Ivan Press

[Ivan Press] Drinks were decided on, but in the end it's only two of the group that head for the stairs. And some level of mystery has been dispelled here; some hint dropped of what it is, exactly, that Katherine is. That Ivan, with his lightning charisma and his quick-slicing grins, is.

He neither confirms nor denies, though. That bastard. He had to have smelled her breeding a mile away; had to have known it every moment he was flirting with her from flybridge to flybridge; had to have known it every second tonight that he was standing there talking about translations and umbrellas, highfiving an increasingly drunk array of strangers who love him right now, man! because of what he did for them.

Has to know, right now, what she is; what he is. And yet, still: not a word about it.

They're each here with their own friends. What they call friends, anyway, though for Ivan it's more properly: retainers and potential-fucktoys. Pretty, petty potentials, pouting now because their rich rich friend wandered off with some six-foot-tall Ugly Betty and left them with three men who either don't speak English or are pretending very well not to speak English. Three men who are getting increasingly drunk, themselves, and when Ivan comes up into the VIP room where the noise isn't so thunderous and a smaller private bar awaits their pleasure,

one of the three -- the cook -- is currently groping one of the girls -- the blonde -- while she moves his hand away again and again, looking like she's having less fun every time.

She puts a smile back on her face when Ivan sits down. He snaps his fingers at Evgeny and says something she doesn't understand. She curls up against his side and he runs his fingers through her hair and kisses her temple and then

sprawls for a while, ahhhing, as though pleased to be off his feet after a long day. It doesn't last. A moment later he's sitting up again, and whatever he says to his entourage next makes the three men get up immediately and prepare to leave. The runway models are pleased by this turn of events until they realize they're being ushered away as well. Evening outing over, apparently.

"I'll call," Ivan promises, and it's not an empty promise. He will call. When he's spectacularly bored, or perhaps when he throws that housewarming party he's been mulling.


Left alone, then, Ivan picks up the bottle of ... what is it, anyway? He holds it up to the neon blue glow from the bar. Oh, vodka. Zyr. Okay. He picks that up, and he heads over to Hilary's group, and quite without bothering to introduce himself, takes a seat beside the woman he does know.

Of course.

"Hi," he says. He puts the bottle on their table. "I bring gifts."

[Hilary Durante] For all she knows -- and, apparently, cares -- Ivan and Kate and Cordelia and Marc could all be werewolves. Or they could all be Kin and Kate's title of Warder is more of a babysitter. This seems to be the extent of her concern with the matter: a flick of her eyes, a momentary stare at the two of them, and then she's going upstairs.

Of course, this is the woman who has not yet been seen with her supposed husband, who seems pleased enough to be captivating the gaggles of teenage boys that think Tommy's stepmom is hot as hell. If she's thinking Ivan is a bastard, it doesn't seem to have much to do with bitterness that he knew! And he didn't tell her!

Hilary's entourage is less Russian and less potential. There's another couple of women around her age, and there's some hangers-on. The boyfriend of the recently divorced friend, the younger woman breezing through town, the gay man used as an accessory by the woman who has more dates and fewer relationships filled with more tears than they really want to hear about again.

She's with them when Ivan comes up and snaps his fingers and ahhhs and temple-kisses the blonde and then

then she's with him, because he's coming over to the couches she and her friends are occupying. She's leaning back, legs crossed, arms along the back of the cushions, looking lazy and holding a new glass of champagne dangling from her fingertips. She doesn't move as Ivan wanders over and puts himself beside her.

Hilary looks at the bottle, and looks at him, and brings her glass to her lips to take a sip while her friends squeal and thank him and start asking him questions he likely has no intention of answering. She watches him while she's drinking, and then: "And what became of your little duckling?"

[Ivan Press] Ivan is gracious with this free wave of enthusiasm and attention as he was gracious all night. There's little indication, though, that he's basking in it; that it's much more to him than background noise, than background ambiance, than the improved atmosphere of the club in general -- which is, apparently, worth the amount of cash he dropped for it.

But. No. He came here because he followed the woman who was first simply someone special out on her catamaran, and was then Mrs. Durante, and is now Hilary Durante. A slow striptease of a name, that. The thought makes him laugh, as does her question.

"I don't know," he says. It's the truth. He doesn't lean back -- yet -- an instead folds himself lean and limber, knees on elbows. They have some pistachios on the table to go with whatever it is they're drinking, whatever it is they're doing here. Lounging. Taking in the beat and the music, taking a break before going downstairs and dancing.

Ivan takes a handful of pistachios and begins to crack them. He pops one, tosses it in the air, catches it in his mouth so easily it doesn't even look like a trick. It's a little stale. He leaves the rest on the table, and then

he leans back after all. And puts his feet up on the low table.

"Where's your husband?"

[Hilary Durante] "Paris," she says easily, taking another drink of the bubbly. Her body turns slightly. Shoulders, not hips. Leaning against the back of the couch she curls her knuckles to her temple. "How old are you, anyway?"

[Ivan Press] "Depends." A surge of blue light catches his grin; fades to red a second later. "What's your upper limit?"

[Hilary Durante] Her eyebrow flicks a bit at that. "Interesting directional choice," she observes. "Who said anything about limits?"

[Ivan Press] Interesting directional choice, she says, and this time, no teeth show when his mouth moves in a smile. "Just calling it like I saw it," the name is may be deliberate, "Mrs. Durante."

She throws limits back at him. He laughs, the sound lost in the bass. "I'm twenty-one. Who are you going home with tonight?"

[Hilary Durante] "I'm sure," she replies, unruffled. Undefensive. And not protesting. If anything she seems to simply be a little amused by him, by him 'calling it like he sees it', and after all,

wouldn't he just see so much, in all his wisdom.

She drinks her champagne and she holds herself at least physically somewhat aloof, though there's still no doubt to any of the people around them where her focus is. Nor is the fact that there's chemistry between them invisible to the eyes of steadily more and more inebriated women in their third decade. But she isn't encouraging him, oh no. She's just talking to him. The expression she wears seems only marginally interested, and they've all done it, and they've all seen it before, too.

After all, their husbands aren't around much either, and a little harmless flirtation never hurt anyone's marriage. What he doesn't know. What she doesn't tell him. And so on, and so forth.

Hilary offers him her glass. "I can't drink your vodka if you don't help me finish my champagne," she says, ignoring his question.

[Ivan Press] No, that chemistry between them, borne on the backs of razor-sharp wits slicing back and forth, even if his are grinning and hers are mild and mildly amused, isn't invisible to her friends. She's not really turned toward him. He's sprawled with only his head turned toward her. They're not touching, not even close, but

his eyes are on hers, and they never drift away for more than a second or so. When they do, it's always downward, flicking to her small breasts that don't need a bra; flicking to her fine wrists, her fingers with all their adornments.

But it's harmless. That attraction. That chemistry with some random stranger somewhere. They've all done it. It's flattering when an attractive younger man chats them up. Reminds them of college. Reminds them of all-night sorority parties and the broad-shouldered, empty-minded young men that fucked them in their alpha-delta-phi bedrooms. Doesn't matter if most of those young men are dirt poor; matters, perhaps, that this one is not. Makes it that much more interesting, and forgivable, and flattering.

Her glass tips toward him. He doesn't hesitate; he takes it and he upends it and tosses the glass onto the table. Tosses it. Doesn't care if it rolls off, spills, hits something, breaks.

"How much vodka do you think you'll need," he asks, "before you'll answer my question?"

[Hilary Durante] The flute is glass, and the table is glass, and they chink together and it's loud. People flinch, thinking shattering glass is about to hit their eyes, but though it cracks and spills several drops of champagne left in the well at the bottom, it doesn't send glass spraying everywhere. Her eyes close for a moment, but then open back up to his. And she doesn't seem put off by meeting his eyes. Not for a moment. Not even a little.

She watches his throat move when he swallows. She pushes away from the cushions and reaches for the vodka to twist it open. He didn't bring glasses over. She offers the cold bottle to him first.

"My, you are forward," she's saying. "If you must know," and of course he must, "I'm going home alone. My son has his driving test tomorrow."

[Ivan Press] Ivan twists the cap off and offers it right back to her. "Your little boy," he mimics; there's an amusement there, rich and dark.

For the first time since smiling at their compliments and brushing off their questions, Ivan's eyes stray toward her friends. He looks at them briefly, and he looks at them consideringly. Then it's back to her, and as close as they are now it's dark; as bright as it was on the lake they were far. The color is lost. He doesn't know the color of her eyes; she doesn't know the color of his.

He knows the color of her skin, though. And the toned slope of her stomach; the dip of her navel.

"You've been drinking. I haven't had a drop. Let me drive you home."

[Hilary Durante] "My little boy," she echoes, and confirms, in that same saturated, earthy tone of voice, that same dry amusement. Her little boy whose breeding is more pristine than both of theirs. Her little boy with those broad shoulders and heavy brow. Her little boy who never, in a million years, could be related to her by a single drop of shared blood, even in a tribe as supposedly inbred as the Silver Fangs.

He looks at the vodka, just looks at it, and tips it back to her. Both their hands are on the bottle for a moment.

"My god," she mutters, now sounding irritable as she pulls the bottle back to herself and puts its mouth to her own, taking a small sip. A tightening of her cheeks, not quite a grimace. Practiced, but it's not as though vodka is water to her. Without further ado, Hilary puts the bottle down on the table -- a little harder than necessary -- and rises to her feet, looking at her friends. "I'll be right back," she says, and casts the briefest of glares at -- not to -- Ivan before looking back to them. "I need some air," she adds, scathingly for his benefit. Or instruction.

And she's walking away to the stairs, her heels clipping tautly on the floor, unheard past the music.

[Ivan Press] [this is emp]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ivan Press] [this is subt]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Ivan Press] There's a beat. Then Ivan gets up.

"I'm afraid I've upset your friend," he apologizes to the others at large. "I should leave. Thank you for a pleasant conversation."

So fucking polite. Such a gentleman. He goes back to his own table; eats a few stale pistachios there. Then he gets up and follows Hilary.

[Hilary Durante] See, her friends know she's getting up to get away from this incorrigible flirt, this man-boy who doesn't know when to give up, this -- let's face it -- douchebag who can't see where the line between harmless flirtation and harassment is, who really deserves it if her husband finds out and sends his considerably-sized fist into Ivan's face for panting after his wife. She's getting some air in hopes that her friends will make him leave.

Her friends purse their lips at him. He's not rushing off after her, and a damn good thing, too. They'd stop him. You know. Somehow. Or talk excessively about how they should have and thought about it.


Hilary is on the stairs, leaning against the railing, one arm over her midsection and her other arm bent, hand around her cellphone, the screen lit up a little so she can check her messages. When Ivan comes down, and it's dark and loud and her friends aren't watching and his people aren't around, she hits a button and the screen goes dark; she puts it back in her purse, looking back up at him.

[Ivan Press] She's not even outside. She's not even all the way down the stairs. She's there halfway down, with halfdrunk people squeezing by hand in hand, some giggling, others stumbling. There's a couple one step down dancing there, the girl on the higher step, the guy all but grinding between her legs. Outside the glass enclosure of the VIP lounge, bass rolls unimpeded through the air. Shivers through their bodies.

Ivan's eyes are alert and keen. He's a fucking Ragabash after all. A scout and an assassin. Something like that, when he's not being exactly what he is. His eyes fall on her when he's at the top of the stairs; stay there until he's level with her, nearly eye to eye in those heels of hers.

He's not smiling now. Not for a moment anyway. He looks at her, and then he looks at her body, and then he looks at the purse her phone disappeared into and the hand that held the phone.

The glance over his shoulder is casual, bordering on careless. He's making sure her friends aren't watching, though, and he's making sure the more important crowd -- not his friends or hers but their mutual blood-acquaintances -- aren't watching. The Fangs and their kin who might not give a damn if Ivan bangs his way through their unmated numbers, but certainly might give a damn if he tried to make a move on a woman so obviously married and so obviously taken care of and so obviously well-bred, with a stepson so obviously well-bred, that her husband could only be Fang himself.

Quite possibly Garou.

Very possibly of a rank higher than his own.

When he turns back he steps closer in the same arc of motion. He steps closer and then he's nearly as close to her as the couple is one step down; his hands don't reach for her or try to hold her, but just like that he lowers his head to kiss her.

[Hilary Durante] She's not a young woman anymore. She's not a crone. This is what is known as one's prime. The mark of her womanhood isn't in the ring on her finger or how well she walks in heels but how well she walks, period. How she holds herself like she knows who she is, and how she watches him like she can see right through him. Like she can see right through all of the bullshit around them, in fact. And there is so, so much of it.

But mostly it's in the way she does not seem afraid. Not of this. Not of all but inviting this man -- who is more than ten years younger than she is, truth be told -- to follow her down the stairs for whatever reason.

This reason.

When she got up and left it was something of a challenge, and when she put her phone away and looked up at him there was the faintest air of expectation and -- yes -- challenge. Not in the childish c'mon, I dare you way, either, but a deeper, more complex, riskier

well?

She belongs to someone else. Of his tribe and above his rank, no matter that he's in Paris right now -- if she was telling the truth about that, and so far she hasn't really lied to him. Not that he knows that for sure. But he knows damn well, regardless, that she belongs to someone else, in the eyes of the human world as well as in the eyes of the Nation.

Once upon a time in Russia, there were those that believed all young men needed, for the development of their hearts and minds and character, to have an affair with an older, married woman. It gave them something to be burningly passionate about. It taught them a thing or two about pleasing a woman who was past the tittering rush of being touched at all by a man's fingertips. It taught them about loss and pain and despair, and about the illusions they could lose themselves to if they were not careful.

It's all over the literature.


Ivan moves in close, close enough that he could slide his leg between her thighs if he wanted to, close enough to all but press her back against the railing, and though he doesn't reach out to touch her, he lowers his head just a touch. In these heels they are the same height, or near enough. He tips his head to one side and leans for her, and she

lets him.

So it starts out like that, slow and mostly on Ivan's end. Hilary's lips aren't full but are silky-soft and taste faintly of plums. Close-mouthed at first, and they'd be able to hear the soft sounds of their kissing if they weren't in a nightclub. Her mouth slows time down for a few seconds, and then it starts to open to him.

He feels her tongue for the first time when she moistens her lips in the middle of kissing him. Her hands are on the railing to either side of her body, off of his. But this is no hard kiss, no rushed one, no fervent explosion of desire. She could do this for hours.

When she touches his tongue with her own as if to taste it, taste him, it feels like they have been.

[Ivan Press]
First kisses are always a thing of uncertainty. This one more so than most. This isn't your average first kiss; the stuff of successful first dates and goodnights at the doorstep. This isn't so much an expression of preexisting adoration or its culmination but a testing. A query: complex; risky.

And adoration has little to do with anything. Intrigue; now that's a different thing.

Truth: Ivan was half-expecting to be slapped for trying. Not because she didn't invite it. Not because she's shocked or offended, or even because it's the Thing To Do when you're married to a man who loves you enough, or at least loves the representation and image of you enough, to put a few dozen carats' worth of jewelry on your fingers, around your neck, in your earlobes. Not as a gesture of any of that,

but as a play of dominance, plain and simple. He would expect that of her.

She surprises him, though. That's been the case from the beginning, hasn't it? Unpredictable, the things out of her mouth, the things she does. Such a soft, cool, lovely thing. And her mouth the same way: soft, lovely -- warm.

Ivan doesn't maul her. He doesn't throw her up against the wall and paw his hands all over her. He doesn't eat at her mouth; doesn't grab her face and hold it to his in a fit of passion. Nothing like that. Nothing so crude, so animal, so

well

passionate as that.

So he initiates. But she sets the pace. And they meet in the middle, and their mouths are lingering together, and their bodies are relaxed and her hands are on the rail of the staircase and his are at his sides, and it's not until her mouth begins to open to his that his eyes, dark in this light, close.

A drawn breath, soft and slow, and in the midst of it her tongue across her own lips; grazing his. Ivan's hands touch the railing; touch the wall. Fingertips only. And a little deeper now, and so languid. It's just the tip of his tongue to hers. It's just a single shared breath when his mouth opens, shared like a swimmer drawing from air before going under again,

when his mouth closes again over her lower lip. She tastes faintly of plums. He thinks of the deep refractive blue of the lake at midday.

And this isn't really an escalation of what was happening upstairs or on the flybridges of their respective yachts. It's not some next step, one step closer to some point of no return. This is merely an extension; the same thing, a different style. All along, beneath the surface, it's been the same thing. It's been a question over and over beneath all the challenges he's thrown her way, beneath all the sudden forward questions flicking carelessly out of his mouth like marbles; a single unswerving question:

Will you?

How far?

He initiates. She sets the pace. He follows. She'll be the one to draw it to a close, and when she does -- when she gives the faintest insinuation of an ending -- Ivan lets her draw away; draws back. His eyes open. Darkness and neon lights leave his eyes glimmering; his lips where her mouth has wet it. Under that sleek chic waistcoat, that nice shirt, his chest rises and falls in slow, smooth, deep pulls.

The outside of his right hand brushes the inside of her left. His other hand is on the wall between her elbow and her side, and apart from their mouths, nothing of them has touched at all.

Now he's the one just looking at her.

[Hilary Durante]
And what he doesn't know, what he will likely never know, is that when Ivan came down the stairs to stand before her she almost didn't wait. She almost took his face in her hands and kissed him, hard and searching and eager.

She didn't.

And when he leaned down to kiss her she almost did the same thing: almost drew him closer or moved her hips to rest close to his, almost put her glossy fingernails in his short hair and dragged him down into kissing her like sirens pulling sailors below the waves.

She didn't.

Hilary almost did. She wanted to. She's had enough in that willow-thin body of hers for the blood to rush to the surface of her skin, to ignite clusters of nerve endings. And Ivan is lovely. Lean and firm under those luxurious clothes of his, young and dynamic and voracious. And Ivan is wondering as he leans down if she's going to slap him across the face for trying, just to show him she can get away with it.

He doesn't maul her up against the hard metal railing, the hard stone wall painted black behind her. And Hilary doesn't grab his face and hold him where he is to eat at his mouth like an animal. But she kisses him, and she deepens it, and though his breathing changes slightly and he touches the wall to either side of her, a loose framing, Ivan withdraws at the faintest hint that the kiss is -- might be -- ending.

Looking at her, and finding her looking at him, and discovering a look in her eyes that is considering and gleaming and strangely cool, all the same.

"I'll meet you at the docks on Saturday," she says, after a moment. "Three o'clock?"

[Ivan Press]
No, Ivan will probably never know that somewhere behind those considering eyes, that cool face, Hilary thought of putting her hands on his face and her manicured nails in his hair; thought of dragging him under and against her, kissed him the way the couple one step down were dancing.

And Hilary will probably never know he looked at her hand and thought of taking it. Thought of pulling her down the stairs and around the corner; into the bathroom or out to his car. He almost did. He wanted to. He didn't because --

because it was still a question.

Will she.

How much.

Now in the space between, the bass-trembled space between where her eyes are gleaming and cool and alien in the shifting hues, there's an answer. A time and a date and a place, and his answer isn't verbal. He leans down and the rail by her right hand quivers as his hand thumps down on it. His fingers grip.

This kiss is an escalation. It's a little harder, a little deeper; the force of it tilts her chin up a few degrees. It's short, though; ending at that faintest hint of withdrawal.

His eyes are very dark now, shadowed under the cut of his intelligent brow. And he is lovely, this young man and his lean razored cheeks, his lean razorsharp smile. This young wolf who pursued her with the reckless confidence of someone who's never lost; who has a hunger in him that no amount of playfulness, no number of million dollar smiles, could ever mask entirely.

Ivan nods, which is all the agreement or confirmation he needs to give. He steps back and drops one hand from the rail for her to pass.

[Hilary Durante]
There's not a mirror for Ivan's playfulness or animalism in Hilary's gaze, or in anything he can see of her. It isn't that she's a perfect liar -- and he's met a few, and he is one himself -- but that she's something else entirely. Of the dozens of ways one could describe the way she looks at him, one is like a woman standing before an open fridge not quite sure of what she wants to snack on

or holding a swatch of fabric for the new curtains in her hand, rubbing her thumb over it while she tries to decide if she likes it or not, and if it will require redoing the carpet and upholstery or just getting some new throw pillows.

The sensuality of it is there, the hunger and the tactile leanings, but no investment in him. He's Mr. Ivan Press, owner of Krasota and a jet ski and whatever else. The man who walks into a club with three supermodels and buys the whole club their drinks for the night. And that is all he is, so far. And even what that is describes nothing, is nothing, means nothing about him. They are just facts.

Hilary is on the verge of smirking after he brings his hand down on the railing, the corner of her mouth starting to pull in a lazy smile because he's kissing her like this now, and she responds in kind. Her eyes are open and her mouth, too. This kiss is harder. It's wetter. And still she keeps her hands on the railing, and keeps her hips against it, though someone passing by bumps into him and pushes his body to hers for a glancing second. Or two.

There are people waiting for her. Gossips. There are Garou and Kin waiting for him, or mingling upstairs, who could do even more damage. Never they mind, not for a moment.

She is watching him as they pull apart again, that faint impression of a smile still on her lips. She drops her eyes to his chest, to his hips, the rest of him lost in darkness, then turns away, walking back upstairs. She does not meet his eyes again.