The Slow Burn, Chapter 7

7.
Riddick: Face To Face With an Angel

Riddick stared in amazement as the girl approached him. She put a package of cotton pads down, the little round things his foster sisters had used to apply something they called “toner” to their faces, resting it on his thigh as if it was the most normal thing in the ’verse to do, and began to struggle with the top of her vodka bottle.

“That’ll make me more thirsty, not less,” he commented. It was hard to hide his amused disbelief.

“It’s not for drinking,” she muttered, wrestling the top off. “It’s for your cuts. Closest thing to rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide I could find. Shame we lost the bloody med-locker.”

Smart girl. He looked her over again. She was all business now, opening up the package of cotton pads and taking one out, then soaking it in the alcohol. He could study her at his leisure while she worked. Her skin glistened with perspiration from the hot suns. She’d put her hair up rather haphazardly, and he felt a sudden, intense urge to run his fingers along her throat and bury them in her hair. The alcohol on his wounds was cold on his skin and stinging in his cuts, which somehow enhanced, rather than diminished, the arousal he suddenly felt. His pants had become uncomfortably tight; he wondered if she noticed.

“You never told me your name,” he murmured huskily.

She looked up at him, meeting his unprotected eyes for the first time. A lot of people flinched away when they saw his shine job, but a look of amazement crept across her face instead. “Fiona Cavanaugh. And you’re Richard Riddick.”

He let his voice drop lower, letting some of his arousal show. “Delighted to meet you.”

She seemed to completely miss the innuendoes he was sending her way, but for the first time since the crash, he saw her smile. It was a wan smile, but a real one. “A pleasure.”

“You do realize that you’re going to get in trouble with Johns again,” he told her.

“Fuck him,” she muttered, soaking another cotton pad.

“I’d rather not. He’s not really my type. You, on the other hand…”

That actually got a hint of a laugh out of her. “I am not fucking him.”

“That wasn’t what I was suggesting.”

Her eyes met his again, and he watched as a flush crept up her cheeks. Now you understand what I’m gettin’ at, babe. It was interesting to watch her without the goggles, seeing the movements of her body heat as it shifted across her skin. If he looked carefully, he could almost imagine that he was seeing through her clothes.

He was gratified to hear the answering huskiness in her voice when she spoke. “Turn your head a little.” He complied, letting her carefully swab the large bruise that the settler woman—he thought he’d heard Fry call her Shazza—had given him on the side of his skull. Gentle as she was, he still winced when she touched it. That one was going to hurt for days.

But in the meantime…

He knew he shouldn’t play these games. But it had been way too long since a woman had gotten this close to him, and it was tempting to see how much closer he could convince her to get and what she might be willing to do. Even if being chained up like this was about as far from his erotic fantasies as he could get.

But he didn’t even know if she was old enough for what he had in mind. Felon or not, that was something that mattered to him.

Never mind whether she’s sane enough, he reminded himself. Jackass.

As she finished tending his wounds, he heard the sound of the merry little group returning. They sounded agitated.

Way to kill the mood. “Sounds like they found Zeke’s real killers. You’d better scoot. Don’t want Johns yellin’ at you again, do we?”

“I don’t want him doing anything to you, either.”

Riddick smiled at the girl. It was a fierce smile, one that would normally warn people that even chained up he was still very, very dangerous. Its effect, however, appeared to be lost on her. “He won’t. Don’t worry about that.”

The concern on her face was plain, and it confused the hell out of him. Why did she care so much? “You sure?”

She was still close to him. Before he could stop himself, he leaned forward and brushed her lips with his. “I’m sure. Now you’d better go.”

Now the girl looked a little flustered as she gathered up her makeshift first aid kit and stood, and her scent had changed in a way that made him suspect all of the restraint he was trying to preach to himself was useless. This wasn’t over, for either of them. He heard her release a shaky breath as she started out of the darkened room.

She feels it, too. If Johns doesn’t kill me in the next few hours, I think this might just be happening.

“Fiona.” His voice was soft, but brought her to an abrupt halt nonetheless. She turned to look at him. “I’ll see you soon,” he told her, slipping as much promise into the words as he could.