Ivan Press

[Ivan Press] About half a week ago was when they parted in Wilmette Jewelers, where the staff was more than happy to trot out specimen after specimen for Espiridion Durante's loving wife, and where Ivan hands his perfectly-functioning Breitling over to be serviced. By then the both of them are perfectly put together, and by then Ivan is doing his best to pretend what happened earlier didn't affect him in the slightest. Actually -- more to the point, he's doing his best to pretend nothing happened at all, and Ivan being Ivan, such pretense is brilliantly carried through.

He offers mild, polite commentary on the watches being shown. Yes, he likes the finish on that one. No, he's always preferred mechanical movement over quartz; he likes the smooth sweep of the second hand. Though it's gentlemanly to wait until Hilary is finished before walking her to her car, Ivan is yawning by the fourth watch, and excusing himself by the sixth with some vague excuse of needing to meet a friend for coffee.

About a week ago was when they actually set the date and time for this encounter, and the location was no more precise than the docks in the city. She wants to see the Krasota, though, and that's enough to go by.


It's Dmitri that meets her out on the waterfront walk, looking quite out of place in black slacks, black turtleneck: like some New York aspiring art-film director who's someone gotten lost on the shores of Lake Michigan. This is the first time the hawknosed butler, who appears also to serve as a valet, and the esteemed Mrs. Durante have met. Even so, his approach is so direct and sure that his confirming "Mrs. Durante?" is all but unnecessary. "Mr. Press sent me to wait for you. Right this way, if you please."

He leads her down to the floating docks. DuSable Harbor is prime territory, right on the lip of the city's center, and real estate is at a wild premium. Most vessels docked here are small dayboats. The few fifty-footers and above are moored at the ends each floating dock, and the lean, sweeping lines of the Krasota are easily recognizable from a distance.

There, Kolya, the helmsman, is lugging a large cooler onboard on one shoulder while dragging another behind him by one hand. His rugby shirt, dark blue on sky blue, makes his already wide shoulders seem vast. He nods a gruff hello as he passes Hilary. Trailing him are two maids -- not in ruffled-laced frenchmaid outfits, amazingly, but demure dove-grey uniforms -- each pushing a small food-cart. Ivan kept his word, it seems: they will be more than amply chaperoned, and their chaperones are notably closemouthed and tonguetied.

Dmitri bows Hilary aboard, and does not follow. He needn't, anyway: up on the flybridge, Ivan, unsurprisingly idle while his staff works away, folds his book closed and leans over the railing to call a hello. A moment later he's on the maindeck, cool and summery in a white short-sleeve shirt; khaki slacks, one leg haphazardly rolled up to the knee.

"I knew he'd find you," he says -- presumably of Dmitri. "Has he introduced himself? No, he usually doesn't. In Soviet Russia, master introduce butler. This is Dmitri. Unfortunately, Dmitri gets terribly seasick and will not be joining us."

As the last foodcart rolls on board, Ivan gives Kolya a hand with the gangway, hauling it up and stowing it away. Dmitri departs. Kolya goes abovedecks to guide the vessel out onto the lake.

"Make yourself at home," Ivan adds. "Could I offer you a drink, something to snack on? When are you expected back at home?"

[Hilary Durante] Black leather bands, metal bands. Square-oval faces, round faces. Diamonds, no diamonds. The illusion of silver, the reality of gold. These are the watches she looked at in Wilmette as Ivan walked with her. She talked to his jeweler about what sort of watch for this size of wrist -- bigger than Ivan's, thicker, from what she said -- and what sort of man would wear it -- active, but controlled, she said. She flicked her eyes at him while he yawned, her lips colored softly

rather than bleeding gently as he kissed her in the aftermath of destroying himself and utterly wrecking her.

A lovely woman, Mrs. Durante. Whose soft thighs wrap so neatly around his slender lower half, who moans so sweetly when he fucks her to orgasm after orgasm,

who comes two, three times if he pins her arms down while he does so. Who screams if he bites her while he fucks her. Who laughs quietly at his boredom at the jeweler and excuses him, thanking him for his help before he goes.


Who stands at the docks in a lavender blue sundress several days later, hair down and straightened, a large straw hat holding it from the wind. There are sunglasses on her face. She carries a bag -- after all, she might want to swim. Or sunbathe. She greets Dmitri with a broad, gleaming smile, so pleased to meet him, of course. She walks along with him in cork wedges and a minimal amount of jewelry -- for her. Hoops in her ears, wedding ring and one other on her fingers, no bracelets, nothing more.

Onto the Krasota, which she was just so very eager to see. With an appropriate chaperone, of course. She knows there are people on these docks who know people who know someone who know her friends who might talk to Micaela or Tomas who might --

Hilary ignores the servants as she boards, which is as unsurprising as Ivan not helping them. She waves to his hello and all but waves away the introduction, except that she smiles at Dmitri and nods and is so very polite and oh yes he was so very efficient. She goes to the railing as Ivan helps with the gangway, looking out over the water, eastward.

When are you expected?

"I'm not. My stepson's in the apartment in town and my husband is still in Paris with his daughter," she says, looking over the broken surface of the breeze-tossed water. "So I suppose I'm at your mercy until you run out of gas," she adds mildly, musingly, her eyes hidden from the light.

[Ivan Press] If Ivan remembers the events of their last meeting - and quite assuredly he does - it doesn't show readily as he welcomes his guest aboard. If he notes the difference between 'my stepson' and 'his daughter,' this likewise sinks under the apparent radar.

The Krasota is a leaner, swifter ship than the Cielo; not nearly so wide, nor so heavy in the water despite its single hull. There's less depth and breadth to the vessel, and consequently for light. Every inch of the ship is veritably bathed in light, with windows and portholes set even in it's belowdeck cabins.

Decor is sparse and tasteful. Everything in sight is some rich shade of cream or teak, accented here and there with metallics and darker, richer hues. Apart from Dmitri's usher service and Kolya's mute nod of greeting, Ivan's people don't trouble them at all. The two maids are quiet as church mice, rather efficiently laying out what looks like some casual form of afternoon tea in the open-air lounge at the stern. Ivan, meanwhile, follows Hilary out onto the narrow walk toward the bow.

"The Krasota has a 500-mile range," he says, smiling. The sun gilds his eyelashes. "I'm sure someone somewhere would protest if I sailed you halfway down the St. Lawrence Seaway to New York."

Belowdecks the twin engines begin to cycle up. Ivan takes a hand out of his pockets and holds lightly to the railing as they move forward, up a few steps, and out onto the bow with its gracefully swept railing and its inviting sunpad. Ahead, the dock begins to recede as Kolya backs them out.

"An overnight cruise, though," Ivan continues, and as careful as he is to maintain a casual flirtation between them, a casual distance of an armsreach or more, there's something - a glint, a spark, something real, in his eyes. "Would that be too much to ask?"

[Hilary Durante] It keeps her from having to say Names.

Dion. Tomas. Micaela. These people as real, living, breathing, warm-blooded creatures with wants and desires and personalities and lives and all the things that make her want to lie in a dark room with pills in her stomach in a cold cloth on her face, blocking out the light and the reality of the ever-burdening, ever-burning world.

Cielo is a long, swiftly-sailing vessel for its massive size. It is luxury on the water, a lakefaring mansion of sorts. It is not built for racing or for flash but for the utmost possible comfort while cruising what body of water there is. It is a lovely boat, but not one Ivan has had the pleasure of touring or enjoying himself. Krasota is an entirely different breed of vessel, except in terms of its luxury and its expense. Hilary walks carefully, since she is in such high heels -- though wedges are a bit easier. She touches the railing as she looks over it, at the water rather than the cabin or the patio or any of it.

The water, which is so very deep and dark and cool. Which has life but life that is hidden, which has no feeling or motivation to question, which has no want or desire of its own but to be.

She turns her head to look at him as the maids set out tea and as he comes near, flirting ever so harmlessly with her. Something about this doesn't feel quite so casual, even now, even at the start, before they've quite left the harbor.

The engines come to life and her voice becomes a hint louder, a touch clearer, though it isn't entirely necessary; she is standing quite close to him, after all, in her little dress and her broad-brimmed hat. Which shades her eyes to the pint that the sunglasses should be mostly a fashion statement rather than a necessity. Perhaps they are. "People might talk," she says, as lightly as one can.

And watching him, also this: "Take me belowdeck, Ivan."

Because she's polite: "Please."

[Ivan Press] There's a light quirk of a smile, and a furrow to his brow that's a reaction either to what she says or the sun and the wind. "Of course," he says gently - it serves as an all-purpose reply.

They turn away from the sweeping turn of the harbor. Ivan tips his head back and calls up to Kolya. The men converse briefly in Russian, with Ivan gesturing briefly at the wide expanse of the lake. Then, catching up, he explains, "I asked Kolya to take us out in a loop. We should be back a little after dark, and that's factoring in time for a swim.

"For me, of course," he adds. "I know that's not really your thing."

Passing the fare laid out at the stern, Ivan picks up a canapé or three, plus a decidedly un-Fangly can of soda. Orange soda, at that. They pass through the sunlit saloon, where opened sliding doors and windows let in the fresh breeze, and through the dining area. Then it's down the stairs into the quieter belowdecks.

"Port cabin," he says, gesturing vaguely through an opened door, "and starboard. Fore stateroom through there, for honored guests. In case you change your mind about that overnight cruise. Crew quarters are in the stern, behind the engineroom, by the garage. They have their own stairs and they can't hear us. Not that they'd disturb us or gossip, regardless.

"And these," he sweeps open the door immediately behind the stairs, "are my quarters."

The suite is easily the size of a hotel room. There are enough personal touches that it is clearly his room, his ship - not enough to indicate he's taken any long cruises lately. Or ever. An L-couch in one corner; armchairs across the way. A closet with a few changes of clothes. A desk along the opposite hull; a sleek, flat laptop resting atop. A head tucked away behind closing doors. Dominating the main stateroom, though, is a vast bed, easily kingsized. The linens look freshly changed.

"Would you let me tie you down," Ivan says softly, his tone hardly changed, "and blindfold you?"

[Hilary Durante] "Oh, I enjoy swimming," she mentions as Ivan turns back to her, in a tone less correction and more oh, well of course you didn't know. She allows him to give her his elbow, if he offers it as they walk; even practiced on her heels and on a yacht such as this there is a bit of unsteadiness to her. It's only gentlemanly, after all, for him to serve to balance her.

If he does not offer, however, she walks slower. She touches the railing as she goes. Her hand falls to his arm once. "I brought a suit," she adds, but glances at the sky, "though I may just sunbathe today, and leave the swimming to you."

Watch you, that means. Lie in the sun and watch you move in the water, that means. Perhaps. Or she might ignore him like Tomas and his friends, facing the other direction, visible to them as they splash in the lake but otherwise inattentive. She may even fall asleep while he takes a dip in the cold, deep water where so many Garou and Kin have dumped so many misshapen bodies over the years.

Hilary stops for a single small bite, sinking her teeth into the pâté-laden slice of cucumber with the single tine of rosemary atop it as they stroll to the saloon. No drink for her, no can of soda or glass of champagne. Just a single bite of the single canapé before she tosses it into the first rubbish bin she finds, once they're out of sight of the servants and descending. She takes off her sunglasses as she goes, tucking them into an outer pocket of her bag.

"I never said I'd made up my mind about that," she says as he mentions the fore stateroom, and this time it does have a slight trace of correction. Condescension, almost, though by now he may even know to expect that from her.

They stand at the opening door between the stairs and his quarters, which she observes with an appraising glance and quiet hmm of consideration. Neither her expression nor her visual track of the room changes as he suggests tying her down and covering her eyes. She just murmurs, "As I said," and now she turns to him, finishing her look about his cabin, finding his eyes with her own with that fearlessness he's come to see so often in her, "I suppose I'm at your mercy."

[Ivan Press] That sort of fearlessness makes Ivan wonder how she's managed to survive thirty-some-odd years in the Garou Nation. The Silver Fangs are not a tribe renowned toward their callousness and brutality toward their kin; nothing on the order of the Shadow Lords, anyway, or the way the Furies treat their males. Still, the Fangs are nothing if not authoritarian and mad. Couple that with Hilary's potentially self-endangering tastes, and --

well. He wonders, sometimes.

Not now, though. Right now, he stands a little behind her to allow her an uninterrupted view of his quarters. His private domain within this ship, which is in its entirety his private domain. Within this city, which may as well be his private playground. His shoulder is to the wall. His can of soda rests against his thigh. His eyes meet hers when she turns to him, and here in the uncertain green that sometimes wants to be amber, wants to be wolf-yellow, is the first twisting flame of want.

"I suppose you are," he replies softly, and then straightens.

"Give me your bag," he says, almost brusque; almost businesslike. "I'll put it in your quarters. Sure you don't want to come abovedecks as we get underway? It's a better view from DuSable than from the North Shore."

[Hilary Durante] "No," she whispers, as he stands straight again. She hasn't moved, neither further into the cabin nor towards him nor out into the narrow hall again. "I want you to fuck me."

Then, almost demurely, her hat coming off now as well, but remaining in her hands: "As you like."

[Ivan Press] This makes his head tip a scant degree or two to the side. His eyes gleam.

"Say that again," he says; soft again now.

[Hilary Durante] At his mercy. Obedient. The first time, she resisted him over and over. Tested him. Pushed. Endured his demands and all but snarled them back in his face until he was losing his mind with wanting her, with trying to figure her out, with finally grasping what she wanted from him, giving it to her... and losing something of himself in the process.

But the next time. And this time. She's so fearless but so obedient, so submissive, not with the beautiful simplicity of one who knows nothing else but still that iron-willed determination to be so. She makes it clear with every movement, every step, how deliberate her submission is, how decisive her obedience. It isn't defiance. It's a strange breed of eroticism, the way she wants it to be

very

fucking

clear

how she's giving herself to him. Hilary watches him, those gleaming eyes meeting her darker and more enigmatic brown ones: "No," she repeats, not in disobedience but in recitation, "I want you to fuck me. As you like."

[Ivan Press] A flash of humor at that -- a genuine flick of a smile. That wasn't what he meant, quite. She knows it. It fades into something simpler; something she's undoubtedly seen on the faces of

who knows how many

other men she's propositioned, or accepted the propositions of. The floor turns gently beneath his feet as he starts forward: nothing so poetic as the world shifting, but simply the yacht swinging about, the engines reversing to run forward now. Outside the broad windows, well above waterline even in the lower cabins, the harbor and its boats slide by.

Ivan shuts the door, pulling it behind him until it latches. Then his fingers trail off the handle and, in that same arc of motion, alight on Hilary's hip. Her waist. In her heels she's nearly of a height with him; they're eye to eye. He leans into her, holding her by the waist, and he kisses her until he's swaying into her.

Then he draws back. His orange soda is set down first beside his laptop. He takes her hat from her and sets that on the desk as well. Then her bag, which he places on the chair in front of the desk.

A yacht this large has only the slightest hint of wave motion when they exit the protected harbor and begin to cut across the calm waters of the lake. It's hardly enough to have to get used to. It's quite possibly less than what Hilary experiences on her catamaran which, while larger, also rides higher on the surface on its double hull. Ivan moves with it easily, as though he sails every day, all day, his balance utterly solid as he comes back to her

and reaches around to find the zipper or the buttons or the fastenings to her dress

and begins to undo them.

[Hilary Durante] No need to say it, of course. She knows he likes to hear her say the things she does, the things about him. Not compliments or even things she likes about his body or his person, but that she wants him. She wants him to fuck her. She knows he likes it when she cries his name aloud as he's doing it.

Abovedeck there's a lovely spread of single bites and juices and sodas. Enough for far more than two but not so much that it's overwhelming. Luxurious, of course. A little wasteful, perhaps. His cook is likely quite efficient, as well as trustworthy and discreet as all of his loyal servants. Hilary clearly showed only enough interest to not insult the hospitality outright but

they both know why she's really here. Why she'll be here until he runs out of gas or takes her back to harbor or maybe, even, until tomorrow morning. Which is risky. Being with him at all is risky, for so many reasons, but coming out on his yacht and cruising the lake all night is doubly, triply so. Still, she's considering it. Or abandoning herself to it. To him.

Hilary breathes in just when he touches her, right before he kisses her, and she's right there suddenly, wrapping her arms around his neck and opening her mouth to his as they come together. She doesn't stumble, she doesn't waver except in the way her balance moves forward, pressing her against him.

Ivan's fingertips find the polished, silk-soft metal pendant that serves as the tab of her zipper, hidden between the folds of the seam up her back. It draws down smoothly, all the way to the rounding curve of her ass, loosening all around her as it does. She goes on kissing him, her breathing quickening. Two days was a long time to wait, last time. Five is obviously, mathematically more difficult to have dealt with.

Her bra and panties are a shining, satiny pink. In between kisses, gasping softly: "Will you be a little rough with me when you tie me down?" And kissing him again, catching his mouth and burying the traces of pleading she hears in her own voice in that press of their mouths together, that tangle of their tongues. "Just a little," she whispers, like an assurance, like a bargaining.

[Ivan Press] To some, this would seem like madness. Last time they met he fucked her so hard he had to heal her afterward. He made a promise -- to himself, if not quite to her -- that he would not do that ever again.

This time, he wants to tie her down. He wants to cover her eyes. He wants to render her so utterly a captive to his will. And that's not even taking into account the fact that they are right now heading out on the lake, that up in the cockpit Kolya is even now accelerating up past planing speed, up to cruising speed with the water turning white in their wide wake; that pretty soon they'll be miles and miles from land and from anyone that would or could remotely help her if she needed it.

It seems a little like madness. It seems a little dangerous. Yet in truth, Ivan proposes ropes and blindfolds as a sort of alternative. There must be some other way, he said last time.

And perhaps she senses that. Intuits it easily enough that she asks him -- bargains with him, pleads with him --

to be a little rough.

Her dress pools into his hands, and then down to the floor. There are closets here, shelves, cubbyholes, drawers. Any amount of mostly-unoccupied space. It doesn't change the fact that when he undresses her, he leaves her things where they lay, as though they simply don't need this anymore. Or this. Or that.

So there goes her dress. There goes her bra, unclasped and drawn off her arms, baring her like a gift. His eyes go to her body. His lips part and his brow furrows, and perhaps it's gratifying even for her, whose depths and doubts are so often simply nonexistent, to see the desire etched all over his face. He bends to her, bends her over his arms wrapping around her waist, and puts his mouth to her small, shapely breasts. He sucks at her while the angle of the sunlight changes over the bed and the floor -- slants across the headboard as they head northeast. When he lets her nipple slip out of his mouth, he kisses her between her breasts, over her heartbeat.

"Yes," he says; like an assurance. Like a promise. He hooks his thumbs under the waistband of her panties and pushes them down, too, down to the floor.

When he straightens, he steps back from her. And at least one of those many shelves and drawers is filled after all. Out of the dresser he pulls cuffs and blindfolds, silk; lengths of delicate chain. They look new. Someone's been shopping. It is entirely possible that that someone was, in fact, a most unfortunate Dmitri. Never mind that, though --

there's this. He leans back against the shelves and pulls his boat shoes off, dropping them on the floor. He's barefoot now, no socks. Quite courteously, as though asking her preferences for dinner:

"Would you prefer to stand, sit, or lie down?"

[Hilary Durante] All this stress, all this emotional trauma, over what he did to her last time. And oh, she'd scoff, you didn't have to heal me. That was just for convenience's sake. The frightening thing is, she would believe it. She would say it and it would be the truth. They could have very well skipped the watchmaker's shop, after all. Who, really, is going to be tailing them and asking the jewelers any questions? Cordelia had gone before it even came up in conversation as an excuse!

Oh, the way she'd argue with him, convince him, reason with him that it was really all right, what he did to her. It was okay. He could do it again and it would be just the same, just fine, do it again.

This, though, seems like a compromise. An offering to some dark, pagan thing inside her that asks for bloodshed and pain and brutality for the grace of her pleasure, the nearness of her presence. As though she were a goddess, when she is one of the lowest of those creatures he deals with, barely above a mortal or a servant, more cognizant but no more useful than a spirit, weaker than the weakest of any Garou. He doesn't have to. He swore not to hurt her so badly again, a promise required only by the part of him that is sane, and she's here all the same, telling him she wants him and letting him slip her dress from her body even before he reaches out to that wicked, hungry, mad thing inside her.

With promises of bindings and blindfolds. Physical restraint, sensory deprivation. Surrender, with the seeming -- if not the reality -- of force to it, flavoring it like a dollop of honey in the mix.

Her dress is made of silk and falls easily. Her arms move according to his motions as he draws her lingerie off of her, smiling softly as he looks at her like that, like already he's aching for this, for her, longing to have her again. Oh, it gratifies her, to see that twist of wanting start to become a clench. And it pleases her, how his arms -- which are strong, especially compared to her own -- fold around her, holding her close and in balance and in place while his mouth

which is hot, and wet, though not as much as hers perhaps

wraps around her sundappled breast. She does not forget her question or the fact that he has not answered it. Her breath catches slightly as he utters that single word, and the heartbeat he just brushed his mouth over starts to patter that much faster. It isn't because he's drawing her underwear off, leaving the soft scrap of pink around her ankles. The wedges she wears wrap with cloth ribbons around her ankles, tie there. She does not simply step out of them but stands where he's brought her, bare but for jewelry, shoes, panties fallen to the slenderest parts of her legs.

Hilary doesn't move as he moves away, opening drawers and bringing out the accoutrements for this afternoon's activities. When he looks at her he can see her chest lifting as her lungs expand with air, sinking as she exhales, trying to breathe silently, or near enough. Something about his question, however, makes her eyes veritably roll back. She breathes in deeply, and he can see her buttocks clench eversoslightly, see her torso tighten up a bit.

"Oh," she whispers, the word just a sigh, an exhale, a breath out past her lips.

[Ivan Press]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Ivan Press] It's that look on his face again; that slight tilt to his head, the directness of his eyes. Whatever he sees makes the corners of his mouth turn up. He doesn't quip; doesn't say anything at all. Ivan just draws the blindfold off the dressertop, and comes back to her.

There are shades over the windows. This room could be dark as eventide. Dark as night. He leaves them open, though. He has her until dusk. Until night. Maybe until morning. No need to rush the transition between light and dark. And besides that: maybe he wants to see. He wants to see that sleek long body of hers quiver with anticipation and desire. He wants to see her wetness start slicking down her inner thighs.

The cabin door is closed, and it is not locked. It doesn't have to be. He has an absolute knowledge in this, which is so confident that it is in and of itself a reflection of his sheer, privileged arrogance: no one will open a door he's closed.

And he circles her. He moves behind her where she stands, and he bends to kiss the arch of her shoulderblade. Then, straightening, he folds the blindfold over once lengthwise to thicken it. The silk of the blindfold is cool and smooth, warming quickly to body temperature as Ivan slides it over her eyes. He knots it behind her, firmly, then reknots it to keep it in place.

His knuckles graze the line of Hilary's spine on the way down. His hand spreads over her ass, rubs for a moment, squeezes gently. When his arm slides around her side, he urges her back against his body, his shirtfront smooth and cool; his flesh firm and warm beneath it. His hands find her breasts. He caresses her there, cups and squeezes just as gently, one to the other and back again.

Then he steps back. His silence is unnerving, almost complete. He's never told her his auspice. She's probably guessed, and if she hasn't, she will now. Hilary hears no footsteps; just the faintest rasp of metal over wood some distance away after a pause. And after another: his voice, in front of her now -- level and calm and quiet.

"Hold out your wrists."

[Hilary Durante] The only reason she knows his name is because it was shouted from the speakers that night at the club when he kissed her. The only reason she knows his tribe is because of a brief conversation where Katherine was present, talking of 'family'. She hasn't asked his auspice. He didn't even know her husband was Garou rather than Kin til he asked.

Hilary seems to care so very little about so very many things. She asks very few questions, and doesn't seem to listen to the answers. He has seen only the briefest, most torturous flickers of humanity and vulnerability in her, and they are just as horrifying -- in their way -- as her distance.

Her eyes are closed as she tries to regain control of her breathing, as longing rockets through her in ways she doesn't even try to hide. So Ivan sees it. He sees that somehow that simple, blithely spoken question did more to arouse her than any touch as he was undressing her. She stands there with her shoes and underwear still on, eyelashes merely flitting once or twice up and down as he circles her. When she knows he's behind her, her eyes close again.

They are closed when he blindfolds her, and not surprisingly, she stays quite still for him to do this. She doesn't protest. She doesn't make a sound. When she can't see, he can see the rising tension in her at being deprived this sense, so primary to humankind. It makes her react stronger to the graze of his touch down her back, makes her shiver slightly, arch a bit as his hand nears her lower back, as though asking him to --

well. To do exactly what it is he does, palming her ass and caressing her there, fondling her. She exhales softly, welcoming the touch but struggling not to rub herself wantonly against his hand. He can all but feel the quiver of restraint as he slinks his arm around her, just like he can feel her tremble a little as his hands come to her breasts, too.

Hilary doesn't try to touch him back. She is breathing tautly, her bare, soft ass against the front of his slacks but not pressing to his crotch to try and get some kind of friction between them. She hunches forward slightly though, those small, soft breasts of hers moving further into his palms as she all but tries to bend over.

Then he's sliding away from her, and she doesn't know where he is, and is strangely alright with that. She doesn't whip her head towards the sound when she does hear it, but waits for him to come back, waits so very patiently and so very nicely.

And so obedient, still, holding her wrists out with their insides -- lined with branching blue veins, electric rivers beneath the thin surface of her pale skin -- facing each other, hands loose. "How do you want me?" she whispers, as though being deprived her sight makes her try, at least, to be quieter as well.

[Ivan Press] Her wrists held forth are not immediately bound and locked. Instead, Ivan bends to them, laying one kiss on each like ritual. She can't see him, but she can feel his lips; she can feel his breath as he speaks, and by that she knows he's still bent to her wrists.

Like ritual. Like a supplicant, when he's the one tying her down.

"Every time I think of you," he replies, and this is a whisper too. This is not really an answer to her question at all. This is something more like a confession. "All the time."

Then he straightens, and he becomes brisk and efficient. He binds her wrists, and the cuffs turn out to be padded in suede, soft against the skin, thick enough to cushion against whatever pull or tug she might later exert. There's a moment of hesitation with the buckles, which is the only real indication that this is relatively new to him. Not the very first time, though. His hands are too sure on her wrists for that. The click of the small carabiners linking the two cuffs together is too crisp for that.

In truth, the chain between the cuffs could probably be snapped with a little genuine effort, even from someone of her uncertain strength. The second chain that he fixes to the center of the first is not much sturdier. He gives it a light, experimental tug, but in the end he doesn't lead her around by a chain like a pet. A plaything.

It's his hand on her lower back instead, propelling her gently across the room. If she has a decent sense of direction she'll know she's heading for the couch -- or, more precisely, for the standing closet beside the couch. The handle is one long vertical bar extending up nearly to the ceiling. The chain rattles as Ivan slings it over this bar, loops it around once to secure it, twice or thrice more to shorten it. When her arms are drawn up, he clips the other end back to the links between her cuffs.

"Every which way."

That is an answer after all.

Across the room, some more sounds: her bag being lowered to the floor. Ivan comes back with the chair, setting it down in front of, seating himself. Her back is to the closet door. Her wrists are bound over her head. Sparse jewelry and cork heels are all that remain on her body. Sunlight falls across her torso, which is drawn taut and sleek, her nipples sherry-brown oblongs on her lovely breasts.

Ivan just enjoys the view for a long moment.

Then he slides his foot forward until the outside of his calf touches the inside of hers. His clothes are still on. The khaki is as soft and cool as his shirt was; his leg beneath as hard and warm as his body.

He nudges her legs slowly, slowly apart. She can hear him draw a breath. She can feel his leg against hers; can tell he's seated by the angle and by the direction of his voice. Then:

"Lift your foot. Put it on my thigh. That's it." His hand atop her foot for a moment, warm and caressing. "Now higher. Put your ankle over my shoulder. Tilt your hips for me, baby. No, sideways -- just like that.

"Let me see how wet you are."

[Hilary Durante] She doesn't try to touch his face or caress him as he bends to kiss her wrists. But she does turn them upward slightly to meet his mouth as it falls on her. He can't read her reaction to his words; she doesn't suddenly gasp, or sigh, or pull away from him. And her eyes are, by his own doing, hidden from him. This could make her even more distant, harder to get close to. Connect to.

Why he wants that, though, she can't imagine.

They switch back to brisk efficiency, and a smile toys at her lips as he cuffs her. Binds her. One has to wonder how used to this she is how new it is; no trembling, coltish girl-thing in his hands right now, by a longshot, but considering this is Hilary, this could be the first time she did this and it's unlikely she would seem startled, frightened, worried. Elevated.

In any case, she remains as she has been, perfect in her obedience and submission to what he's doing to her. He promised to be a little rough with her like this. He said he would. And she holds to that. Smiles, when he tugs on the chain to test it. Almost steps forward, into him, but that isn't what he means to do with her. So she hesitates, waiting for direction.

It comes in the form of a warm, slim hand on her back, walking her over to...

she has lost all sense of direction. If they were in a hotel room it might be one thing, but she does not have Ivan's impeccable sense of balance. They are on a boat and that boat is steady but moving quickly. She has been blinded and did not memorize this room in a second after looking at it, especially as distracted as she was by simple, pure lust. It's possible Hilary can't remember what color the bedspread is, much less where the couch or closet happen to be.

It's hard for her to tell what's happening by a tug here, the movement of the chain she can hear but not visualize. She has no idea what she's attached to in the end, when Ivan secures the chain with her arms over her head and tells her he wants her

every way.

There's wood at her back, though, cool to the touch and polished smooth. She feels, more than hears, him move away. She hears the rustle of her bag being moved, hears the chairlegs lifting from the floor, then setting back down again. It's all quieter than it would be, the same actions done by some other person. Even when he doesn't try, Ivan is more stealthful than the average... well. Anyone.

He doesn't touch her after that for awhile. Hilary can't even hear his breathing. For all she knows he's gone. He left the room, he went to lie on the bed, he's in the head, he's doing exactly what he's doing and just staring at her while she stands there. She would be in dire straits without her shoes with the chain shortened as it is. She would be stretched. Or she would be hanging. As it is she's elongated for him, and

nobody abovedeck, Kolya or those two quiet maids, know what he's doing to her in here. What he's going to do, and what she's actually asked for from him. All but begged for, in truth.

Hilary doesn't question. She doesn't murmur his name, but she breathes in a little gasp when his pant leg touches her calf. Instantly, almost unconsciously, her legs part just a little, heels scooting outward. Further instruction comes, and with it her obedience. She holds to the chain for balance, leaning back a little as she lifts her leg and rests the sole of the wedge on top of his thigh. Her manicure is a pale, pearlescent pink, as though it was meant to match the lingerie she had on a few minutes ago.

Ivan helps her put her leg up a little higher, and when she finds her balance again, Hilary relaxes somewhat. The way he wants her to move, the way he has her leg up, makes her trust the chain. She lets it hold a little more of her weight, though not all of it. She breathes a little faster, and she shows herself to him, biting her lower lip.

[Ivan Press] He's reclining in the chair, which is simple and elegant, as befits the rest of this sleek, elegant ship. No arms. Plain, smooth woodwork. Softly padded seat, and all of it in warm, neutral tones

that she can't see right now.

His hand is on the outside of her leg, stroking gently, idly up and down as she shifts for him. As she shows herself to him. He exhales quietly, turning his head to drop a kiss on her ankle, and then bends forward. Her knee slides over his shoulder. His hand slides under her thigh, and then between her legs. His thumb draws her lips aside. He looks at her as she stands there for him, bound and blindfolded, displaying herself at his behest.

"Beautiful," he murmurs.

His middle finger slips along her slit, so gently that he barely parts her lips. He collects whatever wetness has slid out of her on the tip of his finger and, with an artist's patience and whim, traces moisture in a curving arc up her belly; in a loose in-spiral around one nipple.

When his mouth follows that trail, it's nothing close to whimsical and light. It's sudden, ravening, his body surging against hers and pushing her thigh over his shoulder, folding her leg up against her body. His tongue and his lips press hard against her flesh, licking ferociously up along her abdomen, over her ribs, ending with a singularly intense suck at her nipple.

And then he's sitting back again. Relaxed. Stroking her leg.


His staff has no idea what he's doing in here. They can guess it's sexual. They can surmise that much from the closed door; they'll know it for sure when they reappear abovedecks freshly showered before they ever dip into the lake. But the details of it, the way they're going about it, the way he's taking his time with her and she's so deliberately and so utterly submitting to him;

the fact that he's got the lovely, arch mate of another Garou chained up on her heels and very little else --

that likely does not cross anyone's mind.


Stroking her cunt again, after a while. Stroking his hand down her leg and against her pussy, sliding the pads of his fingers against her opening gently, and then firmly. The pad of his thumb finds her clit; presses and rubs. The tips of his fingers toy with her cunt, flirt with the notion of sliding into her.

"Look how wet you are," he murmurs. "Look how wet this sweet little cunt is," and it's one finger, and then a second, slipping in to the knuckles. "I think I could shove my big, hard cock into this tiny little pussy and you'd take it all and beg for more. Like a good little fucktoy.

"That's what you want, isn't it. For me to pound this tight little cunt until the whole fucking ship hears you coming on my cock."

The only indication of his movement is his shoulder sliding forward under her thigh -- and then his breath on her lower belly, a second before he bends to her cunt and closes his mouth over her. He fucks her like that for a while, his fingers sliding slow and heavy inside her; his mouth warm and so fucking slow, so maddeningly patient on her clit.

Moments slide by. His eyes are closed now, though she can't see it. He's sucking harder, plying her with that talented, dirty mouth of his; fucking her with his hand while she stands there, balanced on one foot, in high heels.

"I'm going to make you come on my mouth first," he tells her. "And if you fall, we're going to stop and go swimming instead."

He kisses her once, gently, his lips against her clit.

"So don't fall."

And he laughs. And his hand comes around to the small of her back, holding her firmly against his face as he puts his mouth right back on her

to do exactly what he promised.

[Hilary Durante] It's almost gotten relaxing, at this point. Hilary holds herself with the poise of a dancer on that single foot, keeps herself arched but not tense to the point of trembling. And Ivan touches her leg, kisses her, speaks in a low, soft voice like one would talk to a skittish horse. There, there. Shh, shh. She's relaxing, even without being able to see, which makes her calm, which makes her float slightly, as though what they're doing here is no more exciting than having a little quiet time together, perhaps reading.

Nevermind that she's chained and blinded and naked. Nevermind that she's showing him her cunt and the tracery of wetness there, still hot from when he asked her how she wanted to be taken, what her preference was on positioning. She seems so calm, even as Ivan starts to touch her, stroking his fingers against her pussy. Her clit. Her slit. Her lips.

Hilary gives one of those mmms of enjoyment as he looks her over, as he finger-paints her own wet onto her body. There's a soft gasp when his hand has left her cunt, then a loud one when he is suddenly pushing against her, pushing her leg higher up so he can lick her belly and her tit and suck on it so furiously, so hungrily, til she wonders why he isn't growling.

Her breathing is a little faster, when he stops. Sits back. But she isn't squirming. She isn't whimpering, or begging. She's been so quiet. She's been so damnably obedient, barely making a peep of pleasure or protest.

Another mmm when his hand comes back to her. As though he didn't just ravage her torso with his mouth, as though nothing's changed, at all.

But she shivers when he teases her open, and her lips part soundlessly when he pushes his finger inside of her. And that's when he tells her about putting that big, hard cock in her tiny little pussy and she clenches on him involuntarily, as though trying to take those fingers the way she would, in fact

take that cock, all of it, and beg for more

like a good little fuck toy.

That's what you want, isn't it. Which isn't a question, but she moans softly in affirmation, nodding as he goes on, talking about making her come til she's screaming, til everyone can hear her begging for it, enjoying it, getting fucked like that and liking it. She does squirm when he starts to eat her pussy, though it seems almost like she's trying to get away rather than use his tongue for her pleasure.

"No," she whines, pulling on the chains, writhing while he laps at her, fingers her. Ivan can feel the shocks of pleasure going through her every time his fingers thrust into that tight, wet little pussy of hers, even as she pleads: "No... give me your cock. Ivan...Ivan, put it inside me. I want you to fuck me. Nooo," and this last is ragged, matching the twist of her hips as she tries to get away.

[Ivan Press] -- which sends his free hand winging across her ass, a single sharp smack that ends with his hand gripping her hip, holding her in place.

It's a fine line for him to walk, in truth. How hard to spank her. How hard to grip her. How hard is acceptable, is sane, and how hard would edge him over into what he does not and cannot want.

He's still all right. This is still fine. And he presses his mouth briefly to her lower belly, a hard kiss as fierce as a bite.

"Shut up and take what I give you." This is a growl. Then he cups her forward, pushes her cunt against his mouth, and goes right back to eating her out.

[Hilary Durante] Hilary gasps when his hand meets her ass, the slap resounding through the cabin even as he grabs her hip, holding her body firmly against him so he can eat that fucking cunt. It's a fine line, and not an easy one: he can feel what that sharp spank did to Hilary as wetness flows over his fingers, as her pussy tightens on them, gripping them inside. Or maybe it was the words he used, the way he said shut up and take what I give you, the way she felt like he might call her a nasty little whore if she fought him a little more, if she didn't do as she does now.

Now, she's biting her lower lip and trying to keep quiet though she whimpers all the same. Now, she's riding his tongue and his fingers with light, wanting rolls of her hips while he demandingly, ravenously licks and sucks at her pussy. Now, she's using his goddamn mouth, trying to make herself come so he'll fuck her, so he'll give it to her, so he'll do what he said

and fuck her with that big, hard cock, make her take it all, use her like his little fucktoy.

Which he doesn't entirely want to do. Which he can't let himself want as badly as that dark part of him is really asking for. She wants him to spank her again, to fuck her, to slam her against the closet door he's tied her to until every thrust is answered with a hard shudder of pain and need comingled with her screaming.

Hilary shuts up and takes what he gives her, though. She whimpers as she rubs herself on his tongue, gasping when she can't help it anymore, bucking slightly when he fucks his fingers a little deeper into her. "Yeah," she keens, her thighs flexing. "Yeah..." as though this means anything. As though any of it does.

[Ivan Press] Ivan knows what she really wants. And the irony is, of course, is that it's what he wants too. Some part of him, anyway. Some part of him he's afraid to give rein to because sometimes it feels like what it wants will cost hm pieces of his soul. Or his spirit.

So there's this instead. This sort of compromise they're negotiating as they go along. There's his mouth hard on her cunt, and there are her wrists chained together and strung up to the closet door of his fucking multi-millionaire-dollar yacht. There's his hand on her hip and on her ass, his caresses heavy, his fingers squeezing not quite gently; his palm smacking again on her flesh when she says

Yeah...

in that needful tone of hers, because he frankly doesn't want to take his mouth off her clit long enough to answer her.

So his hand answers her. And the low snarl in his chest, vibrating through his tongue into her body. And his fingers inside her answer her, pushing a little deeper and staying there, staying deep inside her to give her pussy something to clench down on

when he starts eating at her in that fierce, unrelenting way he's already figured out, from all of two prior encounters, makes her hot. Makes her shake and squirm and moan.

[Hilary Durante] If Ivan really wanted to pleasure this woman, he knows how to do it already. He knows how she'd scream if he grazed his teeth over the lips of her cunt, if he slapped her harder and harder, faster, until her cheeks were bright pink. He knows how to put her down facefirst on the bed and fuck her, snarling and biting at her til she's covered in marks from his mouth, and he knows how wet she gets when he does it like that. How hard she comes, how utterly lost she is with pleasure when he takes her over some edge she can't get close to otherwise.

That edge has nothing to do with enjoyment, though. She liked fucking him in the shower. He knows that. She liked just having sex with him in the hot stream of water, up against the wall. But it was more like fucking a pretty vessel than anything else. Hilary was there, she was coming, she was gasping in his ear as he spent himself inside of her, but

something was missing. Some deep, vital part of her couldn't be reached. Or couldn't make it to the surface.

"Oh, you're good," she's gasping, somewhere between the screaming wreck she becomes when he does it the way she wants it and the pretty, pleasurable little thing she is when he fucks her nicely, "you're so good, baby."

And it sounds like she actually means it. It sounds like she's biting back moans when he slaps her, spanks her, again and again, not in any sort of rhythm she can predict but when he feels like it, when he wants to. And it makes her whole body jerk in response, makes her gasp. "Oh god, more," she says, louder this time, demanding.

[Ivan Press] "Mmph," he answers, some muffled snarl against her cunt.

That chain he's got her hands suspended by won't hold her weight. Not even close. There's no way she could possibly hang by that, and so her weight is on her one leg this whole time. Maybe that's why he slides his fingers out of her and wraps his arm under her ass instead, supporting her; or maybe he just wants to keep her

right the fuck there

while he eats at her cunt, sucks at her clit and bites at it with his lips; turns his head now and then to scrape his teeth over her inner thighs.

Never hard enough to bruise. Certainly not hard enough to break the skin. An intimation of what he's done to her before, and swore not to do again. Not that, then. He gives her this instead: the flat of his palm smacking against her ass, harder now as she demands it, his fingers grabbing at her flesh; his palm rubbing for a moment as though to soothe her

an instant before he smacks her again. More, she's moaning, and he gives her more; gives her clit a hard suck and pants, "Yeah?" back at her in some monosyllabic, half-sensical language, which is all he can manage with his mouth on her cunt so often, his face buried between her legs and eating at her until her slick is all over his cheeks, his jaw.

"Come for me," he's snarling against her now. Another slap lands, hard enough to sting. "Come on, you dirty little slut. Come for me so I can turn you around and fuck you."

[Hilary Durante] "I want to see you," she gasps, clenching on his fingers, her hips twisting. She almost falls. Almost. Doesn't, because she's desperate not to, she can't bear the thought of going out for an idle swim, can't stand the thought, wants to shriek if she thinks about the frustration of her arousal like that. She doesn't fall. She wavers until he holds her up, her spine bent backwards, arched for him. She cries out when his fingers leave her, plaintive and protesting, but she jerks and bucks when he uses his teeth on her thigh. Bites softly on the lips of her pussy.

"Ivan, I want to see you," Hilary is all but moaning, almost as though she knows he's going to refuse to take the blindfold off, as if she knows it's useless.

The spankings are driving her towards the edge, of orgasm if not her despicable self, and she's closer to it every time he hits her. Every time his hand slaps across her buttocks she lets out a little cry, and her slick flows anew, and covers her clit, covers his tongue, til that's all he can taste anymore.

There is no particular trigger, no word or deed that sends her cresting into orgasm. It builds in her, and she's riding him for her pleasure, riding his face as best she can in this position, mouth open to moan for him. She wails as he calls her slut, as he promises to fuck her, her thighs going rigid and her body arching hard when her orgasm finally hits her.

It's indescribable, in some ways. To be receiving her like this, taking her cum into his mouth and all over his lips as that slender chain rattles on the bar its connected to because of the way she's bucking, the way she's rubbing herself on his tongue, moaning oh, oh, oh, ohh like there's nothing else sane left in her

when he knows she can go so, so much farther.

[Ivan Press] It's a little like drowning, to have her like this. To see her all stretched out and shuddering over him, her slender wrists caught in those smooth rich cuffs; her breasts shivering which every quiver of her body, every smack of his hand.

And he does smack her. More than once, and quite hard, while she's rubbing herself against his mouth; while she's getting off and coming and

drenching him in her slick.

And he's licking it up. He's rubbing his face in it, eating her up, holding her cunt against his face and devouring her like he can't get enough, and all the while she's moaning the way any other woman would moan when they're at the farthest limits of their pleasure,

when he knows she's nowhere close to that. When he doesn't even know where that limit lies.


Eventually she's coming down from that rolling, cresting wave of an orgasm. He's still going at her, his mouth talented and relentless on her body, his tongue circling and sliding and flicking. He knows she's oversensitive right now. He doesn't care. He goes at her until he reaches some amorphous point of satisfaction, himself, and then

Ivan leans back, and shrugs her leg off his shoulder, lowers it to the floor.

Outside the windows, the Chicago skyline has receded. The lake's everywhere now, deep blue like an ocean. He's panting quietly, his face a fucking mess. He's sweating under his crisp shirt, his light-colored pants, and when he stands up his erection strains against its confines.

He pushes the chair aside. He unbuttons his shirt, his eyes on her the whole time; undresses while he looks at her blindfolded and bound, thighs quivering from her first orgasm. He watches her while he peels that shirt from his shoulders and leaves it on the floor.

Then he's coming to her again. He comes right up to her and he kisses her mouth, hard: crushes his mouth to hers, gives her her own taste back to her. It's halfway into the kiss that his hands land on her ass, squeezing, massaging; slapping her right cheek once, a light tap compared to the way he smacked her while he was eating at her. He makes that sound again, that low growl against her mouth,

and then draws back. He turns her around. The chain twists over her head; she can't see it anyway. Taking her by the hips, he draws her back until her arms are outstretched and her body is bent forward; draws her back until she's bent over for him, her cunt wet and slick and swollen from her first orgasm, from her cum and his mouth.

"Dirty little slut," he calls her, low; fond, even. "Such a hot, horny little cockslut."

His pants are still on when he pulls her back against his groin. She can feel the shape of his cock beneath, hard and hot through the khakis and the boxerbriefs; an insinuation of his lust, nothing more. He grinds up against her, though, and she can't see the way his head falls back; can only hear the way he sighs a pant out.

"Oh... that's so good," he whispers. "That's such a sweet, wet little cunt, baby. So fucking tight. Begging for cock."

-- his hand on her ass, a slap that cracks off the ceiling and the walls --

"I want to hear you beg for my cock."

-- and sliding up her back now, slow and firm, pushing through whatever thin film of sweat rides there. Folding around her sides to cup her breasts. He finds her nipples, rubs his palms against her until they're hard; pinches them lightly, tugs at them.

"I want to hear you beg me to wreck that pretty little cunt with this big, hard cock."

[Hilary Durante] After her orgasm, what little equilibrium Hilary has goes out the window. She jerks against Ivan as he goes on kissing her cunt, letting out whimpers and oh gods as he goes at her as though to lick her clean. Her thighs are quivering, her breath panting in and out of her chest, shaky and arhythmic. For some reason she lets out a little cry when he moves her leg down again; it doesn't feel like it will hold her weight, and in truth her knees buckle a little before she manages to hold herself up.

The chair scrapes against the floor when he moves it; this time Hilary's head follows the sound. It isn't nervousness, it's sudden and sharp awareness of what's going on around her, as though every part of her is as sensitized as her clit now. She can't see him sweating or undressing; she can't smell his sweat til he gets closer to her, and when he gets closer to her is when he kisses her.

Like he wants to kill her, almost. But she opens her mouth to that crushing blow, moaning for it. She sucks on his tongue if he lets her; gasps in disappointment if he doesn't. Hilary presses against his front, rubbing her cunt against him through his slacks, bucking gently when he spanks her again so very lightly, so teasingly.

She seems satisfied for a moment. Subdued. Soothed by that kiss, by that last little slap of his hand across her flesh. So when Ivan steps back this time, Hilary doesn't groan with longing. She tries to catch her breath, because she knows more is coming. And she'll take what he gives her. He knows she will. She'd take so much more than he's even willing to give.

So she turns, trusting his hands to guide her, which makes the movement graceful rather than a stumbling shuffle of her feet. She intuits what he's doing, and leans forward, forearms resting against the closet door, then -- pulled back by her hips -- just her hands, palms flat on the polished wood. Her breathing is audible now; it's possible even some poor maid walking by the cabin door -- if Ivan did not in fact tell them all to stay the hell abovedeck -- could hear her panting, could hear Ivan muttering those low, erotic slurs.

Instantly, as soon as he lets her pink-tinged ass and her swollen cunt touch his pants, Hilary starts to try and grind against him. She isn't holding onto any pretense of aloofness. She isn't hiding her want, and she hasn't been. She's rewarded by the way he exhales then, hard and wanting, pressing himself back into her

and rewarded, too, by the way he spanks her. A second after that echoes through the room there's wet soaking through the khakis, and a soft cunt rubbing harder on him while the woman he has blindfolded and chained up belowdeck is letting out little answering moans, nigh unto incoherent.

But when she speaks it's not in loud, keening groans but a breathless whisper, gasping for the words themselves like they're almost out of her reach: "Please. Please let me have it now. Please, you can have whatever you want, just fuck me with it."

Hilary shudders, twisting her head around, her cunt clenching on nothing, making her hold back a groan. "Please, Ivan, I want that big cock in my pussy."

[Ivan Press] Ultimately they know so little about each other. He doesn't know where she came from. What her maiden name was. Who gave her that pure, pure blood in her veins. What, if anything, made her this way -- or if she was simply born like this the way some are born without sight, without hearing.

They don't discuss their lives outside of these brief, searing intersections. They don't discuss each other. He knows the name of her husband and his children, but only because she's talked about them blithely, uncaringly, while putting herself back together

after he tore her down and splintered her apart.

She knows his name because an entire club learned it the night he bought everyone drinks. She knows this yacht because they met on the lake on their respective flybridges. She knows his car because she followed it once to get fucked.

She doesn't know he lives a block or two from DuSable Harbor, up in a crystalline cube set atop one of the tallest buildings on the waterfront. So high up that he didn't need privacy because there was simply no one else around to see him.

She doesn't know where he came from, what his family does, where his money comes from.

None of this seems to matter, because in a sense they do know each other in a dark, thorough way. He knows what gets her off. He knows what she really wants, this woman who's so often so perfectly poised, so haughty and pristine. He knows she gets

so fucking wet

when he spanks her, or pulls her hair, or shoves his cock in her mouth or in her cunt; when he uses her hard; when he fucks her so roughly he leaves marks all over her.

And she knows that as genuinely reluctant as he is to do that, as much as he wants to avoid it, some part of him likes it too. Loves it. And in that at least, Hilary Durante knows him better than anyone else on the face of the planet.

Which is a frightening thought, if he thinks about it.


So good thing he's not thinking about it. Good thing he's watching her grind herself against the front of his pants. Good thing his hands are running up and down her body, gripping and dragging over her smooth skin, taut flesh. She begs for him, that pretty posh mouth gasping such filth that it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end out of some illicit pleasure

just to hear her sounding like that.

He bends to her, wrapping his arms around her, biting her gently over her shoulderblade as he rocks his hips hard against hers: the insinuation of a fuck without ever approaching the reality of it.

"That's a good little whore," he whispers in her ear, and then straightens.

And he doesn't back away. He's pressed so close she can feel his knuckles brushing her ass as he undoes his belt and button; brushing her cunt as he slides the zipper down. Then fabric's dropping away, and it's his thighs against hers; the shape of his cock long and hard under his boxer briefs, wedged against her cunt; darkening with her slick and with his own precum.

"You're making such a fucking mess," he tells her, low, and draws her lips apart to grind his cock along her slit. "You're so fucking wet you're making such a mess of me, you dirty, nasty little slut."

There are Silver Fangs who would faint at the thought of their esteemed tribemates using language like this. Who would faint at the thought of their precious kinfolk being used like this. Who would frenzy at the thought of her enjoying it.

"You know what happens to dirty little sluts?"

His fingers pushing down the waistband of his underwear, then. His fingers pulling his cock out, laying it heavy and hard over her ass, grinding it against her in slow deliberate rolls of his hips while his palm cracks off the side of her ass.

"They get fucked senseless. Now..."

Ivan steps back; pushes his lowerwear down to his ankles, kicks it all aside. Naked now, he takes his cock in hand and slides it along her slit until he finds the opening of her cunt. Presses just enough to slip the head of it past her lips. He's far back enough that she'll have to strain to reach him. Which is, of course, the point.

"...take that cock for me. If you want it so bad, let's see you work for it. Let's see you take every last inch like a good little slut."

[Hilary Durante] Some part of her has to know how wrong this is, all of it. The rules of how to treat others are oftentimes very simple. You don't lie. You don't cheat. You try to be kind, generous, honest, respectful, and so on. You don't go out of your way to hurt people. You don't tolerate people who go out of their way to hurt you. She has to know, because these rules are handed so heavily down in every strata of human society. Even sitcoms generally get it right, but Hilary doesn't.

Either because she likes to be bad, or because she doesn't care, but there's no way she's innocent of knowing what is expected of her as a person, much less a Fang, a kinswoman, a wife. There's no way this woman he has in his yacht's main cabin is innocent at all.

Ivan could see clearly that after the briefest flicker of tension when he blindfolded and bound her, she relaxed almost entirely. There was no nervousness in her, no fear, not even the playful pretend-terror that accompanies so much kink. She was quiet but there was a friendliness about her even as he was chaining her to the closet and demanding that she tilt her hips so he could see how wet her pussy was getting for him. She was as calm as one would expect her to be if this was something else entirely.

Like going on a little pleasure cruise with her lover, having a nice romantic evening around the lake, leaning on his shoulder and watching the sun go down. That feeling. That sensation in her, quietly glowing with contentment, as he stroked her leg after forcing her to put it over his shoulder, staring at her like a recently acquired work of art that he finds pleasant to look at, and contemplate, not looking at her like a lover at all.

Because there's no love here. Not between them. Perhaps not in Hilary, at all, for anyone or anything. She's so distant, even in her gentle contentment, and then he does something like bite her or spank her or grab her roughly, pawing his hands hard and eager all over her body, and she crumbles into his arms like suddenly every part of her is touchable. Accessible. Open to him, when there's no reason she should act like she knows him, or trusts him, at all.


They've coupled a few times. No more. Only one of those times, and only briefly, could she see him while he was inside of her, see his face, watch his eyes, but she didn't stare into them as she came as though to make some sort of unavoidable, earthshattering connection. In the shower nearly a week ago he buried his face against her neck as though seeking comfort as being with her drove him over the edge. And every other time, though they are still countable on one hand, he's had her like this. Bent over. Bent away. Unable even to look back over her shoulder at him after a point, simply because of the force he's used to fuck her.

To fuck that long, slender body, the skin so smooth it tells his fingers every time he touches her that she's ever so fine, ever so costly, like stroking a bolt of silk in consideration.

To fuck that soft, sweet cunt, whose taste is liable to become an addiction, like a distillation of her beauty, her breeding, her sexuality dripping onto his lips and tongue that he can take into himself and remember.

To fuck this woman who is only a woman -- rather than a well-ordered simacrulum of one -- when he treats her like a slave, like a whore, like a toy he can enjoy and then break at his leisure.

Like one of those fucking cars of his.


And now, when he's bending her over and telling her to beg for it, teasing her with that cock sliding between the cheeks of her ass, which is still hot and pink from being spanked by his hand --

now is when she seems most to trust him. Tells him he can have anything if he'll give her this. Do anything he likes, if he'll just use his body to join with hers, and use it to harm hers, and somehow in the midst of all that connect with her in the only way she's able.

If he'll just make her feel human for a few minutes, she'll give him anything he wants.


Ivan knows how to pleasure her. He knows she likes it like this, likes to be used and loves it when he finds that part of himself that is so very terrifying to him and lets it drive for a little while. He's seen and felt how fucking wet she gets for him. His slacks, tossed aside, are wet on the front from what it did to her to be nibbled and slapped and told she was going to have to wait. Called slut and fucktoy.

It doesn't make any sense. It's madness, like her body moving on him now is madness, incoherent with desire. She bucks when his hands stroke up and down her sides, whimpering and gasping as he lets her have it just enough to make her crazy, holding her to his body while he does so, whispering tenderly in her ear that she's a good little whore, for being so wet, for being so messy.

It's strange for gentle that is, for a moment. Bent over her, holding her, rocking against her. The bite he gives her would never leave a mark and even the words from his mouth are murmured softly. And still, strangely enough, it makes Hilary moan for him. Louder, as he starts to undo his pants, staying close she can feel his hand taking his cock out.

For her.

Hilary's entire body shudders when Ivan starts grinding on her, soaking up her slick with his cotton underwear, unable to feel how hard her cunt is trying to clench down on him. Her hands clutch uselessly at the closet, though one finds the vertical bar and holds on, the other still braced flat against the door. She hears the stretch of elastic, the rustle of fabric being pushed down and aside. She's seeing only stars in the dark, all of them exploding in flashes of color.

And then

he's sliding his cock up and down that perky little ass of hers, spanking her hard and sudden again, and she starts trying to fuck him. His cock isn't even against her pussy then but she starts to buck and roll, trying so hard to fulfill what he says, to get fucked senseless.

Only then

Ivan steps back to get his underwear completely off and Hilary gives an overcome cry that is very nearly a sob, touching her forehead to the closet door like she's about to give up, like she can't take anymore. She trembles, her lips fluttering with the beginnings of supplication, of pleading, but he comes back. He comes back and she sighs and wriggles comfortably back against him, happily widening her legs, arching her back as he strokes himself over her slit. The head parts her lips every time it slides over her pussy, almost frictionless as it rubs her clit.

"Ahh," Hilary sighs, just shy of a long, slow gasp, when he puts it right there against her opening. She's going to get fucked. He's going to give it to her. He's going to push himself in and give a nice, hard fucking, and he's going to put his cum inside her and it's going to be --

"Ivan," she groans, as he tells her she has to work herself back on it. But there's no hesitation, nothing. The thing is, when she does start to take his cock, she does slow in

long, hard circles of her hips. Nothing shy about this. Nothing even attempting elegance. Just hungrily but slowly, firmly bending herself over further, pushing away from the closet door til the chain won't let her even touch it, biting back little moans til she's taken the first few inches of him and stands there,

bent and arched,

twisting her head so he can see her profile. Her dark hair across her cheek, hanging over her shoulders, her glossy lips parted. "Ivan," she whispers, this time, her hands in front of her and the chain taut, "Ivan, I can't do it. I need you to help me. I need you to fill me up."

[Ivan Press] It's true that there's no love there. It's not true that there's no entanglement whatsoever. By the very nature of their association -- which is to say, illicit -- they've become entangled. Potential liabilities for one another. They have secrets to keep now. They could blackmail each other. If her mate is the particularly jealous sort, she could get him killed.

Or herself.

And: deeper than that, there's the entanglement that arises from the simple fact that sex with her is unlike anything else he's ever had. Is mindblowing, and sofuckinggood, and sometimes so fucking terrifying. Is utterly unique, beyond even what she can do to him or what she'll let him do to her; what she wants him to do to her; by the simple fact that she is not his

and will never, could never, really be his.


When she whispers like that; when she turns her head and gives him her profile, when she works herself onto him and when she whispers for him to help her, tells him what she needs, tells him to fill her up, the look on his face is --

well. She can't see it. So it doesn't matter.


It's different this time, though. And she can feel that. It's not the same, what's happening here today and what happened at the hotel last time. It's not just the chains, the blindfolds, the silk cuffs. It's not just how slow he's taking it, how he's drawing it out; how his dominance is utter and explicit.

It's the strange gentleness between the slaps, the smacks, the deliberate hard spankings. It's the strange generosity that underlies what looks so much like selfishness, as though this time, today, he hasn't forgotten that she's alive. That she's living. That she isn't, after all, just a toy to be used and broken and discarded.

To some degree, even the blindfold, even the fact that he hides himself from her to make his dominance more complete, more absolute

is done for her.


His hands take her by the hips, then, and his grip is so firm; so confident. He holds her steady and sinks into her, slowly this time, slow and steady, in slow, long thrusts that gradually take him deeper.

"That's it," he breathes. "There you go. Take that cock. Open that sweet little cunt up for me. What a sweet little slut. What a good, obedient little cunt. Take it for me."

And it's not quite gentle, the way he enters her, and stretches her out, and fills her up. It's not quite gentle but nor is it brutal and angry. Firm, then. Steady and sure, with no room for waver or uncertainty, until he's planted deep inside her, his groin to her bottom.

When they're locked together, he moves her forward. Their footsteps echo through the place where they're joined -- she can feel every step shifting his cock inside her. He stops when her hands are back on the closet; when she's close enough to bend her elbows and rest her forearms against the cool wood.

Ivan bends to her again, then. He kisses her shoulder, and down across that delicate wing of bone that marks her shoulderblade. He licks her skin and sucks at the dip of her spine. When she straightens, he lifts her hair back over her shoulder. This is surprisingly gentle, too: the way he brushes her hair off her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the tips of his pinky and ring finger. The way his knuckles stroke her cheek afterward, as though fascinated by the fineness and clarity of her skin.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he whispers. For a moment his fingers linger close to the blindfold, as though he might flick it off --

-- but no. His hand passes on. Is heavy on her shoulder, drawing down her back. When he finds her ass again he rubs it, strokes it, and she knows even before he does it

that he's going to smack her just like that, sharply, grunting once under his breath as her cunt clenches down around him. He strikes her again, harder still, his other hand cracking off her ass this time, and before she's quite recovered from that

he's grabbing her by the hips and fucking her, hard and smooth and fast, rattling even that solid, well-built closet door against its frame.

"Yeah," he's groaning. "Yeah, fuck, take it."

[Hilary Durante] Maybe Hilary never really talkes about her mate because she doesn't want Ivan to be thinking about him. About what he might do. Or even about the fact that she belongs to someone. Maybe Hilary's the one that can't stand thinking about that, though. It's never certain how she feels about things, when who she is and what she feels seems to alter based on whether he's brutalized her and fucked her and come inside of her or not.

It doesn't matter though, how much they hold back or don't talk about. They can't protect themselves. In the end, this is where they find themselves: with Hilary bent over in front of Ivan, his cock sinking deeper into her and the words out of his mouth filthy though they will eventually turn into wordles growls and mindless exclamations. And it doesn't matter what they keep secret to keep each other from being blackmailed or embarrassed or even killed, because they both know each other's great secrets:

that there is a fathomless crack in her soul, jagged and ancient as any canyon; that she is broken somehow, perhaps even inherently, perhaps irreparably, and

that his own soul is far darker, far more vicious, more violent, more depraved, than even he ever knew or wanted to face.


Which may be why he can never have her, more than her age or her breeding or her mate or any of it. There is nothing to tell him that it would not eventually kill her. And destroy him.


For a few moments, they are quiet and still together, a moment of calm in the tumult. The seconds unspool with his dominance and her unspoken but whole trust in him, which is just as terrifying as his want for her. The way he enters her, moving closer, is almost sane. It makes her shoulders drop and her mouth open to gasp, then shudder with panting, groaning as he moves steadily and firmly into her cunt, muttering to her the whole while.

Sweet, he says. Good. Obedient. And she is.

She moans softer at the movement forward, circling her hips back against him as soon as she has the leverage of the closet door to help hold herself up. And since he can't see her eyes or see her breasts he has the sight of her ass swaying like that back against him, stroking against his lower half as she works his cock inside of her now that he's not so very, damnably far away.

And this is strangely quiet, and calm, and... comparatively gentle. These kisses on her shoulder and her back, the sweep of her hair as it slides over her shoulder and swings down her back, the grazing touch of his fingertips, the stroke of his knuckles, the slow, sweet circles of her hips and the occasional clenches of her cunt.

Almost, Hilary flinches away when his fingers touch the blindfold. Not quite. She shivers as his hand passes on, nothing more.

But she sucks in a deep breath as he rubs her ass, warms it further with his palm, and despite this she gasps anyway when the strike lands. She bucks forward, grabbing at the closet door but finding nothing to hold onto any more than she did before. The second time, she cries out, laying her brow to her forearms where they rest against the door.

What follows then is the sound of the door rattling and the woman crying out, gasping little whimpers of pleasure as tightly held in rhythm as any drumbeat, her cunt taking his cock over

and over

and over again as he slams it into her, groaning, muttering, fucking her.

Hilary takes it. She takes it and she arches for it, tipping her head back when they find a pace that suits them -- which is to say, one that is ragged and forceful and almost vengeful, somehow.

"Again!" she yells, as every thrust threatens to send her tumbling, as the way Ivan is giving it to her makes enough noise on its own to fill the cabin with the noise of flesh slapping together, male grunting and female moaning. "Ivan, more!"

And he knows, he has to know, what she really means.

[Ivan Press] He knows what she really means.

He knows what she wants. He knows how to give it to her. He knows he could reach forward and grab her by the hair; twist it around his wrist and hold her by it while he slammed her from behind. He knows he could slam her head into the closet door and tell her to shut the fuck up

and that no one would come running to see what the fuck was going on; no one would come to her rescue.

He knows he could fuck her so hard her screams were on the border between pain and some insane, cracked pleasure, and that she'd like it. She'd love it. She'd come back for more.

He knows he can't do any of this. Not if he wants to hold on to some shred of sanity.

So he snarls at her, wordlessly. And he holds her by the hips and he's fucking her now, pumping at her hard and fast but

not that hard; not so hard as he could, and has. And his hands aren't digging into her hips. And he's not holding her immobile, or slamming her back to meet every thrust. His hands are moving, roving up and down her sides, riding the shockwaves through her body; are letting her move in response to and in reaction to his motions.

He slaps her ass again. And again. Irregularly, with no apparent method or reason; whenever he thinks of it, it seems, if he thinks of it. It's his left hand on her ass this time, and his right pushing up the valley of her spine to plunge under her sleek hair and grip the back of her neck. He holds her there, driving her forward another step, pushing her forward until she's easily close enough to lean against the closet door

while he pounds her.

"Oh, fuck, that hot little cunt," he pants. Their bodies are slapping together. The closet is rattling. The chains are grating and sliding, slipping and clinking. He leans down to her and he licks at her back, bites at her, sucks at her shoulder and groans in her ear. "I love that sweet, greedy little cunt."

[Hilary Durante] What, after this?

Shall they drink together, eat together, spend the night here on his yacht together like he suggested? She's never seen him but that she's left him soon after. She's never pressed for an extra moment, and while the door is open for him to join her when she showers his sweat off her back and his cum off her thighs, she's never asked. Though she leans against him under the water or moves her wet hair aside while he washes her back for her, she's never told him that she likes it.

The number of hours they've spent together is... perhaps four, if one is extraordinarily loose about it. Maybe even less than three. And Ivan takes her out, shows her the fore stateroom, suggests an overnight cruise around the lake when the reason they're here together this afternoon is so he can plow her. Again. And again. And again.

He promised himself he would not do the things he wants to do to try and find her limit, to see how far he could really go with her. And she made him all but promise to give her at least a little of what she needs. The blindfold helps. So do the chains.

But above all it's the way he keeps spanking her as he fucks her, random every time, and thrusting hard and firm into her pussy right after, like an aftershock to the slaps and a counterpoint to the way he strokes her body to follow the sound of his palm contacting her flesh. Her buttocks are pink by now, will stay so unless he stops himself, but every time his hand lands Hilary cries out, moaning wildly as she pushes back against him, her cunt bearing down on his cock. Every time he holds her hips and fucks himself harder into her she gets closer to orgasm, wetting his cock in her sheer, unashamed lust.

A shudder rockets through her when he puts his hand on the back of her neck, pushes her forward, comes so very close to literally holding her up against the wall while he fucks her.

"Ivan...!" she wails, his name ricocheting off the walls, probably overcome abovedeck only by the sound of the motor's churning. In terms of coital conversation the burden is on him, so to speak; she is a reduction of pleasure and madness now, capable of begging and blasphemy, like some wild worshipper who for brief, transcendant periods knows nothing else, remembers no one else, is given entirely to ecstasy.

"Oh, Ivan, harder!"

[Ivan Press] Again. More. Harder.

Her demands or pleas of him are, in the end, so very simple. Give her what she wants. What she really wants. Make it rough. Make it hurt.

And the truth is it's hard to hold back. It's hard to remember the woman she became after he fucked her so hard last time, whole and wounded and somehow, so very twistedly, fulfilled. It's hard to remember that when it's so much easier to think of just giving in to it, to the urge to use this sweet little toy that's laid herself so prettily and so trustingly in his hands.

It's harder still to remember who became

and not want to bring her back. And not want to get through to her again somehow. The first time they fucked, after they fucked, when she was slipping back into who the whole fucking world sees when they look at Hilary Durante -- he wanted to grab her, shake her, shout in her face until she gave him some sign that she was, in fact, human.

This is something of the same. He has too many wants to name himself. He wants to fuck her. He wants to fill her, own her, claim her. He wants to hurt her. And

he wants to see her. Really see her.


And they know almost nothing about each other. And they know each other so well, already. In two, three mad encounters, he already knows where that line is for her. Where pleasure crosses into pain; where merely rough becomes brutal. For a half-sane moment -- perhaps less than half-sane -- he wonders if he can learn her, know her so well that he'll know exactly where the divide is. If he'll be able to ride it, and give her what she wants

without taking anything from her. Or from himself.

He suspects not. He wonders if the very act of taking, wresting, hurting, is what she wants.


So: his hand firms on the back of her neck. And he lets his own chain out another notch. He fucks her a little harder. He leans down to her and he bites at her shoulderblade; at her back. He licks and sucks at her ribcage, reaches beneath her to cup and squeeze at her breasts, and it's all rough, it's all ungentle and impolite and crude and crass and nothing close to how one imagines a woman like this would want to be treated, but:

it's not brutal. Not quite. Not really. He doesn't give her that.

What he gives her instead is his mouth all over her. Is his hand eventually sliding down her stomach, sliding between her legs. Is his fingers on her clit, and his palm slapping across her flank, her ass; is his cock hammering her from behind and her wrists suspended up in their cuffs --

and what he gives her is a certain amount of patience. This isn't the ravaging, world-burning fuck they've had last time and the time before. This is something more akin to a war of attrition. An exercise in variation, and summation, and sheer fucking tenacity.

He tells her this, too. He told her, earlier:

I'm going to make you come on my mouth first.

He tells her, this time -- his temples wet with sweat, his body flexing into hers over and over, his own breathing harsh and ragged:

"I'm going to make you come again. And again. And again."

He bites her. His palm cracks across her ass. And then he's kissing her, the tendon of her neck, the ache of her mouth if she turns her head.

"Until you can't fucking stand."

[Hilary Durante] Again. More. Harder.

She keeps saying it and it keeps meaning the same thing: Don't stop. Push harder. I'm so close.

If it's hard for Ivan to remember the woman that Hilary became after last time, how it was rough enough to make him pull a gourd out of his body to heal her, how it was rough enough for her to stay in herself for a little bit longer than the time before that, then he has to stop and ask himself what it is like to be here.

But that leads down a dark path. Still: to be human so infrequently, to feel so little, to need so much just to exist inside of her own skin for a few moments like the pain is calling her back to awareness of her own being --

it can't be easy.

And she has to know. He all but yelled at her last time, saying there had to be another way, something else she 'liked', some other way for her to be like that. He accused her: if he can see it, she had to feel it. She can't, midway into her thirties, be so oblivious to herself that she doesn't know.

If he could see her medicine cabinet. The most frequently called number on her cellphone, which is not her husband or her stepson or any of her friends but her doctor. If he knew what she knows. If Ivan knew that, he wouldn't be appalled or even surprised by the way Hilary gives herself over to him like this, letting him tie her up and cover her eyes, strip her naked, fuck her until she's screaming.

Letting him. When he does this for her... to a point.

Maybe she knows that, too. And maybe that has something to do with how she cries his name now, over and over the way she does when she's getting close, when he knows he's about to make her come, when she can't think of anything else to say but keep begging for him, for him to not stop that hard slid in and out of her cunt, the slap of his body to hers, the grind of his groin on her ass when he thrusts deep and moves in her while he puts his hands and his mouth all over her.

Faster, now, as she's holding onto the closet door and close to tears, from the simple sound of her voice. It isn't even pain, though the pain helps. The pain makes her see white, and it lets her relax, and when he gives it to her she can come like this, her cunt clenching on him where he's buried deep in her, holding tight to him while she comes

and comes, even as he's telling her he's going to make her come, even as he's putting his hand between her legs so he can play with her clit and spank her and fuck her and, it seems, feel her come.

Hilary is shaking in his arms as he goes on fucking her, sweating on her, filling her up with his cock while she loses herself. He tastes her perspiration on her neck, feels a strand or two of hair across her throat, but she's too overcome to turn her head and kiss him. She can't handle kissing him right now. Not unless he gives her more.

[Ivan Press] There is that, too.

He does put his hand between her thighs to feel her come. He touches her to make her come, but when she's coming, when she's gripping at the closet door, the bar of a handle and the slick surface of the wood -- when she's all but in tears again from

whatever it is that makes her weep when they fuck,

he cups his hand over her, splays his fingers over her cunt, and just feels it. Just feels her quivering and clenching around his cock. Just feels his cock sliding into her again and again and again, as though to fuck every last drop of her orgasm out of her.

His fingers are wet when she's finished. He's panting, and he has to stop for a moment; he has to stop because if he goes on he'll come himself, and he's not ready to yet. He's heavy against her for that moment, almost as though he has come -- but his cock is throbbing inside her, jumping with every other beat of his pulse. He kisses her neck and her jawline, heavily, licks the lobe of her ear.

And then he's touching her again. Mercilessly, playing with her clit with his cock buried motionless inside her. Toying and rubbing and fucking her with his fingers, holding her thighs apart with his free hand if she tries to close them. "That's it," he's murmuring; or perhaps it's a growl, "that's a good girl. You can take it. Take it like a good little whore. Let's see you come again.

"Let's see you come again with that big cock shoved up your tight little cunt," he bites her -- a drag of his teeth slow over her shoulder, "and maybe I'll chain you to the bed and plow you afterward."

[Hilary Durante] The thing is, she does come again. And it isn't strange, and it can't shock him, because he's felt her come on his cock multiple times before, one orgasm after another, sometimes in reaction to a certain way he grabs her or talks to her, or the fact that he fucks her and doesn't stop fucking her even when she comes. Or, simply, because once Hilary reaches that near-invisible limit and goes past it, she's gone. She can't come back down until --

does he even know? Is it just sheer exhaustion? Does the pain finally overtake her and allow her to start breathing normally again? Is the other option Hilary coming, screaming, weeping until she faints in his very arms?

He doesn't know.


After her first orgasm she's shaking, she's gasping for breaths and choking on them, trying to say his name again and failing, her legs loose and trembling under her every time he thrusts into her again. He slows, and stops, to control himself, and Hilary whimpers. A second later, before he's ready, when he's just kissing her and licking her, reaching down to stroke her again, Hilary

is fucking him again, taking advantage of the freedom of movement he left to her and bucking her hips on him, all but bouncing as she might if he were ever to let her get on top and ride his cock. She lets out a harsh, ragged sound as he starts snarling softly in her ear, her hand slapping against the closet door.

"Fuck," she gasps, filthy as you please, suddenly tossing her head, arching her back, and going at him harder now, faster now, using that hard cock he put inside of her finally to give herself the orgasm he's demanding. Wet, hot slick flows out of her with every word out of his mouth, dripping from her with all that clenching, and when he tells her he might put her on the bed and --

"Oh... oh, fuck!"

And she's losing her mind again, losing another piece of it, fucking him until, quite literally, her knees begin to buckle.

[Ivan Press] This time, to some degree at least, it's her driving him to some precipitous brink. This time it's her fucking him, her fucking herself to her own orgasm; it's her arching her back and going at him, pounding herself against his cock while his promises, or threats, trail off into snarl and growls and curses.

Fuck, he says when she fucks him like that. Shit -- oh my fuck --

and she's losing her mind again, and he's suddenly going at her in return, pounding her as hard as she was pounding herself onto him; cupping his hand hard over her cunt as he fucks that orgasm out of her the way he fucked the last one out of her.

Which is to say: relentlessly. Which is to say: hard, and rough, and on the very edge of vicious.


He wants to hold back, but in the end it's impossible. Some point of no return passed; some crest of pleasure that has to break. He bites her shoulder as he comes, roaring against her skin. He hammers her, those last few thrusts; grips her waist and her arms, grips blindly at her body as he loses himself in it.


Her knees are giving way at the end of it. He's taken his hand from her hip at the end of it and braced it against that closet door beside hers, and he's panting and shuddering from the effort of not collapsing with her. He's wet with sweat now, slick with it, his hair damp with it, and as her thighs tremble and her cunt pulses he presses inexact, mindblasting kisses against her back; against her shoulder.

And then he pulls out of her. If her knees buckle he catches her; braces her against his side while he reaches up to release her wrists. When the long chain comes loose he wraps it around his hand a few times.

He guides her to the bed the same way he'd guided her to the door: his hand on the small of her back. Or perhaps: his arm wrapped around her waist, supporting her if she's coltish and unsteady. When they get there he pushes her down on her stomach, bent over the edge.

It turns out he lied. He doesn't chain her to the bed after all. He undoes the clip between her wrists, then folds her arms behind her back and resecures her wrists.


Not a lot of time wasted after that. He runs his hands over her back. He looks at her cunt, wet and swollen and so well-fucked already, and he's hard again. He slaps her ass a few times. Slaps his cock against her ass, breathing harshly, muttering to her about that fine ass, that sweet, wrecked little cunt, and about fucking her until she's screaming and fucking her until her juices are running down her legs and fucking her until everyone on the fucking boat can hear her begging for cock.

When he pushes himself into her, it's as fast and sudden as he's ever entered her. One slide, hard and deep, before he's fucking her all over again, holding onto the chain between her wrists, standing at the edge of the bed with his body upright and his feet planted wide, his cock pounding into her while he growls at her and pants over her cunt, slaps and spanks her, calls her things that one would barely expect a pretty, sleek thing like him to even know the meaning of.


He fucks her until he comes again. He fucks her until he has to let go of the chain and plant his fists on either side of her ribs; until he's riding her with his teeth bared and sweat running down his chest; until he's planting a hand in the center of her back to hold her down, to hold her right there while he pounds her cunt

so fucking hard

for those last two, three, four strokes as he comes inside her, snarling.


Ivan's close to the limit, there. Very fucking close to that half-mythical line he imagines lies between rough and brutal, pleasure and pain. That's as far as he dares to go, and when he's finished his head is bowed and he's leaning into her; he's bearing her against the mattress and panting like he can't get enough air. Like there isn't enough air in the room.

She might think it's over, then. That he'll untie her now and unblind her, and they'll ... god knows. Shower. Go up. Eat canapes. Flirt harmlessly. Swim.

It's not over. He does untie her -- but only for a moment. He does remove the blindfold; leaves it on the ground, and this is the first time she's seen him since this began. He's hardly recognizable as the young man on the flybridge waving a hello to her on the floating dock. He utterly recognizable as the savage, lean thing that fucks her to furious, bruising orgasms in anonymous hotel chains. His hair is dark with sweat, damped down against his skull. His skin gleams. His eyes gleam, too.

He binds her hands again. He chains her to the bed like he said he would; spreads her arms, crucifies her against the bedside lamps bolted into the wall. He stands at the foot of the bed with his cock half-hard in his hands, halfway between relaxation and new arousal, and he strokes himself as he tells her to look at herself. Chained down like a fucking slave. Laid out for his pleasure. He tells her to open her legs and show herself to him. He tells her she's a fucking mess, slick on her thighs, cum in her cunt. He crawls over her and lays over her; puts his hand between her legs and starts to play with her again. He tells her he's going to fuck her

and fuck her

and fuck her

until she's drenched and filled and utterly fucking filthy with his cum.


Again, then: kissing her mouth while he fondles her cunt, muttering in her ear while he fucks her with his fingers. Bringing her again while his teeth graze her throat. When she's finished he's hard again, and

he fucks her again, shoves his cock into her cunt while she's still coming down; fucks her while he kneels over her with her legs over his shoulders, her thighs clasped to his torso.


He comes down over her when he's close, that time. He folds himself over her and drives himself deep, hard and firm, slower this time, deliberate, heavy. He groans like he can't help himself.


After that, a longer respite.

After that, he lays himself out beside her and unchains her from the lamps; leaves the cuffs on. The truth is they're such flimsy things, and the chain between so frail and permissive, that she could probably take them off herself. The truth is he doesn't care if she does. The truth is he suspects she won't.

He closes his eyes for a while. His breathing grows even. Maybe he drowses, but if he does, it's only for a few moments. His eyes open again.

He touches her face, this lovely woman he can't ever have. This lovely woman he's absolutely destroying. He touches her face and he strokes her cheeks, her mouth. He raises himself on his elbow and leans over her, and

she can tell from the way he kisses her that he wants to fuck her again.

[Hilary Durante] Almost, they come together. Perhaps with any other woman it would feel like something else, something real growing between them when his orgasm tumbles after hers into the abyss.

But this is Hilary Durante, whose name does not seem to fit her. Whose last name is too Spanish, whose first name is too old, whose body and bearing don't seem to suit anything but the cool persona she wears when she isn't like this,

which is to say,

naked and sweating, filthy with mingled cum, the silk over her eyes catching whatever tears don't flow straight down her cheeks. Something makes her need him to hurt her, and something makes her all but choke on her own sobs when she finally gets to break down, and feel those things that make humanity so ecstatic. And so terrifying.

Ivan understands this much at least, and doesn't stop. Then again, he couldn't if he wanted to. He needs this now, too, at least this very moment, needs to sink his teeth into her when he comes, forcing their bodies together so brutally that her skin turns pink under his grip in places. Whatever he said about not being able to do this again, whatever he said about I can't, when it gets right down to it

he can't control this any more than she can.


Hilary, sobbing, gasping, crumples as soon as the tide of Ivan's orgasm starts to go out and as he lays all those kisses across her body. She makes some noise, incoherent and aching, when he pulls his cock out of her, and she isn't just unsteady. She falls as though her body is beyond her now.

Ivan's arms around her, then. Hard. Firm. Shaking from his own exertion, searingly warm even when he hasn't been fucking, feverish and sweating now that he has. The cuffs tug on her wrists even so, the chain clinking and catching on the bar he tied her to. Every time a breath shudders through her he can feel it through her ribcage, so close to the surface of her fair skin against his chest as he's reaching up to release her wrists.

Hilary can barely walk right now. her pulse is sickeningly fast, her face leaning to his chest and shoulder as he takes her to the bed, pushes her down, guides her arms backward and restrains them together. All she does is whimper when he slaps her now, hand or cock, and it's doubtful she comprehends a word out of his mouth as anything but distant noise past the rush of blood in her ears, the quaking of her own breathing.


She screams this time when he enters her, the shriek of it dissolving into a moan that sounds as helpless as she is, and while he fucks her

Hilary comes again, while she's weeping so hard she can't seem to breathe right. She comes even though every inch of her is so sensitive that this imaginary line between pleasure and pain is obliterated, and she doesn't know what it is anymore. What she feels anymore. But she comes anyway, wailing from it like the pleasure of the orgasm itself is unbearable at this point. Ivan thinks he's close to the limit. The line. He has Hilary up against it from sheer sensory overload now, though, not from how much pain he's exerting or how forceful he's being.

His chest presses her into the bed. And he can feel her crying now, if he managed to miss it before, if he didn't care before, if it was just part for the course before because this is what Hilary does when the sex with her is at its best, when he takes her to the edge.

Or close enough.

Ivan takes the blindfold off, tossing it down, and he's still planted inside of her and her eyes are closed, her face tear- and sweat-stained, her mouth open. If she's hardly recognizable as that young man with the brilliant grin, Hilary doesn't look like anything he's seen before. Her lip isn't bleeding and the only bruises so far are the rather slight, surface ones that will form soon enough on her backside. But he doesn't know this woman, and as soon as he can see her eyes -- even closed -- he'll remember that.

She can't seem to move under her own power at this point. She stopped fucking him back. Her cunt is bright pink as he rolls her over, a mess of various forms of wetness. Ivan puts her arms up over her head and she whimpers, her arms shaking like leaves as he spreads them apart.

It takes her awhile to remember his name, as he's standing back at the foot of the bed with his cock in his hand. She disobeys as he's telling her to look at herself. She keeps her eyes closed, her head turned to the side as if he'd never rolled her over. And she disobeys even as he's telling her to open her legs, drawing them together though she knows her thighs will stick together. Even folding her legs closed, and then bending her knees, her ankles crossing, hips twisting to the side,

tucking into as much of a ball as she can, with her arms spread wide and chained to the wall. Like she has something to protect.


It isn't even that she hears him and is rejecting what he's saying. It isn't even that she's afraid. He knows fear. He would smell it no matter how many times he came in her, no matter how much she sweated from arousal, he would know if she was scared of him. Even if that's just a lie he tells himself, the sour smell of terror is missing from this woman, who he has out on the water with quite literally no escape but his mercy

unless she's a ridiculously skilled and tireless swimmer.

Hilary is crying, and her body is shaking from sensory overload but emotion, too. She's doing the reverse of laying lazily waiting for a virile male: instead of leaning back and letting her legs fall open, she curls up and away. Instead of looking at him, meeting his eyes to tell him she wants him, she's refusing to open her eyes and even acknowledge where she is. He's never seen this from her before.

She's broken down. Broken open. But she's not connecting to him. She's there, but she's --

reacting like a normal, sane person might, when used like a pretty little fucktoy.


And maybe Ivan is too far gone, himself. Maybe he crawls over her and forces her to lay back, opens her legs, touches her pussy and snarls in her ear. Maybe he brings her off again on his wet fingers and his filthy hand even as she's making herself stop crying, even as she's moaning please of oh god and Ivan. Maybe he fucks her again like that, lifting her hips from the bed and tilting them to receive his cock as her legs lay over his shoulders. Maybe he makes her come then, too, before he loses himself in her again.

Maybe he can't help himself.

[Ivan Press] Ivan does, in fact, stop.


He fucks her at the closet. He catches her when she falls, and he guides her sobbing and shaking to the bed, but that doesn't strike him as unusual because -- well; he wants to break her down like this. That's the whole point of this exercise: to bring her to some unspeakable brink, to break something down inside her and let forth these raw tides of human emotion. To make her real

to herself, and to him

for a precious few moments before she's twisting closed again.

So, no. He doesn't stop then. He knows he hasn't hurt her badly. He knows she's not weeping from pain, this time -- at least, not the physical sort -- and he thinks if he fucks her again, and again, and again she'll find that sort of release she needs and he'll have her for a moment without the bruises. And the bites. And the cut lip, the raw cunt.

He doesn't stop then, and he binds her wrists together again. He rides her again at the edge of the bed, and he makes her come again, and he comes inside her again, and when he's finished

he pulls her blindfold off and turns her over and lays her out and chains her down and

she folds in on herself like she has something to protect.


That's when he stops. That's when gradually, little by little, some heat-haze of lust drifts away and something rather like ice-cold realization settles in its place. That's when he doesn't, in fact, force her legs apart to push his fingers into her; that's when he doesn't, in fact

rape her while every fiber of her conveys no, conveys stop, conveys refusal and retreat and self-protection.

He stops. His body wet with sweat, his cock and his groin wet with their mingled fluids, he's still at the edge of the bed. One foot on the ground, one knee on the mattress. He looks at her, and he doesn't curse. Or apologize. Or panic.

Ivan comes back to her. He's quick about this, now: unclasping the restraints, freeing her wrists. One of the cuffs slides off the edge of the bed. The other lies where it fell, a scrap of sheening black silk.

He tries to touch her soothingly then, if she'll let him: stroking his hands over her shoulders and over her arms, over her back. He folds himself over her, on his side and along her back, and he tries to wrap his arm over her,

saying nothing at all.

[Hilary Durante] Chains and cuffs fall away, just as forgotten as the blindfold, as Ivan crawls up on the bed. Something in him has turned cold and dark as he realizes that Hilary is past the point of saying no, just as she's past the point of saying yes, which means

he can't do what he meant to. What he thought of. So he looks at her, and then crawls onto the bed, taking away the restraints he put her in after he stripped her to her shoes and blindfolded her. Those shoes are all that's on her now, heavy on her feet, as Ivan removes the cuffs as he removed the blindfold. It all falls away.

The instant he begins to touch her, she turns into him instead of curling tighter into herself. She searches for his body blindly, putting her face to his chest and shuddering. She lets his hands smooth over her sweat-drenched form, taking a deep, ragged breath.

But when she exhales, it's a bit steadier.

[Ivan Press] No hesitation, then; he holds Hilary against his body, one arm wrapped tight and secure around her; the other hand rubbing smooth broad circles over her back.

He doesn't shush her; doesn't tell her it's okay, it's all right. For a long time, Ivan simply holds her.

When she's calmed, or at least calmer -- when sobs are no longer shaking her -- his hand slows, stops. He wraps both arms around her then, and they lie there a while: atop the counterpane of his bed, the sunlight bouncing across the surface of the water to ripple across the ceiling; the yacht swaying and rocking and skipping gently over the calm waters.

The engines are a dull roar through the walls. They must be miles and miles out on the lake already.

"Tell me what's the matter," he says at last, whispering.

[Hilary Durante] She's gasping, and panting, and shuddering, but she's calming. No longer sobbing, no longer choking on those sobs, Hilary curls into his warmth and that strength that to any Garou would seem middling at best. She starts to breathe normally after awhile, as he's stroking her back and holding her on the bed, soothing her after taking her to the very brink of what she could physically -- and perhaps emotionally -- tolerate.

Just breathing, then, as Ivan wraps his arms around her. She makes no move to get up, remove her shoes, and ask him if he'd like to shower with her real quick before they go for a dip in the lake, which out this far should surely be quite frigid even this time of year, ha ha. Oh, living in the northern midwest, isn't it so very droll.

Hilary just shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, twice. "Nothing," she whispers. "I just needed this."

She lifts her face then to his, still tearstained, and puts her hands on his face, kissing him. Her wrists are reddened but not bruised, not scraped. Just pink. She's unfolding once more against him, and though she's still quivering from all he's done to her so far, her legs part slightly, as though in welcome.

[Ivan Press] He's careful with her now.

If he's honest -- and it's hard not to be when they're stretched out naked on the bed; it's hard not to be when the evidence is right there for all to see -- he's still aroused. He's still hard. When she unfurls herself and comes closer, when her lips touch his, his cock twitches against his lean abdomen.

Which doesn't have the sort of iron definition so many of his kind have. Which doesn't have the sort of raw strength, raw power, that one might almost expect of a Garou. Everything about him is smooth and lean and sleek and svelte: a creature built for speed and dexterity, for stealth.

And, apparently, for this. Whatever this is.

Careful, then: this kiss so like the first. Receptive, his eyes open and clear for seconds, moments, before they close gently as his lips part. He kisses her softly, and at the end of it his hand comes up to stroke gently up her forearm. His fingers lace through hers.

When they part, his leg rests between hers. He looks at her for a moment, saying nothing. Then:

"Why do you cry?"

[Hilary Durante] "I don't know," is the still-whispered, but honest answer. As honest as his erection, truth be told. As honest as that kiss, which is not the testing, explorative thing from the nightclub but something else. Not the rough, biting thing from their couplings but... something else. Something honest.

She runs her hands up his sides, down them again, grazing his abdominals before, quite innocently almost, moving to his cock, which is sticky with cum from both their bodies. She strokes him idly, sighing heavily, before leaning in to kiss his nipple. "It just happens."

Her other hand is linked with his. She squeezes it, and licks his nipple, and the hand around his cock guides it to her cunt as she lifts her leg up over his hip. "More," Hilary says, barely breathing the word.

[Ivan Press] Ivan breathes carefully as her hands explore his body, which might be the first time he remembers her ever doing this. Always, before, her hands went straight to his cock -- or were pinned to the bedspread. Clutching at the covers.

His eyelids fall when Hilary's hand finds his cock. She strokes him, and neither of them seem to care about the fluids, about the cum, about the mess. He leans his brow to hers and he kisses her again, eyes closed now and closed still when she bends to kiss his chest.

Their hands are loosely linked when she slides her leg over his hip. His fingers flex around hers as she guides him to her opening. His breath catches, and then his hand lifts to her face; he kisses her yet again, deeper this time, and rolls on his back.

And he brings her over him. A length of chain slinks across the bedspread with the change in weight, the dip in the mattress.

A concerted flex of his body thrusts him into her; completes their coupling yet again. He's lost track how many times he's penetrated her, fucked her. He groans, head pressed back into the pillows for a moment, and then his eyes open again. Wrapping his hand behind her neck, he pulls her down, his mouth opening to hers, and then he's fucking her again.

[Hilary Durante] What has it been, now? How many times has he used her cunt, how many times has he made her come whether she seemed cognizant of it or not? How many times has Ivan let himself go inside of her?

It doesn't matter. But her body knows. It's tender, and it's sensitive, and still she wants him. Or this. Or something. She closes her eyes for a moment as he kisses her, their brows touching, and brings him closer with her leg, and her hand, til he finds her wetness touching him again.

A moment later he's rolling her on top of him, and lowering her onto his cock, and Hilary's hands are on his hands where they hold her hips. Her eyes are on him as she sinks down onto him once more. No neat swivels of her hips now, no grinding. She's sore, she's aching, she's shaken, but she wants this. She exhales as he groans, and her eyes flicker closed with passion just as he's opening his so he can look at her, find her.

Hers open again when he touches her neck. She whimpers as her body folds to his, but it's a different sound than before, when he was driving her past a point she couldn't return from without Ivan relenting a little. It's soft. So are her lips, melting into his.

[Ivan Press] And so is this fuck, when you get down to it.

Soft. A little bit slower. A little bit saner. Even though his hand pulls her down to kiss him. Even though he flexes up into her in smooth, heavy strokes of his hips.

He says nothing now. No erotic filth spilling from his lips. No demands, no commands, no running commentary about her cunt, about her pussy, about her wetness and her tightness and her heat. The only sound that leaves him are the shudders of his breathing; the low groans that he almost bites back. Eventually his hand slips from her neck, smooths down her back. His palm rubs over her ass, and

he doesn't strike her again. He holds her by the hip, and lowers himself back to the mattress, and watches her eyes as his own flicker and cloud with what she's doing to him. What it feels like to be fucking her again slow and firm, sliding into her all over again.

[Hilary Durante] Hilary has never ridden him before. And that sounds like it means more than it really does: they have only seen each other a few times. 'Never' doesn't cover very much. But here's something to take note of: it's good like this, with her. She's good, like this. As wrecked as she is, Hilary is a sight to behold on top of him, her slim thighs to either side of his hips. Her pale body winds almost hypnotically above his, and her hands stroke over him, caressing his chest, running up his arms.

And Ivan is quiet, but for those panting, shuddering breaths, and Hilary actually talks to him this time, more than just cries for more and screams of his name.

"That's it," she murmurs, as he rubs her sore and still-pink ass, fondling her without spanking her, "oh, that's it, that's a good man,"

and it may occur to him that if she really does fuck those teenage boys he saw gathered around her, she doesn't call them man but she knows better than to call him boy. Hilary caresses him gently all the while that she's riding him, leaning over him to rest kisses against his chest and his neck, sighing softly as her clit rubs against his cock, though it makes her shiver. It has to be slower. She simply, physically, can't take much more.


What she can take is enough. Enough to ride him like this, slow and steady, rhythmic, building to longer, deeper strokes of their bodies together, her hands splayed over his chest and his holding to her ass while she arches over him, hair spilling down her back. And there's no denying what she still looks like, the marks that will fade even without healing but are still there:

teartracks on her cheeks

her hair mussed by the blindfold

wrists pink from the cuffs

light bruises on her ass from how he spanked her again and again, losing track of how hard, how many times, while he fucked her up against the closet door


There is no way even now to look at Hilary and think she is poised and cool and collected. She's not retreating into herself as she rides him, faster now, hair swinging down over her shoulders and breasts while she leans over him, her groans like purrs, whimpering yeah, that's it, that's it, give it to me --

and while she comes, tight and wet and bouncing slightly on his cock with the needfulness of it, the way she pulls her orgasm into her body from his hardness deep inside of her. She comes while upright, clenching down on him, her hands pressed to his chest, her lips trembling as it overtakes her.

"Oh," she whispers, circling her hips slowly as she comes down, "oh, Ivan."

[Ivan Press] Hilary has never ridden him before. And Ivan has never quite come like this before: not with her facing away, and not with his face buried in her shoulder or against her neck.

Facing her. WIth her above him, upright, her hands on his body; her body shivering as her orgasm takes her over and trips his off.

She can see the look on his face, then, which she never has before. She can see the way his brow furrows and his lips part; how his mouth opens in a sound that never quite emerges. He comes silently this time, grasping at her hips and pulling her down, holding her still, bucking up against her though there's no room between them; shuddering into her as his head falls back and his eyes squeeze shut and his body pulls into an single tensile arc beneath her.

Those slow, slow circles of her hips, coming down, run havoc through him. He shudders and jerks as she moves on him, gasping, and he groans now -- moans long and loud on a slow swing of her hips; pants when she rides him into her again.


His eyes open for a brief searing moment when she's coming down over him. They're still dazed, glassy with pleasure, the pupils blown, the mutable green flecks and chips of color. His heart is hammering. He can't breathe steadily enough to kiss her yet, but he presses his mouth to her face anyway -- blindly, because his eyes are closed again -- seeking her mouth, her cheek, her temple.

After that he rests a while, eyes closed, hands loose on her hips. Body limp, as though drained of everything, finally.

[Hilary Durante] It's sort of nice, watching Ivan come. She smiles a little as he does, though he might not be able to see it through the haze of lust he's in. Her lips twitch but not with the amusement he's gotten so used -- probably -- to seeing on her face. She waits for him to settle down after it's passed, and then she goes willingly into his arms, against his chest, letting him rub his mouth over her. Not quite nuzzling. Not quite kissing, either.

But that's kind of nice, too.

Hilary settles against his chest though now he isn't holding her wrapped in his arms. It seems as though she's forgotten about what he did to her before, what he would have done to her if he hadn't stopped and realized that it would be rape. She's still floating, still away from whatever it is that makes her build up those walls so fast and serene it's hard to see it happen.

She rests against him like they're old lovers, like she knows him at all, or like he knows her. But when you look at it from the perspective that she has seen a part of him no one else has ever encountered, it helps make it a little less insane.

But not by much.

[Ivan Press] Their encounters leave her weeping. Leave him on the edge of something black and terrible. They leave her peaceful, calm in a way that transcends anything he could easily understand, and they leave him troubled. By what happened. By what he almost becomes, one way or another, every time.

By what happens between them. And all the complexities thereof.

They're quiet now, lying together like they've known each other for years; been lovers for half their lives. His arms come up eventually and wrap around her. It's a loose embrace. Comfortable.

He opens his eyes eventually and finds that the angle of the light has changed somewhat. They've been here ... he doesn't know how long. He isn't wearing a watch. Those delicate chains are still hanging from the lamps; those scraps of silk are still flung here and there.

Their clothes are still on the floor. And the engine is still running, and the sunlight still bounces off the water and covers the ceiling of the cabin in swoops and webs of light.

"Do you want to stay the night?" he asks then, very quietly.

[Hilary Durante] They're both so sweaty. So sticky. She's thirsty. She's aching in places. Her hips, her feet, her wrists. Her back. Her shoulders. All over, really. Hilary can't move yet, though, so she doesn't try. Her hand is curled loosely on top of Ivan's chest, and she looks at her fingernails aimlessly, not quite seeing them. Or anything.

Not even the light glancing off the waves to strike the ceiling. Not even the room around her, which she forgot while she was blindfolded. She hears the presaging of his question in his chest before he asks it, but when she does, her eyes drift close, eyelashes flicking over his sex-slicked skin.

She presses her lips to his sternum, smiling. "I want to take off my shoes," she murmurs, half-thoughtful.

[Ivan Press] Idly, half-reflexively, his fingers comb through her hair as she kisses his chest. There's a short pause; then he laughs quietly and sits up

and quietly sets to work undoing the ties and straps of her shoes.

[Hilary Durante] Considering that perhaps twenty minutes ago, or at least less than half an hour ago, Ivan was quickly unchaining this woman from the wall because she was sobbing, because she was tucking into herself protectively, it is hard to imagine how they can be smiling at each other now, laughing. How she can lie on his chest so trustingly, how she can let her eyes close even further as he strokes her hair, plays with it between his fingers. How he can move to untie those cloth ribbons from around her ankles and draw the cork wedges off her feet to let them set or tumble on the floor. And the straps left marks in her feet and lower legs, yes, but they'll fade just as soon as blood flows back into them.

The only way it's possible to understand is by acknowledging openly and firmly that something is incredibly and deeply wrong with Hilary, and that it has found some kind of a dark match in whatever is deeply and incredibly wrong with Ivan. To be the muse for a man's violence is nothing to aspire to. To find such a muse is not a lofty goal.

Or even, if one remembers the way she looked as she cried, an acceptable one.

Even now, as gentle and sweet and happy-seeming as this is, there is no way to look back and deny how they got here in the first place. What it took for Hilary to be able to act like some sort of normal person, even for a little while. She hasn't yet begun to draw into herself; she pushes herself up on her arms and that smile of hers

is so brilliant, kicking the wedges off the edge of the bed and laughing when they crash heavily on the floor. She tumbles backwards to the pillows as Ivan comes back, and smiles at him when he does, or smiles at him from the pillow as he stays upright. It's okay with her, either way, and she brushes her hand over his arm, his shoulder, his leg, whatever is within reach.

"It's risky," she says, finally, which isn't an answer. Not entirely. Not to the question he asked.

[Ivan Press] She's smiling now, and she seems human; seems normal, happy. He's a little quieter than he is when she first sees him any given day, and there's an irony in that: that she opens up, that he quiets down.

The road to this altered state of being is a dark and treacherous one. He reflects that it's always violence that underlies it. Always abuse of some sort. He didn't maul her this time. He didn't leave her bruised and tender and barely able to move, but he came so close, so very close, to forcing her.

And thinking this, Ivan rubs her feet and her ankles after the straps are undone; masses her lower legs as the shoes are rolling to the edge. Hilary kicks them to the floor, laughing, and his smile quirks briefly wider over his shoulder. She tumbles back and he lays back as well, slower, stretching out beside her on his side as her hand passes down his body.

Risky, she calls it. His mouth moves a little; some faint hint of humor or wryness.

"You could tell people we had engine trouble and had to stop for repairs," he suggests. He bends to her, kissing her between the breasts, and then at the lowest rung of her ribcage. There's a faint sketch of a grin, "I'll even act petulant and rejected if you want."

[Hilary Durante] Hilary lifts her leg a bit while he rubs it. And though he's essentially serving her in this, massaging her while she reclines rather than reciprocates, there's no hauteur to her. Or at very least: not much. It's a distant thing, there due to practice, but no more genuine to her than anything else he's seen so far. Maybe even those smiles.

She welcomes him back to her as he climbs over the bed, his arm around her as he leans over to kiss her between her breasts. She strokes his hair, though it's damp to his scalp and wet with sweat, and just murmurs:

"That isn't why it's risky."

[Ivan Press] That gives him a moment's pause. He lifts his head, and the way he turns, nudges against her palm, may be entirely instinctive.

"Then why?"

[Hilary Durante] So her hand cups around his head, as though to keep him still. To keep his eyes on her, and where she can see them. "Because you want me," she says, with the boldness and lack of nervousness afforded by the very impossibility of that coming to pass. "And we can lie to our friends and the tribe and my stepson and everyone else, and you will still want me."

[Ivan Press] Now there's a flicker of a crease between his eyebrows. He shifts, putting his elbows under himself, supporting his weight higher.

"What are you trying to say?"

[Hilary Durante] The answer to this is simple enough. And she gauges that he'll understand it. She assumes he will, her dark eyes fathomless on his mercurial green ones, which remind her of fish darting under the waters,

which is not a thought she would normally have.

"That you can't want me."

[Ivan Press] A faint scoff there -- or something that might've been one if he did not, in fact, understand what she meant at once.

He does, though. So the scoff has something of bravado to it; a sort of empty showing that he lets fall a moment later. He lowers his mouth to her body again, biting gently this time at her side, his eyes thoughtful on her face.

Ivan doesn't smirk about it being too late to say he can't want her. He doesn't play at denial, or coyness. He doesn't mock her and ask if she's saying he's falling in love with her,

because they both understand what she means, even if neither of them can -- or at least, he can't -- easily put it into words.

He kisses her now, the spot he'd bitten softly. Raises his head again.

"Because I can't have you," he says quietly; musing. "Not really and not ever."

[Hilary Durante] That's to be expected. His near-scoff, his ducking of his head while he watches her face, like he wants to look at her still but cannot bear her eyes on his like that, seeming to see so deep even if in truth they do not see much at all beyond

well. The iridescent scales of certain fish catching distorted light, zipping along with the current, to dodge the rocks and evade the predators and eventually die, all the same, like all small, brightly flashing things.

Her fingers go on tracing the various curls of his hair, as though considering the personality of each one. She does not seem to react to his biting, his kissing of her body, though the muscle there does. Her acceptance is total: of his movement, of his teeth, of her own body startling in some subtle, below-surface way to stimulation.

Of her lot in life.

Of everything, because she has no control over any of it. And she would not expect it.

Ivan says aloud what can be said, since what can't be said has no words anyway. Hilary, dark hair spread half over her shoulders and half over the covers of the bed, touches the side of his face, her fingertips to his temple, imagining she can really feel his pulse there, or the turning wheels of his thoughts. "Yes," she says quietly, because there is nothing else to say. She strokes his hair.

"So an hour or two, here and there. Maybe a night together," Hilary goes on, just as soft. "But not a day. Not all afternoon and evening then a night and a morning." She says it, lists it off, as though each segment of the day drains her somehow, adds onto some measure of exhaustion in her

because life is so very long, and To Be is such a troublesome, difficult, vital verb.

"Not all that time with each other." Her hand stills, and moves to his shoulder, then to her own belly, relaxed now. "It would destroy you in time."

As though she cares, truly, what happens to him in time. Perhaps more honestly is this confession, which he can hear as connected to the idea of his destruction if he likes, though that is not what she means: "And I can't bear it."

[Ivan Press] Now there is a scoff, and it's not so much empty bravado that drives it but something like insult; something like ruffled feathers, injured pride. It would destroy you in time, she says, relaxed, as though there was no arrogance in that at all,

and no truth, and nothing that could possibly bother her.

He pushes up on his hands. Sits back on his heels. His eyes are on her for a moment, vivid, green, staring, animal. Then he laughs, and it's a vicious sound.

"You mean you can't bear to feel human for that long."

[Hilary Durante] Her eyes -- not her head -- snap to him as he sits back. For a second or two, a heartbeat, she stares at him, and then tips her head slightly. "You wound me," she murmurs, too light, "such words coming from an expert in 'feeling human' like yourself."

[Ivan Press] Another moment; another long stare. She's actually angry, he realizes; it says something about her, or about what he thinks of her, that he's genuinely surprised.

A beat. When he speaks again there's a sense that this is a conscious choice, a deliberate decision not to argue, not to fight, not to get involved.

"Pardon me," he says. "That was out of line." He turns; looks over his shoulder at the room, their things, back at her. By then he's wiped all traces of anger from his face and form.

"We should freshen up. You did want to go for a swim before dinner, didn't you?"

[Hilary Durante] "Of course," is Hilary's only answer, when he pardons himself, which is about as meaningful in the end as his admission that he was out of line. He goes on, speaking of swimming, freshening up --

"I didn't," she says mildly, as politely as one can correct a social equal making an incorrect statement. There's a deadness to her eyes, cold and faraway, that is easier to maintain because they are already so very dark. "I intended to come aboard to fuck you, and we've accomplished that," she goes on, reclining again, legs crossed at the ankle. "If you think I should stay for a swim and dinner for the sake of appearances, then by all means I'll indulge you, but otherwise perhaps it's best if we returned to port."

[Ivan Press] For an instant, the corners of Ivan's jaw harden. Then his eyebrows flick -- a facial shrug, a sort of blithe resignment.

"Of course," he says. "I'll let Kolya know at once."

He leaves his clothes where they lay. There's sweat on his shirt. Her fluids on his pants. They're filthy, and anyway, he has plenty on board. Ivan finds a pair of shorts in the closet he'd chained her to and fucked her against not an hour ago and shakes them out, stepping into them. Unshowered, hair damp with sweat, smelling like her, there's absolutely no mistaking what he's been up to.

But then, there never was.

"You're welcome to use the shower," he adds, courteous. "You'll find spare robes and fresh towels in the cabinets."

The door unlatches and swings open, then shut again. His footsteps resound faintly through the walls as he heads up toward the helm station.

[Hilary Durante] It's possible they'll never see each other again after this. Not like this. Polite greetings at meetings of the tribe, run-ins at the yacht club or a nightclub. A little harmless flirtation on his end just for the sake of appearances, because one wouldn't want everyone to think he'd soured on her, been rejected by her, and was cranky over it. But after this it's possible there will be no more, and it's hard to understand why. What happened.

They said the wrong things, hit the wrong nerves, and a split second later the woman who had trembled and sobbed until he took her in his arms and soothed her is gone. The emotions that were allowed to run about the yard for awhile were not just locked back down but obliterated, as though her very being is an inhospitable environment to such things.

Hilary watches Ivan pulls a pair of clean shorts onto his filthy body, all light and resentful at once, and her head tips to one side after he tells her she can shower, use the guest robes, the towels that are no doubt fluffy and soft. He heads for the door and she speaks up: "Now don't be sour, mon petit faucon," she murmurs. "What did you expect?"

[Ivan Press] Ivan is, in the end, not so very petulant that he simply walks out without reply. The door opens; he pauses; the door closes again with him on the same side of it as her. He thinks a moment, then turns.

"You misunderstand me, Hilary," he says: level, precise, and unflinchingly direct. "I'm not walking away now because I'm sour. I confess: I was disappointed that you wouldn't stay. I was taken off-guard when you said I wanted you. My pride was offended by your presumption that wanting you and not having you would somehow destroy me. And I thought you were being a vicious little bitch when you asked to go back to port."

There's a small pause here.

"Then I realized you were right. I came on to you because I thought you'd be a hot little fuck in the bedroom and a woman of grace and sophistication outside it. Someone who wouldn't bore me to tears. Genuinely enjoyable company in any situation. In return, I thought I could provide you with a little extramarital thrill. A little generosity or appreciation or attention or ... whatever it is that might lead a mated and married woman to stray.

"I thought we could entertain each other. Have a little harmless fun. But if this were harmless fun, I wouldn't care whether you stayed the night or not. I wouldn't give a damn if you just wanted to blow through, fuck me, and leave. It might bore me eventually, but it wouldn't anger me. And the idea of somehow being destroyed by not having you would be so utterly preposterous it would make me laugh.

"I wasn't laughing. I was angry. And maybe hurt. The only reason I've reacted like this is because I do want you. Which makes you right on this count, too: I can't want you. I don't want to be ... entangled. I don't want something serious, and dangerous, and irreplaceable. Something with the potential to genuinely hurt either one of us. And that's exactly what this is becoming.

"So yet again, Mrs. Durante, you're right. I think I should take you back to port."

[Hilary Durante] The way she's behaving she should be showered and coiffed, wearing some sort of satin, lace-edged teddy. Hilary lounges on his bed like a goddamned queen of the Nile, forearms flat on the bedspread and legs together, one bent slightly to hint at what she's so coyly concealing. And Ivan is preparing to leave, speaking to her as though they weren't... as they were, so achingly recently.

How quickly things turn. How fanciful, that they could pretend for a moment that whatever passed between them is that easy to erase, or to wish away, forget about. At least one of them has the backbone to acknowledge out loud -- in a way -- that something did pass between them. Change.

She has no corrections for him. No wrong, you misunderstand me, Mr. Press, and no sudden flinches of emotion across her face as he speaks. No offense taken, of course. What he says is right, and goes both ways: a hardbodied, high-stamina fuck in the bedroom. Charming, entertaining, and above all discreet outside of it.

Hilary also doesn't tell him now, any more than before, why she wanted to be with him. What would drive a mated, married woman to straying from her husband. What was missing, that she would look so freely elsewhere. Perhaps she can't, or doesn't think he's asking anymore. Maybe Ivan finally doesn't want to know what goes on in that head of hers.

There's a long silence after he speaks, as she stares at him, those dark eyes of her frighteningly unreadable. It makes them seem cold, when ten minutes ago it was impossible to think of her as anything but warm. Soft. Intensely, terrifyingly vulnerable.

She slides into a seated position. "As you will, Ivan," she says softly, and does not stop him this time if he turns to leave, ascend, and inform his helmsman that they're returning to DuSable.

Regardless, Hilary leaves the bed, stepping lightly over silk cuffs lined with suede, slim lengths of chain, a silk blindfold. She goes to the shower, the door left open, and not long after she's washing their sex off of her body. Alone, this time. She takes her time, makes it luxurious, before she steps out to dry her hair and wrap herself in a robe. There's enough time between the middle of the lake and port for her to prepare herself, to dress. She does so in a little pair of white shorts and a light blue top whose long sleeves are slit and whose neckline drapes off of one shoulder. Little white deck shoes.

She never took off her earrings or her rings. She wears them still, and with her bag at her side is set to enjoy the ride back to shore taking in the sun, drinking whatever spritzy little drink Ivan's maids might provide, and eating canapés.

[Ivan Press] Ivan does, indeed, turn to leave -- but not without pause. And that pause is long, and silent: finally out of things to say. He just looks at her for a moment.

Then he nods once, a curious, courteous little gesture; genuine, or at least near enough that it's impossible to tell otherwise. The doors shuts behind him gently.

Up on the maindeck, Ivan finds his helmsman at the bridge proper. Kolya is informed of the change in plans; the only reason given is that Mrs. Durante is feeling unwell. It's not a lie Kolya or either of the maids are meant to believe. It's simply the story they're meant to parrot if anyone else asks.

Hilary is in the shower when the yacht begins to come around. She feels the motion beneath her and all around her, the floor itself turning under her feet.

Then they're westbound again, the sun splashing off the dazzling white paint; the wide wake behind them frothing. By the time Hilary comes abovedecks, Ivan has showered himself -- in the forward suite, perhaps, where he'd wanted her

very much

to stay the night. He doesn't think about that now. He runs from it, in truth, almost as fast as she's ever retreated from human emotion, and just as involuntarily.


So: he looks cool and fresh and without a care in the world when they meet again abovedecks. His shorts are paired with a short-sleeved shirt; his sunglasses cocked up on his head as he lounges at the stern. It's perhaps five-thirty, six in the early evening, and the sun is still high.

The tea they barely grazed at has been put away. Dinner has been canceled. There are fresh hors d'oeuvres set out in its stead, an utterly different assortment, richer than the last to make up for the lack of a proper meal. Ivan's having vodka straight-up and ice-cold with his caviar, but unless Hilary voices a different preference, the maids -- who she'll learn are named Olga and, rather unfortunately, Nastya -- serve her the mimosa she offered Ivan a week ago. It's his attention to the little details like this that make him such a consummately hospitable host.

They talk about nothing in particular on the way back. They talk about the upcoming autumn social at the yacht club, when everyone comes home from their summer adventures in Kuala Lumpur and Odessa and Dubai; they talk about watches, and whether she's decided on the Baume & Mercier or the Corum. He voices his admiration of her catamaran, but does not ask to come aboard. He invites her to some upcoming party he's thinking of having at the penthouse, but the details are vague.

Once or twice, when conversation lulls, he looks away from her. He looks out over their wake, his expression neutral, his thoughts his own.


They run faster on the return trip than they did on the way out. It's a little after seven when they pull into the harbor. Ivan is the first off the ship, jumping the gap to catch the ropes. Once the yacht is secured, he helps with the gangway, laying it out and locking it down. It's a gentlemanly gesture that has him hold his hand out to help Hilary down the gangway, and then they're walking away from the Krasota while his helmsman and his maids take care of the tedious business of checklists, shutdowns, cleanups, housekeeping.

He walks her to her car. Or to the taxi stand, if that's the case. They might never see each other again after this; at least, not like this -- but they're too poised and too polished for a messy goodbye, and a yacht and an afternoon cruise makes a short crisp goodbye impossible.

At her vehicle, whatever it may be, they part. "Thanks for coming," he says. "I had a good time."

[Hilary Durante] If she was going to kiss him again she would have done so while they were still out on the water, while they were out of sight of maids or helmsman, alone together for however long a moment it took to gain some kind of satisfaction from ...merging, somehow, outside of him restraining her or being rough with her. But neither of them seek any such connection while heading towards port, or while saying their polite goodbyes after disembarking.

The last time she saw him she went home and laid down in the dark with pills dissolving inside of her, staring at nothing until the very shapes of the furniture and patterns on the curtains started to blur. She didn't explain to herself why. The very act was an exercise in not having to explain anything to herself.

Like how it felt when Ivan pulled away from her, sitting up, because she'd said something about him being destroyed. She doesn't even know why she said that. Why she believed it when she said it. Maybe she meant that Dion would kill him, or that the tribe would come down on him, or some bright spark in him would be snuffed out gradually, choked to death on angst that doesn't belong in a twenty-one year old, even one fighting a war.

Hilary doesn't know how to fix this, or what this is, or why she would want to, or if she actually does, or --

anything, sometimes, it seems.


This afternoon -- it is still afternoon, after all, not even the sun has decided it's done with her -- she finds other things to do than sail around the lake with Ivan Press, her newest notch, falling into his arms after begging him to wreck her. She drives herself away from the docks to shop or go pick up that goddamn watch, calls people to keep her busy and distract her from thinking. Her mind is a terribly demanding place, so very full and so very frightening to her that she evades it constantly.


The last time she touches Ivan is when he gives her his hand to help her off the yacht. There is nothing particular about it. She takes his hand without thinking, lets go of it when her feet are steady without lingering. She smiles at him with her sunglasses on and lets him walk her to her car, where he tells her he had a good time, and she says quietly:

"It was lovely." And: "Thank you."