Ivan Press

[Hilary] She's never lacked in artistry. Never lacked in the appreciation of true beauty. No wonder she goes for the young, the fit, the well-formed, the wealthy. No wonder she's a cook, a dancer, a sensualist, an artist in her own right. Those blossoms in the vase in the alcove in his entryway: she understood that. The composition of it, the stark beauty of it.

The ache of it, though. The potential and peace and tenderness that comes from considering dappled sunlight. These are just out of reach for her, something she might process slowly, replicate with effort, but not instantly, instantaneously feel on her own. She cannot simply look at it, feel a warm hand slipping into her own, and say with her eyes: Yes. Me too. I know.

Yet there's something in her eyes now, as he lets her go and touches her face, whispering that he knows that's all she really wants from him, at the core of it all. Reassuring her, almost, that she does. It isn't relief in her eyes, it isn't sudden soothing of her tensions. Trust, perhaps, if he can recognize it with a kneejerk gut-wrench of denial. She believes him. Maybe, and even more treacherously, believes in in him.

Laughable. She's a faithless sort of creature, incapable of seeing gods in the night sky.

For a few minutes up top, they were quietly and simply glad. There is something there, sunken halfway into the mire of their respective madness, reflected in the shattered remnants of two very incomplete people. There is something there in the part of her that does, against all odds, form attachment. There is something there in the part of him that does, inexplicably, seek commitment. But those parts are closed away in locked cabinets, empty rooms, shuttered and shadowed and dust-ridden and terrifying when unearthed. Flashes of simple happiness are not the same as long stretches of idle pleasure. They are deep, and rare, and feel

-- to the broken, and the lost --

unnatural.

Her arm unfolds only slowly, and does not reach for him. She has not clutched at his arm, not since he grabbed her and pulled her up, as though that was in fact the precise sort of embrace that she was pleading for, grabbing at him to give her. It must be terribly draining, she thinks distantly, to be a dominant. She feeds so much from him, just as parasitic as the infant in her womb.

Feels no guilt, thinking this. Does not realize that perhaps she might feel compassion, instead, or that she could tell him: I understand if I make you tired, giving so much of yourself to me. The thought never crosses her fractured, beautiful, twisted little mind.

She does take his hand. There's a hitch right before her palm touches his, though. A moment where she might do who knows what, change the alignment of their touch, move her hand beneath his, show him that not even this can be supplication from him. Hilary pauses, a shadow of a thought crossing her expression, and then lays her hand atop his, palm to palm, cool fingers sliding over his.

"Ivan," she sighs softly, like a caress, and leans forward, kissing him on the mouth. Slow. Warm. Drenching. Tasting faintly of white wine, and herbs, and herself.

[Ivan] Ivan cannot remember the first time Hilary spoke his name. He suspects she may have kissed him long before she said his name. Possibly fucked him, allowed him inside her body, long before she allowed his name into her mouth. Likely it was never something she consciously withheld, never a bargaining chip or a tease or -- whatever else a woman like her, faithless and fickle and so fucking fine, might make a name. Likely it was simply that it never occurred to her to put a name to this creature, this beautiful young man with the hard body, the laughing eyes, that mouth, those hands, that cock.

It wasn't until something changed, and something deepened and became a little terrifying, a little exhilarating, that she started saying his name. And then, from the very start, it was always as it is now: a sigh, a caress, a submission.

Ivan.

Yes, Ivan.

His hand firms around hers after that kiss draws to a close. They leave the dishes where they are. He leads her down the stairs, and they've been this way before -- it was afternoon that time, brilliant summer daylight arcing off the water and reflecting across the ceiling when he blindfolded her and chained her to the door and hit her, spanked her, beat her until her slick was running down her thighs. Fucked her until she was screaming, and sobbing, and beyond herself; until to continue would have been quite literally criminal.

There are no chains tonight. No cuffs, no ties, no belts, nothing but his hands on her, turning her to face away from him after he closes the cabin door behind them. As though anyone else would come. As though the lone servant was not safely ensconced in the crew quarters, separated from them by the engine room and several walls. That engine is silent now, the floor only very gently shifting beneath their feet. It's quiet enough to hear fabric shift. Quiet enough to hear the teeth of her zipper part.

When her dress pools to the floor Ivan steps forward. He wraps his arms around her. His sweater is soft against her bare skin; not the faintest hint of scratchiness. His hands move over her, and when they sweep over her belly for the first time in weeks he turns his head and bites the base of her neck, as though this alone might deny the palpable rounding there, the coming weeks of isolation.

Then his hand is passing on, and down. He reaches between her legs and he starts to caress her the way he does in the shower sometimes: patient and focused and detached all at once, like she's a plaything created for his pleasure. Take pleasure in me, she said. He kisses her again, her neck, her shoulder, remembering it, before he lifts his head and whispers in her ear

that he wants her.

[Hilary] He has the truth of it, thinking back on the way she never said his name, then the way she began to say it, now the way she always does. It's been a very long time now since she ever considered giving him something then denying it to him. More often it just doesn't occur to her, and naming him when he first started fucking her was like that. What did it matter what his name was? What did it matter how he felt, when she was just going to fuck him for awhile til her husband came back and tried to get her pregnant again? What did he matter?

Until, of course, he became one of the only things that does.

She could suck the life and laughter out of him. Upsets him, turns him volatile and disturbed, drains his energy and those long, sly smirks of his that in actuality she finds quite attractive. It makes her want to bite his lips, pin him down, crawl over him, ride out her lust on him. Hard to reconcile that with how his anger and intensity make her want him to hold her down on the bed and use her, swear at her, call her a filthy little whore. Hard to explain, no matter how she tries, why she wants him so badly, why she needs what she does, how this feels when she's never, never felt anything like it before.

It all hangs on the scaffolding of the strange dominance he has for her in the bedroom, and sometimes outside of it. It depends on the way he puts his hand on her ass and tells her just a sip when she asks for a little wine, and how he tells her to go wait chained on his bed, naked, til he finishes his work and comes to her. Even earlier, when his rage flared and he was going outside to smoke and telling her to go downstairs and he'd come fuck her when he finished his cigarette, it aroused her. And she can't explain to him what it meant that she stopped him and tried to make him feel better, tried to understand why he was angry, when on some level she wanted very much to go downstairs and wait, obediently, for him to finish his smoke and come use her cunt. She doesn't have words for what that meant.

The last time she was here they parted, both thinking the other didn't want to do this anymore. But then she showed up at his apartment, exhausted, and if that brat inside her belongs by blood to House Crescent Moon and not House Unbreakable Hearth then that would be it, that would be the night, the one time when Ivan had her that it could have happened.

The first time they slept beside one another. The first time it wasn't mindbendingly rough and yet she was there, she was present. The first time he needed her in his bed, not against some wall, not in a hotel, not wherever he happened to be able to get her.

It's dark down here. There are dim lights, a warm glow here and there, but shadows fall around them when they're away from starlight and away from the brighter lights they had as they ate together. Hilary goes quietly, her coat left topside. She breathes a little more quickly when they enter his cabin. He had her things brought here. And that makes her pulse go a little faster, makes her feel... happy. Wanted.

She remembers the last time she was here, too. And what he did to her. How he made her feel then, how even after she could not take it anymore, when she was so far gone she was unable to say yes, not even quite capable of saying no, just... wrecked, in all truth, she felt a powerful release she's never gotten anywhere else.

Surely this is okay. Better than the things she reads on the internet in secret, better than the things she obsessed over as a child. Surely this is better, this is okay, to find it through another person, to find it through sex, to find it through submission. Surely, as broken as all of it is, this is better than the alternatives.

Hilary turns her head as Ivan faces her away from him, her eyes closed. Her lashes are dark against her pale cheeks as she seeks him blindly, exhaling softly as he unzips her dress and pushes it off her shoulders. She's still so slender. At this point the weight she's gaining is almost illusory, far worse in her imagining than what he feels when his hands run over her. Her skin is pale, unbroken by the strap of a bra tonight. The fabric of the dress was thick enough to not matter, the cut of it unfriendly to lingerie, so: just her fair back, the slope of her spine, the way her shoulderblades draw together slightly when he steps forward and his chest touches her.

She breathes in a little more audibly when he bites her neck. Exhales like he would say his name, but says nothing at all. The sound she makes when he touches her, fingers sliding over cotton and lace, is the first note of a whimper still hiding in her throat, her lips barely parted from it. It's almost hard to hear over the engines. Her head slowly tips back, back, farther still til it rests against him, her back arching ever so slightly.

His words make her ache. "Ivan," she all but groans, which is, in effect, saying the exact same thing.

Her ass lifts against him slightly, rubbing gently on the front of his slacks. She's still in her boots, calf-heigh suede things the color of steel with a thick, tapering black heel. Hilary squirms slightly, reaching behind her and laying her hand on the back of his head. Some part of her wants to tell him he doesn't have to abuse her tonight, he doesn't have to tie her down or chain her up or blindfold her or pin her to the bed or spank her, he doesn't have to terrify and exhaust himself in order to give her what she needs, but she doesn't know if that's entirely true, and she doesn't know if that's okay by these strange, burgeoning rules she's trying to figure out, so she says nothing at all. Her fingers push into his short hair, rubbing against his scalp.

[Ivan] She doesn't have to tell him he might not have to abuse her tonight. He hasn't grasped and squeezed at her flesh. He hasn't let his hand fly across her ass, or thrown her down on the bed. It's not quite gentleness, the way his hands move over her breasts, down to her cunt; but nor is it angry. Or vicious. Or violent.

If he'd gone up for that smoke, this would be a very different sort of fuck. He would have come down with his temper in control. Or at least that's how it would have looked, but it would have seethed inside him, black and tumultuous; it would have risen into something hateful when he threw her over the edge of the bed and shoved himself inside her. That's what frightened him most about those early encounters. Not the kink of it; not the light bondage or the heavy domination or the crack of his hand off her ass. Not any of that, but what was driving him. What was really driving him.

He wanted to hurt her. He said this to her more than once, but to this day he's not sure she understood what he was trying to say. That he was trying to say,

I wanted to demean you. Debase you. Punish you. I wanted to hurt you, don't you understand? I hated you.


It was different, the night at his penthouse. It was different, the last few times they fucked the first time she let him keep her all night.

It was different, the last time they were together.


His knuckles brush her back when he undoes his belt. He steps back from her, unzipping his collar, pulling his sweater over his head. Under that it's just a plain, longsleeved pullover, soft and fitted, the fabric stretching as he pulls that off, too. Then it's just him, his skin golden in lamplight, his hands deft as he undoes his pants and steps out of them.

Brilliant: that's what his coloration is by nature. In the autumn and winter he dresses in darker colors; he loses that deep golden tan of summer. But he's still fair and lovely and long-boned and lean. He still feels the same when he comes back to her, turning her around now, turning her to face him as his agile hands cup her face to his. This kiss is a little hungrier than the last, his eyes closing. He backs her against the bed, and then onto it. When she sits at the edge, he pushes his boxer briefs down, finds her hand and wraps it around his cock.

Ivan seems to lose his train of thought when she touches him like that. His head drops forward, eyes closing; lips parting to exhale. Over and over, half-mindlessly, his hands comb through her hair, smooth over her shoulders.

When his eyes open again he finds hers. Gently, coaxingly, he says, "Suck it for me. Be a good girl for me, Hilary."

[Hilary] Ivan's powers of perception are not normally extended into understanding the minds of the women he fools around with. He's not compassionate. He's not soft-hearted, easily endeared, tender. And Hilary is inexplicable, in so many ways. Even her attempts to express herself go frequently and wildly awry, and expressing herself is almost entirely an endeavor she undertakes for his sake more than her own. That she should care enough to help him understand her is strange enough; it's nearly impossible, then, to imagine she would do it well. Despite all this, there are moments when Ivan quite simply gets it. Gets her.

To this day, she doesn't understand that he hated her. That he felt sick with himself, his mind so far from his physical arousal that on multiple occasions he had to stop, repulsed by what he was doing, horrified by the way Hilary got off on it. Even now she can't quite fathom that he well and truly wanted to break her, hurt her, make her pay for ...being what she was. Doing whatever it was she was doing.

It's possible that even if she understood that's how he felt, she wouldn't understand why. She wouldn't be able to imagine feeling the same thing, when her first, instinctive reaction to Ivan telling her I want to punish you would be titillation. Want.


Things have changed. She doesn't play at dominance. She doesn't pretend to be the wicked stepmother anymore -- not with him. She tries to tell him she wants to surrender, that she's been there every time, that she longs for something with him that's different from any other human or near-human relationship she could possibly hope for. She tries to show him that this matters to her -- that he matters to her -- and that she cares, somehow, if he's happy or miserable.

And Ivan doesn't fuck her like he hates her. Sometimes he even fucks her like he understands. Like the last time, at the hotel and at his estate. He treats her like he knows what she needs, and he treats her like for some reason, he wants to give that to her. And Hilary, never asking why he's interested, why he asks so many questions, why he wants to know her and understand her and learn about her, still does not have any earthly idea what he gets out of this other than the fulfillment of his desire for her. She has no clue why Ivan bothers, beyond the mindshattering sex that he apparently can't get just like this anywhere else.

Which is okay. Which doesn't upset her. Which is why she doesn't ask: why me?


Her hands move to his bared chest when he turns her around, her dark eyes opening, looking up at him through her lashes in a way that would seem coy if she were younger. She steps closer, her foot between his, moving into him as he kisses her mouth. Hungry. Hollowing, aching, then pressing her back til her legs touch the edge of the bed. He pushes and she falls to sit, her hands on his body still, running down now to his hips.

Ivan hasn't bound her. No chains, no silk ties, nothing to lock her to the lamps or the head board or whatnot. She licks her lips as he pushes his underwear down, but doesn't touch him. Doesn't lick him. Not til he puts her hand on him, wraps her fingers slowly around his cock. Hilary's breathing is warm on his skin, as close as they are. She doesn't start to jerk him off, just holding him like that, waiting for instruction.

Or perhaps permission.

He adores her with his fingertips, or it feels like that. He pets her like a cherished animal, heat lifting off of him in the near-dark. She's looking up at him when he finally opens his eyes again, her mouth opened softly, trying to be patient. Trying to be a good little girl ...for him.

With a soft moan, barely audible, Hilary's eyes fall closed. She leans forward even as her lashes are drifting downward, her hand stroking once up his cock. Openmouthed, she rubs the head of him against her cheek, the shaft across her lips, as though teasing herself with it. Or, maybe, marking herself with his body, moaning a little louder -- shivering -- at the sensation. She kisses his head, closing her mouth to spread his precum over her lips. Her tongue flicks over him when she licks her lips, tasting it.

"Ivan," she whispers, half groaning his name, just before her mouth engulfs him in deep, wet warmth. She takes her hand off his cock as her lips travel downward, filling herself up with his flesh as much as she can, but her palm slides instead to caress his balls, cupping them gently, squeezing ever so softly. Her eyes open, looking up at him, before she withdraws her mouth, leaving him slick with her saliva.

And her eyes stay on his, as she takes him in again. And again. And again. Not too fast, building a steady rhythm that varies, here and there: a little faster. A long, slow suck all the way up to one last drenching kiss to his head. She rubs the tip of her tongue along his slit, moaning at his taste before she swallows him again.

He hasn't bound her. She touches him. Massages his upper thighs. Plays gently with his balls. Strokes his cock, when she isn't bobbing her head on him like the eager little slut she seems to want to be for him. Her hands move over his torso, fingertips circling his nipples, feathering back down to hold onto his hips when she increases her pace.

At no point does Hilary stop and -- looking up at him -- talk dirty to him. Ask him what he wants her to do to him, suggest what he could do to her. She doesn't hesitate, but she doesn't stray from what Ivan told her, either. Not right now. He told her to suck it for him. He told her to be a good girl and suck his cock, and she does so with unfaltering, unerring devotion that were it not for the way she moans at the merest flicker of a thrust or the feel of his cock jumping inside of her mouth, one might mistake her focus for a lack of eagerness or enthusiasm.

But when his hand tightens in her hair. When he pushes his hips forward a bit to fuck her mouth. When he shudders a gasp or mutters his pleasure to her, Hilary grasps at his hips, his ass, his chest, wherever she's touching him, groaning around his cock as though he had a direct line to her clit with just the sound of his voice, the motion of his body.

[Ivan] Half-light in here at best. Dim, but warm. Carves him out in arcs and streaks, highlighting off the lean lines of pectoralis and bicep, delineating the edge of the obliques where it meets the hip arch.

He doesn't let her go very fast. Even when she picks up the pace, his hands firm on her head gently. He holds her back. He makes her slow down, slow down, take it slow while his breathing grows imperceptibly heavier. A little raspier. Minutes slide by. He widens his stance by degrees. His weight shifts, centering in the hips. She's unfalteringly committed, devoted. He's almost hypnotized, his eyes low, his breath sliding between parted lips, parted teeth.

It's moments on end before he can't resist anymore; can't stop himself from tipping his head back, sighing when she sucks on him a certain way. Dragging a deep shuddering breath when she plays with him, strokes him, pauses to kiss the head of his cock. Doesn't mean he's unaffected all the time he's not moving, or groaning, or reacting. It doesn't mean his cock doesn't twitch and jump against her tongue; it doesn't mean his fingers don't twitch in her hair. It doesn't mean his eyes don't flicker and shut, his brow tightening in flashes.

"Oh, that's it," he murmurs at last. He wraps his hand behind her head. Holds her there as he thrusts against her mouth -- gently, slowly, but steadily, sliding deeper while he reaches for her hand. Finds her hand and pulls it up his body, up to the beat of his heart behind his sternum; up to his nipples, erect against her fingers. "That's so very good."

An odd mingling of cruelty and tenderness here. In the way he holds her right there with his hand gentle but firm, gentle but inescapable. In the way he feeds her his cock slowly and carefully, but pushes right against the limits of what she can take. Takes her past it. Makes her gag, makes her cough, makes her hand close involuntary on his body, before he lets go the back of her head and lets her withdraw.

He pulls her hand to his mouth, then. Kisses her palm, and each of her fingers, as though in blessing. Replaces her hand on his body and takes his hands from her entirely; lets his hands hang open and relaxed, a little ways away from his narrow hips and lean thighs, as he starts moving in earnest. Starts fucking against her mouth, moving against her the way he might move against her cunt, except he's never fucked her cunt quite this slowly and gently -- moves against her, groaning, letting his head fall back as she adores him with his mouth.

"Touch me," he whispers. "Run your hands all over me. Touch me, baby, make me come."

[Hilary] All of this -- though not from the start, and not always -- is a strange marriage of tenderness and cruelty. It's in how he holds her on the deck under stars and fireworks though they both know he won't be bothering to do so the longer her pregnancy goes on. It's in how she keeps coming back to him, ruthless in her submission, shredding his image of who he thought he was, what he thought he wanted, by letting him do whatever he likes to her.

And it's in the fact that she's never recanted what she said about hating him, how it would be a lie if she said she trusted him in the way that one might argue is necessary for what she wants from him, and how she knows he's not good for her. She isn't so far gone, so inhuman, so withdrawn, that she doesn't know that Ivan can't give her what she truly needs any more than she can give him what he does. Neither of them can make the other better -- not sick. Not insane. Not twisted.

Still, she feels something when he whispers to her, and when he uses her mouth. Hilary feels something when he kisses her fingertips and lets her move her hands on their own again, roaming over him as they were before. He may not be empathetic but by god he's perceptive, and perhaps he can sense it in the way she touches him now. There's no rush to her, no little tricks to see how fast she can get him off. She just... pleasures him. And perhaps for the first time, Ivan might actually feel like she's giving something to him, rather than taking something away.


There are things she's not allowed to do with certain men. Not with her husband, above all. He thinks highly of her, and there's a perfectionistic element to his obsession with her. Things must go a certain way. There is a script to follow. There is a pattern he needs in order for his madness not to devolve into rage. He had a wonderful mate before Hilary, even more well-bred and from his home country, and she produced two incredibly pure children for him, but they were not Garou, and now she's gone. There are things Hilary must do, and giving Dion a trueborn heir is one of them.

It doesn't really bear imagining how Hilary is in the bedroom with her husband when he's around, but from how savoringly she sucks Ivan's cock tonight it almost seems like it's something cherished, something deeply satisfying to her. Maybe it's about the way it is: the brutality, the certain sweet roughness, the gentle edge to it, but she groans softly right on the brink, right as Ivan's breathing goes utterly ragged and unstable, right before he starts to come.

She looks up at him, her eyes deceptively warm in this light, holding him in her mouth and her hand at first but then sliding away. Something of that aching slowness and out-of-place tenderness hasn't gone away, even as Hilary closes her eyes and strokes him off over her open mouth, her cheek, her breasts. It's still there, somewhat painful and somewhat surreal, when she gently takes him back in her mouth. She doesn't suck on him again, doesn't start licking him clean just yet. She holds him in her mouth as he's coming down, opening her eyes once more to find his.

[Ivan] There's a strange tenderness and attachment implicit in all this. Ironic, and unexpected: tenderness from the woman who, for all intents and purposes, is incapable of tenderness; attachment from the man who can barely stand to form such things.

Maybe that's why they don't talk about it. Maybe that's why they barely even look at each other: her eyes closed most the time he's looking down at her; his head tipped back when she finally opens her eyes and looks up at him, looks up at though to witness the moment, the very instant where he loses himself.

It's the first time Ivan has let himself go like this. Willingly; unrestrainedly. His hand is in her hair at the end; his other hand on his own body, clutching mindlessly and randomly at the back of his neck, slipsliding down his torso to grasp again at the flexing musculature of his abdomen. He groans this time, gasps, swears. He doesn't touch his own cock. He lets her do that for him, stroking him off onto her, jerking him off until he's reduced to shudders and jerks, every muscle in his body twitching as though electrocuted every time her fingers or her mouth passes over that incandescently sensitive point just behind the head of his cock.

He doesn't tell her to stop. He doesn't stop her. This is the first time he's ever felt anything like giving from her, and he takes what she gives him; survives it. At the end, when her eyes open again, he's looking down at her. He's stroking her hair, touching her face, tenderly wiping his own cum off her lips like he adores her.

"Come here," he whispers, and when she rises, wraps his arms around her. He holds her like that, close and warm and tight, his mouth bent to her shoulder, his eyes closing.

[Hilary] A few times, his hands pass over hers in their wandering grasps for sanity. Her hands are warm. Strange that she could be so fair, so fine, and her body be so warm to the touch. Strange that she could be a dancer and a cook, pursuits that are merge the physical and the cerebral so effortlessly, and that she could also be this: broken, incapable of caring much even for her own child.

But dancing is, on some level, about performance. And cooking is, even when done alone, about giving. So somehow it may make sense.

A few times, in the midst of orgasm, Ivan finds her touching him, and she doesn't grab at his hands or try to hold onto him but just goes on touching him. Her fingertips draw him out of the dark like threads being pulled into a pattern on a loom, weaving him together until he culminates in what warmth he can find in her. Warmth that, sometimes, he tries to remind himself doesn't really exist, so that maybe it won't come as so much of a shock when he loses it.

She's looking up at him at the end, and holding him softly in her mouth as he brushes his cum off her lips. Truth be told she's a mess from him, and no matter. Ivan strokes her hair like he knows how to be tender, calls her to him like he cares. Hilary withdraws slowly, licking her lips, and goes to her feet, caught between the bed and the Ragabash. No matter that she's filthy. The boat rocks where it rests in the lake, but the motion only dimly, peripherally transfers to them where they stand.

At first she lets him hold her. And then she holds him back, slipping her arms around his waist.

[Ivan] In the end it's only a few moments before Ivan stirs again. He kisses her: her shoulder; then her neck. He kisses her cheek. He kisses her mouth.

It doesn't seem to matter that she's filthy. He barely seems to notice. It doesn't keep him from deepening the kiss, from running his hands through her hair and over her shoulders as he's kissing her. It doesn't keep him from wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her -- rather suddenly, and rather without warning -- walking with her across the small distance to his bed, where his knees and the fronts of his thighs bump against the mattress.

The bedspread is clean. The sheets are clean. That doesn't seem to matter either. He lowers her onto it; climbs up after her. His hands are on her hips, and then he's sliding her up the bed. They part briefly. He pushes her down, and it's not rough, but it is firm. His hands on her breasts, then. His hands down her body, pausing over her abdomen -- lingering there a second, a faint frown crossing his brow.

Then it's past. He looks at her face. So often they fuck with her back turned to him: over the edge of the bed, against a wall, side by side in bed. This time he doesn't turn her over. Stops her if she tries to turn over. He doesn't want to fuck her from behind for the same reason he doesn't want to tie her down tonight. He wants to see her face. He wants her arms around him.

When Ivan bends to Hilary again, he takes her nipple into his mouth. Their coupling isn't so slow now, so achingly luxurious. There's fever in the way he sucks at her, licks at her, bites so gently -- so restrainedly -- at her. He's stroking himself to hardness again, groaning against her flesh; lifting his head to find her mouth, kissing her hard enough to press her back into the mattress as he mounts her, quick now, impatient, a little savage; moves between her legs and finds her cunt and slides inside her,

all at once, all in a single stroke,

burying a groan that may or may not have been her name in her mouth.

[Hilary] It's been a long time since Hilary has taken any leading, guiding role in what they do to each other -- overtly, at least. She's often so quiet, except for her moaning -- sometimes her screaming. She isn't the one pushing him down onto beds and climbing on top of him and whimpering that she wants to ride him like a pony. But how, how easily she goes when he puts her on her knees or turns her over so he can fuck her from behind. How eagerly she makes herself his plaything. How unresistant, now, she is to the way he kisses her mouth and her body as though he could not care less that he just came all over her.

Hilary shivers as his palms run over her body, fingers separating locks of her hair, the only part of her that feels cool to his touch. She wraps her arms around his neck, now, as he lifts her up and steps forward, putting her to the mattress. It's a fine, thick thing, not what you'd remotely expect to find on a boat except that this is a vessel made for luxury above all else. They may as well be in a hotel, they may as well be in a room in one of their houses.

Except they're alone, and no one is going to come upon them without warning, and the only person to hear them or consider them is a young maid who tries very hard not to do either. Even Marya, tonight, may be noticing the lack of screams, the silence in place of the sound of Ivan's hand cracking off of Hilary's flesh, slapping her til she groans aloud in orgasm brought on by, it seems, nothing more or less than his dominance.

She doesn't immediately try to turn herself over, when Ivan lays her down and then moves her up. Hilary's up on her hands as his grip onto her hips, and she helps move herself backward. She'd lay on the pillows again on her own if he didn't push her, but he does, and it makes her shudder. Her back arches, breasts pressing into his palms.

The frown that flickers over his face when his touch strokes past her belly goes unremarked. Unnoticed, even -- she's aching because he's touching her, and aching because she wants him, and when he looks at her face she's got her head tipped back, her eyes closed, her breath staggering between her lips. Hilary hasn't asked him to start hitting her, please, just spank her a little, something. She hasn't begged him to tie her up, if he won't give her the undeserved punishments that are so erotic to her.

They went from very nearly fighting up top to, without much fanfare or leadup, coming downstairs for this. She knew as soon as he led her down that he was going to undress her and take her, and he knew as soon as he heard from her tonight that he was going to fuck her. Just a matter of when. Just a matter of how.

Though really, it's unlikely either of them expected it to be like this.

She moans when he suckles at her breast, quivering as his lips and tongue and teeth play with her. "Baby," she's whispering, putting her fingers in his hair, her thighs open to either side of him, waiting for him, inviting him,

and then he answers, lifting his head and locking a kiss to her mouth, filling her up with his cock. Ivan feels Hilary arch under him, slide herself onto him even as he's pushing himself into her. He hears her whimpering, feels her rolling her hips, starting to fuck him as soon as he's there, right there, with her.

Hilary puts her legs around him. She wraps her arms around him. And it's possible it's been so long since he had her and her arms weren't bound that he doesn't even remember how it feels. The truth is, Hilary doesn't remember if she's ever held him like this while he's fucked her, and she grabs at his back, answering his stifled exclamations with a moan of her own.

"Ivan," she gasps, when their mouths part finally, as their bodies find whatever rhythm they can against the bed. "Ivan, baby, fuck me. Baby, please, fuck me."

[Ivan] That they would end up in bed sometime tonight was a foregone conclusion. It was so obvious, so inevitable, that for a while he was angry again when he thought that was all she was here for. That she was simply pretending a little better now, or that she was simply a little more patient now. That she didn't want him after all. Just his cock. Just his body. Just what he does to her, when she pushes him far enough.

It's impossible to say why he fucked her so many times from behind; so few times like this, face to face. Maybe it was the primality of it. Maybe it was the disconnection. Maybe it was just convenience. Maybe it was easier for him to hurt her when he didn't have to see her face.

This much is true and certain, though: he would not have wanted to fuck her like this when he thought he didn't matter to her. Not merely face to face with her, but like this: so close, entwined, kissing, her hands pulling at his back. Fuck me, she gasps, and she calls him baby, calls him Ivan the way she says it. He cuts her off, his mouth on hers, not because he doesn't want to hear it but because he can't bear not kissing her anymore. He swallows the last thing she says, that last fuck me devoured along with whatever sound she might make when he starts fucking her, fucks her harder, wraps his arm under her shoulder and clasps her to his chest and fucks her.

He finds her hand, then. Grasps her by the wrist and pins her right arm to the bed as though he thinks she still needs this; or as though he needs this now. His grip is relentless. He holds her down even as she holds on to him; holds her down even as he's kissing her, burying himself inside her, rocking her on the bed with the depth and force of his thrusts. He holds her down, and then he's not holding her down after all; his fingers are entwining with hers and he's simply holding her hand, holding on to her, the tips of his fingers dragging on the bedspread as though to hold on, hold on to something, keep ahold.


Ivan doesn't want her to leave him. This is a realization painful and sudden as a thunderbolt. He doesn't want her to take herself away from him. He doesn't want her to grow large, grow ungainly, grow undesirable, grow until she's ashamed of herself and secludes herself away for weeks or months.

He wants her like this. Just like this, pale and pristine and right here, right here every time, his every time.


His hand tightens on hers. He bows his brow to her lips, grasps her hip and pulls her up against him. He fucks her harder. He's groaning now, unashamed, loosing grunts and moans and gasps against her body.

Few words have escaped him all night, and he doesn't seem to have any more to add now. What he wants from her, how he wants it -- it's all in the subtext, in the way his hands pull at her, in the sounds he makes when she moves beneath him a certain way, drags her nails over him a certain way, moans a certain way.

[Hilary] The truth is -- and she convinces herself that when he's in his right mind, when he's not infuriated with her, Ivan must know it to be the truth -- Hilary could get the sex elsewhere. The lean, muscular young body. The hard cock. She could find someone else who wouldn't need to be pushed so much to pin her down and fuck her brains out. She could find someone she could push a little farther, who wouldn't stop when he began to scare himself.

She tells herself, when she lets herself be more honest with him, that he has to know this. He's not a fool. He has to know that she wants him, after all.

Though the other truth is: this may be the first time she's made him feel that way.

That last fuck me dissolves into a loud moan into his mouth as he kisses her. Her long, limber legs wrap all that much higher and tighter around his waist, her calves stroking his flank when their rocking on the bed turns to -- well. What she asked for. Ivan fucking her, holding her against him while he does it.

Right now he's not calling her his whore. He's not telling her what a good little girl she is, taking that big hard cock of his right after sucking it like the hungry cockslut she is. Ivan's not saying much of anything at all beyond this gasp, that groan. On some level it feels to her like something's missing, and the thought flickers through her mind that she's done something wrong, that it's because of the goddamn baby, he already doesn't want her like he did, she's become dull and repulsive to him.

But then a long-fingered hand caressing its way up her arm suddenly wraps around her wrist and pins it down to the sumptuous pillows underneath her. Hilary shudders, and her thoughts and her worries shake apart like diamond dust caught by a wind. She keeps her other arm wrapped close around him, her hand curled over his shoulder, her gasps turning to whimpers in his ear. His name, over and over, all but in rhythm with the way her cunt clenches down onto his cock.

Even when he shifts his hand and laces his fingers through hers there's enough dominance to it, enough command, that it strikes some new chord in her, a different key than the aching wish to give him pleasure, to make him happy. Ivan holds onto her hand and grasps at the bed through her fingers as though he has to find something to hold onto, and Hilary wraps her hand back around his, fingers in the valleys between his knuckles.

She doesn't know what it means, and she is rapidly losing the ability to think about it at all, much less coherently. It means something, though, that she holds onto his hand as he's holding on for dear life, and then he moves like he's just been struck with lightning. Hilary's lips are parted over his brow when he bows to her like that, a gasp moving into his hairline when he grabs her hip and starts to fuck her like he does. Like he always does. Like he's never fucked her before.

Fine, manicured fingernails dig into his back when he starts to really pound her pussy, fucking her into the bed like he's pursuing some quarry, hunting down some sort of delicious, warm-blooded prey. Hilary tips her head back and moans, lips leaving his forehead, her long, lean body pressed up against his as though she needs to feel as much of his flesh touching hers as possible. She fucks him back this time, meeting him in thrust after thrust, sweat scenting the back of her neck, the undersides of her breasts, the insides of her thighs.

Her hand, tightly holding his, somehow remains gentle.

[Ivan] The last time Hilary was here, she wasn't even coherent by the end. By the last half, even. She was out of her mind, out of this world, and it's possible she doesn't even know how she was screaming. How she must have sounded to those young maids that move so soundlessly in and out of Ivan's privileged sphere. Hilary barely notices the servants; she probably doesn't know, wouldn't care, whether or not the single maid tonight was present last time. Neither of them care if Marya can hear them. Neither of them care if she's tensed and waiting for the slapping, the hitting, the screaming, the sobbing to start. Neither of them care if she's surprised when it doesn't.

Neither of them even notice these things anymore. The world may as well have shrunk down to a pinpoint. This room. This bed. This distance between their bodies, which is almost negligible: this movement, him into her, their hands linked, her limbs wrapped all around him as he bows to her and bows over her and pounds her the way he always does,

and in a way he never has before.


So far as their sexual escapades go, this encounter is relatively brief. He doesn't stop in the middle to pull out, to make her suck him clean before shoving his cock back into her. He doesn't turn her over, tie her up, move her from one locale to another, throw her over this surface, against that.

He holds her. He holds onto her. His eyes are closed as they're both moaning, both lost, and her scent and her body is all there is. He stays with her, and she's fucked him often enough now that she knows how he moves when he's getting close. How he braces himself on his elbows and hammers her, swift, short, straight strokes, grunting and panting against her skin. She understands the language of his body: what it means when he grasps at her so mercilessly, when he pulls her against him.

He bites her once, hard, just before he comes. When he comes, though, he's open-mouthed, groaning openly against her. He pounds her against the bed. Holds her there, pins her there, his hips grinding against hers in sharp, hard jerks as he comes into her. There are no words. There are only sounds, wracked and raw, as his hand laced through hers grips for purchase on the bedspread, the sheets.


It's some time before he regains any coherency at all. Some time before his groans turn to gasps, to panting. Some time before the short, heavy strokes of his hips turn into something deliberate, slower, sliding in and out of her as though to draw out the very last of his pleasure.

He's whispering to her then, moving into her, moving out of her, fucking her slow and careful, shuddering from overstimulation -- whispering that's it, whispering that's it. that's good. you're so fucking good.

[Hilary] The last time Hilary was with Ivan, he fucked her over and over and over again. He tied her up and saw into her when she didn't even want to part her legs without his hands on her, without his direction, his dominance. Dominance that is, in the end, a savage exaggeration of reality. She calls it play, when they both know it's nothing like a game. The last time she was with him, Ivan played along without deviation, without question, because he finally understood.

Even after they were washed and clothed he kept up the act, opening his hand over her ass and letting her have some of his wine, ordering for her at dinner, keeping her body close so that he could move her where he lived, taking her to his estate and telling her what she was to do while she waited for him to come find her. And Hilary, not so much a shell of a human being as the shattered fragments of one, finally felt safe.

Wrecked, overcome, incoherent, sleeping half a day with him just to recover: felt cared for. Even if she doesn't know how to tell him that's what it is. That's what she comes here for. Why it's him.


Only now Ivan's not lashing her to the bed. He hasn't struck her, not a single time. He hasn't even been particularly rough with her: no slamming of her body down on the mattress, no pressing her up against the wall, no bending her backward while he kisses her. Just the way he fucks her tonight, the lake gone still and quiet all around them in the wake of those fireworks earlier. Hilary's not shaking apart, sobbing underneath him, but holding him, kissing him when their mouths can manage to converge through their gasping.

She leaves raking red marks across his shoulderblade. She's never marked him before. She likely isn't conscious of the fact that she's doing it now, even as her hand curls against him, digging those finely manicured nails into his skin. She's conscious of his name leaving her lips, though, conscious of the way he's making her feel, the way he's bringing her close not to two, three orgasms over and over but this one singular moment of pleasure that doesn't seem created to destroy her.

Hilary puts her hand on his face when she feels him tensing, sees his arms shift in the way they hold her and hold the bed. She kisses him again, opening her mouth to Ivan's as his hips roll into a faster, harder pace. All those times she seemed too far gone to even really be there with him, all those times it seemed like he was a warm body and a hard cock to get her off, all those times he fucked her thinking she wasn't really there at all --

she was, in fact, paying attention. She knows what his body is telling her. She knows that he's going to come soon, and a hard shiver goes all the way through her at the mere knowledge. His mouth opens, teeth set into her shoulder or her neck or wherever, and Hilary makes a half-wracked, half-relieved sound.


Somewhere on Krasota, perhaps Marya hears Ivan groaning like that, hears Hilary all but sob, and isn't surprised. Doesn't know, regardless of what she hears or imagines she hears, what is really going on.


It's that bite that sets her off, though by that point Ivan may only peripherally feel what's happening to his lover. Her hand clasps his tighter, her cunt squeezing his cock and her whole torso tightening up with orgasm. She doesn't start fucking him back faster and faster or slapping him or screaming, but she moans in the half light, her fingers sliding past his cheek and into his hair. The first time she fucked him she murmured, walking naked or near enough over to his bared body, about how he could come inside of her, and she loved how he reacted to that.

She loves how he does it now, the way he loses himself, the way they aren't letting go. Hilary is is incandescent underneath him, taut and tight and arching, writhing, her legs sliding over him as though she's lost control of her own movements. The sounds she's making are tremulous and overcome, as she rides out of her pleasure against him. He's coming down, coming back into himself, and she's whimpering softly in answer to the whispers he gives her. Hilary's face is turned to one side against the pillows, her eyes closed and her cheeks flushed, sweat glistening on her skin. Their hips roll together, aftershocks of her orgasm rippling through her body and into his with every slow, mind-altering slide.

[Ivan] Gradually the last of those slides of his body into hers, by turns shuddering and smooth, taper down to nothing. He's still then, resting. They're both such long, lean, lovely creatures: like a pair of jungle cats. Serpents. Something of the sort. Hilary's husband would crush her if he lay atop her like this. He would have to roll aside. It's likely even Ivan would have to roll aside sooner or later.

But not yet. For now he stays, eyes closed, his mouth drifting to hers. He kisses her slowly now. There's a luxury in it, an enjoyment that seems rare in the moments afterward when she's shattered and he's either incoherent or tortured.

The only movement now is the gentle, faint swaying of the yacht. It's large enough not to stir to every little wavelet; small enough that it still rides the current instead of cutting through it. Moments go by, Ivan's harsh pants turning to something quieter, lower, and then finally silent.

He shifts then. Moves off her, sliding to the side. Their lower halves are still entwined. He looks at her across the newly opened distance. Sweat gleams on his body. It adheres her hair to her skin, and it's only when he moves to brush it aside that he realizes their hands are still linked. He draws them up between their faces, opening his fingers, shifting, wrapping his hand around hers and bringing it to his mouth.

Like he did at the beginning of all this, he kisses her fingertips now. Then he wraps her hand back into his palm and presses it to his breastbone, his heartbeat to her knuckles.

[Hilary] It takes effort for Hilary to remember what came before this. Despite the fact that she can tell they're on his yacht and even though some part of her recalls watching the fireworks while wrapped in warmth, she can't quite remember how they moved from those moments on deck to this. To now. She looks upward, the low ceiling visible only because there are a few lamps and because the room is small enough that the edges aren't swathed in shadow, and she closes her eyes. She stops trying to remember how they got there, or why it matters.

To some degree, and for reasons she's blind to, she's slightly uncomfortable. Nervous, really. In the back of her mind there's a creeping dread usually burnt away by the anger deep inside her. It isn't overwhelming. It's enough to make her kiss him slowly, and even a bit uncertainly, as the euphoria of her orgasm gives way to realizing that the structure of her reality, the rage and the distance, is gone. Without that scaffolding, the pit yawns underneath her, and this time she's not sure what's holding her up, what's keeping her here, what's letting her stay. She's not sure if she wants to stay.

She knows she doesn't want to leave.

Hilary shivers slightly, not from the cold, and watches Ivan moving their hands. She looks vaguely like she doesn't recognize her own hand, even with its rings, its little white-gold-ensconced emeralds, the platinum band and the pink diamond. The lamplight catches one earring, flashes light because of the way she breathes, then it blinks out of existence a second later.

Her dark eyes track to his face after he kisses those fingertips, following his gaze instead of his mouth. A few beats of his heart go by, then she murmurs,

"Ivan?"

not to get his attention, but like she's asking if he's still there, making sure he hasn't left her, though she can feel him inside her and atop her. Though she can see him clearly, smell him, still taste him on her tongue, still sense his weight holding her like gravity.

[Ivan] By the time Hilary speaks, Ivan's eyes have closed again. He could probably sleep like this -- uncovered, filthy, naked and tangled up on the bed.

He doesn't sleep, though. She says his name like a question, and his eyes flicker open. Shadowed beneath that brow of his, at once noble and surprisingly heavy, they're dark; the color is indeterminate. He looks at her for a moment, his eyes a little dazed, a little dreamy, as though he hasn't quite come back together yet. Sometimes he wonders if this is how Hilary always feels. So shattered; so disconnected. Worse than this, really. He's fragments of consciousness drifting in a haze of pleasure. So often, she's just fragments of self drifting in a void of ... what?

Rage, maybe. Or nothingness.

His thumb moves over her knuckles. "Я здесь," he whispers. He knows she doesn't understand Russian, but it's all right. She'll understand the tone, he thinks. He'll understand the words beneath the words: that he's here. He's with her. He understands, at least in some part.