in wonderment.

She could feel the head of his cock probing at the edges of her opening, and she sank down onto him with a luxuriant sigh. Oh yes... she could feel him all the way through her, nudging up against her womb, stimulating places that almost never got any stimulation...

He kept his hands on her hips as he began to slowly stroke in and out of her, rolling his own hips a little so that he put pressure on all sorts of different places within her. From moment to moment it changed, and she began to shudder a little.

"You like that?" he asked her.

"Oh yeah..." she managed, sliding her hands over his muscular chest, pushing his tank top up so she could look at his nipples, fondle them, kiss them... He began to thrust into her more intensely, drawing soft cries out of her.

A moment later he pulled her down against his chest and rolled over, still inside her, so that she was below him. He lifted her legs a bit, the crooks of her knees resting in the crooks of his elbows so that she was spread wide as he continued to stroke in and out of her.

"How about this?" he managed between his own throaty exhalations.

The new position took him deeper inside her than ever and she groaned as she felt each plunge. She couldn't manage anything coherent, reduced to a single, very expressive "ooooooooooooohhh..."

"Oh yeah, I think you do." He picked up the pace and intensity, his own grunts of pleasure in time with her cries. He bent his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth, tugging at it. She could almost feel as if there was a line stretching between her nipple and her crotch, along which a fire was burning. The line seemed to throb with each stroke of Riddick inside her.

Now the sensations were piling up, a new and overwhelming sensation emerging.

"Oh god, Riddick, I'm gonna..."

He heard her, and his response was immediate. He pressed her down against the seat and sped up his thrusts, pounding down into her roughly, a feral growl escaping his lips. Fry began to thrash against him, hearing her cries rise up and mingle with his almost-bestial ones.

"Yeah, Carolyn... do it... I gotcha..." He murmured as he hammered into her. She threw back her head and screamed out her pleasure as pure sensation washed over her. Wave after wave of it crashed onto her, each one leaving her limp and wasted. And then another one would hit, and another, and another... distantly she could hear Riddick's own orgasmic cries, feel his body shuddering against her... but then another wave would crash over her and for a moment she wouldn't know anything.

Sensation began to return to her, awareness of being in a man's sweat-soaked arms. She was no longer on her back, but was cradled against him while he stroked her hair. He was whispering her name softly.

She opened her eyes and surprised a look of open tenderness on his face.

He's a multiple-murderer, she reminded herself, but felt no fear within her. Not now. And not because he knew how to fuck her just right, either. She frowned, trying to figure out why.

Realization came to her and with it a sort of peace. I'm a real person to him. I felt it when we were together. I heard it every time he said my name. I really exist to him, as me.

That meant the others probably existed to him as people in their own right. They were safe with him, or at least, safe from him.

If the lights did go out on all of them, she thought, she might be able to count on him to help pull everybody through.

A soft chime startled her and she glanced down at the skiff's computer screen. The test was complete. An hour had passed, but the problem had been found. Yeah, he'd certainly known how to speed up time for her.

They both sat up and glanced at the results, pinpointing the breach. Riddick pulled his shirt back down over his chest and began drawing up his pants.

"I'll get that breach patched up, Carolyn," he told her, giving her a smile that she could swear was affectionate.

She reached for her own clothes and began to pull them back on. "Guess I'll go tell Johns that it's time to get the cells."

He nodded. "Yeah. Maybe he'll have surprised us both and gotten them while we were... busy... but I doubt it."

He rose, and gathered up the remainder of his things.

"Riddick--" She couldn't help herself as he moved toward the ramp.

He turned back to her. "Yes, Carolyn."

"Look, I--" She didn't know how to ask it. She wasn't sure why she felt she needed to.

"You want to know if I'm going to leave all of you behind when things get sticky with Johns." He sighed. "I've been asking myself that, too. I don't know the answer."

His expression, even with his eyes covered, was grave and sad as he met her gaze with his own. "I wish I did. I hope the answer is 'no.' But one thing I do know is that when the lights go out, if the dying starts, our whole little psycho-fuck family is gonna rip itself apart. We all need to watch our backs, and each other."

He sighed, shaking his head, as if he'd come to a decision. "You ever wonder why Johns shakes like that? When you see him, I think you need to ask him. And ask why your crew pal had to scream so painfully before he died. Think about what he tells you. Time for secrets is over. Think about letting your own out before he can use it against you too, huh? It's up to you, but it's what I'd do if I were in your place."

Carolyn sat quietly, watching as the ship unsealed and he rode down the ramp as it descended. By the time she'd steeled herself for what she imagined was going to be an unpleasant encounter with Johns, he was hard at work at the hull breach, sealing it shut. If he followed her with his eyes as she left the ship, she never knew, too focused on the confrontation to come.

She allowed herself one little luxury: she hoped they'd find time to do that again soon.