Ivan Press

[Hilary] Those Russian novelists either perpetuated or poked holes in the idea that it was scandalous but ultimately beneficial for a young man to, at some point in his life, have a love affair with an older, married woman. It would be good for him in the long run, particularly if he was from a good and wealthy family, to learn something of passion, to learn how to please his eventual (age-appropriate, young, virginal) wife, to discover the ecstasy of haunting loss. Because no matter how awful her husband, no matter how rich their adoration,

she would never leave, never divorce. She might rather die than lose her status.

Hilary receives his kiss gracefully, though she wasn't waiting for it, hadn't expected it. It's no slow taste like at the nightclub, no lip-biting tear of their mouths, but something different. They appear to be pretending that earlier-today never-was, and it works for them. It works beautifully. She tips her head back and gives him a kiss like surrender, pliant and eager, like she's much, much younger than she really is.

Her eyes are closed for it, showing him the light dusting of color across her lids, the sleek blackness on her lashes. They open again, slowly, when he pulls back, and she rests her hand on his forearm, picking up her clutch and walking out with him to whatever toy he drove here tonight.


Where, when he pulls away from the Dana, she unbuckles herself, leans over, and begins unfastening his belt.

[Ivan] It's the lesser of his two favorite toys tonight: the charcoal grey Lamborghini with its fighter-bull name and its jet-fighter lines. The seatbelts are race-inspired. They strap over both shoulders, across the waist. Hilary undoes them all as he's pulling away from the hotel, tearing onto the street with a spine-bending twist of throttle. She leans over the center divide and he knows what she's up to, knows it even without looking, even before her slim hands are on his belt.

His eyes flick down just once. She can feel, and perhaps hear, the small inhale he takes. Ivan shifts his seat slightly, sliding his hips forward a little. It's encouragement, of a sort. Easing the way, so to speak. And reaching over her to shift gears, his hand slides lightly down her back once on its way back to the steering wheel.

No words. He doesn't ask her where she wants to go; he doesn't tell her to wait until they get there because he doesn't want to crash and die. As his belt comes undo he draws another slow, controlled breath. There's no other communication other than those subtle signs of willingness; arousal; anticipation.

[Hilary] Perhaps this is what he gets for telling her maybe. Maybe you can have a treat. Maybe I'll give you what you want. Hilary doesn't wait, and she doesn't seem to think that taking her seatbelt off in a car going that fast with a man who has probably been drinking is perhaps a bad idea, but Hilary seems to do a lot of things that are fucking stupid ideas and escapes without so much as a chipped nail. One can't blame her for being so utterly confident in her own untouchability.

She's deft but careful as she undoes his belt, and his slacks, laughing softly as she figures out the tabs and buttons and so forth that she can't see. He shifts his hips forward, which makes her let out a soft exhale of appreciation. She reaches past the folds of his slacks to caress him awhile, feeling him through his underwear as he gets hard, lifting up his shirt to kiss his lower abdomen.

It takes some patience to get his clothes out of the way, some patience and some wiggling around as he tries to focus on his driving. Hilary has done this before. Perhaps several times. She goes on stroking his cock once she has it out of his clothes, stretching up to kiss his neck, lick his earlobe, leave a little lipstick on his collar,

literally,

before she bends back down to his lap and guides him with her hand into her mouth. A low moan leaves her as he slides over her tongue, til she feels him touch her throat. Just a couple of long, mindbending seconds of that, her lips around him and her mouth sucking tightly on him, the whole length of his cock inside of her. Just seconds. Then she's sliding her lips up, kissing his head, licking underneath it,

and sliding her mouth down onto him again.

[Ivan] Ivan is wearing jeans, actually -- jeans so distressed they look like he might've actually driven cattle in them. Or mined for gold. Or god knows what else. Which, of course, only means that they're obscenely expensive. They look caked in mud, covered in dust. They're smooth and soft beneath her hands, though, thick without being coarse, belted low on his hips, just enough give that she can stroke him through it

and make him groan. The sound in involuntary. If she looks up, he's driving with his head pressed back against the seatback, both his hands on the wheel.

She gets his pants open. She pushes his shirt up, and his vest, and the line of hair that runs down from his navel was darker even the first time they fucked in late July. Has bleached since in the sun -- at the beach, on the lake, on his yacht, on his terrace -- to the same dark and textured gold of his hair.

When she crawls up his body he turns his head, eyes still on the road, and kisses her brow. Kisses her cheek. Kisses her mouth if she'll lift it to him, tearingly, panting out when they draw apart, and then she's sliding down his body again, down to where her deft little hands have undone his belt and his button and his zipper, have taken him out of his boxer briefs, are holding him upright and hot and hard and just waiting for her

to do exactly what she does.

The first time her mouth closes around him, Ivan makes another sound -- somewhere between pleasure and torture and relief. He's barely breathing. She takes him in and he moans, a long yeaaah, his hand coming down from the steering wheel to rest on the back of her head for a moment.

The second time she does it, he holds her down for a second. Two. Flexes his hips up against her, fucks his cock into her mouth, makes that wracked noise again, louder.

Then his lean, hard hand goes to the back of her neck. He pulls her upright. He's breathing harder. His so carefully cultivated facade of messiness has devolved into the genuine thing: his clothes undone, his cock slick with her saliva. "That's enough for now," he says, eyes on the road save for a quick, quick flick in her direction. "You don't want me to crash, do you?"

[Hilary] She doesn't look up. Hilary hasn't met his eyes since before they got into the car, and she doesn't now. Not when she plays with his cock, working him into a stiff erection, playing with him until he's struggling to keep his eyes open and drive. Not when she rises up and licks him, kisses him, jerking her face away from him when he tries to kiss her, snapping her jaws once at him when he goes for her mouth. It's somewhere between playful and vicious, that.

And she doesn't look at him the whole time she's going down on him. A shudders goes through her when he touches the back of her head, signal enough that what he does next is alright. Is good. She moans when he holds her down, before she's breathing harshly through her nose and just taking it, letting him fuck her mouth like that, use her mouth like that. As soon as he lets go she's bobbing her head on his lap, giving him what is quite simply a messy, wet, eager blowjob while he tries not to get them both killed.

She's panting when he hauls her off his cock, his hand wrapped around her neck. But her hands are free. His aren't. He's driving. Hilary still has her hand around him and strokes him, smooths her saliva and his precum over his skin while he's telling her that's enough,

but it's not.

Hilary doesn't answer. Not at first. She has to catch her breath a little. Lick her lips. "I want you to come," she breathes, and leans over him again, putting him in her mouth again, going right back to that sweet, firm rhythm she was at before.

[Ivan] It infuriates him when she won't let him kiss her. Not her face; not her mouth. She snaps her teeth at him and he snarls at her, sounding for a moment not at all like the laughing golden playboy on the deck of a yacht, in the casino lounge of a hotel. It's not the sort of fury that drives a werewolf to violence, to red hate. It's something different, a sort of anger that twines with lust, a sexual brutality.

Which might be why a moment later he's pushing her face down on his cock and fucking her, not only grinding against her face but outright fucking her like that. And she lets him, she moans for it, and neither of them seem to realize or care that this is not respectful behavior; this is not the sort of way you behave with your lover, or with a woman like Hilary, or -- any of that.

Then he's trying to get her to stop. Stop, so he can fucking drive. Take them somewhere where she can suck his cock all night if she wants. Where he'll hammer her all over again, and though he doesn't know this he's not the only man to have fucked her today. There was him. There was her stepson. For all he knows her husband had her again before he left, too, For The Good Of The Nation and all. For all he knows she's a slut, she's a whore, she's giving it out for free even though she herself is so very, very expensive.

Ivan might not even recognize that there's an anger in him, deep and black. He might not even recognize that these thoughts are a manifestation of that anger; that the way he wants to hurt her, wants to break her the fuck down and make her show him who she is is a sort of anger; that the way he called what they're doing a nice uncomplicated emotionless fuck is a sort of anger, too. He wouldn't know when this anger began -- when they fought today, or when she wouldn't stay the goddamn night, or when she pushed him to push her that first time, or simply -- when they met. Because something in him recognized the blackness in her.

It doesn't matter. None of it matters, because they all belong to a realm of logic and reason, which is not where they reside when they're like this. When he's with her. There's no consistency in how he reacts to her. Sometimes she makes him ache. Sometimes he wants to brutalize her. Sometimes it's the same thing, and now,

now her hands are on him again. She tells him what she tells him and he groans; she goes down on him and his head thumps back against the seat. She can feel the car taking a sharp left. God knows where he's going. He might not even know where he's going, but they're going up an incline, a ramp, the freeway. Because it wasn't bad enough to risk crashing on city streets.

"You want me to come in your mouth?" His words are a pant. His hand is in her hair again, gripping this time: that rich dark thickness tangled and clenched in his fist. "Are you going to take it all like the filthy little cockslut you are?"

[Hilary] If she cared where Ivan was taking her she might have told him where to go. She might have asked. She might be looking through the windows and the windshield, casually observing her surroundings and considering where he might be driving her. It's the first time he's ever been permitted to drive her anywhere and she seems bound and determined to make it the last time by sheer virtue of blowing him until he wrecks the car and gets her killed

and wouldn't that be a fun explanation to have to make to the Fang Elder, to her mate. Not that he would. He'd get that lawyer of his to take care of everything.

Hilary doesn't care where Ivan's taking her, leading her. She doesn't care what he's doing to her, over and over again, just like he doesn't seem to care right now if she's taken cock after cock today, if she fucked her husband before she came to his penthouse to fuck him,

just like she doesn't care if he went back to his yacht and fucked every eligible woman on it, unable to take out on them the anger he felt at her, unable to do to them what she begs him to do to her,

just like she doesn't care if he went to some industrial club and picked up some woman who would gladly let him take a whip to her if it got him off.

Just like she doesn't care, now, if she makes him crash. She doesn't think it will happen. She thinks of how his cock feels, and how he tastes, and the way he makes her lips sore when he fucks her like this as he drives, holding onto her thick dark hair, burying his long, slender fingers in it while he buries his long, lean cock in her mouth.

Hilary moans, and it falls apart in a tattered whimper the longer it goes on. She's reaching between his legs and gently stroking his balls, too, like she fucking meant it when she said she wanted him to come. He clenches his grip in her hair and she groans at the words he half-pants, half-snarls into the air. It is the closest thing he gets to an answer from her.

[Ivan] There's absolutely no attempt to reciprocate. He couldn't if he wanted to, but to be honest: he doesn't want to. He doesn't care about reciprocation right now. He doesn't even care about making this last, or making this somehow good for her. She's letting him fuck her like that and he takes what she gives him without hesitation, without waiting. He uses her mouth and holds her down on his cock and lets her up only to gasp a breath now and again before he's pushing her down again, telling her to lick it or suck it or harder or move a little, put a little effort into it

until he's panting and groaning and his hips are lifting from the seat and he's going fast, too fucking fast, his attention barely on the road and the blessedly empty lanes of the freeway and the few cars that streak past so fast they might as well be parked on the shoulders. He's not worried about the police. They couldn't fucking catch him if they wanted to. He's only marginally worried about crashing, now, and that's receding with every passing second. Every stroke of her hands, or her tongue, or her lips.

"That's it." It's a continuous stream of filth, whispers tattered at the edges. "Suck it for me. Take it all. Deeper. Fuck, yes. Come on. Get back on that cock. Get back down on it -- yeah,"

until toward the end Ivan's not even holding her down anymore. He's reaching back and grasping at the leather of his seat; grasping at her back, smacking his hand on her ass through that slinky dress of hers; he's gasping and panting and fucking up against her mouth and that anger in him is fusing with his lust, and his need, and his confusion at it all

and that's all in his voice, all in the way he gasps, "Fuck -- Hilary -- I'm gonna -- "

His hips lift from the seat when he comes. He fucks up against her mouth, hard, a single rigid arc of motion. The cabin fills with his groans, harsh, unrestrained. He has to fight to keep his eyes open. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. His free hand comes down on her head; his fingers twist into her hair, so hard that later, later, when the orgasm passes and he can let go again, he'll find a few strands of her hair dark and fine between his fingers

and look back at this, at the way he's using her now, fucking her face like it's her cunt, like it's some vessel crafted purely for his pleasure and his use,

and feel something like shame.

[Hilary] It's good for her. Later on that might add to his shame, remembering how she moaned and how she was sweating a little in that sleek dress of hers, how she took her hand off his balls so she could reach down through that slit in her skirt and -- do whatever it was she did to herself, stroking or fingering or just holding her pussy in her hand while she let him brutalize her mouth. Later on he might feel vaguely horrified at what he did. At how much he enjoyed doing it. At the fact that Hilary liked it just like that.

Got off on it. Came while she sucked on him, choking on his cock and on her own moans of pleasure while he was muttering to her orders, instructions, demands for her to fucking take it. Take his cock. Swallow that cum like a good little whore.

Which is what she does, whether or not that's what she is.

If they were going slow enough that anyone could see into the heavily tinted windows of this car there'd be no doubt at all what was going on, that this asshole in the Italian car was getting some truly spectacular road head and putting several lives at risk. Hilary's not even keeping her body particularly low while she blows him. She's moaning, when she isn't gagging, and then there's a harsh sound as she holds her lips around him when he comes, a sharp inhale when he twists his hand in her hair.

She stays with him partly because he's not letting her up. He has no idea if she'd keep her mouth on him like she does if he let go of her hair, but it's some time indeed before Hilary is gently easing her mouth off of him, swallowing thickly, gasping, putting her mouth back on him to carefully, carefully lick him clean. Slowly, because he must be so very sensitive now. But there she goes at it, sucking on him, licking him, long before she slides away and if his hand is still in her hair then so be it, she's got his wet, sticky cock against her face and her reddened, red-painted lips are moving to kiss his shaft and murmur against his thighs:

"Where are you taking me?"

[Ivan] Afterward--

he is sensitive. He can barely stand it when she touches him again, when she licks him so slowly and carefully as though to clean him off. Ivan is gasping, his hand flying up to clutch at the smooth fabric that covers the ceiling of the cabin; bats at the dashboard, grips on, pounds once when she sucks at the head of his cock.

Through it all, he never asks her to stop. Not even when every touch of her tongue makes him shudder. Not even when he has to put his head back, briefly taking his eyes off the road, and moan. When she's finally done, he's a wreck. He's shuddering. He might be trying not to think about how he just used her. Some part of him wants to explain: I'm sorry, I think I was still angry. Or, I'm sorry, you drive me crazy. Or, I'm sorry, you pushed me.

Or any of the things he might say to exonerate himself. Or excuse himself. Or shift the blame. Or -- at the least -- explain.

He doesn't say any of it. He doesn't think she wants to hear it, and he doesn't really want to say it anyway. His hand is gentle on her head now. He strokes her hair slowly, carefully. When she kisses his cock, it jumps again, as though even now he hasn't had enough. As though even now, he wants to go again.

She asks where they're going. He has to think for a moment. He has no fucking idea where he's going, only that he's on a freeway and was driving by muscle memory and instinct.

Then, "My lake house."

[Hilary] She wouldn't have been surprised if Ivan had answered that he had no clue where they were going, they're lucky to still be on the road. She can't see his discomfort, his mingled anger and shame and everything else warring in him as he refuses to let himself apologize, excuse, blame, explain --

whatever it might be.

Hilary is settling back into her seat, leaving him quite literally half out of his clothes, driving with his cock still wet from her mouth. She buckles herself back in, murmuring an alright to his answer. Then she's leaning forward, opening the glove compartment to see if there's some napkins or tissues in there, maybe looking for breathmints, god only knows. She flips down the visor so she can look in the mirror, wiping off an errant smear of that sinful red lipstick from the corner of her mouth,

while Ivan sits there in the driver's seat, his pants and his underwear shoved down and his shirt and vest pushed up and his cock not sure if it's exhausted from what she just did to him or aroused all over again by it.

She reaches into her clutch and takes out her phone. "I'll just tell Antony to drive back home, then. When I'm ready to leave I can just take a cab."

So proper. So calm, while she texts her chaffeur, as though she never leaned over the center console to suck cock, as though she can't still taste Ivan on her tongue.

The phone goes away. She takes out a little tin of cinnamon breathmints and pops one in her mouth, looking out the window.

[Ivan] For once, Ivan doesn't ask her if Antony can be trusted. If someone wouldn't ask questions. If she shouldn't make up a lie. If he shouldn't talk to Antony instead. If, if, this, that -- covering his tracks because that's what he does.

He's just quiet. His eyes flick toward her. She's hunting through his glovebox, which is nearly empty except for the leatherbound little kit that came with the car; a registration slip; a map of the chicago metro area and, in fact, a pair of leather gloves. The kleenex is behind the seats. He reaches back and gets it for her, handing it to her without comment.

While she dabs at her makeup and takes a breathmint, he pulls a few tissues himself and cleans himself up the best he can, sparing only the occasional glance from the road. Then, after she's turned away to look out the window, he tucks himself away. The road is dark. There are few other cars at this hour. He says nothing for some time.

Then, "I can call my driver. Have him take you back, if you'd prefer."

He doesn't think she'll accept. He offers anyway because it's polite, and because -- in some small and ultimately insufficient way -- he wants to make it up to her somehow.

[Hilary] The breathmint really isn't enough. It's something, though. Better than nothing. And she sees no reason to demand that Ivan pull off the freeway and stop at a gas station so she can get a travel bottle of mouthwash and wash her hand. Her right hand. It's resting on her knee, palm up, and she's texting her chaffeur with her left because her own slick is drying on the fingers of her right hand.

The glow illuminates her face a little, a faint golden blue. She puts it away, and a little while later Ivan makes his suggestion, unable to stop himself from trying to help. Trying to cover his tracks, as though she isn't just as practiced at this as he is. Maybe moreso. Not in combat, battle, tracking, but in terms of fucking around on the side,

absolutely.

She looks over at him, amused. "I told Antony I'm riding with other guests to a house party on the north shore. The staff is fairly used to my arriving home from social events by taxi, either quite late or in the morning."

It seems there may be more to it than that. But he promised. So that is the explanation she gives, and perhaps that is even the explanation he forces himself to remain satisfied by.

[Ivan] It's that word, morning, that makes his eyes flick toward her.

Mutable eyes, those. Green in the right light -- direct light, sunlight, bright light. Green, with a rim of amber, wolf-gold, at the pupil. flecks of blue and grey at the edges. Green, but in light like this, or in the shadow of his brow: simply dark. Hard to read.

A moment goes by. Then, "All right." Another mile or so before he speaks again. "We should be there in ten minutes or so. It'll just be us, if that's all right."

[Hilary] The woman in the passenger seat isn't even looking at him when she speaks. She isn't looking at his eyes, trying to see did you hear that? did you get that? which may make it seem like she spoke thoughtlessly. Maybe she did. Hilary doesn't watch her words as well as she should. Not with her lovers, at least, these young men with their hard bodies and changeable hearts that she adores so very much that she can't seem to stop herself.

She examines her nails, and nods absently. "I thought as much." His staff has the day off. She assumes that means whatever household Kin he has, as well.

So they drive on, up along the North Shore. Maybe he takes the fastest route, the one he always takes. Maybe he switches to a more scenic drive on the way. It scarcely matters, and Hilary doesn't comment either way. She reaches over and massages his thigh slightly, seemingly at random, watching the way it flexes as he shifts, feeling it firm up and relax under her palm.

Mmm, is all she says, as inconsequential as ever.

Until they're pulling up to his estate, sprawling and grand and private, right on the lake, right at the water's edge. Hilary has her hands to herself by this point, observing his lake house as it unfurls itself before her eyes. She looks idly curious. Little more.

[Ivan] It's like it so often is. They break each other down. She tears him apart. He brutalizes her. She enjoys it. He's wracked in the aftermath. She's withdrawn back into her placid, peaceful little shell, far far above the turmoil and destruction of raw human emotion.

This time he doesn't ask why. Or how can you live like this. Or -- anything. There's nothing to say between them, and he's lost mostly in his own thoughts, and

her hand comes to his thigh, and he starts a little. Then his hand comes down. He covers her hand for a moment. Neither of them say anything of it. They likely don't even look at each other. Soon enough she withdraws, and he sets his hand over the gearshift.

Ivan does, in fact, take the fastest route. There isn't much scenery to be seen at this hour, anyway -- new moon, dark night. Time for foul deeds, if you believed such things. It turns out Ivan leaves the freeway perhaps only an exit or two from Hilary's usual stop, but then she probably already knows they live in neighboring, affluent, WASP-y areas of town. She seems to spend more time up on the north shore, though, while he spends nearly all his time in the city.

The streets here are quiet and quietly expensive. They pass a tiny downtown area -- a handful of cross-streets, a scattering of obscenely overpriced boutiques. Then it's onward to the winding residential streets, past gates, eastward, lakeward.

The estate Ivan eventually turns into is, as might be expected, sprawling and large. For all that, the manor itself is surprisingly low-key. No stunning work of architectural art, this: no endless panes of glass, modernist angles, minimalistic corners and edges. It's a classic country manor. The driveway ends in a paved roundabout, but Ivan parks in garage. There's room for five cars -- two on one side, three on the other. The other space on his side is empty; one imagines it's saved for the Bugatti, should he somehow end up with both cars here at the same time. The other three spots probably houses his staff's matching Escalades.

The servants' quarters are above the large garage, connected to the rest of the house by a closed gallery on the second floor; an open walkway on the first. There's a side door there. Ivan takes Hilary through the front, though: these little courtesies are second-nature to him. The foyer is dark. When he flicks on the light, the interior of the house turns out to be almost cozy, for all its size. Unexpectedly warm and welcoming, a sharp contrast to the ultra-chic penthouse he spends most his time in. There's a vaguely rustic-mediterranean style to everything: furnishings are mostly in warm-hued stones and woods, bright walls. Plenty of light. Plenty of greenery. There's an air of retreat to this place -- enclosed, warm, private, quiet.

"I'll make us some coffee," Ivan says, shutting the door lightly behind them. "If you want to freshen up, my bathroom is through there, on your left."

[Hilary] The nights are getting colder. The days are still warm, but autumn comes early to the Great Lakes. If Hilary is distressed or relieved by the changing of the seasons, it doesn't seem to register. She has no shawl around her shoulders, but it isn't that cold. All she has to carry in is that little clutch, which probably holds that tiny tin of cinnamon mints, her phone, a few plastic cards, a couple of keys, and whatever freshening-up makeup she needs. It's slender and doesn't bulge, but women's purses are often like clown cars.

Her heels tap on the concrete as they exit the garage together. She isn't awed; his lake house is larger than their house in Wilmette, but god knows how many pieces of property Dion owns around the world, and how little Hilary cares about such comparisons. He has staff, and they're not here. There is no reason on the great green earth why Ivan, a young single man, should need so much room. Or even want it, haunting and cavernous around him every time he comes here.

Parties, maybe. Lots of places to stick hangers-on when they get drunk and not obnoxious enough to stick in a cab, or when they're pretty enough to want to keep around til morning.

For some reason, Hilary reaches over and slips her hand into his when they leave the garage and go to the front door. Any other woman -- any other woman -- and he would have reason to think she's seeing him with rose-colored glasses, her one true love, the man that will save her from her wicked king of a mate. Ivan has no reason to think that has anything to do with her hand slipping so softly into his, lacing their fingers together. She's still holding it, albeit lightly, when they enter and Ivan illuminates the room. She lets go when he turns to close the door, looking around herself, standing quietly with her hands now folded in front of her.

He points her in the direction of the living room with its cozy-looking fireplace, and she says: "You have a lovely home," quietly, like they're in a library. Which is, actually, to their left. She doesn't ask for the grand tour. She walks forward, out of the foyer and into the living room and through it, not turning left to his bathroom but going out to the double doors, grasping one of them, swinging it open, and stepping out onto the veranda.

[Ivan] No gracious thank-you; no cocky I-know at her compliment of his home. Just this, quiet and thoughtful: "Yeah." He tips his head back, looks at the double-height ceiling for a moment. "I don't usually bring people here."

They part immediately after that, so he doesn't have to explain it. She probably wouldn't ask, anyway: why, why, why, why. She doesn't go into his room after all, but out onto the veranda. There's a pool in the back, beyond which the landscape falls away to a stretch of beach, and the lake. There's a half-story beneath her -- the basement and whatever else might be down there lifting the main story a little farther above the ground.

He leaves her to explore as she likes, going into the kitchen himself to make coffee, as he promised. This is one bit of cooking he can do adequately, though it hardly counts. He grinds the beans fresh, then starts the drip -- which coffee brews, Ivan comes out onto the veranda, joining Hilary.

[Hilary] Of course he doesn't. It's big and empty and silent and even though his penthouse is pristine there's a sense that it's lived in, that it's familiar, that it's ...well, that it fits him. This place does not fit Ivan. It fits his budget, though. And isn't that what matters?

They part. The silence is less opressive outside, where the water moves against the shore, where in the distance she can hear the motors of boats, if she strains to listen. It's the Sunday before Labor Day, and everyone has all night and another day to party and recover. And she has tonight to get her fill of Ivan Press, if such is even a possibility.

Even when they fight, insult each other, do what emotional harm is even possible when both of them are shielded by thick armor of not-giving-a-shit, she ends up right back where she likes to be most:

bent over for him, his hand tangled in her hair, his voice muttering filth while she makes him come.


When Ivan comes onto the veranda she's standing on the railing much in the same way as she stood on her balcony at the downtown apartment where she spent most of the afternoon. She closes her eyes when she hears him, and she does hear him, but his footfalls are quieter than any she knows. Her eyes close, and then open again as she turns her head to look at him. Then her body, hands on the wall or rail encircling it, hips resting back against the same.

With a shake of her head she moves her hair off her shoulders, baring her neck to him with a pale flash. No moonlight shines down on the water, or onto her skin. She's breathing more quickly than the seven-times-per-minute that is human average. She's watching him, much like the way she watched him the first time he came down the stairs and kissed her.

"I'm not incapable of caring for people," she whispers, her eyes on his. "I loved my brother. I was very... fond of my caretakers, when I was little." Fond. She struggles over that word, trying to find one that comes somewhere near what she felt in childhood. It's the best she can come up with. "You don't know me. I don't like it when you act like you understand me."

Not twenty minutes ago he had his cock in that soft mouth of hers, fucking up into it til she all but gagged, holding her down while he came, tearing strands of her hair out with his grip. And instead of crying, slapping him, asking him to just let her out, let her go home, she licked him clean with a strange sort of tenderness, like she adored him. Like she adored him because of the way he'd just treated her.

Yet what she doesn't like is when he's nice to her. Or when he tries to understand her, get to know her as a person, treat her with gentleness.

She takes a breath, and they're still quickening, and she's still whispering: "I want you."

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't know how Hilary sees this home of his. He doesn't know that she looks at it and sees big, silent, empty, dark. It's nothing like that to him. If anything, it's the opposite of that. This place is more of a den than the penthouse will ever be. The penthouse suits his flash, true. It suits his lifestyle. It suits his need to be high, high above, to look down on the world, to live in a crystalline castle. It suits his position: a figure of envy.

But the animal part in him, small and often-repressed as it is, doesn't always like the room there. The open spaces. The nonexistent walls. Sometimes he gets sick of feeling so fucking exposed. Sometimes he wants closed spaces. Warmth in the furnishings. Something less polished, less glossy, less perfect: stone fireplaces, thick rugs, wood-paneled rooms, a secluded house nestled deep in trees, surrounded by grass, set at the edge of the lake far from the city.

He likes it here. It's a retreat. He doesn't spend much time here, but when he does he doesn't bring anyone else home with him. It's not where he entertains. It's not a place for parties, for others, for hospitality. There are far too many bedrooms for him to occupy, but none of them are guest rooms. He feels like owns this place, every square inch,

which is curiously not quite true of the penthouse.


Out on the veranda, Hilary turns to face him. He's looking over the lake, quiet now, relaxed in his own territory. The breeze is cool on his skin. When she speaks he turns to look at her, his eyes dark in this light. He didn't ask anything this time. She tells him anyway, and he listens, silent now.

"I'm not trying to act like I understand you," he says at length. "I'm trying to understand you. But when you give up so little, I make assumptions based on what I see and what I know from my own perspective." A small pause. "I'm sorry if it's wrong. Or hurtful."

She draws a breath. I want you, she whispers. He turns to face her a little more fully. There's another pause, and then he holds his hand out to her.

[Hilary] He knows so little of her childhood, her background, that if he dwells there it's maddening. Caretakers. Her brother. Austere Howl. She's an exceptional and obviously trained cook. She moves with equally exceptional, obviously trained grace. It's so much easier to try and puzzle out what is in the here and now. The way she fucks, the way she sounds when she comes, the way she kisses him, the fact that she's here in what is a human-seeming territory for him to roam through.

Hilary wouldn't be surprised if he walked the halls here in lupus sometimes, leaving scratches on the flooring and curling up in front of the fireplaces. But Hilary wouldn't be surprised if she went downstairs and found the largest collection of Cubs memorabilia in the world. Hilary wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to take her back outside and fuck her somewhere in the landscaping, half-covered by ferns and honeysuckle, digging his fingernails into her and leaving dirt-streaked scratches over her back and along her hips, bruising her breasts with his teeth.

But it isn't about surprising her. It's about how this place feels to her, all big and dark and full of rooms like caves. Closed doors, long hallways, rooms above and rooms below. Never knowing if you're alone or not. Never knowing if someone's going to be able to hear you in such a 'cozy' place if you wake up screaming, if your bed is soaked in urine, if you're even really awake when you're upright in bed wailing like that, seeing things in your dreams that you can't escape from even when you open your eyes.

At least in a place like his penthouse such a scream would echo, but Hilary doesn't think in terms like that. She doesn't think about it at all. She just knows that this place feels oppressive to her, vaguely frightening, even as it feels intimately and utterly familiar. She is resigned to it, as she is resigned to the same feeling in her own house. She knows almost nothing else.

Right now she's not afraid, and she doesn't feel lonely. Loneliness isn't something Hilary particularly struggles with. She goes out alone, she eats alone, she shops alone, without ever feeling desperation for it.

Right now she wants him, and he offers her his hand. Hilary looks at it, then looks at him. She doesn't understand.

[Ivan] She looks like she doesn't understand. It takes enormous confidence, enormous self-assurance, to be able to keep his hand outstretched like that. To not read it as rejection. Anyone else, and that wouldn't be a problem at all for Ivan. With Hilary, though, he's never certain. He can never be certain.

He keeps his hand out nonetheless. And he says, quietly -- "I want to take you to bed." A breath drawn. "So I can fuck you again."

[Hilary] Her eyes track back up his arm. Those eyes are darker than his. In the right light they're warm and friendly, but so is her smile when she shows it. Without even moonlight they're nearly black, like doll's eyes in pale porcelain face. She breathes in and goes back to him while coffee drips down in the kitchen, soon to burn. Her body flows up against his like a wave lapping at the shoreline, crashing, crushing, arms around his neck and the entire length of her given over to press against him.

Hilary's lust is such a sudden thing, so overwhelming when it hits her like this, til it's everything she knows, everything she can think of. And right now all she can think of is how to get him inside her. How to get naked and let him hold her down with his hands or just the weight of his body, slamming that cock into her the way he does.

She shudders against him, moving her mouth to his neck to lay a sucking, biting kiss there. When she groans, it's a soft thing, and when she starts to try and rub her body against him, it's wanton, thoughtless, almost whorish.

[Ivan] Her mouth is at his neck for only a few seconds. His skin is smooth there, as it is on his jaw, on his cheek. He's the sort of man who could go two days without shaving and barely have bristle. He's the sort of creature she seems to love so fucking much. Love fucking so much. Golden and lean and young and smooth, and

beneath that sunlit facade, capable of such brutality.

His mouth is on hers, then. He catches her mouth and he catches her face between his hands, kisses her so hard, so suddenly, groaning into her mouth. Like he didn't just fuck that mouth. Like he didn't just come in her mouth. Like he didn't scrape her raw with his questions, earlier; fight with her, shout at her, all but turn her out of his home.

Nothing makes sense when he's with her. So he stops trying to follow the logic. There is no logic, but there is this: sudden, raw need. He wanted her again the moment he saw her out on his veranda, looking over the black lake. He wanted to bend her over the balustrade and pound her right there, standing behind her, fucking her so hard her cries scattered out over the lawn and the pool and the lake and receded into the distance.

That's not what he does, though. He kisses her on the veranda -- mauls her face, really -- but then he's pulling her toward the door, in through the living room, into the master suite. High ceilings in here, too. Airy, bright by day. It's possible all Hilary sees is the darkness, huge and looming. Big windows that let in the lake view and the sunlight. It's possible all she sees is the blackness outside. He has her dress unzipped before she's at the edge of the bed. By the time he's pushing her down on it, down on her back, he's pulling her dress off, peeling her panties off, pulling her shoes off and letting them thump to the floor.

He strips her utterly naked before he even starts on his own clothes. He turns on the bedside lamp, and the glow makes even her pale skin look golden. He lays her out across his bed and raises her knees up and spreads her legs so he can look at her, so he can see her cunt growing wet as he whips his vest off, undoes all the buttons of his shirt, undoes his belt and his fly for the second time within the hour.

This is a murmur: "Do you want me to tie you down?"

[Hilary] The reason they're here has a lot to do with how distracted Ivan was while driving. He didn't think about it when he took the freeway. He couldn't think, period. They aren't here because he wanted to bring her back to his den and make slow, sweet love to her in his big, warm bed. The whole reason they're seeing each other (over and over again) today is because they like to fuck.

Now, it may be true that he's going to get attached, and he's going to want to keep her here all night, hold her while she sleeps, see her when the sun comes up through the spacious windows of his bedroom. It may be true that he wants her not just because her cunt is so tight and so wet but because he wants her as his own, wants to possess her somehow. It may be true that Ivan is just as sick as she is, and that she really wasn't insulting him when she said so,

but just saying I get that.

They kiss as though he didn't fuck her mouth in the car ride over here. They kiss like they can't stop, which is the truth. Ivan knows damn well she wouldn't stop him if he turned her around and bend her hard over the stone balustrade, pushing her skirt up and yanking her underwear aside in order to hammer his cock into her. He knows she wouldn't stop him even if it hurt, if it bruised, if the rock scraped her, if she jarred her ankle trying to keep herself upright. He knows she wouldn't stop him, and that is what terrifies him when he takes her.

That, and not knowing what he would let himself do to her. How far he'd go.

So he pulls her inside, their hands on each other. She loses her shoes somewhere in the living room, dancing out of them with a little kick, a step, moving back against him and unbuttoning his vest while he's grabbing for her zipper, her mind and her eyes not on the surrounding darkness but thinking, seeing almost nothing at all. When Ivan pushes her down -- doesn't lower her gently, doesn't ease her onto the covers, but grabs her and shoves her onto the mattress where he plans to fuck her -- she breathes in sharply, arching her back to lift her hips so he can strip her dress off more easily.

Her bra is strapless. Black, or close enough to it that it looks black right now. Her panties are... nonexistent. Funny. Earlier she was wearing white lingerie, she was walking around his penthouse without anything under her clothes, and now he's got a single bra with just a few little hooks in back to contend with. It doesn't last. It comes off, too, and then there's nothing but her

and her cunt, laid out for him as he opens her legs up for himself, tilting his head this way and that to see her through the shadows.

Hilary puts her feet over his shoulders. She rubs her leg on him while he gets his shirt off, undoes his belt, starts to push his jeans away. She brings her legs together, obscuring his view of her pussy, rubbing her thighs together to try and get some friction on her cunt. He murmurs something to her from the darkness.

Ivan may as well strike her with lightning. She moans, her body lifted up on her elbows, her head tipping back, hair spilling down to the duvet, lust ripping through her like a jolt not unlike pain.

[Ivan] Ivan turns his head as her ankles slide over his shoulders. He bites at the inside of her calf, sucks at the fine skin there. God, but she's so fine: like porcelain, like silk, like something expensive and fragile and precious and

just look at her, rubbing her thighs together to pleasure herself because he's still undressing; he's still stripping his shirt off and pushing his jeans down and stepping out of them.

Her answer isn't even verbal. It's just a noise, just a reaction that has him bending down to her, lithe and limber-spined, leaning over her with his sleek broad shoulders and his narrow hips, his cock rubbing against her cunt through his boxer briefs and his mouth on her neck and on her breasts, hard, sucking at her tits like if he doesn't devour her just like this he couldn't survive another second.

Then he's pushing himself up again. "Stay there," he says, soft, a command nonetheless. He goes into his closet. When he comes out he has neckties in hand, because apparently he doesn't keep those toys here; he tosses them onto the bed, onto her body, as he strips out of his underwear.

This is the second time he's tied her up. He's quicker about it this time, less patient. He knots one tie to each wrist, then grasps her by the hips and shifts her lengthwise on the bed. Then Ivan's kneeling on the mattress between her legs, securing the knots; leaning over her to tie the other end to the bedposts. When he's finished her arms are spread wide. He slides a pillow under her head. He can smell her arousal, smell the wetness between her thighs. It makes his eyes gleam. It makes him so fucking hard all over again, and he says nothing as he slides her feet over his shoulders again, one at a time.

[Hilary] This is no playful fuck. And no matter how they might laugh or snap their teeth at each other or any of that, ultimately it never is. It taps into something too dark to be play, even wolfish play. Playful is something Ivan gets with his foolish little girls, with his starved swans, with the women who sense that he's a little bit dangerous, who sense that he doesn't need them, and are all the more attracted to him for it. They don't make him frightened of himself. They don't make him confused. Shaken. They don't push him up against the border between pleasure and revulsion and make him enjoy being there...

at least for as long as the pleasure lasts.

Hilary doesn't help him undress. He never knows if she's going to or not. If she's going to take off her own clothes or ask him to take them off for her or if he'll be able to wait that long before stripping them off. She lays back as he comes over her, reaching up with her arms to pull him closer. It's not tender. She holds onto him like a drowning victim, legs sliding down to wrap around his waist, hips lifting so she can rub herself back against him. And she's moaning like he's already fucking her, like he's already thrusting into her pussy with hard, fast slams of his cock.

Which is to say: moaning in sharp, bright gasps, helpless and whimpering cries against the curves of his ears while he sucks her pert little breasts into his mouth and eats at them. Her cunt leaves wetness on his boxer-briefs. They're a tangle of limbs, gold and ivory, and they could fuck just like this but Ivan doesn't.

He tells her to stay, and she gives a small, plaintive sound in answer. While he's getting his neckties she's rolling over, writhing on the bed, wriggling her arm between the covers and her stomach. Her face is turned to one side, mouth open, panting against the duvet as she plays with herself. Again.

Ivan's ties land across her lower back, over her ass, and she moans at the way they fall as though she finds even that slight sensation pleasurable. This is his view of her, as he yanks down his underwear and socks: laid out, hips writhing, her ass slightly lifted, offering flashes of the sight of her fingers stroking between her lips, teasing her clit.

When he's ready to tie her up he has to grab her and flip her over. She keeps trying to touch herself, keeps trying to touch his cock as though to guide to to her pussy, til he has to grab her arms and hold them down, kneel on her if necessary, cock rubbing over her breasts as he wraps the neckties around each wrist, knots them, pushing her up so he can tie them to the bedposts. He can smell her arousal. There's traceries of her slick here and there on him: forearms, thighs, stomach, anywhere she touched him or managed to rub herself on him. Even when she's tied down her legs are free and she's doing that again, rubbing her legs together trying to get some pleasure, unable to stop,

and the whole time she's making those noises, like she's lost language but has to communicate to him vocally somehow that she's ready, that she's ready for him to fuck her, that she wants it.

The tenderness of giving her a pillow is almost laughable. But Hilary doesn't laugh. She moans when he opens up her legs again, guiding them up his chest and over his shoulders.

Her head turns and for the first time in a long time she looks up at him, meeting his eyes, her groans softening to pants while she looks at him. She's trying to get herself onto him, making her slender arms tug at the neckties. The knots aren't soft. Maybe he can guess that she likes the rubbing of the fabric against her flesh. Maybe he can guess how she feels about friction burns. He knows the way she screams when he slaps his hand so hard across her ass it leaves a red mark, how wet it makes her all over his cock. But it's possible that she's never, not before he's actually been inside her, looked at him like this and just whimpered, the way she does now:

"Please. Please, Ivan. Tease me."

[Ivan] The sound he makes -- that short, near-silent exhale -- could be a laugh. Could be a pant. He looks down at her, watches her writhe and squirm under him, watches her move and rub and

relax, if only for a while, if only slightly. Their eyes meet. Lamplight leaves both their eyes so dark, unreadable. She's whimpering for him, begging him to tease her, and his eyes blink once, slowly, animal.

He has such superb, flawless balance. Kneeling over her, sitting on his heels, he bends to her. Never puts his hands down for balance at all. His hands are on himself, cupping his balls, stroking his cock, stroking himself nice and slow and easy while he bends to her and closes his eyes and sucks kisses along her lowermost arch of her ribcage; the flat taut expanse of her stomach

where even now the next generation of heroes might be growing.

At her navel he pauses, nipping at her thin skin, licking over her flesh. Then he leans back, spine straightening. He's so hard his cock stands upright even when he lets it go, reaches for her with his hands instead. He's looking at her cunt now, staring at it rapt like he's never seen her before, like he's never seen her get so fucking wet before, and she can feel his fingers long and graceful on her body, sliding thumbs over her lips, drawing them apart, drawing her open to reveal

that sweet, tight little cunt he loves so much.

"There you are," he whispers, like he's just found her again. At last. There's a little smile on his face, lopsided, one side of his mouth turning up. He might not be aware of it at all. He draws a slow breath, and then he shifts his knees forward, rocks his hips forward, holds her open to him while he slides the shaft of his cock over her

and over her, and over her, lightly, smoothly, rubbing against her without giving her the heavy, grinding friction she craves so badly.

"That's it." Nothing but whispers, as though somehow this room, this light, this fuck has become holy. "Get me wet. Slick me up for that greedy little cunt. Yeah, that's it."

[Hilary] The moan Hilary releases when he touches her with his cock is almost a wail. The fact that he kisses her body and touches her pussy with almost no care for what pleasure it grants her is erotic enough -- to her -- but ultimately she wants his cock. She told him simply that she likes how he uses it, how he fucks her with it, how it feels when he gives it to her. A shudder goes through her, hard and vibratory.

No blindfold, this time. He can see every spark of reaction when it hits her, see the way she looks up at him with something like adoration. It's mad that this should make her feel anything for him at all, that the only time she seems to give a fuck is when he's tying her up and using her, striking her, biting her, turning her over and pounding her so hard it becomes a genuine risk that he's going to seriously harm her. But he knows she's mad. She's a Silver Fang, and her blood is too pure for sanity.

Hilary arches her back as he rubs on her. No matter how he folds her she doesn't seem to kink up or tense; her legs over his shoulders, her legs pushed til her knees are against her chest, nothing seems to make her uncomfortable. And he'd know. Even when she's enjoying the discomfort he can tell when he's pushed her against some limit; Ivan has yet to find the limit of Hilary's range of motion. She's supple as a switch.

Can be just as punishing.

What she says now is a thoughtless chorus of whimpers and murmurs, oh, baby and oh my god and ah --!

but her face is turned to the side again, her eyes closed as she's overcome with pleasure coiling and twisting up from her cunt through the trembling muscles of her abdomen, the taut flesh of her breasts with those pink, perked nipples.

[Ivan] There's something relentless about this. Tease me, she begged, and that's exactly what he does. Something merciless about it all: about how slow he goes now, and the way he presses his chest against her legs, and the way he rubs himself over her again and again with smooth rolls of his hips, just the way he might if he were fucking her,

except he's not fucking her. He's holding her pussy over and fucking his cock over it, on and on, seconds unspooling to minutes, minutes to minor eternities while she twists beneath her, lays her head to the side, moans like she can't even think straight anymore.

His teeth on the inside of her shin brings her back. He bites her leg where it lays over his shoulder, not gently. When she looks at him his hands trace up her legs, thigh to ankle, then down again. "Look at me," he says. He's shrugging her legs from his shoulders, setting her feet on the mattress again, spreading her open. "Look at me, baby. You want to watch this."

His free hand is on her body. Palm on her lower abdomen, thumb over her clit. He rubs her in slow, slow circles while he rubs his hand up and down his cock, pumping it a few times as though to prime it for her cunt. Then Ivan shifts, his weight coming forward and off his heels a little. He guides his cock to her opening and

-- this is so fucking slow, too --

starts to press into her. Gives her the head of his cock. Draws back. Slides into her again, a little deeper this time, lips parting with the sensation, brow furrowing. Yeah, he breathes. Open that cunt up for me. Open up for me, and

stopping again, half inside her, feeling her pulse around him, sucking his lower lip between his teeth for a second before he's withdrawing.

Ivan slaps his cock against her clit. He's hot and wet, so fucking wet from her already, and he tells her so. Mutters about how fucking wet she is. How messy she's made him all over again, and so soon after she swallowed this cock and licked it clean. Mutters about that sweet, messy cunt, and how he was going to fucking wreck it, fuck her until she couldn't remember her own name. Keep her tied down and pinned down and getting fucked, getting used, over and over, all fucking night, until he was done with her.

He's stroking himself again. He's sliding his thumb up along her slit, catching her slick on the ball of his thumb. He sucks it off his thumb, sucks it off the heel of his hand, and then, holding her eyes, reaches down to draw her open once more.

"Take this cock for me," he whispers: he starts penetrating her all over again. This time, he doesn't stop.

[Hilary] Morning, she'd said, slyly slipping the mention into her speech without looking to him for his reaction. There had been one. He wanted her to stay til morning on his boat, wanted her all night. Wanted her in his penthouse while she slept, told her he wasn't interested in joining her whether she fucked him or not, held her anyway. Hilary knows. It infuriates him that she knows how -- what was the word he'd used? -- fascinated he is by her, how easily he could become fixated on her. It enrages him when he's reminded that the likelihood of Hilary feeling even that much in return is so small.

And then they get like this. He gets her in bed or on his couch or in some hotel, bends her over and makes her scream for it, and she's so ...well. It's what she said at his penthouse. Like this, she's his. His and his only, for as long as this madness lasts.

No wonder he prolongs it. No wonder he takes his time with her, wrecking her, owning her like he did in the car on the way here, like he did in the cabin of his yacht. No wonder it's so tempting to take full, utter advantage of the surrender she offers him, and punish her for all those times she's out of his reach.

A wail of pleasure leaves her when he bites down on her leg, waking her from the opium-like haze he's put her in with his murmuring, with his cock, with the silk neckties digging into her wrists. Hilary doesn't first realize that he wants her eyes on his. He strokes her legs and she's still writhing like before, now with a bite mark in her leg, til he demands that she looks at him. Says it again, putting her legs down. That gets her to turn her head, opening her eyes to him, her mouth open for every panting breath she takes. She meets his eyes and whimpers softly when

he calls her baby.

Almost obediently, she looks down her own body, watching him as he touches her, watches his hand move as she feels that movement turning her body to something molten, something sweet. She gasps at the way he jerks his cock, trying to press her hips towards him so she can take it, so she can have it. And he gives it to her. Just a little. Then a little more. By the time he stops halfway in her cunt she's shaking, clenching wildly around him, her head back and her hips bucking.

The sound she makes when he pulls out again is despairing, eyes flying open. Every time he slaps his cock on her she jerks, the ties tugging on the bedposts silently. At least, it seems they're silent. She's whining for him now and it's hard to hear anything else, even the water outside the windows, and this bed is too fine to creak.

"Baby, fuck me," she begs, in a whisper, because he's talking about her sucking his cock and how hungry she was for his cum, what a hot little slut she is, how hard he's going to fuck that pussy of hers, how he's going to keep her on this bed and tied to those posts so he can just come back and fuck her, use her again and again, at his leisure. It makes her tighten up, as though she's on the verge of orgasm when he's not even inside her.

And then he is

and then she does,

and that alone is mindbending, is insane, that he starts to push into her and she comes like that, is coming as he slides his cock deep into her cunt, welcoming him with those quivering, saturating clenches.

[Ivan] "Oh my god," and it's a groan, a rush of words as he feels her coming like she's shaking apart on him, pulling at him, closing around him, clenching and clutching around him as he grabs her by the hips and

suddenly it's not slow anymore. He sinks into her, one hard thrust, plants himself inside her as her orgasm rolls through her. He comes down over her. He drags her hips up against his. He holds her just like that, grinding against her, moaning against her shoulder as she's arching and writhing under him.

When it's over, Ivan doesn't wait. He pushes himself up on his hands, looking down over her body -- looking at the sheen of the lamplight off her sweat, looking at her breasts lifting and falling with every breath, looking at her stomach trembling as the last ripples of her orgasm flash through her. In another instant he's doing as she asks, doing as he's told, doing as she wants, doing as he needs,

fucking her, pounding her against the mattress in heavy, deep strokes, slamming into her like he wants to make her scream.

[Hilary] Perhaps the fact that she comes like a short fuse being lit is what keeps him from teasing her any longer. Perhaps if she hadn't he would be doing this anyway, meant to do it as soon as he started giving it to her, but

this is how it is.

She comes, her hands clenching into fists because she can't grab at him, clutch his back while he sends her over the edge just by pushing into her, and he groans as he sinks hard and fast into her, holding himself there. Which is strangely generous, all told, the way he holds his cock in her and just feels her orgasm rip through their bodies, lets her have it, lets her go, just grinds on her cunt but otherwise

gives her this.

And in a way he folds to her, burying his cries in her shoulder. If she could move her arms she'd hold him there, push her fingers into his hair and cradle him against her breast while she comes, back arched and torso tight, taking him deeper with every pulse, every wave of pleasure that goes through her. It goes on for awhile. Perhaps that's shocking. It isn't one of those quick, hard little orgasms he knows she has sometimes but one of those melting, unfurling ones that seem to roll on and on forever inside her. And perhaps that's surprising, but it goes on and on and by the time it's over she is sweating, is glistening, and looking at him

like this:

Her eyes open as he pushes himself up over her, open like the moon being unveiled by clouds. They both know that at this point there's going to be no telling without some rather invasive testing whose child it is, should she turn out to be pregnant. He's fucked her so many times since she went off contraceptives. Not as many as Dion. That seems like it's going to be changing. But she looks at him like she knows him, and like he knows her, and she never looks at him like that when they aren't

this way, together.

She breathes in with a tremulous timbre just before he gives her that first hammering thrust of his hips, and the force of it sends a cry out of her. And again, and again, and again, til she's screaming, til she's tipping her head back and holding onto the stretched-out neckties, her knuckles as white as her cheeks are pink.

[Ivan] Sometimes one has to wonder if Ivan's even aware, if it's even made it through his head, that Hilary's not on contraceptives anymore. That he really needs to use protection. It's not even that fucking hard. He has boxes and boxes of condoms at the penthouse. Ribbed ones, nubbed ones, colored ones, flavored ones, ultra-thin, warming, plain old durexes. He even has wallet cards that pack two condoms for emergencies and unexpected hookups.

And then he tumbles in bed with her, with this one woman he can't have, whose pregnancy by his seed would be utter unmitigated disaster, and the word condom never even crosses his mind.

He's fucking her now, plowing her against the bed, going at her so hard after that initial, deep penetration, after he held himself inside her and let her have that first endless orgasm. First -- only it's not. This isn't the first time he's had her today. This isn't the first time his lean, hard cock has flashed into her cunt and out again, slick and wet, only to plunge into her again. This isn't the first time he's fucked cries and screams out of her, fucked her until her slick was slathering onto his balls, slipping down her thighs. Fucked her until she's wild and clutching at whatever the fuck she can, letting her cries go in the air because there's no pillow to bite, no cushion.

This is, however, the first time he's fucked her while facing her like this for some time now. The first time he's fucked her while braced over her, his lower body slamming down into hers; atop her and taking her and making her receiving him just like this, almost savage, almost brutally hard. He's grunting and groaning on every stroke. He's pounding her and the house is empty and maybe that's why he doesn't care if she screams like that, but she knows that's not true. He'd fuck her just like this if all eight or ten of his staff were here. Were outside the fucking door. He'd fuck her just like this

even if her husband was outside, waiting to be let in.

[Hilary] If she could grab his face and pull him down to kiss her she would. She wants to kiss him so much when he fucks her, wants him passionate and biting and destroying the sometimes illusory boundaries between one body and another. She keeps gasping though, doesn't ask for it the way she asked for him to tease her or fuck her or let her suck his cock, and moans when he gives her what he does.

They fuck like it's been days instead of hours, weeks. But after they fought, after she took herself off his cock and walked away instead of letting him crush her close to his body, after she went silent and distant instead of having even a few short, precious moments where she turned towards him and wanted him near, it may as well have been since ...well, since before that ill-advised fuck with Dion at the door, waiting to be let in.

In that sense it's been a long, long time since he's had Hilary to the point that she's left weeping and quiet, clinging to him as though she really does need something about this, need his brutality with her, to just feel the way other people do without having to try so goddamn hard all the time.

Now his name is coming out of her mouth and she's bouncing against the bed with how hard he's fucking her, slammed into the thick bedspread and soft mattress again and again and again like he can't stop himself, and probably wouldn't if he could. There is a point when she stops trying to fuck him back. When she just receives him, takes it, and that is the same point

when her cries get louder.

[Ivan] She likes the way he moves, those smooth liquid flexes of his body, the hard slam of his hips. She likes the way he uses his cock. She likes the way he fucks her, and most of all, she likes it when he gives it to her hard, takes her, uses her, acts like he doesn't even give a fuck if she comes or not, enjoys it or not,

is hurting or not.

That's what makes this so dangerous. Such a slippery fucking slope, because it seems Hilary can't get enough unless she's pressed up against some razor edge of danger, and Ivan can't quite stop himself from taking her there. And himself. Look at him now, bearing down over her, his hands planted on either side of her ribcage and his body slamming into hers. In the lamplight the look on his face is clear: so intense, so driven, so focused it's almost indistinguishable from cruelty. Maybe it is indistinguishable. Maybe he's fucking her like this

because he's angry at her, or what she does to him; because he hates that he loves this, hates her for making him like this; because he can't find this anywhere else

and that's what makes it so fucking good.


He's hammering her. Their bodies slap together. There's sweat on his brow, sweat slicking the sides of his face, sweat on his ribs, sweat down his back. He's not far now, and she can tell, has fucked him often enough to recognize the set to his jaw, the grimaces, the groans, the way he breathes. He's so fucking close and he's rearing up to wrap his hands over her thighs, to pull her against every thrust, and --

just like that, he stops.

One last slam of his cock into her and then a hard stop. He catches his breath. He sits back on his heels, his cock buried deep, jumping and pulsing of its own accord as though it had a will of its own, wanted to finish, wanted to come inside her. Ivan swipes sweat off his brow against his bicep. Slaps his hand against her flank, her ass, so quick and careless it seems an afterthought, and then twice more, harder each time, calling her a fucking whore the last time.

He grabs her hips and pulls her off his cock. He shifts her up the bed, moves her until her back is to the headboard and she's sitting; raises her knees, opens her legs again, moves between them and lifts her, pulls her onto his thighs as he kneels before her. He's rough when he enters her this time, fast and hard, all at once. He bites her shoulder to tattoo a groan into her skin.

Then he's fucking her again, slamming her against the headboard this time, pounding her with her body close to his. Her knees are over his forearms. His hands are laced behind the small of her back. There's very little room for her to move like this; very little room for her to do anything except

take it. Take what he gives her, and like it.

[Hilary] It's one thing to be with a pretty, young, clear-eyed man whose body is lean and hard and beautiful. It's one thing to beg such a young man to spank her, to pull her hair, to bite her, to give it to her nice and hard. They hold back, those boys so convinced of their own virility and strength that they feel like the sons of gods, immortals, princes of earth and sky. They hold back, convinced that if they really let go she'll never, ever do that, oh god, do it again. She'll never them them near her priceless little cunt again, and they want it so badly that they hold back,

and she never lets them near her again. And they think: I hurt her. I went too far. They go to the next woman and they're afraid of themselves, they're afraid of the women they bed, they're afraid of the sort of sex they wish they'd been brave enough to try, they're afraid that they wanted it, they're disgusted that even if they didn't want it, she made them like it.


There are those boys, and there is Ivan, who would understand all of it. Who would know all those feelings and yet gives himself over so much more readily, who realizes that she doesn't want him to hold back, that the harder he fucks her and the more he hurts her the better her orgasms are, the more opened she is to him. So he fucks her like that. Uses that hot little cunt til wetness all but drenches his lower half because she's so fucking horny, god damn.

And Hilary moans for more, jostled on the bed while he drives that hard cock of his into her again, and again, and again. She catches glimpses of him, snarling, grimacing, sweat dripping off his face, his hair, making him as slippery as that pussy of hers, hating her, loving it, losing track of the difference between those two. And getting so close to his own orgasm, and hers,

that when he stops she screams.


It's the way some women would scream when struck, when wounded, shot in the heart. It's a ragged, strangled cry of something like agony when he stops. Her cunt starts to clench on his cock almost immediately, as though the very act of stopping like that has her verging on orgasm again. She bucks againsthim while he holds her thighs, wiping sweat off his brow. She dissolves against him, gasping, writhing her hips in circles to drag her clit over his shaft, panting like

a fucking whore. He starts to hit her. And she groans, arching hard, her body tightening up as she comes again, sweaty and pale and pink where he hits her, pink in her cheeks, pink on her tight little breasts, pink as her cunt is where it squeezes him over and over. She's right in the middle of it when he yanks his cock out of her, it's not quite over, she's not coming down and so she cries out again, another shattered groan.

Hilary's shaking all over as Ivan moves her. She's limp, letting him manipulate her body like he had to know she would. Her head bounces slightly against the headboard once, because she's barely even holding herself up. She's delirious with want, finally managing to open her eyes as she looks at him, as he spreads her legs open, as he lifts her up so she can get back inside her.

"Ivan..." she whispers, and then he shoves his cock into her cunt and bites her, and she moans into his ear, loudly.

Hilary tries to touch him. Her arms are still outstretched but she tries. It does no good and eventually she gives up, abandoning herself to what he does to her. Whether he keeps her from hitting the headboard too hard. Whether he lets her come again. Whether he protects her, when he has no right to, and she doesn't want him to.

Yet.

Ivan, Ivan, Ivan she's moaning in his ear, softer, his name hitching in her throat, hiccuping in time to the slams of his hips. Come in me. Come in my pussy, baby. Baby, god, let me make you happy.

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't want to.

He doesn't want to protect her. He doesn't want to keep her from slamming her head against the headboard, or the wall. He doesn't want to take her in when her husband has made her home utterly intolerable to her. He didn't want to fuck her then and he doesn't want to fuck her now. He doesn't want to fuck her like this, the way she wants or even needs him to; he doesn't want to hurt her, he doesn't want to please her, he doesn't want her to feel good and find release and find whatever it is that she gets out of these encounters. He doesn't want any of this, and

those are all lies.


She never says his name like that when he's not inside her. When he hasn't broken her down and rebuilt her for his own pleasure; made her something to slake his lust in. When he hasn't fucked her this hard, this thoroughly, this selfishly. She says his name like that now, moaning it, over and over again, telling him to come inside her, begging for it, begging him to let her make him happy.

That, more than anything else, breaks down the last barriers left in him. The sounds he's muffling against her shoulder become harsh. Ragged. Something like desperate.

In those last few seconds he rises onto his knees, lifting her off the bed, pinioning her against the headboard and the wall, suspending her with one arm around her waist and the other

coming behind her head, a cushion between her skull and the wall. He holds her like that, lifts his mouth from her shoulder, and his eyes are closed now. When he kisses her, he kisses her blindly, his fingers pulling at the back of her head, his mouth open to bury the sounds he's making inside her

even as he's burying his cock inside her. Even as he's slamming into her one more time, hard enough to make her gasp, hard enough to make him groan, hard enough that when he comes, he comes deep inside her, fills her, shudders into chaos inside her and against her.


Afterward he stays inside her for a time. Afterward he's shivering, his hips still bucking against hers now and then, his mouth opening to gasp against her lips, her chin, her neck. She can't hold him; he doesn't even know if she would. He holds her, though, his arms wrapped tight around her now, clasping her against his body as though if he let go now he could tear something open in himself.

It's moments on end before he can breathe smoothly again. Moments on end before he can open his eyes again, before his heart reaches some sort of acceptable pace.

As soon as it does, as soon as he can think again: he pulls away from her. He loosens his arms, draws out of her, lets space open between them. Leaves her, and maybe it's petulance, or cruelty, or maybe it's simply the memory of this afternoon, of what she wanted then. Ivan looks dazed; shattered. It doesn't matter. He gets off the bed, picks his underwear off the ground, and uses it to clean her slick, his cum, off of himself. Drops it back on the floor, after.

He looks at Hilary then. He observes her a moment, and then -- if she looks like she might understand what he's saying -- he speaks to her. His tone is level, and apart from the faintest hint of unsteadiness in his breathing, calm.

"I'm going to get a glass of water. Do you want one?"

[Hilary] This time, not for the first time, and not that it matters, they come together.

For Hilary it's again, it's so many times in one day she can barely move, she can barely stand having him inside her even for a few seconds after her orgasm stops thrashing through her, making her tip her head back and scream while Ivan bites down harder and makes those rougher, more desperate noises. She comes hard and tight this time, wracked around him while he's holding her crushed to his body. She shudders and gasps as he kisses her, and she's lost count of how many orgasms she's had today, and how many of them have been due in part to this man.

Her cheeks are wet. But then, perhaps he knew they would be. Knew she'd weep from this, overcome, overwhelmed, unable to retreat from the shattering chaos he finds inside her. Creates, inside her.

Afteward he stays inside her, shivering, and she doesn't hold him, can't, but she bends her head to his and is nuzzling him the way it seems impossible that she ever would. Hilary rubs her face over his hair and his cheek, gasping with him, panting with him. She leaves tear-tracks tracing over his face, mingling with sweat. The two are impossible to tell apart as they cool.

Minutes unspool between them with Hilary tangled up and tied up and cradling him with her head since she can't wrap her arms around him. He holds onto her and she holds him with her legs as best she can and

the fact that her head is bowed to his like a swan's makes it all the more tearing when he unfolds from her, pushes away from her, and pulls out of her. Hilary gasps, though not really because it's too soon. Her eyes are opening as he withdraws, dazed and not meeting her eyes. She looks at him, shaking, watching him clean himself off, her eyes gleaming wetly. She's staring at him when he looks at her.

Her lips are together as she slowly nods, part again as she takes a few shaking breaths, as though she's on the verge of weeping again. "Please."

[Ivan] That's not what he does after all.

He takes a step back. There's that. One step toward the door, the kitchen, the glass of water he wants for himself and offered to bring to her out of some superficial cold courtesy. Then he stops, and then there's a pause, and then

he comes back to her. He remembers the last time he tied her down. He remembers undoing the straps and buckles then just as quickly as he undoes the knots now, even though these have pulled almost inextricably tight after she's tugged and writhed against them for so long. Ivan gets them loose, though, because he's deft and clever and quick and so fucking good with his hands, with his fingers, with manual dexterity.

He gets them loose and he takes just a moment to hold her wrists in his, to rub his thumbs gently over the friction burns. Then he's wrapping his arms around her and lifting her into his arms, and the quickness of it, the smoothness of that lift, has more to do with her lightness than his strength.

He sits at the edge of the bed. He holds her against him like that, on his lap, her knees to either side of his hips, his arms wrapped around her and his face bowed to her shoulder, and he thinks to himself,

not for the first time,

what am i doing. what the fuck am i doing?

[Hilary] She startles. He probably can't think of a time he's seen Hilary startle. She doesn't expect this. The way he turns away from that step towards the kitchen and comes to her, back onto the bed, naked and covered in sweat and the smell of their sex. She doesn't expect the way he unties her so suddenly that it almost hurts more to have the neckties loosened and removed than it did to have them digging into her. Her skin is reddened and indeed scraped a little raw, but not even as bad as a rugburn.

Hilary gasps softly as Ivan hauls her onto his lap and holds her there. She's sore. She wants to close her legs together and curl up as though to protect her cunt now, which didn't seem a concern before. But she lets him. She trembles wildly as she straddles him, tucking her arms between their chests like she's cold, breathing more harshly than she was a moment ago. Raggedly.

Almost like desperation.

She puts her head on his shoulder, too, hiding her face there in the dark.

[Ivan] Perhaps for a moment she thought he was going to do what he threatened to. Promised to: fuck her over and over again, use her cunt, use her like a whore all night. That's not what this is, though. He doesn't touch her, fondle her. He doesn't stroke himself until he's hard, doesn't shove his cock back into her and bounce her on his lap until he comes again.

He just -- holds her. And this is somehow more than she can take, that she has to hide her face, tuck her arms to herself, protect herself. That he has to turn his face to her neck and her shoulder, and question everything he's doing here.


Ivan has been selfish almost every moment he's been with her today. He's been angry most the time, too, fucking her like he was teaching her a lesson, or punishing her, or taking something out on her. There were a few exceptions. There was the way he tried to stay close the very first time. There was the way he let her have that orgasm, that first orgasm on his bed when he drove himself into her and held himself there while she came apart.

And there's this. There's how he holds her now, and holds on to her, and doesn't let go. This time, he holds her until she draws back.

[Hilary] It's a very long time, in the end, that they sit like that together. Curled together, heads bowed to one another's shoulders. There's bruising on her back from slamming on the headboard. He found her hair on his fingers earlier in the car, brushed them off as she cleaned herself up and took her little breathmint. There's friction burns on her wrists that will take at least a day or so to heal, but he doesn't know about her weird-smelling cream from Chinatown.

She holds herself to him, breathing, and she doesn't really understand that he's been angry at her all day. Obviously at his penthouse, afterward, when he all but kicked her out. The nasty way he treats her isn't misinterpreted as love, really, but she doesn't know that most of the time he's been with her today he's been selfish, he's been angry. He's given her a great deal. He let her cook with him. He gave her orgasm after orgasm after orgasm. He let her suck his cock. He gave her his cum, over and over. He tied her up and he slapped her ass and called her names, and

she doesn't realize this is selfishness, she doesn't think of it as anger.

Hilary lays her face against his neck and she rests on his chest and shoulder and lap for some time. She doesn't stir for a very long time, in fact, and Ivan doesn't either, so their sweat has cooled and her tears have dried by the time she turns her head a little and whispers, questioningly:

"I thought you were getting water."

[Ivan] He stirs, then, at that: like someone waking from a dream. Or a coma. Or death. He lifts his head, and draws a breath, and it's some time before he answers.

This is a whisper, too, "I didn't want to leave you alone."

His hand strokes over her back -- slowly, as though exploring her, as though noticing she's there in his arms, accessible, touchable, for the first time. When his palm reaches the small of her back he shifts, drawing back a little, letting space open. His hands hold her by the hips. She's still so lean, so sleek, such a long, elegant body. Nevermind the mussed hair. The pink marks on her ass where he smacked her. The friction burns on her wrists.

He runs his palms up her front, cupping her breasts for a moment, moving on. He takes her face in his hands. He kisses her once, slowly, and then he lets her draw away.

"I'll go get it now," he says.

[Hilary] For a short moment, their eyes meet. Hilary looks at him, hair mussed and body wrecked, while he tells her why he didn't leave. And she, perhaps damningly, leans over and kisses him softly, turns her head and nuzzles his cheek and what the fuck is he doing.

She rests against him while he touches her, leaning back as his hands roam from back to front, skimming her flesh up to her breasts. She follows his wrists with her eyes, watching him as he caresses her. Her lashes fall. She sighs, adored.

Her eyes are still closed when he cups her face in his hands and draws her forward to kiss her. She puts her hands lightly on him, returning it, her body aching wonderfully. Her wrists sting. Her ass and her back are sore. Her cunt is throbbing slightly, raw from fucking.

They separate, and for another brief moment, their eyes meet. Just a moment.

The neckties hang from the bedposts where he tied them. The bedspread is rumpled and, yes, there are damp spots from their comingled cum, from how wet Hilary gets when he fucks her abusively, from their shared sweat. She doesn't seem to mind when he helps her slide off his lap. She curls up on the bedspread on her side, drowsing as he gets up to go get water, watching him walk out.


When he comes back, Hilary has moved on his bed. She's resting her head on the pillows at the headboard, her body stretched out a little, but she hasn't covered herself up even though her nipples are hard from feeling a bit cold. She lowers her eyelashes and lifts them again as he comes back in, as though to say hello, as though giving a little wave.

"Ivan," she murmurs, in recognition.

[Ivan] It's a long way to the kitchen. Ironically, in terms of square footage this place isn't so large as his ridiculously huge penthouse. It feels larger, though: so many rooms, so many hallways and galleries and foyers and dens and studies and bedrooms and libraries and workshops and

and, and.

Too much for a single young man, even if he's attended by a battery of ten or twelve servants. Too much for anyone, really, unless one's family sprawled across several generations and branches.

He doesn't mind. He likes it. He likes the distance, the quiet, the sense that it is his, secure, walled, safe. He goes to the kitchen and he feels his imprint here, too. It's a quiet place just for him, that he never lets others into. It's a quiet, safe place where he can pour a glass of ice-cold water, and then another,

because he did bring someone here,

and she's still there, because he fucked her there, and she doesn't belong to him, and

oh god, what is he doing.


He comes back with two glasses of water. Ice cubes float within. She looks like she's sleeping. That twists in him like a knife. She opens her eyes, then, and she says his name, and he comes to the side of the bed and gives her a glass. Takes a drink from the other. Sets it down.

Then he climbs back into bed. The bedspread is filthy and there are no servants here to change it, but that's all right. He's filthy too. She's filthy because he fucked her until she was, pumped his cum into her, fucked her slick out of her, make them both such messes, such messes.

It's getting cooler. Autumn in the air. When he lays on his back, his sweat lifting, he feels cool. He doesn't get under the covers, though, or suggest that they take a shower to warm up. Not yet. He lies there beside her, looking at the ceiling, and he says -- and does -- absolutely nothing.

[Hilary] Ivan likes the mazelike cluster of this sprawling mansion, how he stalks naked and alone through it in the dark, knowing every inch because it is his, hidden away from the world by tall, thick walls and a large expanse of ground all around it, water at his back. That is how he goes to fetch water: naked and alone and in the dark, in his den, his territory, one of the only things he might possibly be said to be devoted to other than his own pleasure.

Selfish thing that he is, cradling a kinswoman after fucking her because he can't bear to leave her alone. And selfish prick, naturally, going to get her a glass of ice water to cool her parched throat because of the way he made her scream while he bore down on her, filling her up, pumping her sweat and her slick out of her all at once.

This is not who he is. Fucker of married women, sure, occasionally. But... not this. He doesn't even know how this is. What this is, other than wrong. Other than dangerous. Other than a bad idea. Bad news.

So of course he comes back and brings Hilary a glass of water.


While he's gone she's curled up on the bed for awhile, then moving to get a pillow under her head. She reaches over and touches one of the dangling neckties, looking at how the dim lamplight touches on her raw skin, thinking fondly of how it got so. They aren't wrecking each other in sunlight for once. The only other time they had sex after sundown was in his penthouse, and he insisted on taking her to his bed, and he didn't hurt her there and she didn't weep but they didn't really even have time to come down after orgasm because Dion was there.

Hilary lets the necktie go and withdraws her arm at the thought of her husband. She's not wearing jewelry tonight, but her rings are in her clutch if she should need to put them on. One never knows. One should be prepared when one can be.

Her thoughts start to turn back to that cold, prim cadence. She closes her eyes and fights it, holds onto this, tries not to be frightened of it, but she knows it will go away soon enough. And he'll be angry. He'll hate her because she can't bear to feel like this for very long. He'll hate her if he comes back and she's inhuman again, distant again, and she knows that even so,

they'll end up back in a tangle together, sweaty and lusting and vicious with desire. Because she's not getting this anywhere else, either.

A presence enters the room. She thinks she may be imagining it, because she often senses presences that aren't there, especially when it's dark and she's alone. So Hilary opens her eyes, and ice cubes clink in a glass of water, cracking deep within. She sees him and whispers his name, but doesn't sit up to take the glass he brings. It goes on the nightstand, and she waits for him to get back in bed, feeling herself going further away from him even as she moves across the bedspread and lays her cheek on his chest, her arm and her leg draping over his body.

She tries to hold on, and the trying is shaking her apart. She knows she's going to fail.

[Ivan] Ivan knows very well that she will fail. Incapable, he called her. Incapable of holding on to this. He doesn't even know what this is. He wouldn't say it's her, the real her, because he'd have to some sort of lovelorn sod to think that, and Ivan, young and pretty and playful as he seems, is such a cynic when it comes to love.

He doesn't expect her to even try to hold on. He's surprised when she comes to him and wraps herself around him, lays her cheek on his sleek chest, holds on to him like holding on to him will help her hold on to ...

this.

He doesn't say anything now, though. No questions. No demands, nothing. He promised. He keeps his promise, because that's what Silver Fangs do, and a few nights from now he'll form a pack -- a temporary, shifting alliance of a pack -- and while he's forming that pack there'll be a Bone Gnawer who can't stop bitching about, dissing on, hating on the Fangs, totally oblivious to how or why this makes everything he says about equality an utter hypocrisy, and --

Ivan will want to tell him, then, that just because he doesn't act like that pompous buffoon Matthieu doesn't make him not a Silver Fang. He is, every inch, a Silver Fang.

If he weren't, he wouldn't be here right now. He would know better. He wouldn't be so fucking insane, christ, that he couldn't stop himself.


He doesn't say any of this. He wraps his arm around Hilary's shoulders after a moment. He's so very lean, so sleek, so long; his proportions that sort of rarefied grace that comes only from ten thousand generations of being served, being catered to, being coddled and attended at every turn until even warfare became a sort of pastime, a mostly-optional amusement. One could always find someone to delegate to if one wasn't feeling like being heroic this week. This month. This lifetime. Send the Fenrir instead; those stupid brutes are always eager for war. Send the Fianna instead; they're too drunk to know better Send the Bone Gnawers. They're born to die.

Times are changing. That's not a luxury the Fangs have anymore, but that's the sort of luxury his body is built for. He's built for tennis on the court and croquet on the lawn. For horseback riding and alpine skiing, for yachting, for idling by the poolside, for fucking.

He's not built for war, and

he's not really built for this, either.


Ivan shifts after a while. His lean hands and all their deft strength come to her hips. He shifts her atop him, slowly, mindful of how hard he fucked her, how far he took her. He moves her until she's on top and her legs are open to either side of his, and their bellies press together, and her small breasts press to his chest.

He strokes back her hair. Gently now. Almost tenderly. Not a trace of the way he grabbed her by the hair in the car; held her head down while he fucked her mouth. Not a trace of the way he hauled her upright and slammed her against the headboard and opened her up and pounded her again where she couldn't get away, couldn't hold him, could barely move, could barely do anything but take it, take it, take it all.

He doesn't try to kiss Hilary on the mouth. He thinks he can almost feel her slipping away. He kisses her neck, though, and her jawline, and the dip under her lower lip. He lays his head back and he looks at her, his hands stroking gently down her back, and he says:

"Why don't you tie me down this time?"

[Hilary] There's really no name for 'this' other than the things they've already come up with. Humanity is one way to put it. That's what Hilary's trying to hold onto as she lies there against Ivan, her body and her hand a little too firm where she holds him, not entirely relaxed. The struggle isn't that she can't hold on forever. If she wanted to, she has the strength of will to endure this. To be this. She could be built for this. So could he. But at least for her, it has a lot more to do with want than with insanity.

Hilary doesn't want to feel human. If she feels human she has far, far too much she has to face up to. She has far, far too many things to feel. There are some people in the midst of grief or heartbreak who wish they could become as cold and distant as she is. They feign it as best they can, for short periods of time, before something or someone melts their hearts again.

It's unlikely that anything will ever melt Hilary's heart.

She holds on and she's not sure why, because she knows if she does she'll feel worse than she can bear to think about. She closes her eyes and doesn't open them when Ivan starts to move her. Hilary's shifted atop him and she sighs softly, nestling on his chest as though she's the sort of woman who nuzzles and cuddles, who cares. She listens to his heartbeat but doesn't seem to notice it, and she'd do just as well without it.

And Ivan, well. Strokes her back, kisses her neck and her face. She smiles lazily, catlike, when he caresses her lower lip with his mouth, and she starts to return that kiss. She's raw. She's sore and aching and even the thought of fucking again is a little bit painful, a little bit overwhelming. And he asks her why she doesn't tie him down this time, like the fact that they're going to keep at each other is a foregone conclusion.

Which, to be honest, it is. Ivan knows very well that Hilary would have let him keep her tied to the bed all night if he wanted to. She wouldn't have complained if he'd left her there and teased her with that glass of water, stroking her nipples and her clit torturously with ice cubes. She hasn't even bothered to take a drink yet. He knows, and it might bother him, that she'll let him bruise her and bite her and draw blood if he wants to, and that she'll still stay and keep fucking him.

Let me make you happy, she'd moaned, as though Ivan coming inside of her was the end-all, be-all of her own pleasure.

Hilary's breath hitches. She lifts her head from his shoulder and looks down at him, her brow a tiny bit furrowed and her expression a little bit confused. A little bit surprised.

Her question should be obvious: "...Do you want me to?"

As though she doesn't expect him to say that yes, that's what he wants. He wants her to tie him up. He wants to be subjugated. He wants to be used the way he uses her. He wants to be held captive to her lust. He wants to be ridden at her leisure. Of course. He wants to submit to her.

Sure.

[Ivan] To say that Ivan was completely, totally, unswervingly certain would be a lie. He's not. There's uncertainty in him, and when she draws back with that tiny stitch in her brow, it seems to echo on his. His chest rises and falls beneath her, breath quickened a touch. He touches her face, as though this were part of his thought process, part of the road his thoughts take from am i? to i am.

"I want you to," he says quietly. And then his frown deepens a little. "Do you?"

[Hilary] If they were truly lovers - that is to say, if there were any chance of love, true our otherwise - then the way that Ivan touches her would make some kind of sense. His fingertips are cool on her cheek and her jawline, the heat drained from them temporarily by holding glasses of ice water, but she can feel them warming again. He's this spoiled, luxurious creature, but the darkness that is his lust and his rage rises up in him when he's with her, buoyed to the surface by her own.

Hilary turns her face and lets her lips graze over his touch, her eyes holding his as she does. "What do you want me to do you?" she asks in a low murmur, dragging her words like a sheet down his body

just before she's dragging herself down his body, too. She trails kisses along his throat, flicking her tongue over the curve of his clavicle, searching blind as a child for his nipple before wrapping her mouth around it.

[Ivan] A creature so lean and elegantly formed as he should move with incomparable grace and lightness. And the grace is there -- a preternatural stillness and silence to his motions, sometimes, and an animal ease in his skin as though it were utterly impossible for him to look awkward or ungainly, or to do something he does not intend.

Lightness, though: that's another story. She draws herself down his body and his hands follow her; his fingers plunge into her hair and they're heavy, dragging, pulling through the silky dark strands and cupping round the back of her head. He holds her to his chest for a moment, his eyes closing, his ribs rising with an inhale. Then his eyes open again.

"Whatever you want," he says, and there's some vague amusement here now; perhaps the first genuine humor she's seen in his since ... lunch, maybe. Or longer.

[Hilary] So she bites him.

Not when he puts his hands in her hair and holds her to his chest, breathing heavily, lusting after that hot, wet point of contact. But when he tells her to do whatever she wants, with that trace of amusement that seems so pointedly at her expense for daring to ask.

Hilary bites down on his nipple, knowing full well how sensitive it is now, her teeth set around the aereola and suddenly digging in. It's no light, quick nip. It's no playful little bite to tease him or to coyly hint at some pretense of her own violence. Hilary bites in, and bites down, and her teeth scrape his nipple as she turns it to a suck again, then pulls her mouth off of him.

She looks up at him, her dark eyes almost black, absorbing all the light that touches them.

[Ivan] Ivan sucks a breath in between his teeth. Retaliation is instantaneous: his hand flying across the swell of her ass, every bit as hard and ungentle as her bite had been.

His nostrils are flaring on another inhale when she lets him go and looks up. Their eyes meet. There's a flash and a glitter in his. Something of challenge in his, met or given. His nipple feels hot and cool at once: the last lingering echos of pain hot, the moisture of her mouth drying cool. He pushes his hand back through her hair once more, dragging through the knots and snags that had formed while he fucked her, pulling them loose.

"Go on," he says quietly.

[Hilary] He told her to tie him down -- well. He suggested it. Why don't we. Why don't you. Maybe. Well, we could. And her first response was to ask him if that's what he wanted. Yes. He wants it. Uncertain at first, growing to lust, he said he did. Do this. Pull those neckties down from the bedposts and bind him with them, open him up, lay him out like a kill waiting to be drained and eviscerated.

What does he want her to do.

Anything she wants.

Even now she bites him, and not gently. It's hard. It's not even lustful, per say. It's a warning and a question, both. And he answers:

go on.

To which Hilary finally answers him, herself. She draws away, her hair stroking through his fingers as she pulls back, rising up over him. She didn't even seem to react this time to his hand across her body, neither getting wet for it or even gasping, as though her senses are deadened. Hilary looks down at him, hair spilling tousled and tangled over her breasts and her shoulders, and her hands trail over his chest. She shakes her head, her own eyes half uncertain, half viciously, angrily resistant. Defiant.

"I don't want to," she says, the tone of her voice so soft it's an undercurrent even to his own quietness.

[Ivan] That puts a stitch in his brow. Ivan lies there a moment, prone, not quite at repose, a thrumming tension in his bones and his joints and his lean, long musculature.

Then he raises himself on his elbows. Distribution of weight raises his shoulder joints against his skin; stretches his pectorals. He frowns at Hilary for a moment, studying her face, her eyes.

"Why not?"

[Hilary] And she can't read that tension for what it is. Anger. Anticipation. Flat-out, burning lust. He may as well be a blank slate. Even his stronger emotions, obviously writ across his face, she takes wrong sometimes. She misinterprets, because her own reactions are the first thing that she has to go off of. It's the first step in judging others, is how you dwell in your own skin. Your own mind.

Hilary's is so very, very cracked. There's no clear reflection to be seen in this woman's eyes or expression. Just shattered, broken images of oneself, and the world.

Her eyebrow slides up a fraction as he sits up, resettling her on his lap. She loops her arms over his shoulders, shifting slightly on his thighs. His cock. Those hints of reaction from her -- defiance, anger, fear, panic, resistance, no -- are hidden again. Or gone. "I just don't enjoy it, Ivan."

[Ivan]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hilary] [She doesn't really want to tie him down. It isn't particularly appealing to her, but the overriding emotion isn't disgust, it's fear. Not of him.]

[Ivan] Ivan sits up the rest of the way then, his legs bending at the knee behind her to accommodate the shift. His thighs rise against her rear; her arms slide over his shoulders.

"I want to ask you a question," he says, "but I won't if you don't want me to."

[Hilary] Like this, they're weaving together. They cross at the hips, her thighs angled down as his angle upward. Their arms cross, hers at the shoulders, his down for now. Hilary moves closer to him, though. She spreads her legs a little more open, til her cunt presses right on his cock. So they nestle together, without grinding, without fucking, and she leans forward to kiss him.

Slow, this. Not like the way she bit him, violent and a little bit threatening. "I may not answer," she says when they part, murmuring the words right on his lips. She lowers her head and kisses his neck. "Depending on the question." Kisses him again.

[Ivan] Like this, they're woven together. Like this, they seem almost like lovers. Real lovers. People who have a chance of falling in love, or being in love.

She kisses him, and he closes his eyes. His palms are pressed to the mattress, holding his own weight and hers if she leans into him. His body is relaxed now, though; a lazy arc slung from the point of shoulder and the point of hip. His skin is warm, the sweat almost all dried now, only faintly sticky to the touch.

His eyes open again when she moves to his neck. He tilts his head for her, letting her kiss his throat. Even there his skin is meticulously razored smooth. It wouldn't be an enormous surprise if a servant did that for him, too.

"What are you afraid of?" he whispers.

[Hilary] Hilary stays where she is. She's not shy about forcing him to hold her weight, though that's not all that surprising. She's not shy about how close their bodies are, how she's had his cum fucked into her repeatedly even just in the past hour, how she's physically a mess from their sex. She licks his sweat off his throat, lapping at him slowly while he opens his eyes again, baring his neck to her as though this doesn't go utterly contrary to some very old instincts.

Even in his tribe, privileged as they are, protected as they are, it is a basic mammalian drive to protect one's jugular. He tips his head and Hilary does not, for a moment, read it as trust.

Or even consider trust.

She pauses, mouth at his neck, at that question. Then, rolling her hips on his lap, kissing the wet spot where she licked him, Hilary murmurs: "I just don't enjoy it, Ivan. It wouldn't be a game. And it wouldn't get either of us off."

[Ivan] Ivan isn't sure she answered him at all, but if there was an answer to be found in that, perhaps it was when she said,

It wouldn't be a game.

He thinks on that for a while. She licks him, and she kisses him, and she rolls her hips on him as though she's slowly moving on now. Moving up that long steep slope of arousal again. He turns his head, presses his jaw to her temple, kisses her wherever he can reach her.

"None of this is a game," he replies, and this, too, is quiet. His teeth scrape the arch of her cheek. He kisses her jaw, follows that to her mouth, and this time when he kisses her his chest fills with an inhale. His eyes close, and stay closed as he stays close, nuzzling against her face, drifting to her ear,

where he whispers, "I want to fuck you again."

[Hilary] A soft shudder runs through Hilary's body, neck to hips when his teeth graze her face. She breathes in. None of this is a game. She's rolling her hips again and again on him now, achingly slow, mindlessly.

It's sort of the truth. As much as they play with one another, tease each other, fuck each other, the playfulness of it is shallow water over hard stone. They daren't trust the reflection of the sky they see, knowing that if they try to immerse themselves in this, sink into one another,

they'll just hit bedrock, and shatter.

But she means something else, and he might not understand, and it doesn't seem like she's willing to tell him all the real reasons why she can't tie him down, or doesn't want to. It's the truth: she wouldn't really enjoy it. She wouldn't find the same dark pleasure he has when he abuses her. It would be something else, nowhere near erotic for her, when she started hurting him. When she tapped into that seemingly bottomonless blackness in the pit of her that makes any emotion a violent risk.

Hilary doesn't want to tell Ivan all the things that suggesting it made her imagine, and how not a one of them really turned her on but all of them excited her and repulsed her at once, and she certainly isn't going to tell him that she doesn't trust him but she trusts herself even less. Nothing, no one, should even pretend to be at her mercy.

It's okay, though, if he pins her to the bed and fucks her til she's screaming, til she's crying. That, she can handle. That's okay.


Hilary smiles, pushing back against him, pushing against his torso to try and get him to lie down again. "How do you want me this time?" she purrs, her nipples hardening as they move together.

[Ivan] The truth is, Ivan intuited that darkness in Hilary when she bit at him like that. He sensed then that if he gave himself into her mercy -- even as pretense, even to pretend -- it could get out of hand. Fast. She could turn into something genuinely frightening. She could actually try to hurt him. He might actually have to tear himself free of his bonds and

(grab her. hit her. choke her. strangle her. hurt her. kill her.)

stop her.

He said go on anyway. He doesn't know, himself, how much of that was bravado. How much was arrogance. How much was some twisted dark desire to see how far she would push him, and whether or not he would retaliate, and how.


That's not what happens, though. It's rare for Hilary to show genuine restraint -- not out of practicality or concern for discovery, for the ease of her life, but out of some deeper worry. Fear. Neither of them reach for the makeshift ropes on the bedposts. She pushes at him, and Ivan lies back willingly, and his hands move over her ass, squeezing and rubbing, massaging.

"Just like this," he answers.

[Hilary] Without knowing just how far that darkness in Hilary goes, or the things she thinks when she's daydreaming -- the things that bother even her, that she is sane enough to know are fucked up -- Ivan has no way of knowing what she would have done to him. Bite him. Oh look, the kinswoman is nibbling on him. What could she do to him that he would have to try all that hard to stop?

But then there is the rest: she said it wouldn't get either of them off. She wouldn't enjoy doing it. But she wouldn't be able to stop herself, all the same. And she didn't come here with him because she hates him or wants to take out her wickedness on him. She came here because she lusts for him so vividly that even talking to him over texts about coming to see him made her want -- need -- to get herself off. And tying him down and beating him until her arm is tired or he frenzies doesn't arouse her.

Trying to open him up with her fingernails comes to mind, and it doesn't arouse her. It makes her retreat, and it makes her rub herself against him to try and burn the other thoughts out of her mind. She pulls away from the core of herself, and it makes her seem distant, disconnected. There's no other way.

Her arms wrap around him, and she kisses him as they descend back to the mattress, her on top this time, her mouth opening to his with a soft gasp. "I want you," she says, and that's true, too, overwhelmingly so. She's stroking her body over his, small soft breasts on his lean, toned chest, ass rubbing into his palms, hips rolling so she can slide her pussy over his cock again, and again, and again. A little faster now. "Ivan," she breathes, her mouth and her whisper trailing off his lips, over his jawline, tattering into a quiet moan. "Ivan, I want you inside me."

[Ivan] It goes without saying that he's hardening against her already. That every slide of her cunt over him makes his breath hitch a little. Makes him want her that much more.

She's whispering against his mouth, and along his jaw. He kisses her face, wherever he can reach her, and then he's pulling her legs a little wider apart and reaching between them and holding himself for her, holding his cock by the base and his free hand takes her by the hips and pulls her down, down, down onto him.

"Oh, that's it," he whispers. "That's it."

She rides him, this time. This is rare. So much more often, he's the one riding her. He seems to fuck her from behind more often than not, as though this added layer of impersonality made it easier to do the things he does to her, even though she knows it has nothing to do with whether or not he knows it's her. The fact that it is her seems to spur that violence in him, the near-madness that makes him fuck her raw, makes him pound her until it hurts, makes him wedge her up against a wall or a bed or a couch, pin her down, hold her right fucking there while he destroys her.

It's not like that this time. She's atop him this time, and they're both just a little worn out. They've fucked so much already, and so hard. He plays with her tits and runs his hands up and down her torso. He cups her mouth to his, gasping against her tongue. He holds onto the bed, mostly; spreading his arms to grip the side of the mattress, a fistful of the sheets. Groans beneath her, unrestrainedly, as she circles her hips on him, winds on him, grinds on him, bounces on his cock until she's crying out against his body.

At the end he holds her by the hips after all. He holds her still after all, and holds her steady, and makes her receive him, take him, take it all, yeah, as he hammers up into her. His breathing is ragged. His heart is racing. Sweat runs down his temples and up his back as he plants his feet on the mattress and

quite simply

fucks the living hell out of her. Fucks her with almost no regard for how she feels. If she can take it. Makes her take it, pulls her against him, pulls her down and plants her firmly on his cock when he comes inside her all over again, fills her all over again, pumps his cum into her all over again with deep, relentless grinds of his hips against hers like he's trying to mark her indelibly.


There seems to be no such thing as restraint for them. No such thing as a gentle fuck, or a slow one. This was as close to it as they get, and in the end it wasn't very close at all.


After, Ivan finally seems worn out. He lays outstretched on his bed, his hands loose over her hips now, smoothing over her ass. Now and again, he takes her in his hands and moves her, sucking a breath in at the feel of her cunt, her wet, sticky, messy cunt, sliding on his cock.

After some time he takes his hands away. Drops one to the bedspread. Tucks the other behind his head. Closes his eyes and breathes, waits for his breathing to steady, waits for her to draw away.

[Hilary] That they would arouse each other again just by being near each other seemed yet another foregone conclusion. That no stupid argument was ever going to sever them from coming back to get more of this, wretched as it is for them. That they were going to fuck again in his bed in his mansion in his estate, alone in the world while the rest of the country enjoys its long weekend

was a foregone conclusion from the very start. From the moment Dion left the house yesterday, from the moment he started to become distant, Hilary knew she was going to find Ivan as soon as she could and fuck him until she couldn't anymore. Until she couldn't move. Until she couldn't bear it. And she knew that if even then he wanted her again she'd let him have her. She'd let him hurt her. She'd lay back and groan and let him pound her full of his cum again, fucking his cock into her, biting every orgasm right into her skin.

Just like she knows as she works herself down on his cock that she's not going to come as hard this time as she did when he tied her up and pushed her against the headboard and pounded her til she was screaming. Just like she knows that all the same, she's going to tease him with the way she fucks him til he does

exactly what he does, grabbing her near the end so he can keep her right there while he slams his thrusts into her, swearing at her, telling her to take it, fucking take that cock,

god, you fucking whore, you like that, don't you?


But for awhile, at first, Hilary works him slowly, kissing his neck and his chest and his mouth and moaning while his cock slides into her, withdraws, goes deeper again. She pants little cries out as he touches her breasts, whimpering for him, riding him a little faster. Even when she's bouncing on his lap it's gentler than it becomes, til something in her snaps and she grabs his chest, digging her fingernails in. And something in him answers with a sharp break, making him grab her hips and hold her so he can fuck her.

Nothing restrained. Nothing gentle. Nothing slow. They fuck the way they always fuck, no matter what toys or bindings they use, no matter if he slaps her ass or turns her over or even puts his teeth to her. They fuck the way they always do, which is to say: until they can't bear it anymore, until orgasm seems like an escape from what they do to each other.

Hilary is panting shakily as Ivan is pumping the last of his cum into her pussy, sweat making her hair cling to her, her breath rushing past his ears. She whimpers as he grinds a little harder into her, and she's been fucked so much today she's sore, she's raw, she can't bear it anymore, but every time he strokes against her it sends a pulsing jolt of agonizing pleasure through her. She clings to him, tears in her eyes but not spilling over, gasping against his shoulder. Every time he moves her on his cock she groans, crying out past his body.


After awhile, he lets go of her, taking his hands back as though to say: okay. i'm done. you can get off now, if you want. i won't stop you.

Hilary just lays on his chest, catching her breath. She doesn't pull herself off of him. She just tries to steady herself, and it takes longer than it has all day. It isn't even the intensity of that fuck. It's just how worn out she is from every. Single. Time, today. How worn out she is from being here, in his house, letting him have her here and keep her here.

Speaking of which.

Time passes. Doesn't matter how long, before she whispers: "I don't mind if you tie me down again, if you want to keep me here tonight." Her eyes are closed. She kisses his chest. "And if you wake up and want to fuck me again, I won't ask you to stop."

[Ivan] Ivan's eyes move behind his lids, but do not open. Her eyes are closed too. Hilary doesn't see this, doesn't see how he might or might not react to what she says. She feels it though: the slight tension in his body when she says if you want to keep me here tonight. And again, when she says want to fuck me again.

His hand strokes down her back. Pauses, heavy and firm, over the small of her back -- thoughtful. Then he leans up, rolls her to the side, a slow breath escaping him as he draws out of her.

"Go get a drink," he tells her. "Take a shower. And then come back to bed."


While Hilary showers, brushes her teeth, does whatever it is she might do, Ivan strips the filthy comforter off the bed. He leaves it piled up in the laundry room for someone else to take care of; he strips the comforters off one of the spare bedrooms and lays that out on his bed instead.

He drinks his water. He goes to the kitchen and gets a refill, and while he's there he takes the burnt coffee off the heat and sets it in the sink untouched. Someone will take care of it, just like someone will take care of the comforter, just like someone always takes care of everything.

If she's still in the shower then, he joins her. He's so silent even without the blast of water. With it, there's very little warning before he's drawing back the shower curtains and stepping into that enclosed, resonant space with her, picking up a washcloth and a bar of soap and washing her back for her unasked. It feels a little like ritual now: his palms smoothing over her skin, then rubbing; then his fingers kneading gently down her back, loosening muscles stiffened by the angles, the positions, the pitiless way they fuck.

Perhaps he draws her back against his chest after a time. Perhaps he touches her, squeezes her breasts and strokes her stomach, reaches between her legs and strokes her there, too, while he presses his mouth to her neck, bites at her skin. If he does, he doesn't bring her off. He doesn't rub himself off against her ass, either. Ivan just plays with her, idly, luxuriously, like she's a plaything tonight. Like she's his plaything tonight.

After a time he draws away from her again. He finishes showering himself, shampooing and soaping, thorough. When they step out they're clean. Their skin is flushed. He has some trouble finding a spare toothbrush; finally finds a cache of unused toothbrushes in his medicine cabinet. They're the brand he uses. They're meant to be his, when he wears the one he's using out.

It's almost a little domestic, a little mundane, when they go back to bed. Clean now, with clean bedding, glasses of water on either nightstand. Domestic, while they get into bed on opposite sides. Domestic, until he reaches over and binds her wrists together; binds her to the bedpost closer to her with one of his ties. The other hangs unused on the bedpost closer to him, like a flag on a windless day.

Lights out. He doesn't sleep behind her this time the way he did at the penthouse. He sleeps on his back, his breathing evening out in seconds, his consciousness dropping away like a stone.


Dark and dreamless, that sleep. Once or twice he stirs toward the surface only to descend once more. Sometime before dawn, when the sky is beginning to lighten, Ivan does wake. He moves toward Hilary, swims toward her through sheets and comforters, finds her warm in her own hollow and wraps his arm around her.

She wakes to his mouth on her shoulderblade, on her neck. He bites at her shoulder as he rolls her under him, saying nothing at all. His breathing grows a little rougher as he grinds against her, rubs himself hard against her, shifts her thighs apart with his knees. It's a fast entry, fast and deep, and the sound he makes when he shoves his cock into her

yet again

isn't so much a sound as it is a caught breath, a catch in his throat. He fucks her with one hand gripping her wrists, warm through his silk tie. The other roves her body. Grasps at her breasts. Fondles her clit. Grasps at her hips, and -- toward the end -- plunges into her hair to pull her head around so he can kiss her mouth, ravage her mouth, eat at her mouth like he wants to eat her alive.

As rough as his hands are, though -- as rough as his kiss is, and as fast and rough as that first penetration was -- the way he fucks her is perhaps slower than he's ever fucked her before. Slow, and deep, and firm, and thorough; rocking into her again and again until the pleasure takes him over and drags him under. He's lost track of how many times he's come inside her, and this is one more: pumping his cum into her again, again, pounding it deep with hard, jarring strokes of his cock at the last.

No slurs, this time. No cursing, no demands for her to fuck him back, harder, come on, pound that sweet little cunt on that cock, ride it like the dirty whore she is. Nothing of the sort. He doesn't even groan when he comes; he bites that back, too.

There is this, though: her name, when he rolling onto his side, bringing her with him. Hilary, whispered to her as he's drawing out of her, and crossing his shin over hers, and

this time, he sleeps with his chest to her back, his arm around her waist. When true morning comes, it's likely Hilary wakes first.