Chapter 14 (there is no 13!)
Lights on the co-pilot's consol started blinking.
They had practically been living in the cockpit, waiting, waiting, and waiting some more for Cody to make a move or make a mistake. Eleven days and counting. Then the panel lit up, like a Christmas tree, Tane would say.
Riddick would say 'whatever'.
He kicked his seat so it spun around and he could get a better view of the forward monitors. Tane was in the bathroom and he bellowed for her. "We got incoming."
"Incoming what?" she asked, depositing herself in the seat next to him.
"Message. Live feed, too." He waited to see it, but there was a blur of color and static and nothing more. "What in the hell is that?"
"Coded. That is coded." Tane said, observing the static like she could make sense of it . . .
"Are you going to de-code it?"
"Hell no."
"Why not?"
"Because if it's Cody I'm not interested and anyone else can just . . wait until I fucking feel like answering them." She deleted the message, then ran her bare foot up his leg, licking her lips.
"Are you trying to distract me?" Riddick purred, gravelly voice making her shiver. He'd been waiting for her to give him some sort of sign that it was alright to touch her again.
"Mmmmmmmmmmm, you found me out." She leaned forward and whispered. "Do your worst."
"Worst? Hide and watch." He scooped her up bundled her back to his quarters, depositing her, gently, onto his bunk. He was different with her, now, more controlled, more relaxed, more human than he could ever remember. Riddick wondered if the animal side was gone for good, but he doubted it. It was too much a part of him.
He stripped off his shirt and stood back, out of reach. "What was that message?"
Tane followed him, running her short fingernails up his well-formed biceps. She stepped close, licking the underside of his chin. "A friend."
"A friend?" he repeated, wrapping his massive arms around her. "Wade?"
"No."
"Good." He kissed her, long and slow and deep until they were both breathless from it. Then he pulled the tie from her hair. She had been letting it grow and it was long, really long now, falling nearly to her waist. He liked it that way, loose, not tied up.
Tane slipped back into the bed. "Turn off the lights." she said, and the lights dimmed, nearly out but not quite.
"You've been updating the computer again." he accused.
"Every day."
He joined her beneath the covers, pulling her close again. Riddick inhaled sharply, taking in her scent, burying his face against her throat. She shivered. He started a slow assault of her senses, trailing his mouth over her collarbone, down her shoulder.
"You are so wicked." she whispered, still out of breath. He pulled her shirt, which was actually one of his shirts, off over her head and traced his fingers down her throat, across the top of her breasts. Tane sighed.
"Like?" he growled.
She smiled. "More than like."
Riddick rolled over, pulling her on top of him as he went. She flicked her tongue across his chest, stopping at each nipple long enough to make him groan. Tane liked the sound of that and did it again, slower, enjoying the reaction.
Riddick got annoyed at all the layers of clothes she seemed to have and stripped the undershirt off her. Much to his pleasure, it was the last layer before skin. She was wiggling out of her jeans before he could complain about her wearing so much clothes to bed.
"Better?" she asked, peering down at him. As lovely as he thought she was, it was her eyes that captured him.
"Much." he rumbled, running his hands up her back to pull her down against him. He kissed her again, slipping his tongue across her teeth into the warmth of her mouth. A large, warm hand found a breast, a nipple and it was her turn to gasp, then moan.
It turned into a cascade of swear words as a alert went off on the bridge.
"Can it wait?" he asked.
"No. It's a collision warning." She was gone in a flash, whisking up discarded clothes as she went. Riddick was two seconds behind her.
Chapter 15
"Nothing's moving." Riddick observed, still shirtless. The ship was safe, as far as he could tell.
"On the contrary . . ." Tane told him. "Bios, subject two."
The computer displayed a map of part of the station, and a blinking dot. "That is Cody, and he's not on his ship."
Riddick felt the animal side stir. "Is he alone?" Meaning, was his co-pilot nearby.
"Bios subject three." Tane told the computer. The screen blinked back to the docking bay momentarily, unable to access his ship, and returned to following Cody. "He's not with West."
"Do we move on him?" He was suprised he even bothered to ask, but then, he had learned to trust her instinct, especially about Cody.
Tane ran her hands over her face. "It takes thirty-one minutes for the hard-dock to extend and seal. Cody's ship is still hard-docked and his pilot is on-board . . . but the engines are only at twelve percent. So we have a window of opportunity. It's just past the middle of second shift on the station."
"Less people about, fewer possible witnesses?"
"Yea." She was somewhere else, and he really wondered what was running through her mind.
He had plans of his own. "Did you call up the dock?" She nodded affirmative. "Then we have some unfinished business." Riddick decided, pulling her away from the consol. Bed, bridge, did not matter to him. He had her naked again in a heartbeat.
"Rid . . ." she began to protest, but he had 'plans' of his own and shut her up with a kiss, hungry and demanding. She had been distracting him and now it was time to return the favor. He picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him. Bracing against the wall with his forearms, he slowly leaned against her, and she helped him out of what remained of his clothes.
Tane rolled her hips to meet his movement, throwing her arms around his neck to hold on. Then he was inside her and she gasped because she couldn't help it. He growled and she pulled herself even tighter to him, nipping at his lip. He got one hand into her hair, drawing her head forward to continue the kissing he had started. For him, the kissing was nearly as intimate as . . . well, all the other things they did. Sometimes in bed but usually where ever they happened to be when the mood struck them.
They had learned each other's moods and movements well, and after weeks of abstainence, it was a mad rush towards ecstacy. He turned them to one side, finding some leverage against the pilot's seat.
"Slow down." Tane whispered harshly.
"No." he told her, knowing he wasn't hurting her . . .
"Riddick . . ." she panted, digging her fingernails into his shoulder.
"Tane." he breathed into her mouth, tasting her and feeling her and smelling her all at once. The idea had been to draw her attention away from the obvious, and he had lost himself in the process. He could feel her body tighten as she reached climax and it made him do the same.
As she began to relax in his arms, he picked her up and headed for his quarters, again. Riddick deposited her in bed and she sighed contently. It only took a few moments for her to realize what had happened. He wasn't joining her in bed. Tane sat up abruptly. He stood in the doorway, blocking it, getting dressed.
"Don't even think about it." she warned.
He put his goggles on, smiling faintly. It wasn't the way he wanted this to happen, but she wasn't going to just let him walk off the ship without a fight. Riddick shut the door and locked it from the outside. It was his room, and with any luck, it would take her awhile to figure out how to get the door to open.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" she shouted from the other side. "Don't you do this, Riddick."
"It's done, little girl." he said calmly.
"You need me."
"I need to know you are safe."
"Riddick." she called, sounding frantic. "Riddick!"
"What?"
"Are you going to let me out?"
"No chance."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Tane hit the door with each word. "For God's sake, wear your body armor."
"God?" he questioned. Not that it was a bad idea.
"Just do it!"
He had never heard her sound so near panic. "It's done."
"Make sure it's yours and not mine."
He laughed, thinking she was merely stalling now. "Yours wouldn't fit me." She knew that, but it didn't occur to him . . .
"Riddick, please." she pleaded.
He was quiet for a moment. "I'm doing this for you, Tane. Try to remember that."
Chapter 16
"Where are you?" Tane said to herself, panting from the pace she had made from the ship to the station. No one was showing up on her tracker - Riddick had to be moving because he hadn't been gone more than 7 or 8 minutes before she got out of his room. And Cody . . he should be showing up, too.
Five minutes later, he did. He was making for his ship. "Damn." she breathed. It was now or never.
"I know you can hear me." she spoke into her comm. "Where are you, because I'm on the Station at intersection Y-16 and the main corridor." That would reach both sets of ears she wanted to know where she was. It worked, too. Cody slowed and Riddick answered.
"That was smart, little girl." he growled. "Do you want him to come after you?"
"Let him." she replied. "Yea, that is a dare."
Cody came on, laughing. "Try to sneak up on you, while Hunter is trying to sneak up on me? I was born at night, but not last night."
"Leave her out of it. Let's dance, just you and me Cody." Riddick offered.
"But it's not you I want to catch up with, alone in some dark passageway."
"What kind of man takes out his aggressions on a woman?" Riddick wondered.
"She's not some helpless whining female." Cody pointed out.
"She's seven months pregnant." Riddick said.
Oh, fuck! Tane thought. "He really needed to know that." she added.
"Really?" Cody drawled. "Now how did that happen? You, Hunter?"
"Nope."
Cody was moving again. Riddick was between him and the bay suddenly, Tane could see them both on the tracker. He had to have been moving through air ducts or electrical conduits to get there before Cody.
"You wait for me." she said without keying the mic. She stopped, watching as the two dots on her tracker merged and then she couldn't tell one from the other. Too late. Tane set the charge on her plasma pistol to one hundred percent - lethal charge within a hundred yards. She planned on being face to face with Cody when she killed him.