Sheebah
Rated R for a sexual situation.



The pain in his leg had become a constant - something that reminded him he was alive, yes – but weakened, exhausted and in agony, Riddick began to wish he were not. Each involuntary movement, a swallow, a blink, even a peristaltic contraction of his asshole, caused his body to resonate with pain. If he dared twist or stretch in order to lap at the rainwater running down the masonry, an agonizing yellow light crashed into his consciousness causing him to shudder and sob.

For two days, he had remained hidden in the gap between the house and the outhouse, out of sight of anyone who may have passed by the fence, but blind with fever and burning with thirst, his sodden hiding place was beginning to resemble a grave.

The pain was at times sufficient to render him unconscious, but as his condition deteriorated, even that respite was denied him.

On the second night, he was discovered, and this came as an unexpected relief to him although it was no surprise, for somewhere in the writhing pit of his delirium, he became aware that he was making a lot of noise – retching and vomiting and thudding his boot against the wall of the house as he convulsed, his flesh searing hot, but frigid at his core.

The hours that followed were filled with assaults upon his senses – water on his skin, needles in his arms, legs, buttocks; bright lights, stinging, burning, prickling, his urine scalding him; too many hands on him. Too much touch. Enough. Enough.

He convalesced in a ground-floor room on a bed with smooth, white sheets and quilted blankets that didn’t make his skin itch. The windows reached the floor and could be opened into a walled garden but for days he lay, motionless in the alien comfort, hid from the light. At night, he could tolerate the moon and was able to look out, watching the trees as they shape shifted, tranquil and undulating beasts of black against the purple iridescence of his night vision.

A cat patrolled the garden – a large-boned but athletic animal with dense, black fur. She passed by his window on her outward and return journey every night and each patrol was a meticulous routine. She stopped to rub her face against the corner of a low ornamental wall and against the branches of a shrub, scenting them, marking her territory.

From his bed, Riddick watched as the cat arched and rubbed and rolled, twisting and stretching, sometimes rising on hind legs to reach the higher twigs, eyes closed, lost and blissful in her ritual.

Later, she would return, usually with a rodent hanging from her mouth but then her demeanour would be different, more furtive. She walked almost in a crouch and paused at his window to look inside, showing Riddick her catch and he wondered if the creature was only showing him what he could not have. The catch was hers and she’d earned it.

By day, Riddick tried to sleep. Sleeping meant that he escaped the daylight but it also meant that he could avoid interaction. The woman who came into the room tended him, quietly and with a comfortable expertise but he resented her touch and tolerated it only as a necessary evil. He understood why she changed the dressings on his leg and checked his body temperature and he accepted the needles and the medicine without complaint.

What Riddick couldn’t reconcile were the touches before the pain and the pauses, which spelled apology before the event. Her consideration for his comfort was beyond his comprehension. Never before had anyone prepared him for the sting of a needle with anything other than a wry grin or a sadistic smile; at best, he was treated with detached indifference. No one had washed him except with a hosepipe and local anaesthetic was a luxury he’d never been afforded until now.

He was roused from a light sleep by the touch of her cool hand to his forehead and he opened shaded eyes, because always, she remembered that he needed them. He blinked, curious about the furrow in her brow and the smiles she gave him when he awakened. When she fed him, she was slow and patient. Where he came from, those who couldn’t feed themselves went hungry and that was that.

Even when he became strong enough to sit himself up and bring the food to his own lips, she remained with him, watching, waiting, saying little except to reassure him of his progress, but even then, Riddick regarded her with suspicion. Okay, he hadn’t been shipped off back to slam but perhaps that was only because she didn’t know who he was yet. A rumour of reward would soon have her dispatch him into the clutches of some passing merc, so the milk of human kindness wasn’t something he was about to get hung up on.

Late one afternoon, when his nurse was gathering together the remains of his meal and preparing to change his sheets, the cat came in through the open window. The woman smiled down at the creature in a way that Riddick had not previously seen and this intrigued him. He sat forward, slightly, watching the cat winding its liquid way around her feet, bumping up against her, forepaws rising from the floor with almost every nudge.

She called the animal, ‘Sheebah,’ crouched and offered her hand, which the cat duly nuzzled and dragged herself under. There was no necessity for stroking because the cat simply dipped and twisted and drew herself against the proffered fingers before finally prostrating herself on the deep-red tiles, offering her belly in an invitation.

Riddick’s brow furrowed and he held his head slightly askew in his curiosity. He could see the animal’s back legs, thick and muscular, the non-retractable claws just a suggestion of their potential amidst the deceitfully soft fur at her feet. The woman didn’t flinch as the other two paws flailed, claws fully extended, hooked, pointed, murderous, but they closed on her hand, harmlessly and Riddick found himself letting loose a slow breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

She must have heard him, though, because she looked up at him from her place on the floor, her voice sounding odd and unfamiliar in its clarity, since she’d only thus far addressed him in whispers.

“Just because she has the ability to gouge my hand to the bone doesn’t mean that she will.”

Riddick grunted, softly and lay back against his pillows again. Was she talking about trust? She certainly seemed to trust the cat, but then it was light outside and she wasn’t hunting yet. He wondered if she would show the same trust at night when Sheebah was on the prowl, prey hanging from her jaws. Would the feline be so attentive and affectionate then? He didn’t think so.

She urged the cat outside and returned her attention to her patient, changing the covers on his pillows and managing to swap the sheet underneath him without causing too much distress to his bandaged leg but, as usual, she didn’t trouble him with further words or with any questions. She simply gathered up the dirty laundry and left him to the quiet solitude of his bed, moving silently, save for the whispers of her skirts against the door as she passed through it, letting it close behind her with a terminal click.

He didn’t really know where he was. This didn’t smell like a hospital or sound like one and she – whoever SHE was, didn’t wear a recognizable uniform, even though she clearly knew what she was doing. His leg was healing and the poison was gone from his system so she helped him take his first steps up and down the room and when it was dark, for a few paces into the garden. The newly unsutured skin felt taut and sore and he thought it was sickeningly close to tearing as his thighs flexed and contracted to take his weight, but she reassured him and indeed, his wound remained intact.

He was exhausted after the exercise and she helped him to sit down on the bed, but though his shoulders were rounded with fatigue, his head, bowed, he was reluctant to lie down and go to sleep.

“What’s your name?” Riddick spoke to his carer at last.

“Anelie.”

She answered in the same, soft, whispery tone that she’d used when tending to him and he wondered just how habitual that was, how artificial it might be. A bedside manner. That’s what they called it, right? Not necessarily anything to do with kindness or compassion, just something practiced as a trusted method of attaining co-operation. Still, it was better than a billy club or some psycho-fuck drug that keeps patients out of it and in no condition to be difficult.

He made no acknowledgement of her name and no attempt to introduce himself but went on to his next enquiry. “And what’s this place?”

“This is…where I live.”

He noticed that her voice took on the same clarity as when she’d made her comment about the cat to him. The bedside manner was gone but she still hadn’t asked him who he was.

“And that…is your cat?” Riddick pointed to the window just as Sheebah was slinking through the gap.

The woman smiled again but didn’t crouch or attempt to touch the cat this time. “She lives here, too.”

Sheebah moved along the tiles, making no sound with her footfalls, but she purred and rumbled like a piece antiquated farm machinery as she came alongside Riddick’s bed and dragged her body along his shins, making a firm bump against them with her head. He remained still, watching with discreet fascination as this animal marked him as her own and took her pleasure from him.

Without really thinking about it, he let one of his hands become limp and his fingers hung between his knees, then sure enough, Sheebah rose on her hind legs and made her connection with them. Riddick twitched, slightly, at the unexpected cold point of the cat’s nose against his skin but he recovered and was still again as two soft paws pressed into his leg and a furry head nudged into the palm of his hand, keening and rubbing, shamelessly.

When he flexed his hand, the cat adjusted her position, letting her paws fall away so that she could arch her back against it, then she turned about and repeated the action until he was mesmerised, hopelessly compelled to turn his hand this way and that so that Sheebah could take what she wanted from him.

As her neck passed between his splayed thumb and forefinger, Riddick became aware of just how fragile and vulnerable the creature was. Behind the head at the base was particularly fragile, which he managed to ascertain by bringing those two digits just a little closer together, tightening his grip just a fraction.

Was the animal stupid? Had domestication made it so docile that it no longer knew how to protect itself?

As Sheebah made her fifth or sixth pass through his hand, Riddick brought his thumb and fingers even closer together, preparing a trap with his hand, not intending to harm her but maybe to scare her, to deliver a warning to her about trusting others a little too much, but before he had the opportunity to close his fingers, he felt a definite low resonance going through them.

The cat growled at him, twisted away from his touch and with vicious precision, brought her front claws along the back of his hand, opening two deep red wounds from his wrist to the base of his thumbnail. Riddick flinched and his hand went to his mouth, reflexively. His tongue touched the metallic tang of fresh blood but he did not get to his feet or make any attempt at retribution. The cat had made her point and answered his question in vivid detail.

She went directly to Anelie, trotting with her tail held vertical, dismissing her offender with a show of her backside, making a high-pitched trill of greeting to her mistress, who crouched and stroked the sleek black back just once, casting Riddick a knowing glance.

“Trust is an exercise in knowing where the boundaries are or knowing where to set new ones,” she said.

Riddick nodded and lay back on the bed, feeling tired but sore and restless. His mouth still nursed the wound on his hand as he stared, idly at the ceiling, watching the strands of translated moonlight moving along it, fanning with each contraction of his eye-muscles. He closed them for a moment, but was startled into opening them as Anelie lifted his hand away from his face and stroked across the two deep scratches with a cool, antiseptic wipe.

This time there was no warning, no apologetic touch before getting down to business. That was a boundary, which had already been set, crossed and moved. She was helping him and he could accept that such as it was, but then she sat on the bed beside him whilst she applied closing tape; a line, crossed…then she reached into the drawer in the nightstand and placed something in his hand.

Riddick’s brow furrowed with curiosity as he felt the curve of his shiv at his palm and he experienced a momentary confusion as her fingers closed his around the weapon, but then she spoke, softly, and he understood.

“Just because you have the ability to cut my throat, doesn’t mean that you will.” Her voice took on a quiet, breathy husk as she instructed him… “Turn over.”

Riddick complied, slowly but without debate, resting the side of his face in the pillow and still nursing the shiv in his hand, making it comfortable there, then Anelie’s hands were on the skin of his back, her fingers exploring the terrain with a gentleness that made his flesh ripple. He closed his eyes and bared his teeth, unaccustomed to such a caress and almost overwhelmed by it, but as he shifted, Anelie increased the pressure and stilled him.

Her hands moved over his back, fingers splayed, the pads barely pressing into the tissue as her warm palms glided over him, languorously. She pushed upwards with the heels of her hands at either side of his spine from the small of his back to the nape of his neck, then dragged her fingers downward and repeated the action, causing an involuntary arch and a subtle unbidden moan.

Soon, Riddick was like the cat, taking what was being offered and enjoying the simple, unadulterated pleasure of it. He moved under sensitive hands, quite capable of ensuring that those hands never stroke another but even as his hand gripped the weapon it held, he knew that he had no need of it and so he twisted, allowing more contact, turned over, let her stroke his chest, his shoulders, his neck.

He purred as Anelie’s lips closed around his nipples, rocked his hips and drew his manhood back and forth through her grip until he growled, trembled and was still, the shiv, forgotten as he lay in the afterglow of his orgasm. Before he drifted off to sleep, he felt the touch of her mouth to his forehead and a vague, knowing smile flickered across his lips. He took comfort in her knowing that kissing on the mouth was a boundary he was not yet ready to cross.

By the time she closed the door, Riddick was sound asleep.

END

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