Ivan Press

[Ivan] It's Labor Day weekend, and like any other obscenely overprivileged redblooded american, Ivan is lounging on the foredeck of the Krasota, sipping some sort of iced fruity concoction while beautiful strangers party on seventy feet of pristine white yacht behind him. God knows where he met them. God knows if he'll ever see them again, these starved swans and ... whatever the male counterpart to starved swans might be. Peacocks, maybe -- but they're here now, they're enjoying his hospitality, and he's enjoying -- well. The ambiance of it all.

One of his guests steps gingerly up to the sunpad. He shades his eyes and squints against the sun to smile at her. She hands him his phone, inviting herself to stretch out beside him. I think you got a text, she says, and helps herself to his drink. He lets her, raising himself on his elbow to read, first, who it was from.

Then the body of the message:

Tea?

His friend wants to know why he's smiling. He glances at her, eyebrows flicking coolly upward. "Am I smiling?" he evades, sounding bored, as he lowers himself onto his back again. He taps out a simple response:

Where/when?

[Hilary] Hilary's party was yesterday. It was a great part of why Dion left when he did, as the household geared up for Labor Day weekend and the guest list and the food to order and all these details, all these people. He's not a shy man or given to running from crowds but it stressed him. And he reacted to that stress the way he often does.

He came to Hilary less and less at night. He slept farther away from her. He agonized over what was happening inside of him, like it had happened so many times before. He tried to understand it, and tried to justify it, and in the end

he was able to. One night he fucked her with a sort of mechanical, joyless way of moving, thrusting, breathing heavily but otherwise soundless when he came, and in the morning Hilary woke to find him packing. She played the part lazily but it didn't matter. Wouldn't he stay, she asked, at least for the party? Oh no he couldn't, he had to get back to his pack, it's been so long already. And inside Hilary breathed relief even as outwardly she cried.

Dion retreated so fast from her one could almost see a dust cloud behind his feet.

So, Saturday they had the barbecue. People from the yacht club, people from the country club. The festivities moved to another household later and went on well into the night. And on Sunday morning Hilary sleeps in, wakes late, and as she lounges in her large, empty bed she takes her phone and asks Ivan if he'd like to have tea.

Where/when?

Hilary reaches down between her legs, where the sheets lay rumpled across her, and she rubs herself through them, lazily stroking her cunt as she answers.

Now.

[Ivan] That doesn't make him smile. That makes him laugh. The sound rides the edge between amused and angry. He stares at the small, lit screen of his phone for a moment before texting back:

All right. Where?

And he's getting up in the same motion, sitting up suddenly enough that the girl next to him is surprised, wants to know what's going on. Nothing you need to be concerned about, he replies, smiling, and pads barefoot across the foredeck; drops down on the walkway; goes inside to tell Kolya that something came up, and he was going to take the jet ski back in to the harbor, and to make sure his 'friends' had a good time.

[Hilary] The answer he gets is simple. He has to ask her twice where because the blood is leaving her brain to enter her clit, but Ivan doesn't know that. He doesn't know yet that Hilary is aroused just thinking about seeing him again, about fucking him again. That by the time he sees her she'll have had at least one orgasm, burying her moans in the pillow on the bed where her husband fucked her two nights ago, not with the passion he sometimes has for her but with a sense of Duty. Of sacrifice, for the Good of the Nation.

Hilary rolls onto her stomach, thinking of the way Ivan usually takes her, mounting her from behind as he, quite bluntly, pounds the fuck out of her pussy.

Your place? It'll take me awhile to get there.

[Ivan] What a coincidence. Me too. See you there.


That's the last she hears from him, and likely the last he hears from her. Half an hour, an hour later, Ivan is home; he's left Dmitri trying to figure out where to stash the jet ski until the yacht came home; he's alone in his vast, glassy edifice of a penthouse for once, because he's sent the rest of his staff home for a holiday. Kind, benevolent master that he is.

And he's thinking to himself that the last time he saw this woman, he saw more of her than he thought he ever would. Than he thought even existed. He thinks of that entire strange episode and he doesn't know what to think. He thinks of the only contact they've had since; he thinks of how they seem always to speak as though they were sparring, as though there's something to prove or something to win, until somehow they suddenly end up naked and fucking each other and


that's when the intercom chimes.


He answers her this time. No butler, no maid, no housekeeper. "Down in a second," he says, crisply, and indeed he is: the elevator doors sliding open to reveal him still in sailing clothes, light-colored and smelling like freshwater and wind.

"You know, you really are terribly rude," he chides. "I was with friends."

[Hilary] There's no answer to that. Hilary can and often does engage in pleasantries, but one gets the impression that it's an afterthought at best, and usually a chore.

It's not a half hour later but an hour before the intercom buzzes at his penthouse, and if she's surprised to hear Ivan himself answering, Hilary doesn't mention it. He doesn't press a button to let her up but comes down to retrieve her. The doors part and reveal him in his summery clothing, perhaps dried since he rode in on that jetski, or changed back into after he arrived at the docks.

Hilary, who was in loose, casual shopping clothes the last time he saw her, is in nothing remotely close to the sort of clothing you wear to meet a paramour: white linen slacks, a pair of soft, strappy leather sandals with a stacked wooden heel, a white camisole underneath a blue wrap shirt that has short, fluttery sleeves. Modest, really. A gold necklace draped down her front, made up of a few rings interspersed with long lengths of chain. Simple, small gold hoops in her ears. Her wedding ring, her diamond band, a little ring of sapphires and curlicues. Her hair is up in a sleek, smoothed-back ponytail, the ends curled thick. There's a camel-colored purse over her shoulder.

"Mr. Press," she says, with pleasure, breezing over his scolding, "it's been too long."

She strides toward him, heels quietly tapping on the marble floors, taking her over the gap and into the elevator.

"Give us a kiss hello," she whispers, as the doors slide closed once more behind her.

[Ivan] Mr. Press, she calls him, as though they were coming across each other on the veranda of their yacht club. It's been too long, she says, as though they were old-but-distant friends. He turns as she passes him, side-on to her, one eyebrow tracking up his brow as he hits the button to close the elevator doors.

The next thing out of her mouth makes him smile. No; makes him smirk. The doors slide closed. He reaches out, his lean longfingered hand wrapping behind her head to pull her forward.

This is hardly a polite kiss hello on the cheek. He pulls her into him as he's stepping into her; it's magnet, a force of nature. His mouth on hers is crushing, furious, not at all the sort of kiss one would expect from the sleek, smirking creature he is.

His clothes are, in fact, still a little damp from riding in.

[Hilary] When they can be seen and heard by anyone whose tongue is not in danger of being cut out if it wags too much, Hilary and Ivan are lightly amused by one another, he flirting or mocking and she either snarking or gently rejecting. Like they share a yacht club on the north shore. Like they attend each other's parties and gatherings as a matter of politeness. Like they both know people in high society like Margaret Lowenfeld-Reed. Like they may as well tolerate each other, for the sake of etiquette.

And then the elevator doors close and she's telling him to kiss her hello and he is on her so hard and sudden she expects to hear him snarling as he presses their bodies together.

Ivan can feel her gasp a little, her hands going to his chest almost as though she would make some play at pushing him back. But that isn't what she does. Nor does she do what she did to another Fang in an elevator a few weeks ago and start stroking his cock as they ascend. She wonders if he's going to take hold of that ponytail and pull her hair, yank her head back, leave bite marks and bruises on her neck like he has before, like he swore not to do again.

Hilary doesn't push him away. She moans softly, greeting his tongue with hers, and starts to unbutton his shirt. Quickly.

[Ivan] It's true that his hand is nearly a claw at the back of her head. He's almost gripping her, almost pulling her hair to bare her neck -- but he doesn't. It's a narrow margin, that. He's just on her, kissing her like he wants to eat her alive. Her hands go to his chest. He draws away for a second, breathing out in a gasp, looks down to see if she'll push him away or dig her nails in, but she doesn't.

She goes for his buttons. Even after an x-mile ride, even after getting wet and drying out again, his shirt feels fine and smooth, deliciously well-spun cotton. The buttons are perfectly in a row, and they slide through his buttonholes with just enough give. He watches her undo one, two, three, and then his head comes up and his mouth finds hers and he pins her against the elevator wall with the force and the hunger of that kiss.

It's only when that's done that some sanity seems to come back to Ivan. His shirt is entirely unbuttoned by then. He draws away just enough to slide his keycard through the reader. The elevator starts moving. He peels his shirt off and wads it up in his hand; reaches out with the other. He's panting quietly. He runs the pads of his fingers over her face like he's blind, like he uses his hands to see: from her hairline to her jawline, passing down her brow, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. He catches her by the chin -- this kiss is different.

It's softer. It's deeper, and melting, and he tastes her like she's fine wine, sips at her, enjoys her. When it's done he nips at her jaw.

The elevator doors open. He tosses his shirt on the ground, reaching out his hand for hers.

"How long do you have?"

[Hilary] He wants to. She can feel the way he touches her, the way he's clenching his hand on her like he wants to stop holding himself back and just savage her, push her to the floor of the elevator and fuck her there, pin her down and take her.

Or maybe that's what Hilary wants, and what she imagines as she undoes button after button and then, when he starts kissing her again, just ripping them free from their eyes, reaching for his body underneath as soon as her hands can get on him. She loves that skin of his, skimming over those lean muscles he has, and she touches him hungrily, smoothing her cool palms over his abdomen, stroking his sides, caressing his chest.

Ivan stops. The elevator starts. He turns back to Hilary and her eyes have opened, her hands have gone motionless on his pectorals, and her dark eyes gleam. They aren't glassy and empty but seem filled with life, like some seemingly bottomless pits appear to breathe with malevolence.

When he starts to touch her face like that, stroking her skin, she shakes him off like his fingertips are a buzzing fly to her, something to be waved aside, something that gives one a crawling sensation. And she resists that kiss of his, slow and melting as it is, tasting her like he does. She barely reciprocates. It's there, the way she parts her lips obediently and the way she flicks her tongue back against his, but it's as though she's indulging him. And he can tell.

But Hilary shivers when he bites at her like that. Exhales, and ignores his hand as he steps away, exiting the elevator. She follows. "A few hours or so. There's a book release tonight I should be at." She lets her purse slide off her arm to the floor of the gallery, and undoes the tie at her side of her shirt, unwrapping it and stripping it off like a jacket, stepping to him again as it falls behind her.

[Ivan] It doesn't surprise him that the gentle things, the slow, lingering kisses, are of no interest to Hilary. What surprises him a little more is that she lets it show now. She doesn't even bother with the pretense. He remembers the first time she kissed him, and how soft that was. How tasting, and slow.

Irony: he had held himself back, then. He didn't know what she wanted.

He knows what she wants now. No; not even want. The word for it is closer to need. She's said it herself: I needed that. As though some part of her needed the brutality, the pain, the rawness of the way they go at each other. As though all the rest of it, the finesse and the luxury and the jadedness of it all, could only be thusly balanced.

She has a few hours or so, she says, and slips out of her shirt. Unwraps it, lets it fall. Ivan's eyes go to her body. To her breasts. She steps to him and he reaches for her bra, unclasping it, letting that fall too.

Then her slacks. His hands go to that next. After that first, scorching encounter in the elevator, he seems to be biding his time now. Taking his goddamn time, unwrapping her like a present.

Because he has hours. And -- perhaps -- because he knows this is the only way to stave off the madness that seems to come over him when she's around. The only way to hold back.

"A book release," he's murmuring, amused, "that you're going to be at."

He undoes the button, the clasp, the zipper. And he lets her slacks drop to the floor. Now she's in her panties alone. His fingertips graze the waistband; he thinks better of it. Leaves it on for now.

"After I fuck you into a filthy mess."

[Hilary] One has to wonder just how much pretense really was in that first kiss at the nightclub. She savored it, and if there was a lie he couldn't see it. There was the sense that she made a decision about him after it, though. Not a judgement. Not a yes, well, you'll do but some confirmation. And now, having tasted, she wants only to devour.

Again. And again. And again.

Her shirt falls. She's stripping out of the camisole underneath it as they step to each other and his eyes and then his hands are on her bra, delicate lacy thing that it is, and then

that's gone, too. Hilary steps out of the wide-legged slacks easily, kicking them aside with those pedicured toes peeping out of those summer-shopping heels. Her panties are white, like the other piece of lingerie now littering his gallery. Hilary smirks when he repeats her, glancing down as his fingers trace the edge of the lace-edged thong, flick past the little blue rosette.

She looks over her shoulder around the penthouse while he's staring at her, stroking her lean stomach, muttering about fucking her filthy, messy, the way he always fucks her, the way he can't seem to help but fuck her when he gets these chances. She is half-ignoring him, even as he pulls his hand away.

Considering she was taking off her clothes as soon as she got inside it seems like an odd afterthought to have: "They're getting better at hiding," she notes, but leaves it at that. She steps away from him, walking towards the living room, as though now -- in thong and heels that thunk softly on the floor, wood to wood -- is the perfect time to go exploring the penthouse she's only been in once before.

"That was a well-told lie you fed my husband," Hilary muses. "It's not an exact translation, but he called you something in the order of 'quite the respectable little faggot'. He approves of our socializing, so long as I keep his son away from you." She sounds amused, lightly disdainful, strolling over to the great glass wall to look out on the city.

[Ivan] By day, this place is even more awash in light. It blazes through the windows; casts across the wide-open spaces that they're emerging into now. Hilary moves as though she's interested in a tour; Ivan follows a step or so behind, watching the way her ass moves, watching the way the light casts over that lean, firm little body of hers.

"They're not, actually," he replies when he catches up to her. The foyer is woodpaneled, but out here: stone, baby. Granite, or maybe marble, polished and smooth, catching the light and reflecting it up. "I gave most of them the holiday off. It's just Dmitri and Yuliya and Kolya this weekend, and they're all out on the lake still.

"It's just you and me," he adds, so much suggestion in his tone that it has to be mockery.

A moment later he's not smirking anymore, but outright laughing -- laughing when she brings up the lie, laughing harder when he hears what Dion had to decree. Standing in the middle of his living room, bare to the waist and in slightly soggy slacks below that, Ivan looks bright; golden; happy. The last of these things is not unusual for him, but it seems to be when he's with her. She's not good for him. She's not good for anyone, one might argue.

Ask him if he cares.

"Desperate times called for desperate measures," he says, playing at humbleness now; pretending he isn't so fucking pleased, himself, with how well that little act went off. "And it seemed like a good way to dispel suspicion. I'll confess I was briefly worried that he might throw me through a wall. Rather an imposing figure, your mate."

[Hilary] An act. All of it, an act: the chiding when the elevator doors opened to tell her she was so rude. The way she called him Mr. Press like he hasn't filled her with his cum time and time again. The fact that she's strolling around his penthouse now barely clothed as though he's giving her a tour when in fact not a minute ago they had their hands all over each other, her tongue tasting the hint of lakewater on his lips.

For all he knows Dion did his job before leaving again -- to Paris, to Spain, wherever the fuck he's gone now -- and that lean, firm little body of hers is currently housing the beginnings of a parasite that will grow and grow and grow until she finally rejects it from herself completely, creating a child that might have blue eyes or hazel or brown or pale skin or dark or god only fucking knows at this point. A child that will, regardless of its parentage, be raised by nannies so that Hilary barely has to look at it, much less deal with it.

For all he knows.

She looks over her shoulder at him, smirking when he tells her that the penthouse is empty except for the two of them. "Oh, horrors," she murmurs. "That's quite improper, you know. Even if you are a fag."

The perjorative drips flippantly off her lips, vicious in its thoughtlessness, empty at the same time. She can say anything she wants. She can get away with anything.

Hilary isn't unnerved by his laughter. She barely registers it, maybe doesn't realize it's unusual when he's around her, that when he's around her his mood is dark and hungry and barely recognizable to him. She walks to the L-shaped couch in front of the windows and puts her knees on the cushion, denting it slightly. He's babbling about his lie, about Dion's assumptions about him, and she's

kneeling on his couch, holding onto the back, looking at the view

and reaching back, hooking her fingers through the band her thong, pulling it aside to show herself to him, even as she's leaning forward like she's just going to watch Chicago for awhile.

He tells her Dion is imposing.

She says: "Fuck me like this. Right here." Musing. Light.

Wet.

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't really get as far as noting that her mate is imposing. Or that he was vaguely concerned about the possibility of being thrown out a window. He starts to trail off when he notices her attention has drifted on. He stops talking altogether when she kneels on his couch and leans over like that.

There's a silence then. Some part of Ivan - the part of him accustomed to being fawned on, waited on, worshiped - is irritated by Hilary. Her presumption. Her careless, callous plays at courtesy. Some part of him feels that same curl of anger he'd felt when she called him off his goddamn boat; when she told him, weeks ago now, to come here, undress for her, pretty please.

It's not enough to dissuade him from going to her, though. It's not enough to keep him from sliding his hand down her back, rubbing his palm over her ass. She pulls her thong aside and displays herself to him. Hot and wet. Still a little flushed, still a little swollen, from when she fucked herself before driving down here to fuck him. He wonders how long Dion's been gone, really. She seems like she couldn't wait. He knows she's completely capable of seeing her mate off and going to visit her paramour half an hour later.

His fingertips trail between her legs. So lightly, the pads of those long, deft fingers slide between her lips; seek out her clit. Withdraw. He pushes his fingers into her then, slow but firm, sliding middle and index into her pussy until his palm is flat against her body.

"What manners," he replies, the lightness in his tone belied by the rough burr under his voice. "No one ever taught you to say 'please'?"

[Hilary] Her cunt is still pink and swollen because she made herself come when she was lying in bed texting him and she got in the shower and did it again. The woman's sex drive is something to contend with, perhaps, or it's him, it's the thought of him and what he does to her even when he tries not to. Promises not to. Can't bear what he does to her

and can't seem to wait to do it again.

Hilary shivers as he comes up behind her, not because of his rage but because of her want. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't even notice that he's Garou, that she should be unnerved at very least when he's angry, when he's violent, when he slaps and bites at her. It should bother her. But this woman comes into his home like she owns it. She walks around nearly naked and shows herself off and she goes home filthy from fucking him and not long after showering his scent off she's sucking another man's cock

but that man is far, far away right now and it's hard to think about how long Dion's really been gone, and if it matters, because

her pussy is so fucking where he touches her. So tight when he pushes his fingers into her. And she's gasping when he finds her clit, arching her back to lift herself up to his hand, leaning further onto the back of the couch. Wanton. Thoughtless, heedless, shameless, she parts her thighs and pushes back against his fingers, fucking his hand a little.

Hilary doesn't say please. He hasn't taken her far enough yet.

[Ivan] Sometimes Ivan thinks there must be something fundamentally wrong with the both of them that they keep coming back to this. Wrong with her, that she's so cold and distant until he breaks her down, abuses her, forces her to some precipice where she has to look herself in the eye and acknowledge ... what? Her mortality? Her reality?

And: wrong with him, that he wants to do this. That he wants to push her, spank her, play so rough that if he let himself he would seriously injure her. Wrong with him, that even after realizing this shit can't go on he ended up

right back here again.

I thought you didn't want to anymore, they said to each other. His reply was flippant and rude: something about damaged goods. Her reply was vague and cursory: something about the way he uses his cock. Neither of them really gave a decent answer. Perhaps there isn't one to give.

Regardless, his fingers are inside her now. And he's watching her, the back of her head if she's still looking out the damn window; her profile if she's turned her head or lain her cheek against the couch cushions. For a while there's just that. He's not even fingering her. He's just -- feeling her around his fingers, feeling how wet she is, and how hot her flesh is, and how when he sank his fingers into her he pushed her slick out of her, slippery on his upper palm.

Then Ivan bends to her. He sets his hand on the back of the couch and he starts to kiss her: sips and sucks at her back, bites at her over her shoulderblade where her skin is thin and sensitive. After a while he draws his fingers out of her. He reaches around then, and his hand is still wet when he finds her clit with his fingers. Rather methodically, fixedly, focusedly, he begins to play with her. Rub at her. There's a familiarity in this: that sense that he's not really doing this for her. He's touching her to satisfy some hunger in himself. The way she responds seems to matter only peripherally.

He steps in behind her after a while. The front of his slacks press against the curve of her ass. She can feel him growing hard, pressing his cock against her through his pants as his mouth comes to her shoulder, the nape of her neck. Then his free hand is coming off the back of the couch. He leans into her a little more heavily, letting her support some of his weight, his chest sleek and warm against her upper back. She can feel his knuckles brush between their bodies as he lowers his zipper to take his cock out, and then he's sliding the head of it along her lips, against her clit, slapping it lightly against her flesh as though to show her just what he was going to fuck her with.

[Hilary] The last time they fucked can't be mentioned. She slept in his territory and he came in behind her and held her for an hour (not even) of that. It's possible she doesn't remember that, doesn't realize he did exactly what he can't admit he wanted to do when he asked her to stay aboard Krasota, spend the night with him out on the water, even if they were in separate beds, however unlikely that is.

And the last time they fucked it was face to face, her on his lap and then in his bed, so eager for it they couldn't even get her clothes off, couldn't waste that time. So eager for it that even when he learned her husband was at his doorstep he kept going, he leaned down over her and fucked her in short, furious bursts until she was coming on him and he was going over the edge and fuck the fact that he knew she was trying to get pregnant, fuck the fact that he couldn't be doing this at all, because it was so good.

Even if neither of them can figure out why it's so good, why they keep coming back, what it is that makes them drawn to this like an addiction. Hilary likes his body and his youth, his strength, his cock and the way he uses it, the fact that he'll bend her over and really pound her without needing permission to do so. She likes when he plays with her, like she's nothing to him but a fucktoy.

For some reason, that seems to do something for her. Seems to take her to the edge faster than anything else. Makes her shiver, when he asks her if she wants to be fucked standing up or lying down, because either way he's fucking her, because either way he's tying her wrists together and holding her there, he might as well indulge her like a favored pet and let her position herself before he rails that

nice

hot

cunt.

That does not and can never belong to him. Which may be part of the attraction. She assumes it is. She assumes that the fact he can't have her for his own is part of why he can't let go of her. As for what she thinks of that, there's no way to tell.

Only this: she moans when he plays with her now, pressing back against him as he leans into her, her cheek agains the back cushions, her face seen in profile. "Ivan," she murmurs, sighs, moans, all soft while he's stroking her pussy, rubs her clit with his wet fingertips. She moves with the flow of his hand, gasping, and then

moaning when he takes his hand back so he can let his cock out. She starts to shiver, bucking against him, so eager to get herself fucked she's starting to not think anymore. She's just ready for him, rubbing herself against his shaft as he slaps his cock on her, panting into the upholstery. He's going to fuck her. He's going to fuck her soon.

[Ivan] Ivan couldn't really answer why this is so fucking good if his life depended on it. The answer seems to vary from day to day, from hour to hour -- from one fuck to the next. Thinking about it ties him up in knots. Doesn't make sense even to himself.

So he doesn't think about it. Ivan's hardly a mindless goon, but on the continuum between reckless and cautious he lies far closer to the former than the latter. And the truth is, when he's behind her like this, when she's bent over and spread open for him like this, already gasping softly the way she does, already moaning[i] the way she does, it's hard to think at all.

She gives her name to him, or to the air between them. He lifts his mouth from her skin, lifts his head. Watching her face, her profile, her cheek pressed to the smooth soft surface of the couch, Ivan stops teasing, stops testing; presses himself against her opening and

slides into her with a smooth, firm flex of his hips. Not quite slow. Not fast, either; just -- deliberate. Which is how he fucks her sometimes, beneath everything else: deliberately, as though to say to her,

[i]feel this. this is real.

His hands come down on the back of the couch, then. He holds on there, braced over her, his breathing already heightened and heavier. "Oh I missed that tight little cunt," he whispers, all in a single exhale. Drops his mouth to her shoulder. Kisses her; bites at her. Lifts his head again to say, "Kiss me."

[Ivan] Ivan couldn't really answer why this is so fucking good if his life depended on it. The answer seems to vary from day to day, from hour to hour -- from one fuck to the next. Thinking about it ties him up in knots. Doesn't make sense even to himself.

So he doesn't think about it. Ivan's hardly a mindless goon, but on the continuum between reckless and cautious he lies far closer to the former than the latter. And the truth is, when he's behind her like this, when she's bent over and spread open for him like this, already gasping softly the way she does, already moaning the way she does, it's hard to think at all.

She gives her name to him, or to the air between them. He lifts his mouth from her skin, lifts his head. Watching her face, her profile, her cheek pressed to the smooth soft surface of the couch, Ivan stops teasing, stops testing; presses himself against her opening and

slides into her with a smooth, firm flex of his hips. Not quite slow. Not fast, either; just -- deliberate. Which is how he fucks her sometimes, beneath everything else: deliberately, as though to say to her,

feel this. this is real.

His hands come down on the back of the couch, then. He holds on there, braced over her, his breathing already heightened and heavier. "Oh I missed that tight little cunt," he whispers, all in a single exhale. Drops his mouth to her shoulder. Kisses her; bites at her. Lifts his head again to say, "Kiss me."

[Hilary] It's best if Ivan doesn't keep trying to get Hilary to explain this to him, explain herself to him. It's best if he just takes her, gives up and gives in and lets them both have what they want without questioning it all the time. If he just

does that, and pushes himself into her, listens to the way she turns her face and buries her moan in the cushions not to disguise it but simply because she needs to feel some kind of resistance to her own screaming for him. She grips the upholstery and grinds back on his cock without waiting, without hesitating, as though she's been waiting since she stepped into the elevator for this.

Which she has.

Sometimes Hilary plays at passivity, at vulnerability. She wants him to chain her up and tell her what to do, use her, tell her where to stand and hwo to move and she wants him to

take out his cock and rub it on her face,

use your tongue,

slap it against her mouth the way he slaps it against her pussy when he's teasing her. She wants him to at least go through the motions of degrading her, as though this does something for her she can't get elsewhere. Beautiful, rich, older woman, married woman, out of reach. Too knowledgeable for any young man to pin down and do this to unless he is very sure of himself. Or else she just loves the play of submission, or the feeling of his cock against her skin, wherever he chooses to put it.

She's moaning into his couch as he's bending over her, muttering about how he missed her. Somehow the sound of the command to kiss him sounds very much like a snarl to her. She shudders, gasping, and tilts her head back, eyes closed, and he can see the light shadow on them, the hints of mascara, he's so close he can smell everything on her, the layers upon layers that hide the scent of who and what she really is.

Neither of them have stopped to talk about using a condom, about whether or not she's back on the pill now that Dion's gone, about what he's going to do when he can't take it anymore. But Hilary's riding his cock like her life depends on it, slamming herself back on his cock, her head back and her mouth in reach, her lips parted. She holds onto the couch for dear life, just

gasping, and panting, blindly searching for him. For something.

[Ivan] There's no hesitation, no sense of a powerplay here. He doesn't wait for her to find his mouth. As soon as she's turning he's leaning into her; he's kissing her, and it's hard, and a little bit rough, and he eats at her mouth while he's --

well. Not fucking her; not at first. Just holding still for her, letting her fuck herself on him. Panting out against her mouth every time her hips wind back against his. Groaning when she moves harder, when she starts to gasp or moan. Exclaiming a quiet gasping curse, fuck, when she moves in a way that lights every nerve in his body off.

When he can't take it anymore his mouth tears from hers. He gasps a breath in, and it turns into a snarl on the way out. Just like that he's pushing her forward, pressing her cheek and her upper chest against the back of the couch. He's rearing up over her to grab her by the back of the neck and hold her there. Pin her down, keep her immobile, receiving him, while he --

While he starts pounding her. Ivan takes her by the hip, his grip hard and rather ungentle; holds her by these two points, neck and hip. They've been fucking for mere moments. Maybe a minute on the outside. He's hammering her now, though, going at her ferociously, addictedly, as though they've been fucking all day already.

She can hear him panting, grunting, cursing, as he rails her. Blasted, filthy fragments of sentences spill out of him. Something about tight fucking cunt. Something about what you want, isn't it. Something about waiting for so fucking long. Something bout taking it like a little slut, taking it like a proper little whore, taking it and liking it because when he was done with her here he was taking her upstairs and tying her down and using her

like she's his very own little fucktoy.

[Hilary] A moan fills his mouth from this woman, aching and sweet. Pleading.

This woman. He's had her once since that day on his boat, but that was two and a half weeks ago, and the pleasure of it was truncated sharply and hauled away from them because her husband was a literal wolf at his door, searching for his mate. There's a luxury to their fucks that was missing that time. That time there was no play at roughness. It wasn't gentle by any means but he didn't bite her, he didn't hurt her, and still she was moaning and crying his name, sweating under him, and she was with him for a few spare seconds even if he didn't break her.

There was no time that night to dwell on it. To see how long it lasted. To stay inside her and see if she would let him touch her hair, her face, kiss her without devouring her. There was no time to even process it entirely, that Hilary -- who needs pain, who needs him to grab her by the hip and the neck and bend her over and fuck her like this -- just came because she wanted to see him. Would have left, but was overcome by want for him like it would undo what they said on Krasota. And held onto him as he fucked her, begged for him with his name the only coherent thing leaving her lips.

No time to deal with that. No desire to, now.

Hilary is caught. Her head twisted, her mouth on his. His hand on her neck, his hand on her hip, holding her where he wants her, how he wants her, just like that, taking his pleasure in her while he mutters filth down to her ears. She holds onto the couch as though for dear life, groaning, leaning back into what he's giving her, taking him deeper, her cunt pulsing, shuddering all around him. Like they've been waiting for it. Like they haven't been fucking anyone else in the meantime when that's patently untrue.

When he mutters something about this being what she wants, when he calls her a slut and a whore and his fucktoy, Hilary lets out a long, loud groan, as though in confirmation.

Yes. God, yes.

[Ivan] It wasn't enough, last time. It would have been enough if she'd simply come to rest; if she simply came and slept and left again, he would have been all right with that. That would have been fine. But she didn't. She was leaving, and then she was climbing into his lap, and then it was like a wildfire. A lightning storm. They were clawing their way down the hall and falling in his bed and he was inside her before their clothes were even off, and --

-- it's a little like that, right now. He's so much rougher this time, as though status quo has been reestablished; but the same sort of sudden rising fervency, the absolute and stunning need that leads him to grasp at her and gasp and curse and

pound her like this, as though sex is not so much recreation as it is a hunt, a war, survival.


It doesn't go long this time, either. He's inside her, and he's letting her ride him, and then he's on her and holding her down and hammering at her; he's muttering filth until it all runs together into gasps, groans, noises that twist together into a single rising snarl as he leans over her, gripping her with his teeth at the back of her neck like a wolf now, both his hands on her hips slamming her back against every thrust.

He comes inside her like that, fast and hard and all-consuming; this woman who is most decidedly not his, this woman who belongs to a mad, courteous creature that Ivan suspects is well-respected by his compatriots who see little of the madness; a mad, courteous creature that, in some other life, he might have respected himself. He comes inside her without a thought of that mate of hers, or of whether or not she was on contraceptives, or of ... anything, really, except the catastrophic pleasure that rips through him then and leaves him panting tattered groans against her skin.


She's been here for maybe five, ten minutes, all told. Closer to five than to ten. Their clothes are littered in the broad expanses of his living room, the entryway, the gallery. He's still hard inside her, his cock pulsing and jerking in her cunt as he leans into her, bears her down against the back of the couch, rubs his hands over her hips and up her body to lean his forearms on either side of hers.

Ivan kisses this woman-who-is-not-kiss, softly now, gently at the side of the neck. Then he draws back, pulling her with him; staying inside her as his lean arms pull her up from the back of the couch,

only to bend her down again, lengthwise along the sofa this time, shifting until she's on all fours on the couch; until he's half-kneeling behind her with one knee folded on the seat and the other foot still planted on the floor.

"I'm going to fuck you again," he tells her. His tone is -- gentle, if anything; soothing. It's not a threat. Or a promise. Or reassurance, even. It's simply what it is: a statement of fact.

She can hear him gasp, oversensitive, as he draws out of her; slides back in. It doesn't deter him. He runs his hands up her back, and down again. Closes his fingers over her hips and

starts fucking her again.

[Hilary] He's not alone. Not when he puts his teeth on her neck and holds her for his cock as he pounds into her, not when he comes so hard inside of her it obliterates all his senses, not when he ends up panting and overcome in the aftermath. Hilary is right there with him, was on the verge of coming even as he was eating her mouth and holding her down on the couch, was quivering around his cock as soon as he started to hammer her with it, as soon as he started growling all those dirty, dirty words to her pretty, pretty ears.

Slender, pale, beautiful, Hilary fucks him back at first and then lets him fuck her, relaxes, relents, gripping the cushions til her fingernails dig into the fabric, gasping. Her long, thick ponytail bounces against her shoulderblades, swings over her shoulder, bares her neck for his hand, his teeth. She squeezes him inside of her while he's snarling in her ear, and she's just moaning til he bites her, and she cries out

and comes like that on him, so hard her hips and her thighs shudder, so hard she pulls him deeper into her, arching her back severely to take his cock, to take his cum, to take him, to pull him down into this searing vortex that takes them every time they fuck.

Ivan can barely hear her, burying her cries in the couch, hiding them under his own growls. She's sweating lightly against his chest when he leans down over her, her thong yanked to the side and his slacks pushed down and their mingled slick running down out of her, a tracery of wetness over their thighs. Hilary's shaking as he leans over her, presses her down further as he covers her. She gasps and shudders, quivering on his cock every time it jerks inside of her.

She can't meet his mouth. Or his eyes. Her own are closed. She's panting, and she's all but limp when he moves her. Adjusts her like a doll, bends her over again. Hilary knows what he wants even before he puts her lengthwise. She shivers, squirming back gently on his cock while he moves her onto all fours. Her hair hangs down over the side of her face. There's a red mark on her neck where he bit her. The day is bright outside his glass walls, illuminating every last inch of her, glinting off her gold, her diamonds, her flesh.

Ivan murmurs what he's going to do to her. After he kisses her like that, and this time she doesn't flinch away from it. She doesn't reject it. She quietly accepts it, almost passively. It's impossible to tell if she welcomes it, the way she welcomes him fucking her again. She moans softly, whimpering, when he pulls out. "Ivan..."

but he's already pushing back in, holding her again, thrusting hard into her, firm, deliberate. She grabs one of the loose throw pillows on the couch and leans into it on the cushions, biting into it to stifle her moaning.

[Ivan] They fuck like it's some kind of religious purging. Like if they just do this, have this, have each other, they can go on with their lives again. She's shaking already when they finish the first time, that first rough, steep plunge of a fuck.

This time it's a little gentler. He lays her on all fours this time, and he's behind her, and he's holding onto her hips as he moves into her again. They're already such a fucking mess. She's so fucking wet, and his cum is in her too; he's fucking her again, and while his hands aren't grasping her this time, and while he's not sinking his teeth into her as though to hold her

right there

for his pleasure, the way he moves into her is deliberate, firm, deep. He gives her every inch; doesn't hold back. In the bright light of the early afternoon, his body is slickening with sweat already, sunlight gleaming off his shoulder, between the sleek planes of his pectorals.

"I'm here," he says when she moans his name, this time. His hands firm on her hips. He draws her back on his cock, slower this time, grinding into her, groaning as he watches himself penetrating her. "I'm right here."

[Hilary] In the elevator he tried to touch her face. He tried to caress her softly, tried to kiss her gently. Maybe he wonders, after how she jerked back from these imitations of tenderness, if she would have let him sleep behind her like he did had she been fully conscious when he laid his arm over her.

There is no way for Ivan to know that on that night, she would have. Even Hilary doesn't know why, but it's the truth, and even though she is adept at it, she is not inclined to lie out of fear or to hurt someone. She doesn't understand why she needs what she needs. It isn't fear. It's just... detachment. Distance. A lack of understanding of how humanity is supposed to feel,

and a great, abiding anger that she cannot name, show, or explain. She's Kinfolk, and she's been told that Kinfolk don't have rage.


This time it's slower, and he's telling her he's here as though to reassure her, or to warn her, or something. Hilary doesn't cry his name again. She moans. She clutches that pillow and bites into the fabric as he takes her again, moving back against him as those slow, rocking motions of their hips together grow faster and more fervent, til they're slapping together every time Ivan thrusts, every time Hilary pushes back against him. It takes longer this time, lasts longer, til Hilary's reaching between her legs and stroking herself, bringing herself off on his cock. Her hips buck as she comes this time, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, however many minutes later. She's gasping open-mouthed and helpless into the living room air, while the rest of the city settles into lunch. The sun is searing.

Their bodies are searing. Sweating. She's moving back onto him again and again after that grinding, quivering second orgasm, sliding her cunt up and down his cock as she comes down. There's wetness on his throw pillow where she bit it, screamed into it. There's wetness all over their thighs, her ass, his cock, her cunt. Sweat down their backs and fronts, making them shine in the sunlight. Like gold, more than silver.

Hilary trembles, and says nothing.

[Ivan] It is slower this time. Only a fool would call it gentle, but it is not, at least, brutal or vicious or even as savage as it was the first time. It's as though having spent himself in her once already, Ivan has more patience now. More sanity.

They say nothing to each other anymore: as though they'd lost their language altogether. His hands move over her though, grasping at her hips, smoothing over her back. Folding over her shoulders. Wrapping around her sides to cradle her breasts. Eventually they're going a little harder. She's driving herself back against him. He's leaning over her, setting his palm on the couch beside hers, and

when she reaches between her legs to touch herself, his hand follows. Smooths down those lean, twisting muscles of her abdomen, strokes past the soft hair over her pubis. His fingers slide between hers. He grips her hand for a single moment while she's moaning, while she's grinding into him, and then he's reaching past her fingers to touch her. To spread his fingers over her, groaning quietly to feel where they're joined, where he's inside her, where he's fucking her -- groaning, and then sucking a kiss against her neck as he finds her clit.

They work on her clit like that, together, as though bringing her off were some sort of joint effort. His fingers slip and glide past hers, and over her flesh. He keeps fucking her, just like that, steady and deep, a little harder, and then a little harder still, as he feels her orgasm building.

When she hits that precipice, that edge, he cups his hand firmly over her cunt. He draws her back on him, drives deep into her, and holds her right there, grinding, flexing, while she screams into that throw pillow, bites at it, clutches at the cushions with her fine, manicured nails.

"That's it," he's whispering. "That's it. Come for me."

She's trembling afterward. He's moving again, fucking her while his mouth explores her shoulders, her back: hungrier now. Soon enough he'll be pounding her again. That's what the rasp in his breath means. That's what the way he bites at her means, scraping his teeth over her fine skin, nuzzling aside her hair to kiss and nip at the back of her neck.

His arm wraps around her waist, lean and slim and hard. He holds her against his body, her back to his chest, and he kisses her behind the ear. It's the last bit of tenderness there is. A second later his teeth are locked in her shoulder,

and he's railing her again. Hammering her so hard he's growling on every thrust, and the sound of their bodies coming together is echoing off the high ceilings, open glass walls.


When he comes, Ivan doesn't say a word. He's too far gone for words. He's groaning, holding on to her, bucking his hips into her again, and again, his eyes closed, his mouth pressed to the side of her neck.

When it's over, he's shattered. He's leaning into her, barely bracing himself over her. And then -- not at all. Bearing her down, laying himself out, sprawling onto the sofa atop her with his eyes closed, his chest heaving with every breath. He doesn't know if he gave her what she needed this time. He didn't smack her ass. Didn't pull her hair. He didn't tie her down, and he didn't blindfold her, and he didn't bind her to his bed and use her the way she asked him to the last time they talked. Texted.

True, he bit her, but not to hurt her. Just to hold onto her. Hold onto something. Hold on to his sanity.

He doesn't know if that was enough for her. All he knows is that he got something he needed, this time, even if he can't put his finger on what. Can't vocalize what, really, he was looking for.

Another moment or two, and he's opening his eyes again. He's shifting over to lie beside her, rolling her with him. His couches are like his beds: minimalistic, lowslung, broad flat expanses that aren't terribly comfortable to sit on but actually make decent places to nap. They're wide enough that they can fit on it together without crushing one another or toppling one another to the floor, and that's what he does.

His arm is still slung over her waist. He's still inside her, softening now, his breathing slowly approaching normalcy.

[Hilary] For awhile it seems that they're alone in the world. This high up and within these walls there's no sign of other life. Chicago's choas cannot permeate Ivan's walls. There are no helicopters or plans flying low enough to come in their line of vision and alert them to the existence of other people. This high up, this far removed from it all, What They Are seems to make no difference. They're neither of them human and he is barely more than an animal at heart but his rage is so dim and her humanity is so flat that neither of them are really a part of either life they're supposedly leading.

See, he's not really a spoiled playboy with daddy's jet and servants at his disposal. She's not really the hope for another generation of their kind. They're part of a tribe that's steadily killing itself off with its own madness. Fewer trueborn every year. Fewer kin with enough breeding to make them worth anything to Falcon. Like that really matters, anyway. He's an aging, honorable, too-noble spirit whose material counterparts are losing as much ground as the Garou.

Might as well pretend to be human. Spend human money, indulge in human distractions. Do the bare minimum to scrape out a few kills for one's name (which nobody can even remember anyway). Spread one's legs and promise to at least have a child or two if not raise them. Be just dutiful enough to get the tribe off one's back, and the rest of the time, try to enjoy this very short, brutal lifespan.


Ivan's laying on her, a shattered, sweating mess, and wondering if she got what she needed. She came. She's trembling with him, gasping for every breath she takes, though when he bears down on her she breathes raggedly, sharply, pushing up, as though to get him off of her. He isn't the largest man she's ever been with -- for fuck's sake, her mate is a goddamn Cro Magnon -- but he's heavier than she is, and she isn't strong and his weight presses into her.

For a few moments after he comes with her, in those seconds before he can't hold himself up any longer and leans down on her, Hilary is moving softly under him, breathing, shifting her hips for no reason but to feel him inside her. Then he comes down, and she starts to struggle, trying to push up on her arms to get him off,

which may be what spurs him to roll onto his side like he does. But by then she doesn't want to be held. She works herself out from under his arm, breathing in shakily, exhaling quietly, reaching down to slide his arm away.

Most times when they fucked, brutal and sharp and leaving marks all over her body, Ivan pulled out so quickly Hilary could barely process what had just happened. This time she's the one who separates their bodies, panting out softly as she draws her cunt off of him. They've made a mess of the couch. He can get a new one if he wants. Hilary doesn't seem concerned about pulling away, sitting up. The small of her back is to his chest. He can't see her face. They can see the whole city.

There's tension in her back. It's a few moments before she speaks, her hands on the edge of the couch. "I think I'll make us some lunch," she muses aloud, the words mere breaths before she starts to push herself up, her legs a little shaky, her panties still askew.

[Ivan] Perhaps that's his answer, he thinks when she slides his arm away. When she slides her self away, drawing away from him, separating their bodies. For once, it's before he's quite ready to. She can feel him shudder once, hard, all over. His breathing grows briefly ragged.

And then he turns on his back. He closes his eyes again: to that vast blue sky outside, to his distant ceiling, to the casual opulence of this place, which could so easily serve as some modern art wing of some museum. Her back is to him now. There's tension in it, which is not how it usually is, after. She's going to make them some lunch, she says, and he sits suddenly up.

"Why are you like this?" The words are out of him before he quite has a chance to think better of it.

[Hilary] Perhaps to his surprise, Ivan gets an answer. It's flat. Not quite toneless, but empty all the same, as she reaches up and smooths a few wisps of hair back across her scalp, adjusting her underwear though it's just as much a mess as the rest of her.

"My brother's packmate entered a severe frenzy one night, killed him, and ate him. I was there. He was turning on me when the rest of the pack arrived and... I don't know. Stopped him. Killed him, maybe."

She shakes her head a little, dismissive of her own lack of knowledge. "I think I was four or five. I don't have much of a memory of it."

Hilary looks at him over her shoulder. "Is there a bathroom down here or do I have to go all the way upstairs to shower? I can't cook like this."

[Ivan] Surprise is an understatement. Ivan is utterly silent. If she turns, he's still staring at her. His body is beautiful. His hair glints with gold in the sunlight. That's how the tribe of Falcon is: as flawed as a metis, as deeply cursed by all that is natural, but every last one of their flaws is hidden deep within.

On the surface, they're perfect.

This Fang's eyes, though: they're dark, shadowed by his brow, sparking with anger or shock or -- perhaps he's just aghast. At what happened. That she told him at all. That she told him like that, and went on to talk about showers, lunch. He's silent for a long time. Then,

"What do you want from me? Why do I have to push you so far every time just to give you enough?"

[Hilary] "I'm not entirely sure what you mean," Hilary says. He could see her eyes when she turned and he can see the same lack of affect in them that he hears in her voice. She's just ...there. There's no sudden exposure of pain or sorrow or shame in her expression, no fear that he's going to expose her as inherently and excruciatingly damaged, flawed beyond recognition, incapable now of being like everyone else. "Though I believe I've told you multiple times now that I don't need a whip and chains to get off."

She's standing there, long-legged and lean-limbed, just staring at him for a moment. She doesn't look quite perfect. For all her poise and her beauty and all that she's a filthy mess at the moment. And there's so much tension and rejection in her it's all but coming off in waves, as palpable as a hand on his chest shoving him back.

The woman who just informed him so blandly that she witness her brother being torn to shreds and eaten in front of her eyes is somehow able to say, without irony: "Now I really am hungry, Ivan, I didn't even have breakfast. So if you don't mind, I'm going to find a bathroom and wash up so I can make something. I'm famished, and getting rather chilled."

Wood on stone. That's the sound when she starts to walk away again.

[Ivan] He's still sitting on the edge of the couch. The messy, filthy couch. Watching her: staring at her as she turns, staring at her as she turns away.

He's a better reader of faces, emotions, people, than she'll ever be. He can tell even without trying that she's tense now, that she's pushing him away. Shutting down. Closing herself up like a book and taking herself away from him, away. She wants to shower; she says it like she wants him off of her. She does not invite him to come along this time.

He lets her go. When he calls after her, it's only to say, "Use the upstairs shower. The only shower downstairs is in the servants' suite. The one in the guest room you used last time is closer."

He gets up, then. His pants are bunched around one ankle. He steps out of them, picks his boxer-briefs off the floor, and uses them to wipe himself off.

"I'm going to get cleaned up, too. Yuliya prepared some late-plates and left them in the fridge. Or we can order in, unless you'd seriously prefer to cook."

[Hilary] By the time Ivan mentions Yuliya's late-plates, Hilary's footsteps are already on the narrow stairs leading up to the bedrooms. She doesn't invite him to come along, no mention of whether she should save hot water or not. They're not at a hotel, hot water isn't an issue.

Upstairs Hilary goes not to the pristine guest suite she slept in last time but to Ivan's bedroom. She uses his bathroom, his shower, rolling her neck under the hot streams of water. Her shoes are in a tumbled pile beside the wall outside, where she stood and laid her hand on the wall for balance as she took them off. The door is open, and it's his room, but

she doesn't expect he'll follow, and that isn't why she came to this room instead, anyway.

[Ivan] Ivan does follow. Of course he does; that's his room. He takes the switchback stairs at the opposite end of the penthouse, though, through the library. And so, it's not apparent until he's upstairs that she's in his room. In his shower.

She hasn't seen this before. She didn't see the bathrooms in the guest suites, either, but she can guess that they're luxurious, and well-appointed, and pristine. This one, though, puts them to shame: as open and enormous as everything else here, outfitted in smooth marble and muted metals. The shower is separate from the tub; it has multiple showerheads. The tub is the size of a goddamn jacuzzi. It even has jets.

The shower walls are clear glass. The elegant, etched patterns in the glass -- a few sparse blades of grass -- are there for decor, not for modesty. She can see him coming in, can see him looking at her for a moment, his eyebrows drawn together.

Then -- because retreating to some other bathroom seems cowardly, and waiting in line seems downright ridiculous -- he comes to the shower after all. There's a rush of cool air as he opens the door and steps in with her. There's plenty of room in here. They don't have to crowd each other, and so he doesn't.

[Hilary] She ignores him.

And he might have expected that at this point, that when he gets in the shower she glances over at him as drolly as one can imagine her looking at her own death coming, finally, to drag her down into the impenetrable dark. Oh, you again?

But just that glance, turning and opening her eyes to see him. There's a hairband around her wrist. She's still wearing all her jewelry. Her thong is on the bathroom floor. And after that glance she turns back around, and they don't touch. He wouldn't instigate it right now, or at very least: doesn't. And Hilary, apparently, has satisfied her hunger for his cock for the time being.

In the end it's not a very long shower for her. She washes him off of her, out of her, and since that nervous question he asked her two and a half weeks ago he hasn't wondered aloud if she's been on contraceptives or not while taking his cum. Hilary opens the door and another blast of cold air touches Ivan's body when she exits, wringing her hair out just before her feet touch whatever absorbent mat or stone or space made for it. The door closes again and he can still see her clearly out there

if he looks.

Hilary moves around his bathroom like she lives there, finding a robe -- it might very well be his -- and finding a towel. She dries her hair and fingercombs it but leaves it, hanging up his robe again and walking out, leaving her panties and her shoes behind as she heads downstairs to the gallery. The next time Ivan sees her she's wearing those white slacks of hers and the blue camisole but her bra is hanging from a doorknob somewhere and her panties are still upstairs with her shoes and that wrap shirt is sitting in a crumple on a chair.

She's barefoot in his kitchen, her hair twisted back and up in a messy, wet tangle of a bun. She's looking for something in the pantry, and finds it hanging on a hook inside the door. Hilary puts the apron on, tying it around her waist a couple of times like the motions are as familiar to her as,

well,

fucking.

Then she's at the fridge, opening the door and taking stock of what he has to offer.

[Ivan] They don't touch in the shower. He doesn't try to touch her; she seems to have all but forgotten he exists. Some part of him has to be wondering what the fuck. He doesn't ask now, though. He keeps to himself; they share a shower but little else. Soon enough she departs and he has the thing to himself.

Coming down later, Ivan must be wondering if she's left already. He wouldn't be surprised to find she has -- but no. She's still there. She's in his kitchen, in fact, and she looks like she knows what she's doing.

This surprises him, too. It should surprise anyone that it surprises him. Just look at her: flawless manicure, flawless skin, flawless luxury. Why would a woman like that cook? Or more to the point: cook well?

It turns out his refrigerator is well-stocked. Two of them, restaurant-grade monoliths of frigidity. There are the usual things one might find at any grocery store. Bell peppers and onions, a watermelon, meats frozen and fresh. Seafood. There are rarer foodstuffs too: a small pouch of longan. Several tins of caviar; with the way his people keep trotting it out whenever someone comes to visit, it's likely there are more in the pantry. Dragonfruit. Abalone, not yet trimmed.

He looks at her for a moment, tying on her apron. Then he snags another one off the hook and -- with a faint air of indulgence -- loops it around his neck, ties it behind his back.

"Can I help?"

[Hilary] Hilary moves around the kitchen and the fridge like she knows what she's doing. Like she's just as much at home here as she is strolling around his bedroom and bathroom, as she is breezing into his penthouse as if she owns it, infuriating him and confusing him and arousing him all at once with her attitude. She's taking things out of the fridge now. Trout filets. Some fresh raspberries. Butter, and as much of it as she can find. Spinach. A little tub of plain yogurt. Feta. She looks at him when he comes down and begins pulling pans down from their hooks.

"That depends entirely on how well you take instruction," she says mildly, looking at him a bit dryly as she arranges saute pans and sauce pans and begins gathering bowls and whisks and so on. "If you pitch a fit and stomp off because a lowly kin is telling you what to do then you could very well ruin the sauce. You have shallots somewhere, yes?"

[Ivan] Ivan smirks faintly. "Do I look like the type?" he shoots back, and then goes to the other fridge. After rooting around a while, he finds a batch; waves them in her direction.

"Should I wash these?"

[Hilary] "You're a spoiled Fang brat," she says, by way of answer. "You are by very definition 'the type'." Emotions are beyond her. She can't fathom how it might make him feel to hear those words, or comprehend the emotion behind it when he gets aggravated by her presumption. But experience is another thing. If X then Y is not a difficult lesson to learn.

A stare. A raised eyebrow. "Your hands. Then the shallots."


There isn't a lot that Ivan is allowed to do while Hilary cooks. He is told to fetch and carry. Get the taragon. Where's the parsley? Grab that pan. Hand me the whisk. Wash this. No, put the knife down, you don't know how to use that. Oh, fine, you use knives in combat, please, show me how to mince the shallots.

You're doing it wrong. Give it here.

Hilary can be a bitch outside of the kitchen. Spoiled, self-indulgent, haughty, a little too sure of herself. In the kitchen -- his kitchen -- she is a sharp-tongued taskmaster with little patience and absolutely not interest in gently teaching him how to pare a vegetable. Ivan is, repeatedly, relegated to stirring duty, and she's particular about even that.

And all the while she's orchestrating what seems like utter chaos around him. It could be a single dish, it could be twenty, for all he can tell at first. There's numerous pans going and sometimes it has to feel that she's sending him to wash his hands just to get him out of the way. Somehow the raspberries and the vinegar -- I said the cider vinegar, this is white -- end up in a buttery sauce that it is his Very Important Job to stir. Clockwise. Not so fast.

Somehow the spinach and the feta end up tossed together and he's Stirring Again -- I said to start whipping it. Like this. -- because there's a yogurt garlic dressing to prepare while she looks through the fridge and decides to add some yellow tomatoes because, as she says, she wants to see if the sweetness works with the salad.

Everything that needs cutting, Hilary cuts with somewhat shocking, thoughtless speed. Sometimes it's just the rapid thunking of the knife on the board and then something's being swept into the pan he's stirring before she turns away to something else. Hilary is not panicked cook, but she is an efficient one, so focused on what she's doing she barely has time even for the criticisms she gives his contributions.

He gets to wash a lot of dishes. No matter that he has servants. You clean as you go, she says. She can't cook in a filthy, cluttered kitchen, she says.

The best part, however, is that Hilary tastes. Everything. Several times. She makes him do the same, and this is the only time his opinion on the whole ordeal is really sought, though usually just to confirm what she intends to do anyway.

More salt?

And a little more salt is added. The thing is, he could disagree with her out of spite. No, no more salt, it's too salty. It tastes like brine already, no more salt. Except that she's right. She's an excellent cook, and he can see her a few times with her head tipped thoughtfully, then she's sending him to the pantry or fridge to grab something she didn't think of before that she just wants to try. And her fingertips snag a sliver of trout to taste, dip down grabbing another to feed to him.

Ivan is permitted to chop up some parsley at the very end, while Hilary is finding serving dishes. Everything is off the heat and in serving dishes but while he's drying his hands from the last round of dishwashing and asking what else she's waving him off, telling him to go pick a wine or something. She's drizzling a raspberry-vinegar butter sauce over the trout, sprinkling the shallots and arranging the parsley. Her hair has dried in that messy bun; it will be wild when she lets it down, not all sleek and smoothed back as it was when she arrived. The salad -- with its dark green spinach, bright yellow cherry tomatoes, feta and thick dressing -- is served in two small bowls. She prepares a ramikin with sliced black olives, just to try it with a few bites because she thinks they aren't necessary to offset the dressing but she'd like to see.


"Let's eat outside," she says, when he comes back with the wine. Her hair is down. She's put her wrap shirt back on around her camisole, hung up her apron. She's still barefoot. There's still no lingerie under that outfit. The food she's made for them is utterly, intrinsically French. That shouldn't be surprising.

[Hilary] [*absolutely NO interest]

[Hilary] [agh! *while Hilary is finding plates]

[Ivan] She's right, of course. He is a spoiled Fang brat. Every bit the type who would take umbrage at being ordered about by a mere kinswoman. One that he just fucked. One that turned cold immediately after, if she wasn't cold the whole damn time.

One that he doesn't understand. One that he doesn't even particularly like most the time. One that he can't seem to help getting entangled with, nonetheless.

And -- she's wrong. Whether it's his auspice, or his low rank, or simply who he is, Ivan isn't really the sort to be easily insulted. That makes it all the more unusual that she manages to set him off so readily, but --

well. He's not thinking of any of that right now. The point is: right now, he's actually rather content to be helping however he can. It occupies his hands, and because he quite frankly does not know how to cook, it occupies his mind as well. He's fine with that. He's fine with it when she orders him around, when she sends him hunting for white, no cider vinegar; when she tells him to stir this, slower, wash that, your hands first.

He has no idea what she's cooking. He stops trying to figure it out after the first five minutes. He stops thinking about what they did, why she is the way she is, what she's thinking -- all of it. He thinks about stirring. Clockwise. Slowly. Once or twice, when her knife, which is actually Evgeny's knife

(and it should be mentioned that those knives are of highest quality, keen and honed and beautifully balance and absolutely fucking lethal)

thunkthunkthunks so very fast across the cutting board, he glances at her with mild alarm. He tastes; he agrees with her. He doesn't argue out of spite, though at one point he asks her to put a little more garlic in. He washes dishes, and then he's stirring again, and then he's washing again, and at the end, the very end, she lets him cut something.

Which he does. Rather slowly. Very inexpertly. It's entirely different, chopping something finely and knifing something between the ribs.


When they're finished, she wants to eat outside. "I was going to suggest the same," he says, and leads the way. The kitchen opens directly onto the terrace, where there are teak tables and chairs and large umbrellas to shade them from the sun. He helps her set the dishes down, then puts up one of those umbrellas. He's a good host. He has an eye, and a mind, for these details. He remembers how she stayed out of the sun on the deck of the Cielo.

"Is your family French?" he asks as he's pulling out a chair for her. Either he's gotten over whatever bewilderment or anger was in him earlier, or else he's hiding it rather well. Staying at the shallow end of the conversational pool.

[Hilary] "English, I think," she says, setting plates and bowls down while he puts up the umbrella. She sits down without thanking him for considering her skin and how to keep her looking so very young for so much longer. Hilary sits down, lets him scoot her in, and looks out over the city while she waits for him to sit down.

[Ivan] Ivan himself sits in the sun. That's no surprise either. He looks the sort: sunblessed. Skin that turns golden rather than burning. Hair that bleaches more and more blond. A wolf of Falcon, after all, as touched by Helios as by Luna. There are legends that say that's the root of the tribe's madness: the jealous, capricious moon.

He sits: not across the table but at right angles to her. There's a breeze up here that would make more havoc of her hair if she were to let it down. His eyebrow flicks up at her answer. There's a pause; then:

"You're not certain?"

A measure of surprise, there. Not everyone's like Matthieu, obsessed with ancestry, but nearly every Fang takes knowledge of one's ancestors for granted.

[Hilary] She's to his right, where she can see the city. The sun will set -- but not for hours, now -- behind her, if she's still here. She won't be. She has a book thing to be at, doesn't she? Just enough time for lunch and then she'll be gone again, off to look and act the part of a bored trophy wife entertaining herself on society. But if she stayed the sun would turn his penthouse into something like an emerald-cut diamond, outline her in an aura of light that would be so bright it would look like a rainbow.

If she stayed.

And Ivan sits at the head of the table, his back to the north, away from the cold winds and the tundra of his bloodline's home country. Facing the south, all bright and hot and fiery. Turned towards Hilary, whose thoughts are sometimes so dark, so twisted, that she learned from a very early age it wasn't okay to draw certain pictures or talk about certain dreams because it made adults go pale.

They're horrible thoughts. Repulsive. Frightening. And she's not obsessed, per say. She can stop herself from dwelling on them for days at a time because she's gotten very practiced and because she found things that helped her. She only sometimes goes on the Internet looking for pictures and stories and such these days, and knows at least enough to clear her history afterward so nobody asks her why she was looking at that.

She's never been able to ask these questions, and Ivan asks such things all the fucking time.


Hilary picks up her fork, shrugging slightly. Her hair skims across her back, a few strands get tucked behind her ear after they blow across her cheek. She spears a bite of her salad, her eyes on her lunch. It's the first time she's eaten all day; one can't blame her for being focused. "Oh, I could find out. I'm sure I was told enough times. I'm sure Dión knows. I just... never bother to remember much beyond my parents and grandparents. They weren't French," she muses. "The thing I was told I had to remember for the longest time was the name of the House, but then they changed that and said not to mention it anymore, so I just laugh and tell people to ask my husband for his bride's lineage, it's all written down in his head. In two languages."

[Ivan] She can see it, if she cares to: the moment the penny drops for him. If she's shared this piece of history with others -- and doubtlessly she has, the sort of creature she is, an enfant terrible simply because she literally doesn't understand what it is that mortifies others so -- she's seen that look before. That flash of surprise chased with understanding.

"House Austere Howl," he says quietly. "I did wonder what happened to their kin."

What's missing in Ivan, perhaps, is a certain wariness; the sense that he wants to shy away now, avoid being connected with such a figure. He doesn't really have the right to denigrate another's upbringing, after all. Look at his family tree, watered in commoner's blood, bearing common fruit.

He eats a cherry tomato. Wraps it in spinach, dips it in a dab of dressing. It's delicious. He told her so more than once as they were cooking. For a while he's quiet. She looks out over the city. So does he.

Then, "Why did you push me away earlier?"

That's a quiet question. For what it's worth, he doesn't sound angry.

[Hilary] "That's it," she says, as he names her original house, the house of her brother, of -- presumably -- her parents, grandparents, ancestors. "I always remember the 'howl' part. But I used to get it so confused, I'd say 'severe' or 'spartan' or 'awful' or any number of words that came to mind when I was trying to think of the right one. That was when I was very young still, though."

Maybe before her brother died. She eats her lunch slowly, with small bites and careful chewing, her lips closed. She licks her lips demurely, unsalaciously, just to make sure they aren't buttery or have a fleck of feta on them. They eat silently, and he doesn't need to tell her again and again that this is delicious, that she cooked well, that this is way better than a late plate from the fridge.

"Because you weigh quite a bit more than you apparently imagine," Hilary says lightly to his question, "and I couldn't breathe."

She looks over at him, eyebrows up a little, questioningly. "And like I said, I was very hungry."

[Ivan] There is, admittedly, a flit of amusement when she says awful. Awful Howl. Mostly, Ivan's imagining those few Austere Howlers he's met before the demise of their house, priggish Victorians that they were. But then they're moving on, and he's asking her about

earlier,

which is all he seems to want to call it right now, and she's replying in that light, nonchalant way of hers. He eats the last of his salad and sets the bowl aside. "No," he says, "I wasn't speaking literally."

[Hilary] "Same answer," Hilary says, and continues to work on her salad.

[Ivan] That leaves him speechless for a while. He can't think of anything to say, so he eats instead: the trout light and flaky, its sauce perfectly tangy-sweet. He did find a wine after all. White, of course. A pinot gris, light and crisp, which he sips without looking at her now, his brow furrowed.

After a time, he speaks again. "I don't get you," he says, low now, his irritation creeping back to him. "You act like you couldn't wait to get fucked. So you come here. You bend over and you asked me to fuck you. So I fuck you. And then you're ... different. You were tense. Usually you're in tears. Then you wanted to have lunch. Usually you'd be long gone.

"What the fuck, Hilary?"

[Hilary] Her fork hits the teak hard. Not because she dropped it. She sets it down with far more force than necessary and turns to look at him. If it were faster, sharper, it would be flailing and overexcited. As it is, she just stares at him, the motion of her hand and her head deliberate. "First of all: I rubbed one out just texting you to set this up. Second of all: don't you dare speak as though you fucked me because I asked. Third: I haven't eaten all day because I 'couldn't wait to get fucked' and I was hungry."

Hilary stares at him, aggravated, and picks her fork back up, pushing it into the trout and looking away from him now. "I loved it. I could have gone again. But when you leaned on me I didn't like it and then I didn't want you on me, I didn't want your arm around me, and I didn't want your goddamn cock inside me anymore, I wanted away from you. That's all I know, alright? Stop trying to pick me apart every time I see you.

"Fucking Christ," she snaps, reaching for her wineglass instead of eating a bite of trout.

There are bright red spots on her face, high on her cheeks.

[Ivan] She doesn't get to fucking christ when he snaps right back at her: "Well, I'm sorry to inform you, Hilary, but that's what people do. They try to get to know each other. Even the coldblooded, faithless, womanizing nonhuman monsters. If you want something that can get you off and never say a word otherwise, buy a fucking vibrator. If you want me to stop asking questions, stop coming around.

"Better yet, don't come running to me for help. That sort of thing tends to give the wrong impression, you know. Might make someone think you had some sort of attachment to them."

He hasn't eaten a bite through that entire rant. He does now, and he doesn't stab the trout; doesn't rip at it, throw it off the roof, whatever. When Ivan eats, it's civilized and calm.

[Hilary] She rolls her eyes at that's what people do. They try -- but she doesn't interrupt him. She eats her trout while he calls himself coldblooded, faithless, womanizing, nonhuman. A monster. Not really 'people' any more than she is. But he's sorry to inform her. She eats with irritation but not yet full anger. If it's even there. He hasn't seen it yet. Just this: annoyance. Sometimes passing, sometimes strong, always little more than might be given to an inconvenience in her schedule.

"I'm grateful for your well-aged wisdom on human nature, Ivan," she says, taking another sip of wine. Her glass sets down on the table again, traded for her fork. "Please do learn to listen, though." Her eyes come back to him, whether he looks back or stares at his food. If given, she meets her eyes the way she always does, as though she were unaware of his rage, unable to feel it. "You ask questions and I have answered. But when I answer you ask ten more. You scrutinize every action, every motivation, to the point that I am not allowed to have a whim, to desire something inexplicably. Or simply to not know. If I fail at a single answer it's the end of the goddamn world."

She twists her fork in her fingers. It twirls slowly, two rotations. Her cheeks are still pink. "Would you like to get to know me better, Ivan? Have me grow attached to you, find yourself more and more attached to me? Since we both know that would work out so well. Good lord, I think you scrape me raw with your constant inquiries because you know I'll eventually get sick of you. Either that or you're simply a tantrum-throwing buffoon."

[Ivan] That Hilary does not understand normal human emotion, does not know how to properly read them even when she sees them, does not mean she's blind. Or that she isn't capable of seeing fault, seeing flaw, seeing weakness. She knows exactly where the needles should go, and the knives. Ivan's learning this the hard way.

And yes: he's calm. He's eating like a civilized person, but his cheeks draw taut as she goes on. There's a point at which he might have apologized, had she stopped. A point where he sees how his behavior would be intolerable to her. A point where some peace might have been salvaged -- but no.

She doesn't stop. She goes on, and when she gets to you know I'll eventually get sick of you his eyes snap up to hers. At this range, no matter how low his brows have drawn, they're visibly green. And hazel. And grey, and blue, and all the other colors twisting together there, testament perhaps to his ever more mixed ancestry.

There's a beat of silence on his end. For the first time in -- god knows how long, Ivan's rage is palpable, a low beat, a burn in his eyes.

"I think," when he speaks, it's coolly courtesou, "it's best that I excuse myself from your company now." He sets his fork down, and his knife. Swipes the napkin up from his lap and across his mouth. Then he's dropping that on the table, too. "Feel free to stay as long as you like. You can show yourself out when it's time for you to attend your book release, I'm sure.

"Have a pleasant afternoon, Mrs. Durante."

[Hilary] Toddlers know how to bite. To say mine! To say back off! Children know how to hit and kick, how to flail so no one can hold onto them, how to cry til they throw up if it will get them what they want. It is not hard to learn how to make oneself so difficult to deal with that people just give up and leave you alone.

Or just out of sheer thoughtlessness. For revenge. For spite. To vent frustration the way one might beat on a table or scream into a pillow or any number of things to release physiological tension, which is riding Hilary today like a train on rails.

She knows better, but that doesn't mean she's afraid when she reaches out and grabs his wrist. Her eyes haven't left him.

[Ivan] That calm, that cold courtesy, proves itself a lie when Ivan reacts. Instantly. He snaps his wrist out of her grasp. The motion is quick, sharp. Of course it is. It's him.

She hasn't looked away. He isn't looking at her at all. He draws a single hard breath. His fingertips feel cold -- adrenaline, anger. His heartbeat is audible in his own ears; he wonders how it is that she can't hear it.

"Don't," he says, softly. A beat later, he decides what it is he wants to say: "Don't touch me."

And he keeps walking.

[Hilary] She rises when he jerks his hand away, before he manages to get one word, then three, out of his mouth. The grace in her is uncanny, and strange thing is, it is after years of degrading from the peak it once reached. Born different, she could have really been something.

Lies. She is something. Something rare, that she does this without hysteria, without desperation of love, rising to her feet with a sort of ancient imperialistic self-assurance. Her voice is ice. That hard. That cold.

"I will not be dismissed like one of your staff or one of your foolish little girls."

And he's still walking, and she's coming after him, as inescapable as thoughts of her. She may very well be incapable of anything but this pride, this surety of herself, this inability to see others as matching her own worth. She is, for all her grace and charm, incapable of so many things as it is. Perhaps she had no fairy godmother to give her anything but the most skin-deep gifts.

Or maybe they were just taken away.

He has a shadow. A barefoot, wild-haired, finely clothed shadow coming with him into the house.

[Ivan] So he doesn't get very far after all. As smoothly and swiftly as he moves, she matches her for it. He doesn't know what she was like ten, fifteen years ago. He doesn't know if she was a dancer, if she had real talent, if she could have been something on stage -- not merely one of those tutu'd little starved swans in the back, but the main event, the main attraction, the star of the show.

He wouldn't be surprised. She has the temperament for it. The demeanor. The coldness. He's not thinking about that, either, though, because she's following him and he's three steps away and he turns on her, furious, shouts in her face,

"What. What do you want?"

[Hilary] [*dusts off the willpower*]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hilary] The fact that Hilary looks somewhat affronted at having this young man literally shout in her face is almost... comical. She's taken aback by the sheer rudeness, rather than startled by the volume. Her hand twitches at her side, but stays there. And, perhaps more surprising, her voice doesn't rise to match his, shout for shout, temper for temper, selfishness upon selfishness.

"You ask me that so often," she says quietly. Doesn't need to tell him what he already knows: that she hasn't ever really answered him, that her answers have been glib at best, just as often flippant and dismissive. "I want you. I feel... okay, sometimes, when I'm with you."

Her brows are tugging together. "Did you honestly not realize that?"

[Ivan] Somehow that takes the bite out of his anger. Doesn't quench it, doesn't banish it, but dulls the edge. Gives him enough calmness, enough distance, to see some glimmer of reason. To understand with a sudden stark clarity that she doesn't behave like this to hurt him, or anger him, or infuriate him. It's not about him at all.

She acts like this because she doesn't know anything else. And that's a realization that makes his face change, makes his scowl turn into a frown, troubled.

"I don't," he answer, and it's barely more than a whisper. "When I'm with you, I'm confused, angry, scared and fucked up. I feel anything but okay, Hilary." A beat; he makes some short, abortive gesture toward the open terrace door. "I'm not dismissing you like one of my foolish little girls. But I want -- I need to leave."

[Hilary] He realizes something untrue about her. He thinks he understands. At very least it makes him stop scowling and trying to scream in her face, but in the end he has no more idea why she acts like this, what she knows, than she does of why his face clears so.

She reaches for him, though, and he can imagine compassion into being as he can imagine her to be simply unaware of other ways of behaving, or he can imagine it desire, the way her hand comes to his chest, barely touching him before lifting again. Her fingertips graze his jawline.

"No you don't," she murmurs, to the word 'want'. Or to the word 'need', perhaps. "You haven't taken me to your bed yet."

[Ivan] She doesn't quite touch him. Her hand drifts toward his chest and he bars it with his forearm; if she reaches for his jaw, he twists back from her.

And takes a step back. Then another. The anger rises in him again, swift and sudden; with it, a sort of cornered feeling, something close to desperation. "I can't," he says. "Hilary, I can't just rebound from emotion to emotion. It doesn't work like that. I can't go from being angry at you to wanting to fuck you. I don't want you right now. I don't want to look at you right now. I want to leave."

His eyes flick around the terrace, back to her. He makes a last, abortive attempt at politeness -- "Thank you for lunch. But please, let me go."

[Hilary] Let him go. As though she holds him captive when he won't even let her touch him. She reaches for his chest and he blocks her; she strokes her fingertips across his wrist instead. Her fingers trail from his skin as he backs away from her, like a cornered animal who any moment now is going to lunge. Like any moment he's going to attack, just to get away.

Another woman might realize that and give him space. Back off, sidestep, give him room to move around. Hilary doesn't even see it. She recognizes something like banked, sideways anger while he's telling her he can't do things she knows are completely possible. He says he doesn't want her and it doesn't make her flinch or downcast.

He thanks her for lunch and she raises her hand to slap him across the face.


It would only land if he let it. Even were she to catch him by surprise, no matter how graceful she is she isn't as fast as Ivan. He can move so that her hand catches breeze, he can grab her wrist, he can smack it aside, but the only way her palm contacts his cheek is if he allows it. And she cannot imagine him allowing it, but she does it anyway. Or tries.

And stares at him, when it fails, piqued. "What did I even do wrong? Why are you doing this again?"

[Ivan] In the end, Ivan is not so chivalrous that he'll stand still for a blow he can avoid. Her hand flies at his face. He moves -- it's so fast, so deft, so fucking smooth that it can't even be called a dodge. Her hand strikes only air, and then he catches it. His grip is rigid for a moment. He's not strong enough to crush her bones in his fist, but he's still stronger than she is by simple biology; by virtue of his gender, his nature, his race.

A beat. Goes by. He could do something now. Strike her back while he has her hand caught. Smash her to the ground. Break her face, break her bones, break her the way her brother was broken right before her eyes all those years ago. The possibility is there: in his eyes, in his grip, in his silence.

Then he lowers her hand for her. It's gentle.

Still, some time before he speaks again. Some time before he draws a breath -- swift, not quite steady -- looks away from her for an instant, and back. "I can't stand it," he says then, "when you remind me that I want you. Or that I won't ever have you. Or that one of these days you'll be through with me."

[Hilary] It is to her credit or simply one more mark of her madness that Hilary never looks away from him. That even when her hand is caught hard in his she doesn't draw a sudden, shaking breath. That as vicelike as his hand is there's a glint in her own dark eyes, the only sort of light he ever sees in them, this excitement in her when he's...

violent. It isn't even necessarily sexual. But it's there.

Ivan draws her hand down and she doesn't resist. She doesn't try to rub her thumb over the side of his hand, doesn't try to lace their fingers. She's just watching him, letting him move her away, and then shaking her head. "No... baby, that isn't what I meant. Don't think about all that. Just let it be what it is."

That could come off as coaxing. Manipulating. She's no great manipulator, though. Not one of the best, at least. But it's soothing, her tone. And a little imploring. "You know when I'm with you I'm yours. Yours only, don't you see that?"

[Ivan] The sound that leaves Ivan then is something like disbelief. He stares at her for a moment. He doesn't know what that tone means; he doesn't know that she's no great manipulator. He can't be sure she's trying to -- what? Get through to him? Comfort him? He can't be sure she isn't just saying something, anything, to get him to --

stay. Calm down. Fuck her again. Or maybe: hurt her. He can't be sure of that, either.

"Do you really think if you say the right things," he says, quiet but edged, "I'll take you upstairs and fuck you again?"

[Hilary] Hilary's head tips slowly to the side, watching him as closely as ever. "I want that," she says quietly, because it is, after all, the truth. She wants him to take her upstairs. She wants him to lay her out and fuck her again. She wants him. "But that doesn't mean I'm lying to you to get it."

She takes a small step back away from him, which all this time is apparently what he's wanted her to do. Get back. Get away. Let him go. "And it's hard for me to understand why not saying the right things every time I speak makes you stop wanting me."

She pauses there, as though considering her words for once. "Hard to believe, too."

[Ivan] As though of its own accord, his hand rises; he turns his head, drags his palm over his face, turns back.

"I still want you. But I'm fucking pissed off right now. You reminded me of things I don't want to think about. You tried to slap me, for fuck's sake. I don't want to fuck."

[Hilary] For what it's worth, and he may realize this on his own either in a moment or later (or never), she didn't mean to. But Hilary doesn't tell him that herself, doesn't think it might make him feel better if he at least knows I didn't intend to remind him of things that make him so upset. It doesn't even occur to her to do so. She watches him, head canted.

Another woman might cry, just... vaguely sad at how nice the afternoon started out, how good the sex was and how nice it was cooking together, even with the tension after sex, after the shower. She might ask him please, can't I just stay, it's a big penthouse, we can just leave each other alone til you've calmed down.

Another woman might also apologize, even if -- as Hilary said -- she truly does not understand what she did wrong. Even if -- as is likely -- she doesn't believe she's done anything to deserve the way he's behaving now, honestly.

Hilary's expression is not one verging on tears or remorse. Just a sort of nonchalant patience now. She watches him for a bit, then exhales a simple sigh. "That's really too bad," she says, and walks with softly padding feet off the terrace and into the penthouse. The dishes are left behind in the manner of any spoiled Fang who knows someone else will take care of it for her, eventually. She plucks her bra off a doorhook as she walks by, but has to go upstairs to get her shoes. Her thong, filthy with their cum. So that is where she heads.

[Ivan] If she cried, or if she apologized, it's possible Ivan would only be more angry. Disgusted with her behavior; disgusted that she says the things she says, does the things she does, and then gets out of it with a pretty apology. A pretty little storm of tears.

That would require her to be a different woman, though. One capable of feeling sadness, or remorse, or -- and this is important -- capable of seeing why the things she did and said upset him so. Capable of having done it because she wanted to upset him, or at least, to push him away the way he thought she did.

She's not that woman. And to some degree, her response shames him. Makes him feel like he's behaving like -- how did she put it? -- a spoiled Fang brat. He was insulted or offended, and now he's reacting by taking his toys and going home.

She leaves their dishes, their half-eaten lunch, out on the terrace. She goes in. He looks at lunch for a moment, and then he goes in too. Someone will clean it up.

When she comes back down from the upstairs, he's waiting at the bottom of the stairs, setting on the winding, free-floating steps. When he hears her coming, feels the light vibrations in the steps, Ivan turns. He looks at her a moment, and then he draws a breath and lets it out. He leans back. He rests there, long lean body laid out on the curving stairs, his head pillowed on the ledge of a step.

"I'm angry at you," he says quietly, "because you sound so certain of my fascination with you. So certain of the inevitability of my emotional attachment, if this goes on. And you're right, of course, and it's humiliating because I know you don't share it at all." A small, sort, humorless laugh here, "You're incapable.

"And as if that weren't enough, you make it sound like I'm desperate for your attention, and asking you these questions as a way to ... I don't know. Keep ahold of you a little longer, or have a little more of you. And then you remind me that that's not possible. It's not even possible for your mate to have you, and he owns you. But -- you're incapable of opening yourself up like that.

"I suppose it's not your fault. And that you don't mean to be the way you are. But it's hard to remember that when I'm feeling the backlash."

His eyes flick to her then, wherever she might be. Over his head. Below him, on the living room floor. Beside him.

"I'll walk you to your car."

[Hilary] Getting her shoes and panties takes a little longer than it should, really. Hilary takes the time to find a comb and works it carefully through her hair. She stands in his bathroom and puts her hair back up, though the ponytail is not so high and not so sleek and not curled like it was when she arrived. She adjusts her clothes. She doesn't bother to put her underwear back on, carrying it down in one hand with her shoes in the other.

Ivan is there on the steps, and he leans back and lays his head on the step. Hilary pauses when she sees him, then continues slowly, her pant legs swinging gently around her ankles. She comes to sit a step or two higher than him, looking down at his face as he speaks. While he does he can smell their sex on those panties of hers, smell her in her clothes, smell the food she made for them, just like he'll be able to go to his couch and smell the way he fucked her there until he has it removed or cleaned or whatever he plans to do about that.

Since her emotions are -- though not nonexistent -- so very dim, it's hard to read her reactions in her eyes. She isn't thinking much about her own feelings, which may be where the disconnect really lies: not that she has no emotions, maybe just that they don't matter to her. She doesn't give them attention it takes to make them grow. Or maybe the part of her that feels is just

broken.

When he is done, before he says he'll walk her to her car, Hilary reaches over and lays her hand on the side of his face for a moment. It draws away; truthfully, she may not have even made contact. Just the implication of it, before retreating. "So young... and so arrogant," she says softly, musingly. "You have no idea what I'm capable of, Ivan."

The last words are leaving her mouth as she rises to her feet, flowing away from him, to walk to his gallery. She doesn't bother to put her shoes on yet. She calls for the elevator with the push of a button, shoving pretty white lingerie into her purse.

[Ivan] His eyes close for just a moment as her hand touches his face. Approaches it. This time he doesn't draw away, or catch her by the wrist, or -- anything. Whatever it is she does, he allows it.

When she rises, his eyes open again. He sits up, smooth and silent, and a moment later stands himself. "I call it like I see it, Hilary." He's said that before. "And I've yet to see anything else. For longer than a few moments, anyway."

An elevator makes departure-at-will impossible. There's always a wait, a pause, a small period of time that could be poignant or awkward or simply inconvenient, depending on the situation. The persons involved. Ivan is walking her to her car anyway, though, or intends to: he waits with her. After a moment, he turns to look at her again.

"I do want to see you again."

[Hilary] "Keep your calls to yourself in the future, Ivan," says Mrs. Durante, standing a few inches to one side of him, her eyes on the elevator doors that will, in time, open up for her. "I neither asked for your opinion of my psychological makeup nor appreciate it."

He wants to see her again. She turns to stare at him, eyes black as ever. "Do you intend to keep making me regret telling you anything but what you want to hear?"

[Ivan] Ivan's jaw is not the heavy square thing her husband's is, but there's hardness in it when he clenches his teeth. He's lean enough that she can see the flash of muscle pull tight in his cheek. He draws a breath, then answers.

"I can't make promises on how I'm going to react to the things you say to me. But there's a difference, Hilary, between not saying anything that doesn't appease me and not saying something that hits me where it hurts. And if you don't see that difference, then you know why I think you're incapable of these things."

[Hilary] She huffs out a small breath, and turns back around as the elevator doors open, waving a hand at him like swatting a fly away from her.

No thanking him this time for how lovely it was. No telling him she needed that. No more fucking arguments, no more trying to get him to -- well, not to understand, because she has ultimately a very small and passing need to feel 'understood' -- stop making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about who she is and what she can and can't do and why and why and why

goddammit why can't he stop fucking pushing


Hilary is barefoot when she crosses over the gap to enter the elevator, and that swipe of her hand in the air is cruel in its dismissal. She's angry. Or irritated, at least, annoyed by him and this whole stupid, pointless fucking discussion. Oh no, she didn't like him crushing her fucking lungs after sex, let's have World War III and an emotional Chernobyl because of it. Oh no, she doesn't want the drama of some young man's impossible attachment to her. Oh no, oh no, now we can't fuck anymore.

She's annoyed. And sick of this. So she steps away from him, into the elevator, truly not expecting him to come down and see her to her car now, or not caring if he does. She punches a button, and puts her hand on the wall for balance to start putting her shoes back on.

[Ivan] There's no mistaking the dismissal in her gesture. She walks into the elevator. He can read her irritation, her annoyance, the fact that she's sick of this.

Ivan doesn't follow her in. She's stepping into her shoes, and he stays where he is.

The doors don't stay open forever. That's another thing about elevators. When they do show up, they don't really allow for drawn-out goodbyes. When the doors starts to slide closed, Ivan adds, "Enjoy the book release."

[Hilary] So he's not seeing her down to her car. Nor is he asking her to stay, just stay, the way he did on his yacht. Stay with me. At least he leaves it at that. Tells her to enjoy the rest of her day, the rest of her weekend, the rest of her life, she doesn't know. Right now she doesn't care.

"I lied."

The doors close, and he doesn't get eye contact when she says that. It's all there's time for. Lied about there being a book release, maybe, lied about intending on going. No motivation, no explanation, and right now she thinks maybe that drives him batshit, since he never stops asking her questions, never stops prying into her as though if he could crack open her skull and spill her thoughts out he would, he'd do it gladly if he could feel like ...

Hilary doesn't even fucking know what he wants, why he never fucking leaves her alone no matter how nice it is, no matter how good,

no matter how she waited nearly three weeks, wanting to fuck him again, wanting it like need, coming to find him as soon as Dion was gone just like Ivan said to. And twice wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough.


Downstairs in the garage the doors slide open again and Hilary exits, looking much as she did before, walking towards her car. Ponytail. Strappy shoes with wooden heels.

Her cheeks are pink.

Her throat is raw.

Her hand is red and throbbing, her knuckles scraped and bruised.