Ivan Press

[Ivan] The Magnificent Mile is a nice, affluent part of town. Plenty of BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes in the parking structure. But even here a Maserati stands out -- an unusual, classy choice. Ivan has little trouble finding Hilary's vehicle, and indeed, when she gets there, he's waiting for her: leaning against the vehicle's smooth flank, arms folded.

"What was that all about?" he asks.

[Hilary] Summer is fading, and the nights are growing cooler every time you step outside into the dark. The less tolerant wear light jackets. Those born and raised here, used to it, clinging to warm weather, are still in short sleeves, arms bared. Hilary is one of those who starts wearing a light jacket once the temperature dips below sixty degrees fahrenheit, which is what the temperature is doing as she walks away from Christian in the alleyway and Cordelia and Ivan on the sidewalk. She doesn't walk terribly fast. Her jacket is in the car.

And there's also a Ragabash who, mysteriously enough, guessed where she was going and got here before her. She stops several yards away, holding her purse and her shopping bags, shifting her weight slightly to one hip. She regards Ivan for a moment, then continues walking towards her summer car, slash Christmas gift.

"Which part?" she retorts calmly, opening the passenger door to put her shopping bags right on the seat.

[Ivan] The passenger-side door swings open inches from Ivan's body. He doesn't move. He watches, and he looks faintly amused -- he always looks faintly amused, except when he's with her -- as she sets her bags on the seat. One might read a subtle hint in that: he's not invited to come along for the ride.

"There was some animosity between the duckling and yourself," he observes. "And then you absconded to the alleyway with her chewtoy, but I didn't think you were in there long enough to do any real damage ... clattering trashcans or not. And then Mr. del Piero storms out looking angrier than he did when he stormed in, and Ms. Sarafin-Diego didn't follow him, and ...

"...well. I'm curious about all of it, I suppose."

[Hilary] What was it she'd said to Christian about her teenage boy at the city house?

Ivan wasn't in the alleyway. He doesn't know about Tomas waiting at their apartment downtown, hopeful, angry, aroused, mad, hating himself for being like his father, hating himself for betraying his father, as tied in knots as Ivan is when he's around this woman. When he's with her. Only Tomas is only sixteen. The years Ivan has on him are paltry compared to the experience he has, with life. With the war. With what it means to be drawn to a kinswoman whose very face sings history.

"Oh, that," she says, waving her hand dismissively at mention of the duckling, like flicking a fly away from the side of her face. She closes the passenger door and turns to Ivan as he goes on about Cordelia's chewtoy and clattering trashcans. She tips her head to the side. "I could ask you what you had to do with Ms. Sarafin-Diego not following Mr. del Piero, but I believe then we'd just be pretending to give a good god damn what's going on in those fluffy little heads of theirs."

She moves to lean, half-sit, on the hood of the Maserati, long legs stretching to the concrete, arms folded close to her body. "It was what I told you at the casino," she decides to answer. "I was giving him an earful about Cordelia's little attempt at territoriality and the meaning of the word 'discretion'. He claimed to not remember ever telling her."

Hilary snorts softly, which shows what she thinks of that convenient little amnesia. She has no idea that Katherine will be calling the house in the morning. She has no idea that she'll be summoned, that this time tomorrow night she'll have had her first scolding by the tribal Elder of Chicago.

It likely won't matter, ultimately. Not deeply. Not to her.

She meets his eyes, her hair falling from where it's tied up in a low chignon, tendrils framing her jawline. "Cordelia's attempts to come off as smooth irritate me," she says simply, and doesn't sound like she's explaining anything. Just stating a fact. Just making conversation.

[Ivan] "Cordelia is confused about what she wants," Ivan opines with exactly the sort of blithe presumption and assumption of accuracy that, turned on Hilary herself, had infuriated her so, "so she ends up wanting everything. The latter is admittedly a sensation I'm familiar with, but former is not. Mix all that in with the misconception that she's even remotely in your league, and -- well. You've seen the results for yourself.

"Anyway," he sounds bored with the topic now. "I'm going to Montreal this weekend and Ibiza the next. Don't suppose you'd be interested in coming along for either?"

[Hilary] Her eyes flick over to him when he mentions that wanting everything is something he's familiar with. She's seen what he surrounds himself with: the glossy, modern high-rise penthouse walled with glass contrasted against the estate on the lake, all stone and mazelike corridors, cavelike interiors. This car for speed, that car for style. She's seen how many different types of cigarettes he'll smoke. Yet she looks at him when he says he wants everything, that he knows what he wants but he wants it all and simple logic tells one that eventually two wants are incompatible.

She knows he wants to grab her by the hair and hold her facedown while he slams his cock into her, smacks her with his hand, digs his teeth into her while he comes.

And she knows he's tried, so many times, to stroke her face with something like tenderness, kiss her with surprising softness. Sometimes, afterward, she even lets him be gentle, and he fucks her slower, or her rubs the tension out of her back in the shower, washing her as though to erase some of his own brutality from her very skin.

"You should try to contact my husband first," she says mildly, "to gain his permission to entertain his mate so. But he's a little out of reach at the moment. You could leave a message with his assistant; I'm sure he wouldn't be inclined to deny a polite request. He tends to dismiss discussions of things back home when he's... gone, like he is."

[Ivan] Speaking of which, Ivan is slipping his cigarette case out of his back pocket now, removing a slender white cancer-stick while tucking another behind his ear. Even this has a certain air of caprice about it. He doesn't chain smoke. He doesn't smoke hourly, or bihourly, or ... even at all, that entire time they were together over labor day weekend. It seems to be something he picks up and puts down again at will, at whim, when he's bored or when he feels like it: his Garou physiology miraculously capable of reversing most damage, taint and addiction with every shift.

Ivan lights up now, though, a pause in the conversation while he cups flame to cigarette, then clicks the lighter coolly closed. Afterward, he offers the cigarette to Hilary. If she takes it, he removes the second from behind his ear and lights that one for himself.

"You don't think that would make him suspicious? Surely the venerable Dion is so taken with his lovely mate that he believes her capable of turning gay men straight."

[Hilary] As Ivan lights up, Hilary observes quietly, watching his long fingers on the lighter, the cigarette. She watches his lips. She shakes her head when it's offered, and the conversation about Ibiza and Montreal goes on. Wouldn't Dion be suspicious?

"Possibly," she admits. "He's just as likely to assume you're taking me as a beard. I can only guess; I've only known him a few years. You should put that out." The words drop from her lips without break or hitch, without irony.

[Ivan] "I've only known him ten minutes," Ivan replies without irony, "so I'll take your advice on this matter. Do you have a preference, Montreal or Ibiza? Or both? I have to confess I've already set a date with the duckling for Montreal, but I'm sure I could beg off if you'd rather come along."

Then Ivan's eyebrows -- which will darken now that the sun is veering southward, away from their latitudes -- flick up his smooth brow. "Concerned about secondhand smoke?"

[Hilary] "I think I'd rather not give her any more reason to vent her insecurities and jealousies on me at the moment," Hilary says wearily, as though she can't even bear talking about Cordelia anymore right now. Her boredom is always there. Almost always. He sees her occasionally when she doesn't seem annoyed by life and those inhabiting it, but those moments are too, too rare. Right now she just seems exhausted by the existence of these teenagers, their dramas, their feelings. "I much prefer Spain, anyway. It's warmer."

Hilary steps away from the Maserati, out of the plume of his cigarette smoke since he hasn't put it out. "Personally, not overmuch. But I've heard it causes neonatal genetic mutation, which really sounds horrific. And stillbirths and SIDS, which I'd never forgive you for. To go through all that pregnancy and birth bullshit and then just have it die."

Her tone hasn't changed from talking about taking Cordelia to Montreal, about the preferable weather in Ibiza, to crib death.

[Ivan] There's a stillness in Ivan now. It's nearly preternatural. His hands are still. His eyes are still. He barely seems to breathe; the cherry on the end of his cigarette peels back toward his lips fraction by fraction of an inch.

Seconds go by.

Then, with admirable calm, the Ragabash clips the cigarette out of his mouth. He's barely dragged on it. He drops it on the ground and grinds it out under his shoe; replaces the one behind his ear in his case. Slips everything away, case and lighter disappearing into his pockets like a magic trick. All this done smoothly, taking his time, taking the time to think.

When he's finished, he folds his arms loosely across his chest.

"Whose do you suppose it is?"

[Hilary] The answer is simple enough. "Dión's."

She leans back against the Maserati as Ivan puts the cigarette out, puts the lighter and cigarette case away. She doesn't try to read his mind, his heart, his expression, his tone. She's looking at a load-bearing pillar off in the distance, and she puts her palms on her biceps. She isn't shivering, but she's colder than she was when she was walking around shopping.

If this conversation were happening tomorrow night she might add: unless he rejects it. But right now she doesn't think it's possible Dion will ever know that she fucked around on him while off contraceptives. Right now she doesn't think it's possible Dion could look even at a fair child looking nothing like him and doubt for a moment her fidelity, or risk his own reputation by causing a scandal. If the child is healthy and -- even better -- Trueborn, what matter the father?

The Theurge of his pack would say that the spirits would know. They know lineages, bloodlines, paternity. He's a Galliard, though. History is what he says it is.

Hilary reaches over and puts her hand on his. "If you're going away this weekend, I'd very much like to spend the night with you if I could." She isn't looking at him.

[Ivan] [empathee! are you saying that cuz you're sure, or because that's my story, your honor, and i'm sticking to it?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hilary] [It's more resigned. She belongs to Dion, ergo: child is Dion's. She's not sure, but she also doesn't really care.]

[Ivan] His hand twitches faintly under her fingers when she touches him. He frowns at her now, his brow sketched into furrows under the bland parking-structure lights.

"I'm the first trueborn Fang in my branch of the family for generations," he says. It's not an answer at all; but then it doesn't even sound like he's caught up yet. "If the child is mine, and trueborn, he'd be ... precious. To my family."

Ivan lets it trail off there. He doesn't know what else to say. Ivan Press, struck dumb for once: he brings a lean hand up to his face, presses his mouth to his knuckles for a moment. Thinking.

And down again. "Fuck," he says, "I wish we'd been more careful after you told me you were off contraceptives. I guess some idiot part of my mind just assumed you'd gone back on the pill."

[Hilary] He doesn't answer. Doesn't tell her yes, he'll spend the night with her, he'll take her somewhere and fuck her the way he always does, give her what he knows she needs, take something away from it if he can. If she lets him in enough to find what he's looking for, too. Before he goes to Montreal, won't he just hike up her skirt and put his hand on her throat and fuck her? Up against a wall, maybe. Bent over the hood of the car. Something.

But Ivan hasn't caught up that far, and Hilary frowns at him as he dwells on this stupid pregnancy thing, like it matters. Talking like they all do. Precious! What if it's Trueborn! She snorts when he uses the masculine pronoun. She exhales, sliding her hand away as though resigned, and wraps her arms around herself again while Ivan swears.

She cocks her head to the side, watching the pillar again. "Well I couldn't very well go back on them until I knew if I was pregnant after Dión left." Though he calls himself an idiot, her tone does not necessarily agree. She's just... talking. Then turns to him.

"I'm nervous now," she says, sounding anything but. It's possible Hilary doesn't really know what nervousness really feels like, or if she just uses it as a euphemism for some milder form of her everpresent anger. "If I have some blond-headed paleskinned baby are you going to start sniffing around thinking of challenging?"

[Ivan] Her snort, that sighing resignation: it rankles him. She's so fucking calm about everything, like some deep pool of clearest water when he knows she's really closer to poison. Ivan's eyebrow flicks up again. "I'm a Cliath," he points out, his drollness ever a weapon of cynicism. "I couldn't challenge your mate if I wanted to."

[Hilary] "Then tell yourself," she says, and another woman would be gentle, but there's almost nothing in Hilary that's gentle, "that it isn't yours. And make yourself believe it. It might even be true."

That resignation. That nothing matters. It doesn't matter if the baby really is Dion's, or if it's Ivan's, or if it's Christian's, if she went off contraceptives before Dion came back to Chicago even knowing that she was going to track down some other young cock to fuck as her last fling before trying to get pregnant with her husband's child.

And he had her for something like three weeks. While he was in town, didn't he? Maybe it's his. He had her all to himself, didn't he?

Except for that one night. Except for Hilary in Ivan's lap and then in his hallway and then in his bed, her shirt askew and her skirt out of his way and her panties yanked aside so he could just be in her, naked atop her, sweating onto her while her husband made his way towards the penthouse to find her. Except for that one night, Dion had Hilary all his own for weeks, filling her. Wouldn't it be ironic if one single fuck with Ivan did the trick when nearly a month with Dion didn't?

Wouldn't he deserve to claim the child, challenge or not?

Hilary's so calm. Talks about sudden infant death blandly. Talks with more interest in fucking him than in whether or not it was idiotic of him to fuck her when he knew she was trying to get pregnant. And it irritates him, whether or not he knows she can't entirely help it. What is a child to her but an inconvenience? It won't heal her of anything.

[Ivan] Strange, but that makes a faint, humorless smile quirk over his mouth. He studies her another moment, his eyes dark in this light. The fluorescent spectrum holds nothing the green and hazel and gold and grey in his eyes can use.

"A good liar knows a lie," he says. "I haven't figured out how to fool myself yet. But don't trouble yourself over it, Hilary. Unless your husband consults a Theurge, we won't know if the child is trueborn or not until long after Dion and I are both dead and gone. And if he does consult a Theurge -- well. Perhaps you'll be kind enough not to share the results."

A pause. Then he glances at the door of her car; back to her.

"Do you want to drive?"

[Hilary] The truth is that of course Dion will consult a Theurge, and the baby will likely not even be fed before it is taken squalling and wriggling to the distant eyes of a Seer who will tell them if Gilded Honor has finally produced a Trueborn heir. He has two lovely, well-bred youngsters already who are utterly useless to the War.

Hilary should be troubled by the thought of her mate dying. She should be troubled by the thought of Ivan dying, if she's --

but god, he knows better by now. She doesn't care. She's incapable of caring if he lives or dies, if he wants her or suffers from wanting her. She's not capable of seeing the need for batting an eyelash if something she enjoys is taken away. He studies her and she's watching him and her eyebrows draw together, but that doesn't mean anything. She's empty of meaning.

And whether it's kindness or just a lack of thinking of it, she doesn't mention the truth, that there is no way that child is making it to its first birthday without its fate being sealed: warrior or breeder. She doesn't tell him the truth: it could be yours. It could be Dion's. It could be Christian's. It's most likely not Tomas's, I always make him wear a condom; it makes him less anxious about fucking his father's wife, really, and he's more enjoyable when he's not anxious.

Hilary doesn't understand kindness. Doesn't usually like it when it's given. Doesn't really know how to express it. Intentionally, at least.

She gives a small nod. "Let's go somewhere close by," she says as she levers herself away from the side of the Maserati, circling the front of the car to go to the driver's side. It's the only sign he has of the hunger she has for him that's been growing just by standing here, talking to him, thinking about all the other times he's had her.

Somewhere close by. Somewhere near. Somewhere we can get to quickly.

I want you.

Don't make me wait.

[Ivan] "You're driving," Ivan says; it's agreement of a sort. He leans down to move her bags off the seat, swinging them into the back as he settles in. "My place isn't far from here," he adds, "but I'm sort of in the mood for a hotel tonight."

His door shuts. Her door shuts. She's reaching to slide her key into the ignition when he reaches across the center console; catches her behind the head and pulls her toward him. They meet in the middle. He kisses her mouth furiously, silently, eyes shut and brow furrowed. When he's finished his chest rises and falls a little faster, a little deeper, but he's calm as a puddle again, leaning back in his seat to look forward through the windshield.

"Do you suppose Espiridion would be around more if this one turns out to be trueborn?"

[Hilary] "Alright," Hilary says amicably, opening her door and sliding into the supple leather of the driver's seat. She doesn't reach over to help Ivan move the bags. He's a big boy. He can take care of them. Not a single one of the bags is from a maternity store. He hasn't asked how far along she is; she hasn't offered the information. It's highly unlikely that she's confirmed a pregnancy enough to announce it since Labor Day. She also hasn't told him there's no chance in hell it's his. He can do math. He probably hasn't.

In any case: it will be a long, long time before she needs anything from a maternity store.

The engine hasn't even turned over yet when Ivan leans over and pulls her to him. Her hands stay on the wheel and keys for only a second before she reaches for him, hands on his face, kissing him back, dragging her fingertips over his jawline as though she's trying to devour him, or drink him, or breathe him in.

As kisses go, it's a rough one. It's choking in its intensity. Drowning. It's as though she hasn't had him in a week and a half. It's as though there's more going on inside of her, for once, than blithe disregard for convention and other people's feelings. Not nearly as much as there will be tomorrow night. But the fact that she's --

Jesus. And he's talking about it again.

Hilary's eyes are pearl-black when Ivan withdraws. She watches him for a second, her lips slightly parted, then draws back as he settles back into his seat. She turns in her seat and turns the key in the ignition, and not long after they're pulling towards the exit of the parking garage, and she's plucking a ticket out of a little alcove under the stereo, which is playing Tori Amos

Jodie never sleeps 'cause there are always needles in the hay
she says that a girl needs a gun these days
Hey, on account of all the rattlesnakes

of all things.

Hilary sighs, paying her parking fee. "It's pretty useless to speculate. He's insane. It might drive him deeper into either extreme of his madness. The thing isn't even a tenth of an inch long yet, Ivan, are you going to talk about it til it's born?"

[Ivan] "I'm not asking for its sake," Ivan replies, an edge in his tone. "I'm asking for -- " just a beat of hesitation there; our hardly seems the right pronoun, " -- the sake of my time with you. If he's going to live with you and lock you away in a stone tower, then maybe it's best for all involved that we make a clean break sooner rather than later."

He doesn't look at her as he says this. There's a tension in his jaw, the angle and hinge of it clenched. He can still taste her on his tongue. In his mouth. The movement of her lips on his; his fingertips on his jaw.

[Hilary] She glances over at him as the gate lifts in front of them. She rolls up her window with the press of a button and then turns her eyes forward and drives out of the parking garage. She doesn't say anything for a little while. They're just driving, and not looking at each other.

Ivan is angry. He's often angry when he's around her, and she can't find the words to explain that she didn't think he was asking for the baby's sake, that the way he responded confused her, that -- as usual -- she doesn't know what she said or how she said it to make him so angry all of a sudden. So Hilary just gives up, as she often gives up, because other people are so difficult to figure out, and it's usually not worth the effort.

After awhile: "If you want this to be the last time you fuck me, then that's fine. But I don't want to talk about the fucking pregnancy or what might happen or how my husband might act. If you want to wrack yourself with what-ifs, do it away from me. I don't want to think about it."

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't even know why he's angry so often around her, or what it is she does -- or he feels, or thinks, or wants -- that makes him so angry. What she says exacerbates it, though, makes him draw a slow, measured breath, makes him look out the side window a moment just so he's not tempted to glare at her.

Or hit her. Something.

"That is your response to everything, isn't it." His tone is light; which is to say, his tone is deadly, and cutting. "Don't ask. Don't talk. Don't think about it. Shove it under the rug or in the closet or in the freezer and it'll be all right."

[Hilary] Hilary doesn't answer that. She goes on driving, as though he didn't speak at all. Which may be a response in and of itself, though not a defense: yes. Don't ask. Don't think about it. Leave me alone.

A couple of blocks go by, maybe less, but she does eventually say this: "I never said it would be all right," she murmurs. "I just said that I don't want to think about it."

[Ivan] He knows he shouldn't ask now. He knows asking will only push her, scrape her raw, hollow her out, exhaust her, and it's not worth it, it's not worth his time, she's not worth his time to care about.

Ivan finds himself turning toward her, though. It's her profile he faces: that lovely, cool, haughty face of hers. Her people -- that vanished, disgraced house of hers -- were descended from the Normans. They battered the Saxon Fenrir when they landed on the English shores; drove them north into the highlands as they themselves had driven the Fianna before them. All of England and half of France was theirs, some of the richest lands in all Europe. It was only later, much later, that that great house fell to neurosis and paranoia, to compulsions of cleanliness, neatness, and a fabricated and complex morality scheme that could not, in the end, prevent their almost total fall to corruption.

"What will you do," he asks quietly, "if it's not all right? Do you have ... any recourse at all if things don't work out as you wish?"

[Hilary] Ivan knows more about House Austere Howl than Hilary does, and she is descended from them. She doesn't know what they were known for, remembers only that what she was once taught to say proudly was then suggested she not say at all. She knows she was sheltered and watched over even when she was given overtures of seeming freedom in the world, but she never really minded, and she never really had any great ambitions to strive for anyway. She knew from a very young age what was meant for her, and she never gave it much thought.

As she learned to cook. As she learned whatever else it is that she knows. Maybe she's college-educated. Maybe she was a gymnast or a dancer or a painter; none of it really matters now, if it ever did. The history of her people matters even less. It's remarkable she even knows as much about the Garou nation as she does; then again, she's been raised by them. Maybe it was part of her childhood tutelage.

She breathes in deeply, tension rising in her where there was, not so long ago, only burgeoning lust.

"I just said --" she starts to snap, then stops, clenching her jaw for a moment. It doesn't make her look pretty, but it doesn't even come close to making her unattractive. It makes her fierce. It makes her vicious. She flexes her hands on the steering wheel and keeps driving. "You can't even ask questions without making your fucking assumptions. I don't think everything will be all right. I don't have some way I hope things will 'work out'. I don't. Think about it. There's no point. Now would you just drop it?"

[Ivan] Ivan's response is almost laughably stereotypical. His face closes up. He looks away; he snaps a single terse Fine and drops it.

She's driving now, and he's sitting, and his relaxation is wholly superficial; he's a raw twisted nerve, angry all over again. He looks ahead. He looks up at the passing skyscrapers, and doesn't ask where she's going.

[Hilary] She can't even remember the hotels they've gone to. She can't remember those early encounters as well as she remembers the sting of his palm across her ass or the dig of his teeth into her shoulder, the hard wet suction of his mouth on her nipples, the rough grip of his hands on her hips. She can't imagine being able to get away with what they do to each other any other place, any small bed and breakfast where their couplehood will be assumed, where if someone hears her screaming or getting slapped they'll come running.

Hilary takes him to the James Hotel. She gets out at the valet, leaving her bags in the back seat of the Maserati. There's nothing in those bags she needs in order to fuck Ivan. She doesn't need anything, when she wants to fuck Ivan, but for him to be there, to be present, and to do all the things she begs him for, that come so strikingly easy to him.

Which is why she keeps coming back. She doesn't have to guide him. She doesn't have to reassure him that it's okay, that she wants it. He tips over some edge in himself and just starts doing to her what she wants, takes the burden of responsibility from her, takes control of her even as he loses control over himself. And she doesn't tell him what a relief it is to be with him. She doesn't know how to say words like that, doesn't even know how to name that feeling.

She does know that if he will just shut up and leave her alone and fuck her, she'll be able to relax. And breathe. And be, for a little while, something like human. Something like happy, even if right now

it takes effort not to slam the Italian vehicle's door as she gets out. She leaves it open for the valet and walks inside without looking to see if Ivan is coming with her. Walks to the desk and gets a guestroom, hands them her card, and in a few minutes has two keycards. She hands them both to Ivan.

[Ivan] He's only a step or two behind her, rising out of her car like he's used to stepping out of such fine-tuned machines; barely even glancing at the valet and the doorman and all the other unimportants. He takes the keycards when Hilary hands them to him. Slips one out of the little paper card, holds it in his hand as she calls the elevator down. Some courtesies are all but bred into him. Even now, he holds the elevator door for her, following her in.

When the doors slide shut they're the only ones in this car. It begins to rise, and he's silent now, nothing more to say. Or perhaps more accurately: nothing to say that wouldn't trigger another goddamn argument. Sometimes he wonders what the fuck he's doing here. Not simply what the fuck are you doing but why the fuck are you bothering. They don't even seem to like each other. They seem to need each other though, or something in one another that they can't seem to find anywhere else.

"How long do I have you for tonight?" he asks as the elevator nears their floor.

[Hilary] Perhaps it's notable that Hilary doesn't take one of the keycards for herself. She walks with him, near him, neither of them carrying an ounce of luggage but for whatever he might have in his wallet, whatever she has in her purse. Condoms, maybe. Not that they've ever bothered with those before, not that they need them now. She doesn't ever carry them. Seriously, how awful would that have looked, should her purse spill out of her hands and drop its contents somewhere?

In the elevator, Ivan is still angry, tense, disliking her, but Hilary turns to him as the doors close and stands in front of him, putting her head on his chest, his shoulder. She closes her eyes, standing there unless he moves them apart. She doesn't put her arms around him. She doesn't ask him to hold her. She just stands there, and at some point he asks her how long he has her for tonight.

"Awhile," which tells him nothing. "I was going to go back to the city apartment to pick up Tomás and lead him back to the house, but I'm sure he'd be thrilled if I called and told him he can drive back alone. His father bought him a car when he was here."

[Ivan] It's not that it's hard for him to stay angry when she's close to him. It's nothing so sentimental as that. It's something different altogether: it's hard for him to stay cold when she's close to him. After a moment he puts his arm around her waist. He holds her against him loosely, and the elevator continues to rise.

"Good for him," he says of Tomas, not at all meaning it and not even bothering to pretend. "You've been putting him off quite a bit lately, though. You should probably make an effort to go back to him sooner rather than later."

It's impossible to tell what this is. It could be prudence, carefulness, the practicality of an incorrigible womanizer who's so very used to this sort of thing, these sorts of precautions, that it's instinct to him. It could that he doesn't want to spend all night with her. Again. Never mind that he invited her to Ibiza; never mind that two weeks from now they'll apparently be flying across the atlantic in his daddy's jet.

[Hilary] Good for Tomas. Sixteen years old, well-muscled enough that nobody cares if he hasn't grown into his face yet, rich, spoiled, given a car not for his birthday or for graduation or anything but just because his father happened to be in the country and someone suggested it might be a nice thing for him to do in between rounds of staring at his wife as she slept. Possibly Estrella. She's essentially raised the children, after all. Dion trusts her.

Hilary stares at the paneling of the elevator as Ivan speaks. She breathes in, and she's the first to step away. May have even been stepping away as Ivan said something about making an effort.

She stands beside him, turned forward again, as the car comes to a stop and the doors open a moment later. Hilary doesn't say anything. She's quiet tonight, as though worn thin -- perhaps by whatever conversation had Christian throwing trash cans around an alleyway, perhaps by shopping all afternoon and well into the evening. She just starts walking towards the room she got for them, her shoulders rounded.

[Ivan] Even on the best of days -- not that they ever have any of those -- their conversation is either light and utterly without depth or stilted and rare. This isn't even a good day. They don't talk at all as they go to their room, their rented bedroom where they'll fuck like sluts, like whores, like beasts. Her shoulders are held differently, though, and she seems so ... thin, as though someone could turn on a light behind her and he'd be able to see into her, through her, see the fragile arches of her rib-bones and the small dark fist of her heart, all the secret maneuverings of her inner self.

Being with her confuses Ivan as much as it confuses any of her pretty young boy-toys. It's a different reason for him, a different level, but ultimately the same sensation. He's lost when he's with her. He's angry, and he wants her, and he wants her for him, and

he reaches out to her, puts his hand on her back as they're standing at the door, and perhaps this is something like comfort or simply as close to it as he can possibly get with someone like her

who doesn't even really want his comfort, anyway.

He kisses her shoulder before he draws away to open the door. They've spoken twice now of ending it. Sooner rather than later. Maybe tonight. He's brought it up both times. Maybe he should say something now, reassure her that no, he doesn't want to end it, which would be the truth; but then, want has little to do with what they actually do. He doesn't want to fuck another wolf's mate, really; particularly not one like her, with such potential to destroy him. He doesn't want any of this, but here he is, regardless, because he just

can't

stop him.

The door shuts behind him. He drops the keycards on the nearest flat surface, steps out of his shoes, strips out of his tie, and just like that, just like that, he's on her. He takes her by the shoulders and pushes her face-first against the wall; his mouth is all over her, on the back of her neck and on her back, kissing and biting down her spine through her blouse, her dress, whatever it is she's wearing.

"I need you out of these clothes," he mutters. He sounds ragged, flayed to the flesh. "Oh, god, I need you."

[Hilary] They don't have best days. They don't have good days. Saying so would imply they spend their days together, that they spend more than a few hours together at a time, that they do anything but destroy each other during those hours.

It's true, though, that something is wrong as Hilary leaves the elevator. She seems drained of some vitality she usually keeps within her, a far cry from the sort of glowing inner light of pregnancy some seem so ritualistically invested in believing in. She's a knot of some squirming, twisting emotion that she can't

entirely feel,

name,

or communicate. She's as twisted in it as Ivan is in his anger and his desire. It started when he told her that maybe she should stop putting Tomas off and go back to him. But of course, Ivan knows her so well. She doesn't want his comfort. He doesn't even ask himself why the word occurs to him before he's determining that it isn't necessary, why something about the way she holds herself as she walks seems a little off. A lot off. She doesn't walk with the breezing confidence she usually does.

Ivan puts his hand on her, though, square on her back, and kisses her bare shoulder. She closes her eyes and turns her face away, her expression knotting up though she hides it from him, her shoulders tightening in on themselves as though she can't stand him touching her right now, as though she can't stand something, as though her skin is crawling.

Maybe he should say something now,

but he doesn't.


Ivan does take her inside, though, and the door closes with a swing and soft click shut behind them, automatically locked but the latch not engaged. Because Ivan is busy stripping out of his clothes and Hilary's just setting her purse down and stepping out of her shoes.

She doesn't hear him, or sense him, coming up behind her before he grabs her shoulders and puts her to the wall, his mouth on her, his body pressed to her. Even as she's breathing in suddenly -- from startlement, from lust, from god only knows -- she's arching her back slightly. Even as she's arching her back as though to welcome him, she's tensing all up and down her spine, head turned as though to try and see him.

He needs her out of her clothes. He needs her. And she closes her eyes again, turning her face back to the wall, breathing out and in through her teeth and her nostrils. Her palms are on the wall, her fingers as tight as the rest of her.

"Stop," she says suddenly, raggedly, gasping the word. It may be the first time she's said this to him when he's touching her, when he's trying to fuck her, and not when he's just asking her question after question. "Stop, stop."

Her palms move slightly, push away from the wall, fingertips never leaving. Then they smack back against it. "Stop."

[Ivan] The first time she says it,

stop,

he doesn't even seem to hear her. The second time he groans like she's taking something from him, something important that he needs just to survive. The third, the fourth -- and he's stopping, so suddenly that he sets his hands on the wall behind her and pushes off, pushes himself away.

And he leans against the opposite wall. They're in the entry hallway. They never made it past that. She smacked the wall. He hammers the base of his fists against it, brings his hands down and hammers the wall beside his thighs.

He's breathing harder already. It's not just lust. It's what he said: need. "What?" he asks. "You don't want to anymore?"

[Hilary] Hilary's hands are on the wall, like she's preparing to get frisked. She twists her head on her neck, looking at him over her shoulder. She hasn't moved. She doesn't, really, answer the question he asks, as though she didn't quite hear it, or process it. "Stop telling me you don't want me just because you don't like how much you need this," she says, which considering he was up against her a second ago, not even remotely indicating that he didn't want her, doesn't make a lot of sense.

She breathes out, and takes her hands off, half-turning towards him. She's so slender in profile it's hard to imagine her pregnant. Fully pregnant, just a matter of weeks away from delivery, her breasts and her belly swollen from it. That's so far off. Right now she's just as slim as ever, elegantly formed and so fair-skinned it seems the sun has rarely been allowed to touch her.

"I just want this," and it doesn't have as much to do with want as need but there's almost difference to her, there's no line between actually giving enough of a fuck to want before it crosses the line and skids steeply down into real need. Whatever's before that -- before want, before need -- barely causes a flicker of anything inside her. "If it makes you so fucking miserable, if you really want me to go back to my goddamn stepson, if you don't want this then stop, but don't ...don't do that anymore. I don't know why you did that."

[Ivan] "I don't want you to go back to your stepson," he says, quietly, viciously, so close on the heels of her words he nearly cuts her off. "I don't want you to go to anyone else."

It's the first time he's said that. Might be the first time he's thought that. It's out of his mouth before he can call it back and he sees it for the truth it is, and that incenses him, it wounds him, it confuses him and destroys him a little bit.

"And I don't want this to stop," he adds a moment later. Quieter. "Which is what makes me so fucking miserable. I didn't say it to hurt you, Hilary. I said it because -- "

he breaks off for a moment. Looks aside; fumes silently. Turns back.

"We should end this. Just because neither of us wants to doesn't mean we shouldn't, and the longer we put it off the worse it all gets. For both of us."

[Hilary] They can't stand this. Never can. They're always fighting, raking at each other. No wonder he pushed her to the wall and put his body against hers as soon as he could, as soon as he got her behind closed doors. They find something when they're like that, and it's inaccessible otherwise.

She makes a strange noise, gasping and destroyed, when he says he doesn't want her to go to anyone else. She's broken. She knows it. She knows it better than anyone. The best she can come up with in her entire life is that she loved someone she doesn't even clearly remember, that she was fond of a few caretakers once upon a time, that she can tolerate most people and ignore the rest. This, whatever it is, she doesn't even know how to cope with. And when those words come out of his mouth and when she sees the look on his face that follows them, Hilary doesn't know what to do, or how to feel.

Not what to feel; how.

She's watching him, one hand on the wall, unaware at the moment of the age difference between them, of ring on her finger, of the fact that thirty-four, thirty-five weeks from now she's going to have to have a baby and it's in her right now and it might be Trueborn and it might be his and it might be her husband's and surely she should feel something about all that other than irritation. She doesn't think about any of that right now. She just says, rather quietly:

"But I need this."

Like she's realizing it, too, for the first time. Or at least admitting it for the first time.

[Ivan] That gets a sound out of him, too, stripped-down and almost-silent, a rush of an exhale like a laugh, or a sigh; like air leaving his lungs after the very breath is knocked out of him.

Ivan wants to scoff. He wants to call her selfish, to want this because she needs this and damn what it does to them both. He wants to say: me too. Because he needs this. Because he's selfish, too. There are other things there, swimming beneath the surface, ideas and fragments that never even coalesce enough to become sentences.

They're ultimately lost. All of it. Ivan says nothing at all. His eyes drop briefly to her body. Breasts; hips; thighs. Abdomen. A moment later, up again: his eyes to hers, not calm but steady now.

[Hilary] She's never admitted to anything like that. Want, yes. I want you. I want you to do this. I want this. Please. But need. She's never told him she needs this, whatever it is, of which he seems to be an integral component. It's good, then, that he doesn't scoff. That he doesn't rail at her, cast blame and anger at her for this. For needing this, when she's never known she needed this, and didn't know she needed it til she said it

just now.

Her eyes are closed, and she's breathing as steadily as she can, caught somewhere between lust and ...well. Anger. Everything boils down to her anger in the end. She's not 'hurt'. She doesn't get 'hurt'. She doesn't get upset or sad or scared. Everything snaps immediately to rage, and not a single Garou in the nation would look at her and think she could have anything in common with their most uncontrollable young Ahrouns, but she does. Even Christian, an uncontrollable young Ahroun himself, couldn't see past the poise and the jewels and realize that he was being led along by someone whose anger eclipses every other potential emotion, infects even her desire.

They're quiet for a few seconds, and her head lifts, her eyes opening, looking over at him. "Will you hurt me tonight?" she asks quietly, and it isn't a question, but a request.

[Ivan] Ivan's throat moves as he swallows.

"You want me to." It's not a question either, but a confirmation. A statement.

[Hilary] The breath she takes in is a little shallow, a lot ragged. Her hand slips away from the wall where it was set for so long, and she takes a slight, abortive step in his direction. Which may be answer enough, that near-involuntary movement, like she was drawn by a line being reeled in.

Hilary's exhale is a little more steady. A little more deliberate. "Yes."

[Ivan] Just a few more seconds of pause, then. Impossible to say what goes on in Ivan's mind. He can be so very good at hiding what he thinks, and feels, and wants -- and even if he weren't, Hilary can barely read him anyway. She can barely read anyone. She can barely bring herself to care.

She knows his answer, anyway, soon enough. She knows because he steps forward, too. His back comes off the wall. His hands come up and he grasps her face between his hands, pulls her forward, eats at her mouth with such ferocity, such fury,

but only for a moment. Then he's tearing away and his hand is on the back of her neck, dragging or driving or propelling her across the room to the bed, which he throws her down on. Throws her, hard enough to bounce the thick mattress on its box springs. Hard enough to rattle a nightstand, thump the wall.

He's on her an instant later. She barely has time to push herself up -- if she's going to push herself up -- before he's grabbing her at the back of the neck and pinning her down again. He hits her, which is the only way to describe this, because what he's doing isn't spanking. It's not his fingers glancing off her skin but the flat of his palm, the back of his hand, whaling across her ass, the backs of her thighs, a half-dozen times or more, striking her with little mercy and much -- so much -- unmistakable anger.

He's angry at her again. He's angry because she won't make it easy for him. Won't agree that yes, this is bad news, this is a bad idea, this is bad for both of them and it'll destroy them both. He's angry because she wants this, and god help him he wants to give it to her, and he's angry because he promised he wouldn't do this again and he's doing it anyway, and he's angry because he wasn't ever like this before but either she's perverted him or it's always been in him, and it hardly even matters which because

now look at him.

"You fucking bitch," he snarls at her. There's nothing erotic in his tone. He hits her again. He's not holding anything back. She's lucky he's not stronger than he is; but then, perhaps if he were he would have learned to control his own strength long ago.

He's straightening to tear at his clothes, yanks that new tie of his just loose enough to whip it off. It goes on the floor. When he pulls his shirt off she can hear him tugging at the sleeves when they catch on his hands, still buttoned; can hear him cursing and then yanking until something gives. It gets whipped aside. Then his belt, stripped out of the belt loops; he hits her with that, too, brutally, folding it double in his hands and whipping it across her ass. He's never done that before. A moment later he's looping the leather around her wrists, binding her hands behind her at the small of her back.

And then he slows down. Just a little. Just for a while. She can hear him breathing harder, from exertion or excitement or anger or all of the above. He undoes his pants, kicks them off. Shoes, flung in the direction of the entrance so hard they bang off the door. Socks. He's naked behind her when he reaches for her clothes at last. He smooths his palms over her thighs, under her skirt. It's a facsimile of calm. He finds her panties and pulls them down first. Down, down, all the way down. Then he's rucking her skirt up, pushing it up and out of the way, and if the narrow cut doesn't give him enough room he'll make the room. He doesn't care if he tears the seams. He doesn't care if she has to figure out how to explain it later, or hide it from the nosy fucking servants, or --

anything. He doesn't care. He looks at her laid out for him, and he wanted to tell her she disgusts him. Or that he fucking hates her. Or something like that, something to hurt her or degrade her or at least anger her, make her feel the way he does, for once, but the words are dead before they leave his lungs. He rubs his hands over her ass.

"Fucking whore," he says, and this time the tone is different, blurred and quieter, strained, wanting.

Ivan doesn't hold her by the hips this time. He opens her legs and he opens her up for him, parts her with his hands as he fits the head of his cock against her cunt. There's a harsh pull to his breathing now. He's so fucking hard already. Didn't have to stroke himself or rub against her or eat her out or feed him his cock or -- anything. Anything but bend her over, tie her up, beat her. He leans over her, and his left hand pins her shoulder to the mattress. His right hand covers her mouth. It's as though he doesn't want her to talk anymore. No more. Not another word, not his name coming out of her mouth like a prayer while he's fucking her, when he's hurting her. Not the things she says, or asks of him, or makes him want to do -- none of it.

When he enters her it's so sudden, so harsh: shoving his cock into her in one hard thrust. He muffles whatever sound she makes. He doesn't muffle the sound he makes, rough and wracked. There's no pause, no delay. He starts fucking her immediately, pounding her from behind, so hard that he can feel the shudders of impact jolting through her right up to his hands.

[Hilary] So much of their time together is defined by the things that are lacking.

Love, affection, real desire. Sanity. Freedom. They're missing. And Hilary isn't shrieking in terror when he comes at her, and she isn't begging him suddenly to be gentle, to be careful, for fuck's sake, she's pregnant, please don't do this. She isn't screaming. And he knows she won't. He knows she won't start screaming until she's moaning, too. He knows she won't be begging him to stop once he's inside her, giving it to her, using her.

Here's another thing lacking: Ivan doesn't restrain himself. This time. He's tried. By god, he's tried before and he's failed consistently. He's tied her up and blindfolded her as a way to try and get her to the cliffs of her own humanity, a way that didn't involve leaving marks all over her, but then he had her in his bed and she had friction burns and she looked so sad when he healed them, and he still doesn't know if it was because she liked the marks where they were or some other reason.


Neither of them know what they're doing, here. It isn't that they're innocent of concepts of bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism, safewords, all of it. But neither of them have appended those terms to what they keep doing to each other. BDSM is just another way to play, another way to indulge themselves. Loose, thoughtless, meaningless.

Except afterward he tends to her so gently. He sometimes fucks her slower, with light swats on her ass where once he was hitting her like this, as hard as he can, enough to bruise. He washes her in the shower and rubs the knots out of her back, soothes the muscles around her joints where her arms were pulled back and tied together. He holds her while she sleeps, or puts a pillow under her head. It's jerky, unfamiliar, these attempts to make it up to her, forgive himself for what he does to her when they're breaking each other to pieces.

When she's shattering him with her submission to this, of all things, as though someone could actually want this.


Hilary doesn't know if he does this because she wants him to or because he wants to do it. Hilary might not care.


The first time Ivan kisses her mouth tonight it's a violent, vicious thing, as much teeth as lips and tongue, biting at her lip. She gasps, back arching to press herself to him, her hands coming up to his face, holding him, kissing him right back, as though this is passionate, as though this is what she's been waiting for.

There's no describing the sound she makes when he tears away, though, wracked and plaintive and shocked all at once. After that it's very rough. She's still fully clothed, more or less. She'd started to step out of her heels at the door before he put her up against the wall. They fall from her feet, thump and thump to the carpet, when he shoves her to bed, pushes her down. Hilary is starting to get up but is shoved back to the covers again.

This time, there's at least some fabric between Ivan's hand and her ass. He strikes her again and again, and it's not erotic, it's not playful --

she called this a game. he said it wasn't.

-- but violent. It's abusive. She lets out a single shriek when he hits the backs of her thighs, the muscles in her legs jerking, her body instinctively pulling away from the pain. He's angry. There's not even lust in this, just brutality, and Hilary isn't responding to it with anything but... well.

Submission. She does like that part. She does like that she can take this. She does like that he is able to take something in himself out on her, even if she's the very reason it's there in the first place.


let me make you happy


A little whimper, a little moan, when he swears at her and hits her again. She's on her knees, face to the bedspread, shaking as he holds her down, shaking as he pushes away to take the rest of his clothes off. Hilary doesn't move. He hasn't told her to move. He put her down like that and there she stays, just like that, waiting for him. Waiting for --

Hilary gives a shuddering gasp, clutching at the comforter, when he uses his belt. She trembles, her eyes wide and open for a moment, processing this sensation as though it's entirely new, as though it's her first orgasm, it's her first bite of dark chocolate, it's sweet and painful and bitter and encompasses everything she is, burns away everything else, everything she wishes wasn't there to begin with.

"Ivan," she says, barely audible, and closes her eyes again.


He binds her with that same belt, and it makes her moan. She's still shaking, her done-up hair coming loose, falling down from its pins as he does all this to her. And she gives hard, vibrating little shudders as he puts his hands up her skirt, strokes up past her stockings, finally touches her skin. "Oh, Ivan," she breathes, starting to open her legs for him even though her legs are throbbing, even though her skirt is tight around her thighs still.

Her panties are some black, lacy things that he peels off of her with a little tug and a little stretch, and they smell of her arousal, pulsing through her as soon as he started touching her, as soon as she finally felt his fingertips on her flesh. Oh, he might hit her, he might hurt her, but then he puts his hands on her and it's so good, it's so fucking good, and maybe he'll --

he doesn't, so it doesn't matter. He shoves that skirt up and it bunches around her hips, her stockings held in place by thin, tightly woven garters clinging to the lace edges. He can see her ass, all smooth and pale and soft. He can see her cunt, the hair artfully waxed, her pussy pink with arousal and starting to get wet for him.

She disgusts him. He hates her.

Fucking whore, Ivan says, the sound of it longing. Which, in turn, makes her try to clench her legs together to rub her lips against her clit, to try and please herself, but he doesn't make her wait after that. He pushes his cock to her and lets her feel it. In an instant she's rubbing back against him, trying to take him the way she did when he chained her up on his boat and told her to work for it. She's gasping, and a second later he muffles that sound with his palm and she only works that much harder to get him inside of her, moaning against his hand.


They should have things like safewords, signals. Ways for her to tell him no, stop, slow down, wait, even when he's covering her mouth. They should stop and think about what they're doing, talk about why they both need it so badly, figure out that she feels so broken that she wants someone to just take control of her existence and tell her what to do, tell her how to be, let her receive it without judging her, without withholding from her, without telling her no, no, this is bad, this is wrong, you have to stop, you're a bad girl.

Well. He can tell her she's a bad girl. As long as he doesn't stop. As long as he gives it to her. As long as she can be this, wrong and brutalized and liking it, insane from it, and still be able to make him happy.

Make him come.


It's more complicated than that. If it weren't, she might understand it. Even Ivan might understand what's inside of him and how it's spurred to the surface with her. They might realize that no, they're not getting this anywhere else, even from some men who might be willing to smack her around or some women who might let him do it. There's a level to this deeper than all that, deeper than exactly what he does or what he says or how he does it, and neither of them can -- or want to, it seems -- talk about it. Figure it out.

Hilary is sweating as he fucks her. She's not as wet as she sometimes is. Who fucking knows why. Maybe she's not enjoying it as much. Maybe it's a byproduct of pregnancy. Maybe it's because he made her admit that she needs this from him, that she doesn't want to go back to her life without it, maybe because at first she's still angry because he told her to go away and go back to her stepson and it made her admit that she can't get this anywhere else, that this is different. Hell. Maybe it's because he hurt her, and the simple physiological fact of the matter is that lust and pain are warring inside of her so viciously right now her body doesn't know what to do.

She's still fucking him back, though. Taking him. Moaning on his hand, wetting his palm with her saliva, with her tears. She's grabbing onto the covers and trying to find some leverage even where he holds her down so she can fuck him. She'd moan his name, cry out for him, if he would let her. She wouldn't say red, or tangerine or bumblebee or anything else they might come up with, though. Because even as he can feel wracking sobs building up in her, Ivan can feel Hilary working towards her own orgasm, too.

Which is mad, and wrong, and terrifying. But true, and perhaps more real than anything else either of them know.

[Ivan] He doesn't let her up. She's shaking. He doesn't uncover her mouth. She's sobbing. He fucks her, and even if there was lust in him, and need, this is all brutality: a pounding as thorough and vicious as a beating. It's at the edge of his capabilities, physically speaking. She can hear him panting for breath, straining for it, as he hammers her with his body. He can hear her weeping, and there must be something wrong with him that he doesn't stop. Doesn't even slow. Doesn't ask her what's wrong, or if she wants him to stop,

or if this wasn't what she wanted all along, dirty fucking whore that she is.


Surely they're not totally incapable of tenderness or gentleness. Surely Hilary fakes it with her mate sometimes, to convince him that yes, she loves him, yes, she feels the way he does. And if Ivan fakes it, too, then he's faked it with remarkably fidelity across god knows how many flings, trysts, and fucks.

Sometimes they even fake it with each other. Or -- perhaps they're simply gentle with each other, sometimes. Or -- perhaps he's gentle with her; and perhaps Hilary doesn't know what gentleness means or entails. But he's touched her soothingly before, in the shower or after a hard bout. He's stroked her chafed wrists; kneaded her sore back. The last time he fucked her, that morning at his lakehouse before the true dawn, it was slow and deliberate and

he tried to make her happy.

She wants to make him happy.

They don't have words for this. There are no words for what this is between them, this sickness, this entire malformed affair, more twisted than any sinborn.


This much, at least: he gives her that orgasm she's shuddering toward. He fucks her just the way he does, utterly without mercy, until she twists and moans and shatters beneath him. He fucks her even after that, as though to drive it home, as though to pound it into her bones, as though to tattoo that first orgasm into her indelibly as blood and ink. Maybe he fucks her into a second orgasm, or a third; maybe he simply just

stops when he does, without explanation or warning, slamming his cock into her one more time and coming to a standstill.

His hand comes off her mouth then. And off her shoulder. He plants his fists on either side of her, his body wet with sweat, his breath hoarse in his throat. He pants with his head down, sides heaving. It's not that he's come. It's not that he's lost his erection. He's just -- stopping.


A moment later he straightens. He draws out of her with a gasp, backs away, puts his back to the wall and slides down to sit at the foot of it. Ivan closes his eyes then, puts his head against the wall, and tries to find his breath again.

[Hilary] When they get right down to it, Ivan is nowhere near as broken on the inside as Hilary is. He's lived quite the privileged life, quite blessed. He certainly didn't see the sort of things she saw when she was a child, forever altering his psyche, and so on, and so forth. He doesn't want this.

And Hilary does. She likes it. She likes it when he's rough with her, even this far, even this hard. She likes it when he calls her names and hits her and ties her up and all of it. She loves it. It makes her come.

Then he pulls away, horrified at himself or disgusted with her or both or something else entirely, and Hilary's left on the bed. She's left shaking and coming down from her orgasm, tears on her face. She moans when he leaves her, and it takes a long time for her to be able to breathe normally after that, to be able to process what just happened.

It was fast. It was, in a way, awful. It made her come but even Hilary doesn't think that was the best sex they've ever had. She doesn't come a second time, or a third. She doesn't soak him with her slick as he's giving it to her. Her skin is reddened where he hit her with his hands and his belt. Her wrists are chafed from where the leather is buckled around her wrists now, but not as bad as last time.

And Ivan's against the wall, away from the bed, off of her, out of her.

Hilary starts trembling. She wants to cry again, but not because she's hit some limit. Something's wrong. And it's fast turning to anger inside of her, what the hell did she do wrong? She didn't make him take it that far. She didn't force him to make it so horrible for himself. Why is he always so angry at her? Doesn't he like this, as much as she does, doesn't he want her, doesn't he need something about this as badly as she does? What the fuck is wrong with him.

She closes her eyes tightly, fighting it. Holding onto that bare sliver of reality, humanity, feeling that is something other than rage. She breathes unsteadily, feeling empty, feeling hollow, feeling what's missing, trying desperately not to hate him for doing this to her.

The belt is even easier than the neckties, and she slips out of it, shifting it aside on the covers. She doesn't go to him. Instead she reaches back and unzips her skirt and her shirt. She starts to shrug out of her clothes, hissing slightly when she turns over and her ass and thighs touch the bed, tender and sore. She takes them off and doesn't bother to take off her bra or her garter belt or her stockings but slides off the bed, crawling over to him.

"Ivan," she breathes, putting her hand on his ankle. "Ivan, please."

I need this.

[Ivan] Ivan is so sharply alert, so aware by nature and so hyperaware right now from physiological arousal, from psychological horror, that he hears everything she does. He knows she's twisting out of the belt. He knows she's getting out of her clothes. He knows she's sliding to the floor and now she's coming to him, crawling on hands and knees like maybe she enjoys this, too, the implicit debasement of it all, and he doesn't open his eyes

until she touches him. Then his eyes fly open, wild, like an animal backed into some corner. Even the skin at his ankle is faintly damp with sweat. He reaches for her without a word, grabs her and pulls her to him so roughly and suddenly that they come together in a tangle of limbs. If he leaves bruises this time, at least it'll be unintentional.

The breath he takes when he buries his face against her is shuddering. He says nothing for a long time. Just holds on to her, holds her wrapped in his lean hard arms, a clinch, a deathgrip.

"Don't you see," he says at last, muffled against her body, "what being with you does to me?"

[Hilary] Maybe she does enjoy it.

Maybe it's hard to walk.


Hilary crawls to him and touches him, but the next thing she knows he's grabbing her, making her gasp, pulling her onto him and close to him. She opens her legs over his thighs and settles down on him and god, she lets herself rest against his cock, shivering slightly even as his breathing is shaking in and out of him.

Her skin is red where he struck her, red criss-crossed with black from her lingerie. She's so raw, so tender, when she wraps herself around him, breathing shallowly in part because of how tightly he holds her. Ivan asks what he does and oh, she tries. She tries to see, and she tries to understand what all this means. Why he pulled away. Why he acted like that in the first place, going so much farther than he has before, hurting her without enjoying it.

The first time he fucked her he did this. Got away from her, like he couldn't stand her, like touching her was burning him.

Hilary doesn't understand. But she tries. Her words are a question, an uncertainty, all but whispered: "...You don't like it?"

[Ivan] With Hilary, Ivan seems to have only two or three emotions. He knows anger. He knows lust. He knows pain, sometimes, though it's debatable whether that's an emotion or simply a sensation. A reaction to damage.

He's angry again now, a searing scathe of it across his mind. "It's not that simple," he says. He doesn't let go, or draw away. "Not every comes down to yes, I like it or no, I hate it. I like it. I hate it. I hate it because I like it. I -- "

he breaks off. He bites her shoulder suddenly, without warning, not hard but palpably -- as though driven beyond words to instinct. His teeth hold a moment, then release.

When he speaks again, perhaps it's hurtful or heartbreaking. Perhaps it would be if she were any other woman: "I don't like who I am with you."

[Hilary] That does give her pause. Not the bite, no. She leans into that, slightly, not pressing her shoulder harder into his mouth but simply curling closer to him, as though this means something to her, as though it warrants a response she doesn't have to think about. Just like how, when he fucks her, she doesn't have to think about... anything, really.

Hilary's heart doesn't break. He doesn't like who he is with her. And she doesn't realize that this means he can't stay with her, he can't be with her, she's bad for him. She just looks a little confused, watching his face now, her brow furrowed as she tries to understand why they can't just have this.

"Not even after?" she asks, rather quietly. "When you're being nice to me, and I'm..."

There's no words for how she is afterward. When she's real, for awhile. Hilary's hair has fallen completely loose now, is a tangle of loosening waves and a stray bobby pin or two. "It was better last time, at your house," she whispers, not realizing that most men could easily take this as a slur against their performance this time. "That was the best time. And in your car."

It's something, at least. It says she can acknowledge that this wasn't like that. That one felt better than the other. That she can see misery, even if she doesn't feel it. "You didn't like yourself then?"

[Ivan] For some time, Ivan doesn't know what to say to that. It's not that she's backed him into a corner; it's not that he doesn't want to admit she's right. Or wrong. Or anything. It's that he genuinely doesn't know the answer.

He watches her throughout, though. They've pulled apart a little. It doesn't seem to matter that they're both naked right now. That he's still aroused. That she's already fucked raw, fucked sore. His arms have unwound from her a little; lay now loosely about her waist, her hips.

"Times like that," he says finally, "all I think about is how much I want you." A pause; and then he lays a few more words down. "To stay. Or for myself."

His gaze falters then. He looks away; looks down, looks at her flat stomach without seeing her. God knows what he's thinking now. About what's growing inside her, maybe. Or maybe just about the way he fucked her just now. Abused her. Brutalized her.

"Please don't ask me to hurt you again. I can't -- I don't -- "

a break; a pause; his eyes close; his eyes open.

"I'll tie you up, hold you down, blindfold you, spank you, fuck you, whatever you want. But don't ask me to hurt you."

[Hilary] Whatever is growing inside of her, whether male or female or Garou or Kin, whoever's genetic material helped create it, there's no doubt that the child is going to be sickeningly, maddeningly pure. That even now its tribe's insanity is being woven into the very fabric of its existence. There's no escaping that. From the day it's born to the day it dies it will have some strange quirk, some freakish desire, some ridiculous fear, some bizarre tendency that, when triggered by life events, explodes into deep mental illness.

And on the surface, whether its eyes are black or blue or hazel, its hair brown or dusky gold, whether its skin is ivory-pale or gilded or caramel, it will be beautiful. Strong. Lithe. Glorious to behold. Prized, if Kin. Followed, if Garou. Paragon of what the human (or human-like) body is capable of becoming.

Probably won't ever know its father as more than a story, whoever he is. Probably won't be more than an occasionally trotted-out accessory to its mother. Estrella will hire a nanny, or a herd of nannies, and later: tutors, dance instructors, art and music teachers, fencing masters. Micaela and Tomas will tolerate its adoration whenever they're around, which won't be often, because

her madness makes her unable to bear the imperfections and instability of childhood,

and his madness makes him unable to bear any intimation of the parental affection he'll be certain he's lost to the little brat.

In short, whatever is underneath the sheath of flesh and muscle, no more than a few millimeters long right now, is already doomed. Blessed beyond reckoning by breeding, by wealth, but fated to enter a world unwanted for anything but its potential to fight (and die) or fuck (and breed), and unloved in all but the most superficial senses. No wonder Ivan, whose generosity of spirit is only eclipsed by his utter, complete selfishness, finds his eyes lingering there sometimes, not sure what to think. How to feel. Or if he's even thinking, feeling anything to do with the fetus at all.

Hilary doesn't notice. Hilary barely even acknowledges that she's pregnant now, except that now she has to follow all these new rules. No tuna, no caffeine, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no soft cheeses, no shellfish... oh, and then she has to get fat. She mostly doesn't think about it, because then she feels revolted, and bored, and annoyed. She's grateful, at least, that Dion is in one of his intellectual phases. At least he won't gush.


And all this time, he's hard and pressed up against her wet, recently fucked cunt. It hurts to have her legs spread like this, but she likes the pain. She likes the soreness. She likes being nestled up against him when they're sweaty and he's naked and she's still in most of her lingerie, knowing he'll fuck her again. Her fingertips stroke idly over his face, his hair, while he holds her limply around the waist.

Understanding flickers a bit in her eyes when he says that when he has her afterward, all he wants is to keep her. He can all but see the cogs turning in her head as she sits there with him, processing that line of thought. Maybe she gets it now why he couldn't say

yes, at those times, i'm happy. i like who i am. i like how we are together. it's good.

Because even she knows, and has known from the beginning, the utter misery that awaits any of the young bucks she takes to bed, should they get that particular desire into their heads. Years ago there was that one, what was his name, he stood at her door and held onto the frame and yelled her name, drunk and desperate, til someone called security and security called the police and the police asked her if she wanted to press charges for trespassing

and she did, so that he wouldn't come back. What was his name?


Hilary leans forward and strokes her face heavily, slowly, across the side of Ivan's. She doesn't get up and say yes, you're right, we can't do this. I'm pregnant, for god's sake. You're going to get sick of me soon anyway, I'm going to get so repulsive. She doesn't say yes, you're right, this is a bad idea, I'm making you so unhappy, and eventually you're going to snap and break my neck, then where will we be? Nowhere good, that's where.

She nuzzles him instead, drowsy as a child, eager for affection as an animal. She puts her face against his cheek and breathes him in, kisses his jawline. He can feel her eyelashes bat across his skin. Doesn't tell him well, alright, you don't have to hurt me that bad. He doesn't have to whip her with his belt for her to get that warm, throbbing pain, for him to leave friction burns where he ties her up, for him to give her those nice purple bite marks with their hard red centers, blossoming on her skin like a Rose of Sharon. He doesn't have to end up hating himself for her to get what she needs.

Which seems to be: that feeling of subjugation. That feeling of being able to give up control to someone else. To be dominated. To be punished, maybe. To be used for someone else's pleasure, since she seems incapable of giving it freely.

Hilary turns her head around and kisses him softly. Maybe that's her answer: it's soft, and slow, and her lips part, her tongue gently seeking his. She lifts her hips, slides her ass against the shaft of his cock in one grazing stroke of flesh on flesh. Her hands cup over his shoulders. The kiss ends for a moment, breaking away as she whispers: "Okay, Ivan."

And she's kissing him again, tender and sweet again, as though she's really capable of either.

Who really knows, after all?

[Ivan] It's entirely possible that as her pregnancy progresses, Ivan's interest will wane. Even now, he's never pretended to be faithful to her. That makes it all the more absurd, all the more insane, all the more unfair -- because whatever else, Ivan does believe in a certain level of fairness, of sportsmanship -- that he wants

well. It's not faithfulness, really. He's not sure she's capable of faithfulness simply because he's not sure she's capable of the underlying emotions that drive such a thing. Tenderness. Sweetness. Caring. Not faithfulness, then. He wants what he's said: her. To himself. He doesn't want to think of her with anyone else. He doesn't want to think of her getting sick of this, getting sick of him; doesn't want to think of the day he calls her only for his call to go straight to voicemail, his voicemails going unanswered, his texts sent into the void.

He doesn't want to think of standing at her door, holding onto the frame, yelling her name until the police hauled him off for trespassing.


Hilary isn't getting up. She isn't getting her things and leaving him be. She's only moving closer, and now her hands are on his shoulders; she's moving onto his lap and stroking herself over him, which makes him pant into her mouth. His eyes have fallen closed by the time she breaks away to

acquiesce, so sweetly. She submits so fucking well, and that makes it so easy for him to fall right into her. Makes it so fucking easy for him to dominate her, beat her, brutalize her if she so much as asks for it.

In the end he's not sure who's dominating whom. He's not sure if it still counts when she asks for it in the first place. He's not sure it doesn't count when some part of him, some twisted dark piece of him, wants it so fucking much. Wants to take it so far, and farther every time. Wants to beat her with his hands, with his belt, with his shoes, his fists; wants to chain her up and fuck her until she --

his mouth parts from hers with a gasp. He presses his brow to hers, eyes shut. A second or so go by. Then he lifts his chin and seeks her again, blindly, nipping her lip between his teeth, sucking gently on the lower before his mouth opens to hers.

He shifts her atop him, his hands on her hips; on his cock. He strokes himself against her, making himself be careful this time, be gentle; making himself guide himself into her slowly, slowly, while he pulls her down onto his lap.

Ivan's arms fold around her then. They're both lean, long-limbed people. She feels narrow in his arms, sleek and slight-boned, thin across the shoulders and the ribs. It's almost inconceivable, the power she wields without even realizing it; the lives she destroys by simply touching them. He folds her against his chest and moans against her shoulder, sounding lost, sounding wracked, as his hands urge to her start riding him. Start fucking him again.

[Hilary] Faith takes belief in something. Belief takes, one might say, a soul. It's debateable whether either of them have one of those, or where it's hidden if they do. But possession is something else entirely. Possession seems a natural outlet for the instincts born into him and the selfishness he was raised to have. Everything can be yours, whispered the world in his ear when he was an infact. Everything should be yours. Everything will be yours.

Perhaps that's another reason why it's so, so easy to believe in Hilary's sweetly erotic submission, and take advantage of it. She moves against him and opens her legs a little wider for him like he didn't just fuck her -- abusively -- into a shaking wreck. She holds onto him like a lover and moans softly in his ear as she's sinking down onto him. Nevermind that the moan is edged with pain, nevermind that he knows she might never feel something as incandescent as love for another person. Nevermind that he might not be any more capable of really showing love to another person than she is.

Her mouth comes back to his again and again as she starts to ride him, right there on the hotel room floor. She kisses him while she goes from a soft, circular grind to slowly sliding up and down his cock, as though if they go slow this somehow makes it 'gentle', too. She murmurs his name right against his lips in between long, wet kisses, whispers:

"That's it, baby. That's it. Fill me up."

[Ivan] There are bruises blooming on her buttocks, the backs of her thighs; her lower back. There's an angry red stripe, a welt, where he lashed his belt across her body. There's a handprint where he held her to the bed by the shoulder.

All these things, when he promised himself he wouldn't hurt her again. He wouldn't leave marks again.

He's a liar by nature, though. He's a ragabash. He deals in secrets and lies, shadows, secrets, honorless attacks. He can't keep faith if he wanted to, just like it's not in her nature to be able to love; just like it's not in his nature to be selfless. Generosity and selflessness are not, after all, the same thing. It's one thing to give what you don't need; quite another to give what you do.

And speaking of need: this is something he needs one some dark, primitive level. He needs it, and so he takes it, regardless of consequence or outcome. He holds on to her as she starts riding him right there on the floor, his back to the wall, their hands and their arms on each other. His eyes are closed now. He gasps and he pants as she moves on him. His head tips back when she circles her hips. He kisses her, hard, when she whispers his name,

and whispers that's it like that.

He remembers her planting her heel on his chest while he undid the straps. That flirtation with dominance, which was in the end just another sort of submission. His hands move down her back. Smooth over her ass, rub over her skin.

"Faster," he whispers. "Make me come."

[Hilary] That promise came ages ago, and he's broken it again and again. He never wanted to have to heal her again but then he had her in his bed and her wrists were ugly red, raw things and there was a mark where he'd held her with his teeth by the shoulder as he held her down and fucked her, grunting into her skin as he came. Hilary probably doesn't even remember that promise; barely even listened to it. Not that she expected him to break it, not that she laughed it off with internal dismissal. She just didn't pay it any mind to begin with.

When he whispers back to her what he does, Hilary gasps, and a shiver goes through her. She rides him faster, almost too fast now, considering how hard he was fucking her before he pulled himself out and moved away, like she hurt him as much as he was hurting her. She folds over him, temple to temple, her hands gripping his shoulders.

"Are you going to come in me?" she pants, almost mewling the words in time with the way her cunt clenches down on him.

[Ivan] "Yes," and for a moment it's not clear if that's an answer or just a sigh, a response, a reaction to the way she folds over him and rides him. His hands pass down her thighs. He grips at the outsides of her legs, near her knees -- holds her there as she bounces on him, eyes shut, panting words past her neck, her ear.

"Yeah. I'm going to come in you."

They're barely words at all, in truth. Barely enunciated. Breath laced with consonants and syllables -- spilling past her shoulder the way her hair spills down her back, silken and sleek and cool, swinging and swaying over his hands as those hands come back up, follow the lines of her back, curve over her shoulders

to hold her against him, just like that, while her lower body works, grinds, rides his.

"Make me come in that tight cunt. Make me fill you up, baby. Oh, god."

[Hilary] This is what she loves. And it hardly matters if he's angry at her when he fucks her, or if he's giving himself over to his own desperation for her, or if they understand each other, or if either of them are 'capable' of this or that. The very first time he went to a hotel room with her she purred nasty, filthy words about letting him fill her up with his cum. She talked about hot, sticky. She took it, moaned for it, acted like a whore for him.

Maybe that's all she is. Not the sort of woman you'd want taking care of children, not the sort of woman who is capable of being nice or kind to anyone. It's one or the other. She can be like this: a fucking slut in a hotel room, bent over in her lingerie, or she can be like Dion seems to want her to be: tender, soft, cradling their child in her arms. There isn't a lot of room in between the two fantasies for a real person to be formed, or survive without being crushed by a) rock and b) hard place.

In any case, Hilary might be too lost in her own twists and turns of madness to notice. Her cunt is raw and sore from what he did to her before but she likes this. It makes her happy. It makes her whole. Ivan is going to fuck her til he comes in her. He's got to be close, even if he doesn't yet feel it building in himself yet. And that's good. And that's why she's here. She can give him something no one else can. Something about that pleases her. She doesn't question it, past that.

Her eyes close as he runs his hands up her body, as he holds onto her. She gasps as his cock strokes her clit, pumped in and out of her as their bodies thrust together, but this really isn't about her. Not in her mind, at least. Still, she moans, and she mutters: "Spank me, baby. Give it to me. take me,"

like none of those words are going to drive him crazy, like none of them are going to spark off that wild part of him that wants her, wants to punish her, wants to keep her, wants, craves, devours. Like she isn't thinking about any of that, anyway.

[Ivan] She must know that's going to drive him wild. She must know that she can't say things like that and not set something off in him. She must know, and that must be why she does it, a calculated risk, a calculation, a manipulation.

Or maybe -- she really doesn't know. Maybe she's surprised, every time, when he tips over some unseen edge for her. When he grabs her and controls her and dominates her and makes her feel it, god damn it, feel it the way she doesn't seem to feel anything else, ever.

Ivan snarls when she tells him to spank her. Take her. He bites her shoulder, and it's sudden and harsh, and his hand flies across her ass as she rides him. A second later the world's tipping -- he's tipping her over, flipping her on her back and coming down over her. So much for slow. So much for gentle. He moves over her like an animal, grasps her hands and pushes them over her head, holds them to the carpet as he thrusts into her again,

hard and deep, groaning rough as he fills her,

and fucks her. It's always like this. He doesn't know why, or how, or why they can't seem to just fuck like normal people for once, without those overtones of dominance, those undertones of sadism. His mouth is at her neck, and then at her breasts. He kneels over her, spine curved, like a beast over prey: eats at her with his lips, nips at her breasts, sucks at her nipples. And then he pushes himself up, holding her down, head bent. He hammers her then, pounding her all over again, groaning, grunting, running down his pleasure, tearing it down, bringing it to the ground.

He lets himself come this time. Lets himself slam himself deep and hold, right there, filling her cunt up as he comes down over her and buries his face against her shoulder; buries the sounds he makes against her neck.

His hands are gripping her wrists at the end. Likely he doesn't even realize how hard he's holding her. Even afterward, he doesn't move away. He stays inside her. He stays atop her, and close to her, shuddering and gasping, hiding himself against her skin.

[Hilary] It's more difficult for Ivan to move into this new position than it is for Hilary. He gets his legs under him and turns them over, rolls Hilary's back to the carpet and starts pounding her. All she has to do is let him, and she does, going pliantly under him. She wraps her legs around him, stockings stroking his lower back, running over his flank. She gasps, the straps of her garter belt digging into her hips, leaving impressions on her ass. Her hands grasp at his shoulderblades as she receives him, arching for it.

He doesn't understand this woman any better than she understands him, see her any more clearly. Surely she must know how she makes him feel, or she must be surprised, or --

it doesn't really matter what Hilary thinks when she moans those things to him, whispers in his ear. Maybe she just wants his hand across her ass. Maybe she just wants to get fucked, and wants it like this because it feels good to her. She clings to him like what she said earlier is the truth, though: she needs this. Whatever it is. She needs him to grab her hands, tear them off his back and pin them down while he takes her. She needs him to treat her like this.

Because the one time they fucked and it was even a little bit 'normal' was that night at his penthouse. He didn't hurt her then, didn't leave a mark anywhere. He didn't hold her down. It was wild and it was fast and it was agonizing but it was the closest they've come. And it may have been the night she conceived. There's no way to know for sure unless -- until -- she gives birth.

"Ivan," she's gasping, as he puts her down and fucks her. His lips and his teeth caress her through the lace and silk of her bra, like she wore this lingerie intending to get fucked tonight when she was just out shopping, for god's sake. Maybe she was going to come to see him afterward, see if he'd let her up to his penthouse and give it to her again. Maybe she was shopping for something to wear for him that would make him just like this, animal and insane, bearing down on her like he can't help himself.

It's like this that Hilary comes again, her arms over her head and her wrists held down. It's when he really starts going at her, driving himself into her again. It's possible that her orgasms are almost intellectual in nature, driven more by the way he fucks her, the games they're playing, than by the actual physical sensations. Then again, it's possible that her mind is so altered that a little pain only makes it better. Or a lot of pain.

Or rugburns.

She comes quietly, strangely enough, gasping and writhing, arching her back as though she's trying to fight her way out of his grip when he knows damn well she likes it like this, wants him to hold her down. She's coming just seconds before him this time, and his orgasm seems to spark off yet another in her, the two tumbling down some steep internal slope together like Jack and Jill, crashing towards concussions. She opens her legs wider and lifts her hips to meet him, to take him, groaning loudly near the end, sweating where her skin is softest.

Doesn't really matter anymore that he comes in her. She's pregnant. He can't do any more damage than that. He can just lie there, holding her down, while she whimpers softly in the last pulses of her orgasm, turning her face blindly to his.

[Ivan] The thought of prophylactics never occurred to Ivan tonight. One might argue that's always the case. If it hadn't been the case, he wouldn't have to wonder now if the kid, the baby, the embryo was his.

If it had occurred to him, though, he likely wouldn't have worn a condom regardless. It doesn't matter anymore, after all. Damage is done. Too late for precautions now.

After some time, Ivan stirs. His hands first: releasing her wrists. Loosening, then turning, cradling her forearms inside. His fingers are long enough to easily encircle her wrists. He rubs the fine skin there, strokes the balls of his thumbs over her pulse-points. After some time, he lifts his head. He finds her mouth and he kisses her, softly now, slowly, tastingly.

When he draws back, he draws out of her. He kisses her collarbone, and then Ivan rolls away onto his back, side by side with her. For a moment he doesn't even recognize the ceiling, or where he is. Then he remembers. A hotel room. The empty space between entryway and bed and dresser. She rented the room for the night, but she'll probably have to go before them. He probably wants her to. They should end this.

I need this, he thinks, and can't be sure whether he's echoing her in his mind or not.

He reaches over after a moment. His hand strokes over her stomach, crosses her ribcage; wraps around her side. It's a loose, odd embrace.

[Hilary] For her part, Hilary doesn't seem concerned about the possibility that the baby has no connection to Dion at all, that it's Ivan's instead. Nor does she seem worried that Christian's going to continue his self-centered self-destruction by running to the one person she told him not to in order to confess, to be purged, to ask for punishment. She certainly isn't worried about her mate coming back from wherever he is now and breaking Christian's neck for touching his wife.

She should be worried about these things. She should realize that her life could go completely off the rails again because things don't go as smoothly for her as she expects them to. She doesn't seem to be concerned, though. Nobody will really blame her, in the end. Nobody will really hold her accountable, when all is said and done. Or if they do, it will turn out they never really mattered, anyway.

Everything will work out just fine for her. And if they don't, she'll still be fine. She's still here, isn't she?


They kiss. Slowly, almost tenderly. Not entirely. Her eyes are dry. He didn't make her weep this time, didn't make her cry as he fucked her to orgasm after orgasm.

"Don't," she whispers, but she might only think the word, rather than say it, because he pulls out of her and draws back anyway. She breathes in as he leaves her, opening her eyes to the ceiling. Sometimes, afterward, he can be so gentle with her, even if he wasn't careful as he fucked her. The way he touches her wrists, the way he kisses her, the way he withdraws, and the way he puts his hand on her.

Hilary closes her eyes again when he crosses his arm like that over her. She shifts aside, his arm sliding off of her, but she isn't pulling away like she did at his penthouse. She's turning towards him, settling against his side, sighing with something like contentment.

She's pregnant. It might be his. Ivan's given no thought to how he'll feel if it isn't, but he just found out less than an hour ago. Maybe he'll be relieved. It has little chance of changing the way the child's life is meant to go. Hilary settles closer to him, and whispers:

"Maybe after you've rested awhile, we can do it again."

No, she can't stay all night. And they both know that. Eventually she'll go back to the city apartment, or she'll go all the way back to the estate on the north shore. She'll wake to a message left for her by Katherine Bellamonte and this time tomorrow night she'll be filled with so much anger she won't be able to feel anything else, think of anything else but seething, violent rage with no outlet but whatever she can find to quietly destroy when no one else is around.

For now, though: another hour, maybe. Perhaps two more.

[Ivan] Don't, she whispered as he began to draw away. At least, he thinks that might have been what she said. He can't be sure. It could just be his imagination. He draws away anyway. They lie together on the floor as though they were exhausted, defeated, dying in the wake of some cataclysm. His hand crosses over her body. She turns toward him, and his arm resettles around her this time. He inhales and his eyes close when she asks for more.

She always asks for more.

"I don't hate you, you know," he says after a time. It's not really an answer -- not to her question, anyway. Perhaps to the tone of it, though. The questioning itself: that she feels like she has to ask for it. Or perhaps wants to have to ask for it. Beg for it. "I'm sorry that sometimes I'm ... so angry."

[Hilary] Lying there on the floor together, stinking of sex, Ivan and Hilary's sweat evaporates quickly into the icily conditioned air. She licks her lips and exhales a he speaks, moving closer to him, entwining their legs. Or rather: covering his legs with one of her own, covering his stomach with her arm, completing this visual falsehood that they are lovers.

"No," she murmurs. "I understand."

Perhaps she means no, don't be sorry. Don't try to explain. Don't feel bad. I understand. I get it. Hard to tell for sure; she's not exactly the best at expressing her feelings (when she has them) or her thoughts (when they aren't disturbed).

Hilary strokes his chest idly, almost lovingly. There's an innocence to her right now, an openness. Or maybe just relaxation. She's loose. She's calm. She's there. "I wish you weren't so frightened by this." And a sigh: "I like it so much."

[Ivan] It's hard for Ivan to trust this closeness with her afterward. It's hard for him to believe it'll last long. It's probably best that he believes -- knows -- it won't. That this is no more who she is than the haughty ice-cold bitch she can be. Or the doting wife. Or the thirty-something socialite out with her friends. Or, or, or.

He raises a hand after a while. Covers hers, which covers his heartbeat. He has nothing to say to that; no way to explain why he's frightened, or repulsed, or uncertain, or ... whatever it is he is.

After a while: "When can you stay the night again?"

[Hilary] [How many days til Dion's reachable?]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 9

[Hilary] He can believe what he wants of her, lacking the truth. Lacking even the knowledge that there might be a truth to her at all.

Hilary, eyes closed and body held warmly against his own in the curve of his arm, can't read his thoughts. She can't defend against any of the things he thinks of her that are wrong, or that are too right, or that make him so violently, viciously angry. She cuddles, quite simply, and seems at peace. She always seems at peace after he fucks her, after he comes in her, after he's left a few marks on her body.

She's at peace, and he's in a tailspin. It's not fair.

When Ivan asks her what he does, she stirs a bit, opening her eyes and thinking for a moment. "It depends," she says quietly. "I've contacted my husband's PA to try and get in touch with him. When he gets the message that I have urgent news for him, and when he responds, I can't... predict how he'll react. Whether he'll come back, or if he'll demand I go on immediate bedrest, or if he'll simply acknowledge it and tell me to inform him when it's born."

[Ivan] It's the first time, Ivan reflects, that Hilary's given any indication at all that she realizes she doesn't know how Dion would react. That how he might react to all this may or may not be as she seems to think. Or hope. That how he might react may very well limit her personal freedom, her mobility, and -- if the three weeks he spent with her was any indication -- what remains of her sanity.

Ivan doesn't say anything now, though. No more cutting words, hurtful reminders. The hand on her shoulder moves gently, strokes her skin. So fine, so smooth. Sometimes he asks himself how he can bear to hurt something so beautiful. Sometimes he understands that it's because she's so fine, so smooth, so beautiful,

so out of reach,

that he wants to hurt her. That on some intrinsic level, what he feels isn't so very different from the seething, black, poisonous hate that festers in the hearts of some of the most abusive and misogynistic men. And that sickens him.

"Well," he says quietly, "you'll let me know, won't you?"

[Hilary] She's never really known. Sometimes Dion is easy to guess. Sometimes she can't fathom him any more than she can fathom anyone else. And she's never been pregnant before. She's never seen Dion take the news -- across the Atlantic, no less -- that he has a new progeny on the way. Sort of. That's probably, most likely his.

Having no previous experience to base her knowledge on, Hilary can't guess. When one gets right down to it, another less obvious fallout of her broken emotional center is that she has a hard time imagining anything that she hasn't already gone through.

Ivan, however. Ivan and his sudden bursts of unbidden rage, the violence he exerts, the pleasure he finds in it even when he doesn't want to --

that, Hilary understands perfectly, even if she can't make him see it.

"Of course," she says lightly, her voice a soft curl of air across his bare skin. "I'll call you off your boat where you're entertaining friends, or show up at your door late at night." That could be self-mockery. But then again, she very well might.

[Ivan] Another long silence follows that. She might be self-mocking. She might be trying to make a joke. Ivan takes it seriously, though; thinks about it. Thinks longer about whether or not to speak at all. Whether or not to say what's on his mind.

"I didn't really mind."

He does, finally. And this is as quiet as anything else; a bare whisper of a sentence. They lie on the floor like lovers. Like it's their bed. Like they're in love. She cuddles against his side and his arm wraps around her, and they're secure where they lay, entangled, joined. It's so easy, physically. All of it. Fucking her, hurting her -- all of it. It's everything else that's hard.

"I think I just wanted an excuse for being angry. Or maybe I'm afraid of you taking me for granted, because that's not so very far from being bored."

[Hilary] Even a typical woman would struggle with processing that quickly. Even a woman he'd just fucked lovingly and slowly -- floor or bed, really, it doesn't matter -- would have trouble absorbing that sort of simply-stated truth while lazing in the afterglow of sex. Hilary isn't quite sure what to do just then. She looks past Ivan's body at the wall, then at the ceiling, blinking every so often.

Of course she knows he didn't really mind. If he had, he wouldn't have gotten back to Chicago as fast as he had, wouldn't have come when she called so easily, wouldn't have thrown himself on her as soon as he could get close enough to touch her.

After awhile, her eyes close again. She breathes in deeply, holds him more tightly. It's hard to remember --


"I don't," she whispers. "Take this for granted."

[Ivan] A brief silence, then, before Ivan's free hand leaves Hilary's. He finds her face by touch, his fingers brushing past her cheek and into her hair. He holds her against his body even as she holds him a little tighter. There's something aching and poignant about this. They both know what they're trying to do.

Trying to hold on to this. Trying to keep her here a little longer.

In the end he doesn't say that he knows she doesn't take this for granted. Or even that he believes her, or that he'll remember now, and he won't doubt her again, or -- any of that. What he says instead is soft, but unflinching:

"Neither do I."

A few more moments go by. A few more heartbeats. Then he takes a deeper breath; looks toward the bed, tilting his head back to do so, his chest shifting beneath her cheek.

"Let me take you to bed," he says.

[Hilary] Maybe when they get on the bed again, Hilary will let Ivan fuck her slower, maybe not tie her up or hold her down or get rough with her. Maybe before they go he'll caress her in the shower, stroke his hands over her softly, kiss her breasts and her stomach without his teeth, and even as he feels her drifting away from him he'll -- perhaps -- remember what she can be like for a few minutes at a time. Real and present. Warm. Tender, in her way, which is awkward and unpracticed but the best she can honestly do.

Maybe. Hilary never knows when she comes to see Ivan if he'll hate her this time, if he'll snap at her, question her, rake her over the coals because she isn't what he wants her to be. She never knows if it's going to be easier for her to fall into him, or if every moment will be a performance, the way it always is.

What she can't find the words to tell him is that she thinks well of him. She 'likes him', is perhaps what she would mean to say. He's often pleasant to be around, but she might say 'diverting' or 'distracting' and, meaning it with only the best intentions, come across as wholly abusive, dismissive, disinterested. What she can't tell him is that she needs him to rough her up the way he does, control her, dominate her, and turn around and give her the rest. What she doesn't have the words to say is that him doing this without needing to be instructed is very nice, and she likes that, too.

Hilary doesn't understand it, so she certainly can't explain it to him.

She just breathes deeply, shifting her bare cunt against the side of his thigh, and nods against his chest, moving her mouth to his nipple to kiss it once. "Yes, Ivan," she whispers, starting to crawl on top of him, even though

he wants to take her to bed.

[Ivan] It's never quite certain how Ivan will react when Hilary starts making intimations of her readiness, her willingness, her eagerness to fuck. Whether he'll flip her on her back and start railing her again, or push her away altogether, or

as he does now --

wrap his arms around her, crush her close, arch his head off the ground to kiss the top of her head, her temple; her mouth if she lifts her head to meet his.

A moment later he's letting her go; shifting her up with his hands on her hips. Seems for a moment like he's positioning her to fuck. Like he'll fuck her again right here on the floor, on this carpet that's a great deal cleaner and more luxurious than a carpet at your average motel-6 but still a hotel carpet that's seen god knows how many pairs of feet go by.

He doesn't, though. He sits up. He stands up, getting his legs under him, rising, pulling her with him and half on him, pressing her back against the wall to kiss her all over, face and neck and breasts and stomach, all over until he pulls away to pull her toward the bed.

"Again," he's murmuring, pushing her down on the mattress: on her back this time, facing him, though they have precious little time to look at one another before he's sucking at her tits, nipping at her skin. "I want to fuck you again and again. As many times as I can before you have to go."

[Hilary] They both know they have a limited time together, no matter when they get together. They both know it could be days, weeks before they get to have each other again. They both know that it's a matter of months, at most, before they tire of each other, or he becomes repulsed by her.

And neither of them know that in less than twenty-four hours the elder of the tribe is going to inform Hilary that she knows she's gone outside the bounds of her mateship at least once. She'll be told that her spine could be ripped out and hung on a wall. She'll be told that she's not to see Christian again, as though by virtue of fucking him once she's automatically out to get him, out to disobey, out to seduce and destroy as many Garou as possible. The insults will pile up one after the other. The judgement will be made as soon as she refuses to divulge details for the sake of her own privacy: Christian, self-flagellating and morose, is forgivable. She is tainted, and untrusthworthy.

Wrong. Bad. On some intrinsic, ultimate, inescapable level.


Ivan kisses her all over. Holds her, puts his mouth on her head and her temple, makes her laugh softly as he runs his mouth over her face, catches her lips. Hilary sighs into his mouth, pressing him back, pushing her body against his even as her kiss intimates surrender. Ivan comes up in a wave, up on his feet, taking her with him, and elevates her. Her arms wrap around him, to hold on, and to stay close.

The bed doesn't bounce as he sets her down, because he doesn't throw her this time. Thick and pillow-topped, it sags as they move onto it together, her hand on the back of his neck, her eyes on his, her breath quickening. His teeth tease her through the lace cups over her breasts and she bites back a soft squeal, smiling at what he says. What he's doing.

"Yes, Ivan," she whispers again, laying back, pulling him over her, bringing him down.