Ivan Press

[Ivan] Wasn't exactly the best of terms, the way they parted over two weeks ago. There was every possibility then that that would be the last they ever saw of each other, barring perhaps the occasional run-in at the north shore yacht club. Even that may have been unlikely. Ivan's vessel is usually moored in the city, and god knows the man makes enough of a production wherever he goes that Hilary would have been able to avoid him with ease.

On the other hand, Hilary's not nearly so easy to track. Whatever may have become of her disgraced family and its bloodlines and riches, Hilary certain behaves, moves, acts and exists like old, old money. The sort of wealth and privilege that's matured beyond the need for flash and glitter; the sort of power that conceals itself in ten-mile-deep estates, whose ultimate gateway is no more than an easily-missed turnoff on a private road.

Once upon a time Ivan's lineage had that sort of quiet power and dignity. It's been lost, along with much of their purity of blood. What they have today is an almost bottomless well of wealth, and to go with it -- and increasingly ostentatious younger generation of which, of course, Ivan is ever the posterboy.

All of which goes to say, it's unusual when he shows up at Hilary's country club with no fanfare, no attending flock of starved swans, no trailing entourage of russians in black. It's just him, strolling up to take her partner's place on the tennis court when the other bows out for a prior engagement. Or maybe just a drink. Something.

It's autumn now, the air cool even in the early afternoon. The sun's out today, and it glints off Ivan's textured gold hair; reflects blindingly off his tennis whites. He looks long and lean, fit and firm, spinning his racket once in his hand as he joins her.

"Mind if I play?" he calls across the net.

[Hilary] There is a complaint among some female tennis enthusiasts that it's a trifle difficult to be taken seriously as an athlete, even more challenging to be seen as an intimidating opponent, when the sport all but demands that you wear a miniskirt on the court.

Hilary does not care. She's a casual player, like almost everyone at the club. She doesn't wear white exclusively when she plays because she's not all that concerned with breaking a sweat. Today she's wearing a baby blue tennis dress with a polo collar. It's not the body-skimming sort of thing seen on plenty of the women around here made of sweat-wicking fabrics. It's just cotton, and a sturdy sort. More than likely there's some kind of short underneath the pleated skirt, but she's not playing hard enough to reveal it.

Besides, she's not playing when Ivan walks up. She's drinking from a water bottle, waiting for her partner to get back.

So her head comes up when there are footsteps nearby, her hair up in a ponytail and her eyes shielded by a white visor. She sees Ivan and doesn't seem to react for a moment: he may as well be the partner she was expecting. No bangles today, but soft white wristbands on each arm. Her wedding ring is glinting in the light, but her earrings are no more elaborate than a pair of diamonds in her lobes. Even dressed for the court: kept woman. Trophy wife. Rich enough not to need to flaunt it. Not to care if anyone knows.

But it's not her partner, no matter how she looks at him. It's Ivan, spinning his tennis racket in his hand. Because of course he is.

In answer, she puts down her water bottle, walks across the court, bounces the ball in her hand once, and serves.

Hard.

[Ivan] Ivan can't possibly be surprised at that first, vicious server. It sets the tone for the game. Clay puffs around their feet as they cut about the court. Aces and volleys fly. It's a quick, hard game, and when it's over Ivan's cheeks are flushed, sweat on his brow.

He didn't let her win. He played as hard as she did; it's quite possible he made her lose. Not much of a gentleman in that regard, to be sure. Then again, a gentleman wouldn't challenge a lady to a game in the first place.

Ivan catches the last ball on the rebound and pockets it. He raises his eyebrows at Hilary, then, coming to the net for the traditional handshake. "Buy you a mimosa?" he offers.

[Hilary] Truth be told, most of the flying and cutting and quickness and hardness is, as ever, in Ivan's hands. In the way he moves, the way he is. Hilary doesn't even try to win, or keep up. After that first serve it seems like she plays as though bored. It says something about her general athleticism that even playing as though she cares no more for this than for anything else, Ivan has to work to beat her. And beat her he does, though you wouldn't know from those black, dead eyes of hers that she would feel any difference between winning and losing.

For what it's worth: the viciousness in that serve was real. And came entirely from her, a single hard swing of the racket sending the ball all but flying for his face.

She knows her manners. She comes to the net. She doesn't offer her hand first, her stare flat and unblinking. And he offers her a mimosa. Perhaps he expects this, is no more surprised by it than he was by how furious she began the 'game':

"No."

[Ivan] "Vodka straight-up, then?" He doesn't miss a beat; it comes flying back at her like a volley over the net. "Would you prefer that?"

Then there is a pause. His eyes flick down, then back to her. When he speaks again it's quieter.

"I'd like to talk to you. If now's not convenient, name the time and the place."

[Hilary] "I think a double shot of vodka would perturb my doctor more than half a glass of white wine," Hilary says mildly in return, "considering she's recommended I avoid alcohol altogether, now."

She doesn't explain that. He might not bat an eyelash: pregnant, after all. No big shock that her doctor would tell her that regardless of what she read on the internet, no, it's not okay, she can't even have a little bit of white wine. Boo.

"I despise you," Hilary goes on quietly. "Convenience has little to do with it."

[Ivan] "Two weeks ago," Ivan replies, "you were ready to place yourself into my guardianship. Now you despise me so much you won't even speak to me? Pardon me if I don't entirely believe that.

"At any rate, it was an apology I wanted to give you. Now, my yacht is moored about two miles away. I live about five miles away. There's an independent coffeehouse about half a mile away, far too bohemian for your friends to see you at. I'd prefer to talk at any one of these locations, but if you absolutely insist on your refusal, I'll say what I have to say here and leave you be."

[Hilary] One of her eyebrows lifts slightly at his statement of disbelief. Another woman, carrying a torch or whatever semblance of such that a woman like her is capable of, would probably argue, somehow. Whisper

I was ready to do much more than that, Ivan.

Another woman, stinging from the hurt of it all still, might look aside, trying to conceal her emotions, murmuring

That was two weeks ago.

Hilary stares at Ivan, unblinking, the sunlight turning her pupils to pinpricks -- not that it matters, as her irises are almost the same damn color to begin with. She doesn't take her eyes off of him. She catches her breath, as they did just finsh playing a point of tennis, but she does so with a quiet steadiness. Isn't ladylike to pant, perhaps, though it's also possible this is just how she learned to breathe when recovering from physical activity. She doesn't murmur or whisper or look away or down. There's something merciless about her, but not restrained: only the sense that she is merciless by nature, that mercy is as alien to her as any other expression of compassion.

"Say what you have to say," she tells him, her expression returning to its blank. Meaning only: her eyebrow has lowered again.

[Ivan] There's just a beat of pause. Ivan doesn't even take one last look around to make sure her partner isn't coming back; her acquaintances aren't listening in; there's no one around to see and hear and gossip.

"I don't understand you," he says. He's quiet enough, but he's not whispering. His tone is level and steady. "It's wholly possible I never will. But instead of trying to understand you, I made prejudged you through the lens of my own experience; pried at you with assumptions already in place. Over and over I've demanded to know why you weren't more ... human, and all the while I was treating you as though you were subhuman.

"That was unfair of me. I owe you an apology.

"As for your future here in Chicago," this, only after a pause, "I'll understand if you prefer to remain in Katherine Bellamonte's care. Or if you prefer to remain up on the North Shore and not venture into the Maelstrom Protectoration at all. But if your offer still stands, I'd like to talk to Miss Bellamonte on you and your husband's behalf.

"And then I'd like to see you again. And see where this goes."

[Hilary] The answer to that is simple, though he shouldn't take from it that she heard nothing he said, has no response to any of it. Or maybe this is the only way she can respond right now, more guarded and stony than he's ever seen her:

"How can I trust you?"

[Ivan] [PROTECTORATE. *red*]

[Ivan] The smallest of hesitations follows that.

The sun is bright. This is one of the more exclusive golf and tennis clubs in the nation; the grounds are immaculately kept, the grass trimmed, the trees lush, the gardens lovely at dusk. Out on the tennis courts, a cool breeze moves unhindered over smooth red clay. A few courts down, there's a friendly doubles match going on. Other than that, they're alone.

"I don't know," Ivan says finally. "I suppose you'll just have to trust me. Or not."

[Hilary] [PROTECTORATATINATION]

[Hilary] [GET IT RIGHT.]

[Hilary] She's watching him carefully, as though she could open up his mouth and start peeling back layers of skin, unraveling him like an onion. She stares at him like that's what she's trying to do, strip him of whatever is in him that could hide something else, then stripping that away, then that

then whatever's underneath that. Is he lying to her with that sincere-sounding apology? Is he just going to turn around when he gets impatient and frustrated and humiliate her again, and again, and again?

Perhaps it's ironic that she even wonders, that she even cares about being humiliated when she's enjoyed having him dominate and even hurt her on so many occasions. Isn't humiliation, shame, and degradation exactly what she's always asked him for? Isn't that what she gets off on?

Hilary waits a moment after that, then asks another question: "Where do you think it would go?"

Since they both already know, too well, where it can't.

[Ivan] At that, there's a brief flit of humor, more bitter than true. His reply is nearly immediate, and quiet. "Nowhere good."

Perhaps they both already know that, too.

[Hilary] Her brows tug together briefly, a flicker of a frown that passes just as quick and sudden as it comes on. Hilary's tennis racket is still in her right hand, and she twists the handle a few times in her grip. Finally it comes to a stop, and she takes a breath.

"I don't think you ever understood that what I wanted with you was essentially, at the core, about trust," she says, almost as though she's reciting something, repeating something like a child who is trying to pretend they're not as proud of their new knowledge as they really are. "And respect."

There's a pause, and then a struggle to get the words out: "I don't ...want you to be unhappy." Which is, it seems, as close as she can get when she's like this to expressing what she does want. Strangely, then: "I do hate you," as matter-of-fact as you please, "because you never respected me. But I trusted you, and I wanted to make you happy.

"I would like to have both. To feel the way I did, and for you to not ruin it like you did. But I don't trust you anymore."

She's blunt. Even if the words are hard to get out, awkward because they're real and strange and new to her, they're also uncomfortably true. At least for her.

[Ivan] Perhaps it's a strange thing that she asks him for respect, for dignity, all while she's willing to -- she's wanting to -- be so utterly dominated, used, even abused by him. Perhaps that's the underlying schism in their minds. It's hard for Ivan to understand how a woman who wants what she wants could also want respect. Could even be human.

She looks human right now, though. Even if her eyes are black as a shark's; even if all the strain there may or may not be beneath the surface is evidenced only in that quick tug of her eyebrows.

She tells him what she wants, then. Not: I want you to bend me over and fuck me or [i]I want you to spank me, hit me, pull my hair[i] but -- this. Something at once much easier and much more treacherous than any of that. Something much more

human than any of that. Respect, she says. Trust.

"I'll try," he says slowly, "to understand you without prying at you. I'll try to remember you're ... not a thing." His eyebrows pull together -- a mirror of hers. "Not a monster. But I need some help, Hilary. It can't just be these ice cold meetings and then the fucking. It can't just be the wife and the wanton, the virgin and the whore. If you want me to respect you, I need to see you. I need to know you're even there."

[Hilary] Another one of those frowns, coming from a place so deep beneath the surface that it barely causes a ripple. "And there you go again," she says, stepping back from the net. She doesn't turn away, though. Not yet. "Just because it's not what you expect to see, or what you think you should be seeing, you blame me. I was there every single time, Ivan."

Her hand tightens around her racket. "Not any of those boxes you like you tell yourself I choose to stay in. Just me. And not just at the end."

Shaking her head, Hilary exhales a huff of air. "I think you just don't like who that is. Or you're just incapable of seeing it."

[Ivan] A dry, humorless huff answers hers. "Well," Ivan says, his tone almost offhand if only as a ward against frustration, "you hate me and I apparently know very well who you are -- I just don't like that person. So why the hell are we even having this conversation?"

[Hilary] She's still for a moment, watching him. A fool would miss his frustration or the way he handles it. On some level she has to know what he really wants, what he's after. He says it clearly enough: to see her. To know her. To discover her, because he seems to believe there's something there worth knowing. Worth giving a shit about, even.

It isn't that she resists that. Maybe to some degree she doesn't want to be known, or seen. Maybe she thinks that what's there is ugly and rotten and broken, and all he did every time he treated her like she was a cold and distant monster when she was at her most open and vulnerable was hammer that home: something is wrong with you. Maybe that's why she hates him.

Because she's capable of giving a shit. And she's capable of being hurt. And just as Ivan hates being forced to wrestle with the reality that he can't ever have her the way he (sometimes) wants her, she hates being made to recognize that other people can always, somehow, reach in and hurt her no matter how far away she goes. No matter how empty she makes herself, no matter how hollow she wants to feel.

Hilary gives a small shake of her head. "I didn't say you know who I am, Ivan. But you keep acting and talking as though there's nothing in me, that I've shown you nothing, I'm just... this or that. Ice cold or fucking. Wife or whore. And that's what it was at first, that's what I wanted at first, but every time you had me you got closer to me and further into me and yet you talk like you don't even realize that. Don't even notice. Like it was all just... fucking."

She's quiet for a second. "Think of how that must sound to me."

Now, for the first time, she looks down. Away. Stares at a chair where a water bottle and towel rest, waiting. Sweating. She turns to look back at Ivan again. "I thought that that night at your house," she whispers, like she's afraid someone is going to sneak up on them and hear them now, "when you tied me up so I could stay with you, that you understood what I needed."

Could, she says.

Not 'had to'.

[Ivan] It's when Hilary looks down and away that Ivan's eyes also drop. Perhaps it's something like shame. Think of how that must sound to her. Think of how that must feel to her, she may as well say, and the truth is -- he very rarely considers how she feels at all. Very rarely seems to even realize she's capable of feeling.

Maybe in the end he is exactly what he seems to be. Selfish. Self-centered. Blithely, devastatingly careless.

Ivan's eyes flick back, though, at that last. When she says could, not had to. Not even would, but could. There's a flash in his eyes then, like electricity down a wire, light across a window. His eyelids flicker, not quite a blink.

"I didn't understand," he says. "But I think I'm beginning to."

[Hilary] This conversation didn't begin with Hilary petulantly telling Ivan that she's mad at him, he's been mean to her. I despise you, is what she said, as steadily as though this was as simple a reality as water is wet, fire is hot. It lacked the desperate sound of I hate you! It lacked the childish bravado of go to hell or get fucked, Ivan. It was more decisive than you disgust me. More intentional than you make me sick. It didn't sound like something to be undone with an apology, a mimosa, even his hand sneaking up her skirt right there on the damn tennis court, which is what she'd want, if all she ever wanted from him was a hot fuck.

It didn't seem like something that could be undone, period. Not the way she said it. Still, they're having this conversation. There's a net between them still, and rackets in their hands held down like swords at rest, but as of yet not re-sheathed. The sound of tennis balls rebounding off of clay echoes to either side of them, the squeak of sneakers, the grunts of more forceful players, the cheerful encouragements called out by a tennis pro with a gleaming white grin.

And the sunshine, glinting off Ivan's hair, glistening on their sweat, yet unable to touch Hilary's shielded eyes. They have almost always met in daylight, bright and searing and relentless. It comes harshly in the autumn, lighting even the most sedate day on fire. It reflects off that flash of reaction in Ivan's gaze, but Hilary doesn't know if it's want or realization or anger or something entirely different, unexpected, alien to her. She's watching him steadily now, as she was before.

It's been two weeks since she told him if he offered her his goddamn driver to take her home she'd scream. Two weeks since he fucked her bent towards a wall, against a painting, on the cold floor, then told her she should leave. Go. Enough. And truth be told, all she understands about what spurred him to that is that he wants more than his cock in her cunt or her mouth, and thought that's all she wanted him for.

Hilary's silent for some time. Then she spins her racket once in her hand. "If you'll let me clean up and cancel my lunch reservation, I'll go somewhere with you," she says quietly, finally.

[Ivan] This is perhaps the first time Ivan's eyes have dropped to Hilary's body. To those long legs under that miniskirt that is the absurd standard for the sport; to those shapely small breasts. It's strangely unlewd, unlascivious, that glance -- almost poignant, as though until now he hadn't allowed himself to look.

Ivan Press, showing restraint. Hell just froze.

"Why don't you just meet me at my place," he says quietly, "whenever you're done here?"

[Hilary] The times that Ivan has seen Hilary out with her friends she's been in stylish but otherwise demure clothing. She dresses like the married socialite she is, conservative and expensive. Most of the women her age, however, are dressed a little less... well, frumpishly, when you get down to it. Baby blue. Pleats. Folded collar.

It's possible that nobody here knows yet what Ivan knows. She never told him when -- when the doctor said she was probably due. But the truth is, even this early there's a slight swelling, there's the beginning of a deep physical change, and on someone as slender as Hilary it's rapidly noticable. Or would be, if she was wearing one of those skin-tight, super-fantastic-magic-fabric outfits seen in plenty across the club's courts.

As it is, looking at her now, maybe he can forget. Maybe that's the point.

Hilary just stares at him for a second after that, as though his suggestion gives her pause. There's a flicker of reaction across her eyes, but it passes. "I don't remember how to get there." Of course she doesn't. It was over a month ago, it was night, and they were coming from downtown. And her face was in his lap for most of the way. There was no reason for her to pay attention as she was driven away, either. No reason for Hilary, of all people, to pay attention to much other than the immediately obvious, the most easily assumed.

There's a moment of hesitation then, another one. A bit stiffly: "If you leave a message at the front desk with your address I should have no trouble finding my way, though."

[Ivan] For once, it's not easy for Ivan to read something. Then again, perhaps it never was easy to read Hilary. Not because she's an excellent liar -- though she is -- but because she's so alien to him. So different.

He tries, though. He frowns at her for a long time. Then he shifts his racket to the other hand, gripping it at its neck. A step closer to the net stretched between them.

"Or I can drive you," he offers. "I just thought you might prefer the discretion of separate cars."

[Hilary] The look in her eyes was easy enough to see as disappointment, but not as easy to understand. Even more difficult to see why it would verge so close to a sense of being rejected, of being ...unworthy, somehow. So Hilary is stiffer, more guarded, all over again, but she hasn't said she trusts him. Quite the contrary.

Still: if he'll wait, then she'll go with him. The very tone of it is submission. The way her voice quieted suggested that if he said no, she wouldn't shower her sweat away. She'd just leave with him, right from the court, if he said

come.

Hilary watches him come closer, flicking her eyes over him, then looks at his eyes. Never been afraid to do that, this one. Wasn't afraid to stand in an alleyway with a tantrum-throwing Ahroun with almost no control over himself, either. Given what she's been through, perhaps it's shocking that Hilary's main flaw isn't fear. Then again, maybe that's just one more thing that's broken about her.

She nods. "No need," she says airily, starting to turn away, to grab her bottle and her towel and go inside again. "Don't forget to leave your address though, so I can put it in my GPS. I'll see you shortly, Ivan."

[Ivan] When Hilary gets to the front desk -- twenty minutes later or an hour later or however long it might take her to cancel her lunch reservation -- there's a message waiting for her. It's written on the club's stationery, sealed in the club's envelope. Two lines scrawled across the center of the page:

Thought we'd make a detour.
401 N Wabash Ave, Chicago

Some detour. It requires her to drive all the way down to Chicago proper. The Magnificent Mile, rife with tourists even in this off-season month. Trump Hotel & Tower, specifically. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Ivan doesn't mind being seen frequenting an establishment founded by the grand mogul of new money. It's his sort of place, anyway -- not the time-tested, overwrought opulence of Chicago's grand old hotels but something edgier, sleeker, done all in smooth textures, sleek tones.

There's another message waiting for her at the reception there. A room key and an attached room number.


The elevator takes her up. They're on the top floor of the hotel portion of the tower; the way it's laid out, however, the residences hold the best views, the highest floors. No matter. Ivan didn't bring her here for the breathtaking view. He could have gone home for that. He brought her here for the cool anonymity, the paradoxical publicity of it all. Look: here they are again. Downtown Chicago, the center of the world west of New York and east of the Mississippi. She's with him again, him and no one else, and they've gone to one of the more high-profile hotels in the city to...

well. Fuck, presumably.


Ivan procured a suite. This is an unabashed wasting of money. He doesn't plan on staying here more than a few hours. If she were someone else, a more wide-eyed ingenue with more beauty than money, one might suspect him of trying to dazzle her. She's not, though, so this must simply come down to Ivan's predilection for the best, the very best.

He's changed out of his tennis clothes. He looks like he belongs in this world of modern edges, darkly neutral tones; its brilliant and unexpected accents in hot oranges, brilliant reds. He's in coat and slacks, dark grey and cut lean, standing at the window, looking out over the city. Sunlight pours in through the window, glints gold off his hair. When he hears the door open, he turns; regards her over his shoulder.

Then he holds his hand out to her. If she comes to him, he draws her in front of him. Puts her between himself and the glass, draws her back against his chest. His arms wrap around her and he turns his face to the bend of her neck; inhales her scent like maybe,

just maybe,

he missed it. Missed her.

[Hilary] In the women's changing room, Hilary is plunged back into the cool, composed realm of wives and mothers and stepmothers, where she belongs. Where she fits. She apologizes to her tennis partner for that knave who stole her spot on the court. Son of a of business friend of her husband, fancies himself her protector and escort while Dion is out of the country. Traci, third wife of a philandering entrepeneur who runs a chain of yoga studios, whose diamond ring's size is in direct proportion to how well and often she sucks that husband's cock, titters that maybe he has a crush on Hilary.

Hilary, leaning over the sink to do her eyeliner, sighs that maybe he does. But there's no harm in having lunch with him or letting him give her 'pointers' on the tennis court, if it keeps those ever-important extra-office relationships strong. She wouldn't want him running to his daddy to complain that Senor Durante's wife snubbed him at the club in front of everybody, and ruin a financial friendship of several generations. Traci, who is not new money but rehabilitated white trash, pretends she understands. And Hilary, whose breeding goes back for eons, whose family tree includes some of the more powerful players not just in the history of business but of the world, finishes her makeup, gathers her things, and promises Traci they'll play again soon.

At the front desk she informs the blazer-wearing young man with the thin shoulders that save him from being preyed upon by this particular MILF -- Nathan, that's his name -- that she won't be having lunch at the club today after all. She asks if there are any messages, a less and less common question in these days of smartphones in the hands of twelve year-olds, but of course he has an envelope for her. A sealed one, and he remembers the guy who asked for pen and paper and envelope and gave it to him because that man made him slightly nervous. He doesn't say that though. He just hands it over, deflecting the urge to flirt because he could lose his job and because he is the sort of man for whom fear of such things dominates his every decision.

About thirty minutes later she opens the envelope, skips her eyes across the two lines written there, and the muscles in her jaw tighten slightly for a fraction of a second. She folds the paper again, tucks it back into its envelope, and puts it in her purse.

"Thank you, Nathan," she says, and excuses herself. To drive all the way down to Chicago proper.


The car the valet pulls around, the car she drives southward, the car the valet at Trump Tower takes the keys to so he can go park it, is not the sleek gunmetal Maserati but an achingly brand-new Jaguar XK in a paler silver. Hilary exits the driver's seat when she arrives, taking a bag from the passenger seat as she does. It's larger than a purse, but too stylish to be mistaken for a gym bag, even if that is one of the duties it serves.

Another desk lackey with another message, this one just the little paper note they tuck room key cards into, the room number -- 4932 -- scrawled neatly on a thin blue line inside. Hilary looks at it, thanks the lackey, and walks to the elevator.


This is one of the more ridiculous suites, to boot. The wall curves outward, all floor-to-ceiling windows and luxury. The bedroom's around the corner, complete with a leather-upholstered chaise from which to view the city if the view from the dining room or living room doesn't suit one, somehow. Hilary isn't looking at the room, though, when she slides the key card into the lock, opens the door, and walks inside, closing it behind her.

"You shouldn't have," she says quietly, blandly, as she sets both purse and bag down on the floor. "What a nice room, though."

So cool. So distant. So disinterested that she says this without even observing what she's commenting on. Hilary's no longer in pale, icy blue, nor a short tennis skirt and visor. She's head to toe in paler neutrals, her dark hair and eyes and her vivid red lip color keeping her from being washed out or -- worse -- as bland as her tone of voice.

The tan trench she's wearing has faint military-style detailing at the shoulders and pockets, collar and belt, but it hangs open. Her slacks fit her in such a way that they look baggy and tailored at once, make her legs look a mile long. A thin gold belt glints slightly around her hips. Her white blouse matches the styling of her trousers, sharp and slouchy at once, the buttons undone past her collarbone. There are just a couple of gold bracelets around her wrists. There's a thick gold snake chain around her neck, and carefully tangled gold knots adorning her earlobes.

Ivan looks at her over her shoulder. She stands in the entryway, one hand on her hip, staring back at him.

When he holds his hand out to her, though, her elbow unbends, and she walks towards him. She lets him move her where he wants her. She turns her head slightly, half-watching him behind her as he wraps her up in his arms and breathes in the scent of her. Hilary's eyes close for a moment, then open, little more than a slow blink.

"Detour?" she queries quietly.

[Ivan] "Mm," he affirms. Detour. She half-watches him, which is to say she sees his arms around her in his fine tailored jacket, the cufflinks gleaming in the afternoon light. She sees the outer curve of his sleek head, his dappled ripe-wheat hair. She can't quite see his eyes closing -- the angle is wrong -- but she can feel his teeth on her skin, grazing, and then catching at the rim of her ear.

"Up until one second ago, I wasn't sure you'd ever let me do this again," he confesses, an aside.

Then this obnoxious young man with the crush, this self-entitled son-of-a-business-friend-of-her-husband, is peeling her trenchcoat from her shoulders with his long quick fingers and tossing it over the armchair behind them. He's reaching his hands up under her top, palms skimming over her abdomen without lingering, without stopping to feel if there's been any change, any advancement, any alteration there -- moving past her ribcage and under her bra. He cups her breast in his hand while his other arm wraps around her at the level of her diaphragm, holds her against him as he touches her, rubs her, massages her, flicks her nipple with his fingertips.

When he bites her again, it's harder: his teeth sinking rather remorselessly into the crest of her shoulder. It lasts only a second, and then he's nuzzling the spot, kissing it as though to soothe it.

Their room overlooks the river and the Loop just south of it, a dense forest of skyscrapers rising out of the flatness of the plains. Once upon a time this place, all of it, was prairies and grasslands, but no more. Now this city perches on the lip of the lakes, latticed with streets, gleaming with lights.

It's ridiculous; one of those buildings, a stone's throw away, is his city residence. They could have as easily gone there, but no. They're here. It's so bright outside that it's not possible to see him reflected in the glass. When he lifts his head from her shoulder, his hands stay where they are. His right hand holds her left breast, heel of his palm to her heartbeat while his fingers toy with her nipple.

"I wanted to fuck you here," he explains then, answering her at last. "Overlooking the city in someone else's room. I wanted to have dinner with you here too. In the city. Publically. I want people to wonder if I'm fucking you. I want them to wonder if you're mine."

A beat.

"At least tonight."

He kisses her then, a hard press of his mouth against the soft hollow behind her jaw; again on her cheek. If she turns to him, he kisses her on the mouth, and hard, swallowing her breath. His hands on her body are briefly greedy: grasping at her side, squeezing her breast. He presses against her back, and against her ass. Releases a moment later, his hands gentling again, stroking.

"Then I want you to come home with me. I want you to stay the night if you can."

[Hilary] There's no answer to that, nothing she has to say or can say. Perhaps Hilary wasn't sure she would even bother coming. Maybe she wanted to see how he liked it. Being toyed with. Humiliated, even if it was only in his own skin. Opened a crack, only to have that willingness slapped back at his face.

But it's also possible that she doesn't really know what he means by 'this'. Touch her? Smell her hair, bite her earlobe? Take her somewhere and have her for awhile to himself, fucking her however he likes and using that pretty slim body for his pleasure, using it like a toy? Let me, he says, because in the end he can really do none of these things to her without her submission to them.

Hilary rolls her shoulders back, opening her arms for him to remove her trenchcoat. He tugs her shirt up and out from her trousers, reaching beneath it to play with her tiny, pert breasts. There's simple lace there to nudge out of the way with his knuckles, then her nipple, hardening to his touch because it was soft and unaroused before.

When he bites her, she gasps. If he weren't right there, right beside her, he wouldn't hear it. As it is, he might not hear it at all, might just be feeling it in the movement of her diaphragm under his arm, the flash of motion in her throat. His mouth rubs against her, kissing her through her blouse, and Hilary relaxes against him somewhat.

She has not questioned his choice of the tower rather than his penthouse. She doesn't even mention it. There they stand, her pliant and passive while he holds her and bites and nuzzles, plays with her breasts and alternately holds them in his hands. Briefly she remembers standing in his shower at the lake house and the way he held her from behind, stroking her pussy though he seemed to have no intention of fucking her, of getting her off, of doing anything but playing with her body like he would any pretty possession.

And Ivan explains, finally, why he didn't take her to his house. Why he had her come all this way, wondering why he didn't want her at his den again, wondering if he would ban her from his bed there, wondering if this was another way for him to prove that he doesn't really need this at all, what. She closes her eyes again around the time he gets to talking about having her out to dinner, publically, wanting people to wonder.

Her eyes are still closed and she's still so damnably passive and compliant when he kisses her. She turns her head after he gets to her cheek, knowing what he wants, opening her mouth softly to his lips, letting him in, letting him take what he wants. Her back arches faintly as he grabs at her, courses his hands over her hungrily, pushing himself to the curve of her ass as though he might just grind against her like that, hold her hips in place and get his cock hard and her pussy wet without taking off anything but her coat.

When he pulls back her eyes are opening slowly, watching him with that endless stillness she somehow manages to grasp, turning herself into a cold blank so well it has to be intentional. It must be.

"I'm hardly dressed for dinner out in the city," Hilary protests softly, as though the fact that it's Gucci doesn't alter the fact that it's really more of an outfit to go shopping in. Daytime, not evening. Far too casual for a decent supper.

She says nothing about the rest. Fucking her here. Someone else's room. The view. The word mine.

[Ivan] A quiet laugh escapes him, and then Ivan's arms are loosening about her. "So we'll go shopping," he says. His hands slip from beneath her shirt. He turns her around, back to that city view now; stands her in front of him with her shoulderblades to the glass and starts to flick her buttons and clasps and zippers and ties open with quick, careless grace. Top to bottom, neck to navel: that's the order he goes in, parting everything, undoing everything along the way.

When her blouse comes undone the halves fall apart from her body. He pushes them apart, baring her pale skin and her fine body. When her slacks come undone he tugs them down until they fall of their own accord. Then she's half-undressed, her lingerie still in place, his hands roving up and down her sides, up and down her torso.

There's a little smile on his face. It's odd, and slight, and a little quirky: something rather like genuine enjoyment, pleasure, which is rare when he's with her. So often, he looks angry. Or torn. Or tortured.

Warm and smooth, his hands come to a rest at her waist. He looks at her, meets her eyes.

"I missed you," he says. And softer, as if to confirm it to himself, "I did."

And he kisses her again like that, with his eyes open, with his hands on her body like he has a right to her, with her so passive and pliant in his arms like she could ever really be owned or mastered or even reached for more than a few precious moments at a time.

[Hilary] At first Ivan unbuttons her blouse, opening up her half-bared breasts under their white lace and revealing her torso. The faint swelling to her abdomen is barely noticable; her clothes aren't even snug yet. Still, she wears slightly looser ones. She feels it, knows it, even if no one else might see it. The shirt doesn't catch on her wrists, because the cuffs are unbuttoned, folded back. It drops behind her, bangles clinking against one another as she presses her palms to the glass.

The whole time, Hilary watches him. Watches his face as he undoes her skinny little belt, unclasps her slacks, pushes them off her hips til they fall. She can't step out of them, wearing a pair of platforms with thick strap of leather across her feet. She stands there like a doll, something like a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, as though she's amused by him.

Her panties are low-cut, lacy things that match her bra, the cut only barely covering that perky ass. He's fucked her like this before, in shoes and lingerie and jewelry, getting only the bare minimum out of his way before he started banging her. Maybe that's why she's hinting at a smile.

But Ivan -- Ivan's actually smiling, looking like he's happy when she knows very well that being with her makes him dislike who he is, who he becomes. It helps that it's been a couple of weeks. Maybe he's forgotten what he becomes when he fucks her, what he hates about himself, what disgusts him about it all. She doesn't trust that smile. She meets his eyes.

And lets him kiss her again, her mouth slow and soft on his. Hilary's hands make their way to his hair, fingertips rubbing at his scalp as her tongue gives his a gentle stroke. She's so quiet. No snarky little comments, no insults, no pleading. Nothing but this detached receptiveness, this easy willingness.

[Ivan] The truth is, that smile doesn't last long. She's so quiet. She's so passive, so fucking detached. Even the kiss is passive -- maybe it's detached too. He can't tell. He can never tell; he's trying not to assume.

It parts. His brow rests against hers; it contracts when it furrows, and she can feel that against her skin. He's more than ten years her junior, but sometimes he feels older, if only because she can seem so pliant, so empty, like a blank slate in which he can see his own darkest desires reflected. His eyes close now; he kisses her again, and this one is harder, edging a little closer to needfulness.

"What are you thinking?" he whispers. His hands undo her bra. He pulls the straps down her arms and lets the piece fall. He touches her panties then, rests his hands over her hips, his thumbs over the waistband. And, "Tell me what you're thinking."

[Hilary] The way he kisses her is like a demand, and there's no answer. Kiss me back. Push back. Need me. Show me something. Because this blank slate, this empty canvas, would be so easy to just paint red and black with his own violence, his own lust. She doesn't have to prod at him or insult him to incense him. But infuriating Ivan has never seemed to be the reason behind all this for her.

Hilary's eyelashes flicker slightly. She shifts away from the glass so he can pull her bra off, lets it drop. She moves her hips til they settle into his palms, her feet motionless. She doesn't even try to wriggle out of her slacks where they're gathered around her ankles.

Stares at him. Her eyes are a bit wide, strangely childlike.

It's a hard question. Which at first gets only this answer: "...I'm not," like a discovery, like it borders on defense. But that's not exactly true. She's a human being -- in a manner of speaking -- not a robot. Not the blank slate she seems to be sometimes. There has to be something in there. Some thought she's having, some reason why she's acting like this. Like nothing.

And even when she tries to come up with an answer, a way to respond to him, to open up to him, all she gives is a request:

"Please tie me down," Hilary whispers, and the words themselves seem to ache as they leave her.

[Ivan] It's not an answer; not directly. It is a response, though. It's like she knows. As broken, as fucked up as Hilary is, she's not so far gone to be utterly oblivious to her own damage.

She knows she's closed like this. Empty. She's not even thinking; but she knows, too, how to get connect to herself. How to get what she needs

to give him what he seems to need. That connection. That spark of life inside her, when she becomes more than just this pretty plaything, this lovely toy, this empty vessel that seems to exist at all other times. Earlier, they nearly argued over a tennis net. She said I was there every single time. He doesn't know if he believes her. He's not sure she's here at all, unless and until he ties her down. Lays her out. Takes control from her, takes whatever he wants from her,

and paradoxically, seems to give her herself back. If only for a while.

Ivan is silent now. He stares at her for a moment, silent. And then he steps back from her, and maybe she thinks he'll leave her now -- again -- capricious creature that he is. It's still possible. He might still leave. He's incapable of loyalty, after all; incapable of commitment, and what they have is growing dangerously close to that. Commitment, if not loyalty.

He doesn't leave, though. He strips his belt out of his slacks. It's the only thing he has to tie her down with. "Step out of your pants," he says quietly, and while she does, he strips out of his coat, unbuttons his shirt.

And then, "Hold out your wrists."

[Hilary] For a very, very long time now, Hilary has been aware that there is something broken in her, irreparably damaged by what she witnessed when she was a little girl. In the year or two following that she learned that some of the things she thought about were very bad indeed, and she is coming to understand how quickly the five year old mind could extrapolate no, you mustn't hide dead animals in your toy chest and no, you mustn't ask questions at the dinner table about how the beast was skinned, how it was drained of blood, how it was cut up and sawed apart

into a repression of every other unbidden thought and sensation and curiosity. Because if one thing she wanted to explore was bad, then it must all be bad. Or worth questioning. Doubting. Being wary of. No desire could remain amorphous, no calm or pleasure could be welcomed without first being analyzed and checked against what she was being taught were appropriate behaviors.

Detachment and disconnection from herself, from her own body, from everything she might like to feel or think about, isn't a skill Hilary's become good at over the past three decades. It happened so early, during some of the first developments of her brain and personality, that it's a part of her, and not one she can overcome just by being told oh no, don't worry, it's okay to feel things. To care. You don't have to double-check. She may be incapable of overcoming that, or of even finding a way around it

other than this.


The cuffs of her slacks are trim enough, not quite wide-legged, that she has to work her heels out of them, to tug the fabric down and off and then drop it aside. This is what she does. Her breathing is elevated in a way it wasn't when he was stroking her breasts and pressing his body to hers. The mere mention, the promise of being bound, the way he tells her now to hold out her wrists as he removes his belt -- which her eyes flick to, sudden and hungry before they snap back to his face -- has her breathing a little faster.

Hilary's nearly naked now. Jewelry, panties, heels, red lipstick, and that belt of his, taunting her because she knows it will end up around her wrists. He was so upset last time when she wanted him to hurt her and he used it on her ass. Maybe she can convince him if he just...

She takes a breath and holds out her wrists, exerting effort not to bite her lip.

[Ivan] He can't possibly miss how excited she gets at the mere possibility, the very thought that yes, now he'll bind her. Now he'll tie her up, tie her down, tie her wrists together and fuck her like a whore. Like a slave. He can't miss how fucked up she is, but the truth is

he missed her, and missed fucking her, and -- perhaps -- even missed this. And if he wants this, he'll have to accept it.

So Ivan binds her wrists together. It's quick and easy now; he's used to it. The leather is cool as he pulls it tight. Then she's nearly naked and his belt is a dark slash across her skin, and he wraps the free end around his fist once and uses it to tug her sharply closer.

His arm wraps behind her back. He bends her backward with force of his kiss. When it's over he doesn't lead her to the couch, or push her against the window; he doesn't even lead her to the bedroom. He bends and he picks her up, throws her over his shoulder the way he had once in the upstairs hall of his penthouse, with her husband already en route to pick her up. It's unromantic, rather forceful: he carries her like an object, takes her around the corner into the bedroom.

The bed doesn't so much as creak when he drops her at its foot. There are lamps bolted to the wall on either side of the headboard, and that's what he knots the other end of his belt to -- drags her toward the righthand lamp by the wrists until she has to slide up the bed to accommodate. He's deliberately careless now, carelessly brutal, and he tells himself he does it for her, so she gets what she needs, but

sometimes he wonders.

When he has her tied down, laid out, Ivan takes a step back from the bed. He sheds his shirt, and then his pants, and then he takes himself out, strokes himself slow and easy as he stands at the foot of the bed looking at her.

"Show me your cunt," he says -- softly.

[Hilary] Knowing that Ivan is repelled, at least somewhat, makes it harder for Hilary to find that place. Right now they're in a tense transition: Hilary devolving quickly into lust, into need, into the parts of herself she isn't allowed to tap into otherwise, and Ivan trying to reconcile the fact that he missed her, and wants her, with the fact that this is fucked up.

And that he likes it.

She smiles faintly as she sees the leather cut darkly across her wrists. She smiles when she sees the way he wraps the leather around his wrist like this is a leash, as though Ivan's jerking forward to pull her to him is some kind of cue that it's okay now, it's normal now, come here

And so she lifts her eyes to him once, as though to let him see it. Let him see that it makes her happy -- as close to 'happy', maybe, as she gets -- that he's doing this, even if an hour ago she was snapping that she despises him. She leans towards him and finds him leaning in, crushing her mouth with a kiss, crushing her body against his.

A shuddering inhale fills her, her arms folded between them because she has no other option. Her heels slide against the floor, would go out from under her and drop her to the ground if Ivan weren't holding her, imprinting her into his very skin, wrinkling his clothes with her body. She gasps and kisses him back, harder now, eager, only to have him tear his mouth away and carry her to the bedroom, drop her on the bed, drag her up the bedspread and tie her to the lamp.

Her nipples are hard. She's flat on her back, askew on the bed with its now-wrinkled covers, the sun shining in through the uncurtained windows to light up Ivan's hard, lean, golden body.

This isn't the first time he's stripped for her. This isn't the first time he's done it and she's known it's not for her (it is). This is hardly the first time she's seen him naked. This won't be the first time he's seen her naked.

But Hilary doesn't open her legs to show him the scrap of lace covering her pussy, the hint of wetness soaking through the thin, thin fabric. She tucks her legs together, and something is inexplicably genuine about what would otherwise look like a totally ersatz display of shyness. She breathes in, shaking her head. She's still breathing quickly, watching him with something like desperation in her eyes.

[Ivan] And that's so unexpected, so -- unlike her, perhaps, only not quite -- that it gives Ivan pause. Literally: his hands pausing on his cock, midstroke. He's half-hard already. She can see him breathing, the motion of his ribcage in the brilliant autumn light.

Just as soft, this:

"Why not?"

[Hilary] That, too, is a hard question. Hilary briefly bites her lower lip, and her arms flex, making the leather dig into her wrists. She exhales then, a breath it wasn't instantly visible that she was holding in the first place.

"You do it," she whispers, like a secret, like she's not really telling him.

[Ivan] It's almost surreal, how fast she devolved into this state. This needfulness. A moment ago she was so cool, so distant. Not so long before that -- careless, noncommittal, commenting about the room without looking at it. And not so long before that, accepting a keycard from a receptionist. And not so long before that, making the boy at the country club nervous because he wants to flirt, he's afraid to flirt, he wonders why any part of him thinks it would even be remotely okay for him to flirt with Mr. Durante's loving,

devoted,

wife.

Who's here now. Tied down with another man's belt, all but naked, her breasts bared, her body bared, her eyes wide open and as naked as anyone will ever see them. Closing her legs on the bed. Telling her lover, you do it.

As though she needed that, too.

So he does. He gives himself a last stroke, a small wedge of muscle flexing at the side of his hip in response, and then he comes forward. He crawls onto the bed on his knees, grasps her knees, pries her thighs apart. So careless about it. So ruthless, and rough. His eyes are on her now, and she can see the way his face goes blank with the effort of not snarling with want. He lifts her legs over his shoulders like he's going to fuck her just like this, like he's going to pull her panties aside and shove his cock into her, pound her right now,

but he doesn't. Instead, he reaches down. Rubs his fingers against her. Rubs her clit through her panties, presses his fingertips against the opening of her cunt. Rubs her until her panties grow wet; plays with her until he gets some sort of response, some stifled moan or whimper that brings his eyes back to her face.

"What are you thinking now?" he whispers.

[Hilary] Somewhere far beneath the surface, invisible to Ivan and possibly only barely felt to Hilary herself, there was some relief, some happiness, to see him again. To enter the hotel room and think that maybe he'd fuck her here, make her feel like she could inhabit her own body again. But it was so far away, so distant, that she appeared as she may have felt on the surface: cool. Distant.

But now she's nearly naked and tied down to a luxurious bed, gasping as Ivan comes at her, grabs her, forces her legs apart. It makes her cry out, half a moan, her thighs opening to him as he puts her legs up and starts touching her pussy. Her back arches, the leather pulling at the arm of the lamp, as she rubs herself back against him.

"Ivan," she says, as though this is the answer, less than a pleading. There's no stifling. She opens her throat and he hears her moaning, sees her gasp as he rubs her through the soft strip of cotton that covers her cunt, lines the lace that skims her flesh so neatly. "Ivan, I want --"

this is hard. She's breaking a sweat, and it can't just be from the arousal, from the desire. Something's changed in between the last time and this time. Something about Hilary is different that isn't just the advancement of life inside her. She gasps the words out, closing her eyes as though she can hide from them.

"I want you to help me," she breathes, the words seeming disembodied, separate from her somehow. These are anchored, though, the ones that follow, tumbling out of her the longer he touches her: "I want you to tell me I'm a good little whore," she pants, bucking slightly against his hand. "Your whore."

[Ivan] [EMPATHEE!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Ivan] Wasn't exactly the best of terms, the way they parted over two weeks ago. There was every possibility then that that would be the last they ever saw of each other, barring perhaps the occasional run-in at the north shore yacht club. Even that may have been unlikely. Ivan's vessel is usually moored in the city, and god knows the man makes enough of a production wherever he goes that Hilary would have been able to avoid him with ease.

On the other hand, Hilary's not nearly so easy to track. Whatever may have become of her disgraced family and its bloodlines and riches, Hilary certain behaves, moves, acts and exists like old, old money. The sort of wealth and privilege that's matured beyond the need for flash and glitter; the sort of power that conceals itself in ten-mile-deep estates, whose ultimate gateway is no more than an easily-missed turnoff on a private road.

Once upon a time Ivan's lineage had that sort of quiet power and dignity. It's been lost, along with much of their purity of blood. What they have today is an almost bottomless well of wealth, and to go with it -- and increasingly ostentatious younger generation of which, of course, Ivan is ever the posterboy.

All of which goes to say, it's unusual when he shows up at Hilary's country club with no fanfare, no attending flock of starved swans, no trailing entourage of russians in black. It's just him, strolling up to take her partner's place on the tennis court when the other bows out for a prior engagement. Or maybe just a drink. Something.

It's autumn now, the air cool even in the early afternoon. The sun's out today, and it glints off Ivan's textured gold hair; reflects blindingly off his tennis whites. He looks long and lean, fit and firm, spinning his racket once in his hand as he joins her.

"Mind if I play?" he calls across the net.

[Hilary] There is a complaint among some female tennis enthusiasts that it's a trifle difficult to be taken seriously as an athlete, even more challenging to be seen as an intimidating opponent, when the sport all but demands that you wear a miniskirt on the court.

Hilary does not care. She's a casual player, like almost everyone at the club. She doesn't wear white exclusively when she plays because she's not all that concerned with breaking a sweat. Today she's wearing a baby blue tennis dress with a polo collar. It's not the body-skimming sort of thing seen on plenty of the women around here made of sweat-wicking fabrics. It's just cotton, and a sturdy sort. More than likely there's some kind of short underneath the pleated skirt, but she's not playing hard enough to reveal it.

Besides, she's not playing when Ivan walks up. She's drinking from a water bottle, waiting for her partner to get back.

So her head comes up when there are footsteps nearby, her hair up in a ponytail and her eyes shielded by a white visor. She sees Ivan and doesn't seem to react for a moment: he may as well be the partner she was expecting. No bangles today, but soft white wristbands on each arm. Her wedding ring is glinting in the light, but her earrings are no more elaborate than a pair of diamonds in her lobes. Even dressed for the court: kept woman. Trophy wife. Rich enough not to need to flaunt it. Not to care if anyone knows.

But it's not her partner, no matter how she looks at him. It's Ivan, spinning his tennis racket in his hand. Because of course he is.

In answer, she puts down her water bottle, walks across the court, bounces the ball in her hand once, and serves.

Hard.

[Ivan] Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Whitman are a little surprised at the sudden viciousness of the serve. They probably blame it on Ivan: young, impatient, damn him for ruining their leisurely afternoon pastime. That first serve sets the tone for the game, though. Players cut about the court. Aces and volleys fly. It's a quick, hard game, and when it's over Ivan's cheeks are flushed, sweat on his brow. The Whitmans are huffing and puffing as they come to the net to shake hands and make arrangements with Hilary for lunch at their place sometime next week.

Ivan stands back from the net, bouncing a ball against the red clay of the court. They're her friends -- or acquaintances, such as it is -- not his. He smiles politely when it's appropriate; offers introductions and shakes hands, and otherwise lets them conclude their conversation.

When they quit the court, Ivan catches his ball on the rebound and pockets it. He raises his eyebrows at Hilary.

"Could I buy you a mimosa?"

[Ivan] Ivan can't possibly be surprised at that first, vicious server. It sets the tone for the game. Clay puffs around their feet as they cut about the court. Aces and volleys fly. It's a quick, hard game, and when it's over Ivan's cheeks are flushed, sweat on his brow.

He didn't let her win. He played as hard as she did; it's quite possible he made her lose. Not much of a gentleman in that regard, to be sure. Then again, a gentleman wouldn't challenge a lady to a game in the first place.

Ivan catches the last ball on the rebound and pockets it. He raises his eyebrows at Hilary, then, coming to the net for the traditional handshake. "Buy you a mimosa?" he offers.

[Hilary] Truth be told, most of the flying and cutting and quickness and hardness is, as ever, in Ivan's hands. In the way he moves, the way he is. Hilary doesn't even try to win, or keep up. After that first serve it seems like she plays as though bored. It says something about her general athleticism that even playing as though she cares no more for this than for anything else, Ivan has to work to beat her. And beat her he does, though you wouldn't know from those black, dead eyes of hers that she would feel any difference between winning and losing.

For what it's worth: the viciousness in that serve was real. And came entirely from her, a single hard swing of the racket sending the ball all but flying for his face.

She knows her manners. She comes to the net. She doesn't offer her hand first, her stare flat and unblinking. And he offers her a mimosa. Perhaps he expects this, is no more surprised by it than he was by how furious she began the 'game':

"No."

[Ivan] "Vodka straight-up, then?" He doesn't miss a beat; it comes flying back at her like a volley over the net. "Would you prefer that?"

Then there is a pause. His eyes flick down, then back to her. When he speaks again it's quieter.

"I'd like to talk to you. If now's not convenient, name the time and the place."

[Hilary] "I think a double shot of vodka would perturb my doctor more than half a glass of white wine," Hilary says mildly in return, "considering she's recommended I avoid alcohol altogether, now."

She doesn't explain that. He might not bat an eyelash: pregnant, after all. No big shock that her doctor would tell her that regardless of what she read on the internet, no, it's not okay, she can't even have a little bit of white wine. Boo.

"I despise you," Hilary goes on quietly. "Convenience has little to do with it."

[Ivan] "Two weeks ago," Ivan replies, "you were ready to place yourself into my guardianship. Now you despise me so much you won't even speak to me? Pardon me if I don't entirely believe that.

"At any rate, it was an apology I wanted to give you. Now, my yacht is moored about two miles away. I live about five miles away. There's an independent coffeehouse about half a mile away, far too bohemian for your friends to see you at. I'd prefer to talk at any one of these locations, but if you absolutely insist on your refusal, I'll say what I have to say here and leave you be."

[Hilary] One of her eyebrows lifts slightly at his statement of disbelief. Another woman, carrying a torch or whatever semblance of such that a woman like her is capable of, would probably argue, somehow. Whisper

I was ready to do much more than that, Ivan.

Another woman, stinging from the hurt of it all still, might look aside, trying to conceal her emotions, murmuring

That was two weeks ago.

Hilary stares at Ivan, unblinking, the sunlight turning her pupils to pinpricks -- not that it matters, as her irises are almost the same damn color to begin with. She doesn't take her eyes off of him. She catches her breath, as they did just finsh playing a point of tennis, but she does so with a quiet steadiness. Isn't ladylike to pant, perhaps, though it's also possible this is just how she learned to breathe when recovering from physical activity. She doesn't murmur or whisper or look away or down. There's something merciless about her, but not restrained: only the sense that she is merciless by nature, that mercy is as alien to her as any other expression of compassion.

"Say what you have to say," she tells him, her expression returning to its blank. Meaning only: her eyebrow has lowered again.

[Ivan] There's just a beat of pause. Ivan doesn't even take one last look around to make sure her partner isn't coming back; her acquaintances aren't listening in; there's no one around to see and hear and gossip.

"I don't understand you," he says. He's quiet enough, but he's not whispering. His tone is level and steady. "It's wholly possible I never will. But instead of trying to understand you, I made prejudged you through the lens of my own experience; pried at you with assumptions already in place. Over and over I've demanded to know why you weren't more ... human, and all the while I was treating you as though you were subhuman.

"That was unfair of me. I owe you an apology.

"As for your future here in Chicago," this, only after a pause, "I'll understand if you prefer to remain in Katherine Bellamonte's care. Or if you prefer to remain up on the North Shore and not venture into the Maelstrom Protectoration at all. But if your offer still stands, I'd like to talk to Miss Bellamonte on you and your husband's behalf.

"And then I'd like to see you again. And see where this goes."

[Hilary] The answer to that is simple, though he shouldn't take from it that she heard nothing he said, has no response to any of it. Or maybe this is the only way she can respond right now, more guarded and stony than he's ever seen her:

"How can I trust you?"

[Ivan] [PROTECTORATE. *red*]

[Ivan] The smallest of hesitations follows that.

The sun is bright. This is one of the more exclusive golf and tennis clubs in the nation; the grounds are immaculately kept, the grass trimmed, the trees lush, the gardens lovely at dusk. Out on the tennis courts, a cool breeze moves unhindered over smooth red clay. A few courts down, there's a friendly doubles match going on. Other than that, they're alone.

"I don't know," Ivan says finally. "I suppose you'll just have to trust me. Or not."

[Hilary] [PROTECTORATATINATION]

[Hilary] [GET IT RIGHT.]

[Hilary] She's watching him carefully, as though she could open up his mouth and start peeling back layers of skin, unraveling him like an onion. She stares at him like that's what she's trying to do, strip him of whatever is in him that could hide something else, then stripping that away, then that

then whatever's underneath that. Is he lying to her with that sincere-sounding apology? Is he just going to turn around when he gets impatient and frustrated and humiliate her again, and again, and again?

Perhaps it's ironic that she even wonders, that she even cares about being humiliated when she's enjoyed having him dominate and even hurt her on so many occasions. Isn't humiliation, shame, and degradation exactly what she's always asked him for? Isn't that what she gets off on?

Hilary waits a moment after that, then asks another question: "Where do you think it would go?"

Since they both already know, too well, where it can't.

[Ivan] At that, there's a brief flit of humor, more bitter than true. His reply is nearly immediate, and quiet. "Nowhere good."

Perhaps they both already know that, too.

[Hilary] Her brows tug together briefly, a flicker of a frown that passes just as quick and sudden as it comes on. Hilary's tennis racket is still in her right hand, and she twists the handle a few times in her grip. Finally it comes to a stop, and she takes a breath.

"I don't think you ever understood that what I wanted with you was essentially, at the core, about trust," she says, almost as though she's reciting something, repeating something like a child who is trying to pretend they're not as proud of their new knowledge as they really are. "And respect."

There's a pause, and then a struggle to get the words out: "I don't ...want you to be unhappy." Which is, it seems, as close as she can get when she's like this to expressing what she does want. Strangely, then: "I do hate you," as matter-of-fact as you please, "because you never respected me. But I trusted you, and I wanted to make you happy.

"I would like to have both. To feel the way I did, and for you to not ruin it like you did. But I don't trust you anymore."

She's blunt. Even if the words are hard to get out, awkward because they're real and strange and new to her, they're also uncomfortably true. At least for her.

[Ivan] Perhaps it's a strange thing that she asks him for respect, for dignity, all while she's willing to -- she's wanting to -- be so utterly dominated, used, even abused by him. Perhaps that's the underlying schism in their minds. It's hard for Ivan to understand how a woman who wants what she wants could also want respect. Could even be human.

She looks human right now, though. Even if her eyes are black as a shark's; even if all the strain there may or may not be beneath the surface is evidenced only in that quick tug of her eyebrows.

She tells him what she wants, then. Not: I want you to bend me over and fuck me or [i]I want you to spank me, hit me, pull my hair[i] but -- this. Something at once much easier and much more treacherous than any of that. Something much more

human than any of that. Respect, she says. Trust.

"I'll try," he says slowly, "to understand you without prying at you. I'll try to remember you're ... not a thing." His eyebrows pull together -- a mirror of hers. "Not a monster. But I need some help, Hilary. It can't just be these ice cold meetings and then the fucking. It can't just be the wife and the wanton, the virgin and the whore. If you want me to respect you, I need to see you. I need to know you're even there."

[Hilary] Another one of those frowns, coming from a place so deep beneath the surface that it barely causes a ripple. "And there you go again," she says, stepping back from the net. She doesn't turn away, though. Not yet. "Just because it's not what you expect to see, or what you think you should be seeing, you blame me. I was there every single time, Ivan."

Her hand tightens around her racket. "Not any of those boxes you like you tell yourself I choose to stay in. Just me. And not just at the end."

Shaking her head, Hilary exhales a huff of air. "I think you just don't like who that is. Or you're just incapable of seeing it."

[Ivan] A dry, humorless huff answers hers. "Well," Ivan says, his tone almost offhand if only as a ward against frustration, "you hate me and I apparently know very well who you are -- I just don't like that person. So why the hell are we even having this conversation?"

[Hilary] She's still for a moment, watching him. A fool would miss his frustration or the way he handles it. On some level she has to know what he really wants, what he's after. He says it clearly enough: to see her. To know her. To discover her, because he seems to believe there's something there worth knowing. Worth giving a shit about, even.

It isn't that she resists that. Maybe to some degree she doesn't want to be known, or seen. Maybe she thinks that what's there is ugly and rotten and broken, and all he did every time he treated her like she was a cold and distant monster when she was at her most open and vulnerable was hammer that home: something is wrong with you. Maybe that's why she hates him.

Because she's capable of giving a shit. And she's capable of being hurt. And just as Ivan hates being forced to wrestle with the reality that he can't ever have her the way he (sometimes) wants her, she hates being made to recognize that other people can always, somehow, reach in and hurt her no matter how far away she goes. No matter how empty she makes herself, no matter how hollow she wants to feel.

Hilary gives a small shake of her head. "I didn't say you know who I am, Ivan. But you keep acting and talking as though there's nothing in me, that I've shown you nothing, I'm just... this or that. Ice cold or fucking. Wife or whore. And that's what it was at first, that's what I wanted at first, but every time you had me you got closer to me and further into me and yet you talk like you don't even realize that. Don't even notice. Like it was all just... fucking."

She's quiet for a second. "Think of how that must sound to me."

Now, for the first time, she looks down. Away. Stares at a chair where a water bottle and towel rest, waiting. Sweating. She turns to look back at Ivan again. "I thought that that night at your house," she whispers, like she's afraid someone is going to sneak up on them and hear them now, "when you tied me up so I could stay with you, that you understood what I needed."

Could, she says.

Not 'had to'.

[Ivan] It's when Hilary looks down and away that Ivan's eyes also drop. Perhaps it's something like shame. Think of how that must sound to her. Think of how that must feel to her, she may as well say, and the truth is -- he very rarely considers how she feels at all. Very rarely seems to even realize she's capable of feeling.

Maybe in the end he is exactly what he seems to be. Selfish. Self-centered. Blithely, devastatingly careless.

Ivan's eyes flick back, though, at that last. When she says could, not had to. Not even would, but could. There's a flash in his eyes then, like electricity down a wire, light across a window. His eyelids flicker, not quite a blink.

"I didn't understand," he says. "But I think I'm beginning to."

[Ivan] It's possible that Ivan has never seen deeper into Hilary than this. It's possible that all the times he's looked at her before, tried to understand her before, tried to find some spark of who she is under all that detachment

-- or perhaps not so much under as amidst, as though her personality, on a daily basis, exists only as a few floating motes of awareness and anger in a great lightless void --

he's never come so close to an absolute truth as this. Right here and now, with her laid out nearly naked, tied down; with him kneeling naked between her thighs like an aggressor or a supplicant; with his fingers rubbing against the most sensitive part of her, toying with those nerve endings and axon bundles that somehow tie her back to herself.

It doesn't make sense, really. Not completely. It doesn't make sense that getting used, getting abused, getting fucked and slapped and hauled around, held down, somehow provides the sharp stimuli she needs to connect to her innermost psyche. It doesn't make sense that there's such a sharp divide between this sort of ritualistic, savage abuse that she doesn't merely get off on but needs -- and the bone-deep horror and revulsion he sometimes feels boiling up inside himself at her, at himself, that she can't bear. That she hates him for. It doesn't make sense from an outside perspective, a sane, perspective, but right now, right this moment,

Ivan looks at Hilary and understands. It comes together. He gets it.

"Okay," he whispers. There's something uncomfortably close to pity in his eyes, but it's not that after all. It's not pity. It's closer to mercy. "You're my whore."

He peels her panties off, then. He tosses them aside, and then he rises up on his knees, lifts her lower body from the bed by her legs hooked over his shoulders. His palm meets her ass. The sound cracks off the ten-foot ceilings.

When he says it again, it's not so quiet. It's not a whisper, and it doesn't sound like mercy at all. "You're my good little whore," he snarls. He hits her again, slaps her, spanks her: hard enough to flush her skin. "You're my cock-hungry slut. You belong to me.

"I know what you need, you filthy little slut. You need my cock. Don't you. You need this hard cock drilling that tight little cunt. You need me to tie you down and fuck you until you're filthy. Until you're a quivering, messy, senseless wreck."

And again. Harder: smacking the palm of his hand across her ass.

"That's what you need. Isn't it. Say it, you little whore. Say you want to get fucked senseless."

[Hilary] [Note to Damon: Fix italics later! :D]

[Hilary] There's some truth in that way of looking at her, as though she's a shattered planet, a few lost pieces floating in nothingness, each one of them remembering a long-since dissolved inner warmth and cohesion, each crack and jagged edge held together by some invisible gravity but unable to be put back together again. Were some Theurge to tell Hilary the story of Rorg, of his endless fury and stubbornness born out of that crushing blow,

she would look differently at the night sky, and understand.

Though there's no way to make that sort of connection or comparison to the fair-skinned woman on the metallic blue covers of this expansive, expensive bed, not with her arms stretched over her head and Ivan's belt lashing her down. It's possible that any one of his packmates could track him down here and yell at him that he's needed to come do his damn duty, but he can thank his lucky stars that he probably doesn't have to worry about a particular Black Fury ever barging in on him while he's got a woman -- a pregnant woman, no less -- tied down before him.

A woman he's now calling a whore. His whore. Slapping her pristine flesh and snarling at her that she's nothing better than a slut, that all she really wants is to be fucked til she's destroyed. No, Penelope wouldn't understand. Nobody would understand this. Ivan only half understands why Hilary wants it, why she needs this in order to feel safe and herself. Ivan doesn't understand why he himself craves it so badly, hates it so much all at once.


Her dark eyes meet his colorful, dancing ones for a moment when he's relenting, when he's calling her his whore in that soft voice. She's worried that that's all, that he'll just parrot back to her what she says, that he won't take her and let her let go the only way she can, but then

oh, then.

Then Ivan's working her panties off past her high heels, lifts her up so he can spank her, growls at her as he's causing sharp, searing ripples of pain to go up her body, warming her to her very core. Hilary gasps, bucking once, tossing her head back. She twists against the bedspread when he demands that she say it, when he informs her that she belongs to him, that this is what she needs. He can see her pussy now, wet and pink and he can imagine how it aches, because even her very scent is telling him how ferocious her arousal is becoming, as though this is tapping into some well of desire and sensuality that is otherwise untouchable, now overflowing.

Hilary moans, arching her back again, trying to rub herself against him: his thigh, his cock, his stomach, anything. "That's what I need," she gasps, the sound of it trending towards a soft whine. "I need you to fuck me just like that. Fuck me like your little whore."

[Ivan] He doesn't let her, though. She's not allowed to rub herself on him. She starts to, and Ivan grabs her by the hips, lifts her hips away from himself, suspends her from his shoulders, from his palms, arched up from the bed.

"Say you're my little whore." This, too, is a snarl, low and guttural. He turns his head. He bites the inside of her calf where it crosses his shoulder, sucks at it, rakes his teeth over her skin. "Say it. Say this hungry, greedy little cunt missed my cock. Say you're my good little fucktoy, my dirty little slut. Say you're mine."

This time, when he hits her, he smacks her hard enough to leave a stinging afterecho -- a hot flash of pins and needles in the wake of that sharp, bright pain.

"Say it."

[Hilary] It wasn't that she didn't enjoy him the moment she got here. It wasn't that she didn't think he looked good, standing by the window, turning to look at her over her shoulder. None of this would have ever happened if she weren't attracted to him. And it wouldn't still be going on if there weren't something more under the surface than the simplicity of looking good, and feeling good under the fingertips.

But neither of them can say what that is. Hilary has an inkling that she can't put into words, coming closest just by telling him that she needs this. That for some reason it should be him, that she wants it to be him. And other than that she doesn't know what to tell him. When she's lying with him afterward and he's caressing her or kissing her or holding her she feels something she can't feel otherwise, and so she has no way to name it. The rest of the time, before the sex, outside of all of it, she thinks he's at least marginally pleasant company, sometimes aggravating and exhausting. She can't reconcile it.

This does, though. This seems to reconcile everything for her.

A ragged cry leaves her when he pulls her cunt away from himself, refusing to let her find pleasure on his body. Hilary twists, writhing, the leather of his belt scraping up on her wrists as she stretches herself towards him, wordlessly pleading for him. The bite on her calf sends a shiver up her leg, quivering along her inner thigh. She tries to get her legs together, to rub them together, rub them against her pussy, working tiny jolts of pleasure out with little bucks of her hips.

"I'm your whore," she whimpers. "I missed your hard cock. I missed getting fucked with it. I wanna be your little fucktoy again."

That last smack lashes across her body and she shudders, shoulders to toes, sweat building on the surface of her skin in answer to the pain, to the sound of his voice keeping her on earth. "I'm yours, Ivan," Hilary gasps, her eyes closed, her head tipped back, her body laid out, stretched out before him, aching for release. "I'm your fucking whore."

[Ivan] She doesn't know what to name this. She can't put a name to what she feels afterward, when they're done, when they're finished, when they've broken each other down to fragments, to dust, and found some peace in all that.

He doesn't know what to call it, either. He doesn't know why he makes her say these things. It's not just because she asked him to. She asked him to call her his whore. She never asked for the rest of this: never asked him to make her say she wants him, missed him, is his. Yours. Mine.

That's what he needs to hear, though. She says it -- gasps it, her head tilted back, her eyes shut, already so fucking far gone and he hasn't even started in on her -- and he makes an animal sound, a low growl in his throat as he twists his head and bites her again, fiercely, sinks his teeth into her with little restraint and no mercy at all.

A moment later he's dropping her back on the bed. He's coming down over her, pushing her legs back with the weight of his torso; rolling her hips off the mattress as he reaches between them. His knuckles brush her cunt; then the head of his cock. Then a single hard thrust and he's inside her, shoved as deep as he can, filling her in a single brutal thrust that he redoubles when he grabs her by the hips and pulls her up against him.

"Yeah," he pants. Barely voiced. "That's it. Feel that."

And he lets her feel it. Gives her a moment to adjust to his cock inside her. The way he stretches her out. The way he penetrates her, fills her up. His chest moves against the backs of her thighs with every breath. He grinds against her, a slow hard circle of his hips, and then he's planting his hands on either side of her

and hammering her. Fucking her with a vicious energy, a sort of wild abandon, as though he's been driven to the same precipice she's at. His body slaps against hers. He pounds down into her, grunting, snarling like an animal; head bent, shoulders tensed, watching himself fuck her like she's a whore, a thing, a toy, a warm wet hole, a possession;

all his.

[Hilary] I was always yours.

No, that's not exactly what she said. Not the same words, but it was a long time ago now and hard to remember, but that was the gist, wasn't it? Always his, every time. At least for the time, giving herself over entirely to him. It isn't loving, it isn't sweet, it isn't good for either of them. There's traces of dependency there. They keep saying need. They don't always manage to call it want.

But now Ivan's demanding that she tell him she missed him, missed his cock, that she belongs to him, and Hilary obeys with the same enthusiasm and desperation with which she responds to his spanking, to his snarling, to the hard bites he places on her skin. As though he weren't asking for it at all. As though it's already there, only being called out.

When he takes her -- and there's no other way to put it, the way he drops her body down and opens her up and fills her up with his cock even as he's pulling her onto it -- Hilary doesn't seem to know what to do with herself. She all but thrashes on the bed, electric and wild, crying out so helplessly it sounds like pain, it sounds like overwhelming pleasure, and yet her arms are trying to come down to wrap around him, to hold him there, to dig those pretty nails of hers into him.

But she can't. She can't even squirm much against him now, pinned down by his body, only writhing as much as he lets her, groaning aloud while he grinds his cock harder into her. It doesn't last long like that, though he can feel her right on the verge of an orgasm even then, riding it out in hard swivels against him. Maybe that's why he starts hammering her then like he does, fucking her like he does, as though he's refusing to give it to her just yet, refusing to let her pleasure herself on him when he's only just getting started.

All the same, Hilary's gasping turns to panting, her body bouncing on the soundless bed while her lover pounds her into it. Nobody can hear them in here. Nobody knows that this is how he likes to fuck this female, that this is how she wants it. What she begs for. And while he's hammering her into the bedspread Ivan can feel Hilary growing slick with sweat, feel her pussy's wetness sliding all over his cock, rubbing into his balls, marking him with the scent of her lust, the orgasms he knows are coming, because

this is how she likes it. This is what she begs for.

[Ivan] The things he says to her may as well be grunts, short and guttural and meaningless except for that lasting undercurrent of want. And lust. And not-quite-healthy need. Yeah! he growls at her, and that's it and take it, you dirty little slut and come on. come on, that's it, take it, and all the while his teeth are clenched; his eyes flash up to her face now and then, but mostly watch the savage-quick thrusts of his glistening cock into her clenching cunt.

Sweat's breaking out over his back, across his shoulders. Over his brow and down his neck. He's hammering her ruthlessly, pounding her into the bed so hard they can hear the covers shifting; can feel the impact all the way through the frame to the floor. The walls here are too thick for anyone to recognize them by voice, but even so their neighbors must be able to hear that subaural thudding of the mattress against the fixed headboard; must be able to at least detect the outermost fringes of the utterly unfettered cries she's letting out.

He knows she's already on the verge of orgasm. He knows she was when he first shoved his cock inside her and held her on him, planted her right on his hard cock and ground against her to make her take it, take it all. He fucks her like he doesn't care. He fucks her like his own pleasure, his own vicious, brutal pleasure is all he pursues; fucks her until she comes, certainly, but doesn't stop then. Keeps fucking her. Keeps hammering that tender, pulsing cunt of hers, slapping her ass and her thighs to make her clench on her, growling at her to don't fucking stop, keep riding that cock, let's see you put some effort into it while he rails her right through her orgasm,

and on and on afterward.

His own pleasure isn't exactly all he pursues, though. Ivan wants her to come again. He's actively seeking it. He shifts his weight over her after a while, reaches between her legs. He plays with her clit, and this is as pitiless as anything else; he's watching her face now, watching how she reacts while he rubs her, toys with her, fondles her. When her voice changes, shifts into a higher strain of need and want, a quick vicious grin flashes over his face.

"Are you gonna come again?" he's panting then, and all this time, all this while, he's still fucking her with that same unflagging speed. "Are you gonna come for me like a good little whore? Come on my cock. Be a good little slut and come again for me, and maybe I'll flip you over and pound you senseless."

[Hilary] There's something abusive in all of this, and only a fool would say that it's Ivan abusing Hilary, it's Ivan doing all the evil, it's Ivan hurting her, destroying her, doing something bad. Just because he's the one whose belt is tying her up. Just because he's the one on top, the one slapping her, biting her. The one calling her such filthy names, the one fucking her so hard. A number of his starved swans and wounded pigeons would be terrified of him like this, and he's not even a Garou of high, boiling rage.

Hilary's making him do it. To get close to her. To have her for a little while, even if as soon as it seems like she might want him for a long long time he'll prove incapable of wanting her back, of wanting anything that might last. Of anything that might confine him.

Tie him down.

She's screaming as he fucks her, crying out every time the thrust of his cock makes her body slide up on the bed, pushes her head back, her hair caught under her shoulders. They aren't screams of terror, or even of pain, no matter how close they verge to it. She's enjoying this. She's got her legs spread far to either side of his waist as though she can't get him deep enough, she's opening up and obeying and taking it. The few times he looks up at her face that's how she looks: arched back, moaning, lost in what he's doing to her.

And she comes. She comes with those tight, clenching waves through her body while he's sweating onto her, snarling at her while he -- bluntly put -- nails her pussy to the bed, hammers her til she's unable to even get a full-throated scream out because of how hard he's going at her, how fast. She starts to whimper as her orgasm unrolls into the sensation of Ivan's hand on her flesh again, the strikes he gives her sending aftershocks of ecstasy back through her again, and again. He tells her to fuck him back, tells her to work for it, and she shudders, giving weak, wanting rolls of her hips, as though she's afraid he'll stop if she doesn't obey. And she can't bear for him to stop.

The shriek Hilary lets out when Ivan fondles her clit makes her whip her head to the side, biting the inside of her own arm as her thighs start to quiver, as his touch melts her together, pristine and perfect, like lightning striking sand. She's weeping now, he can see the tears leaving her eyes, hear half-choked sobs in the gasps and the moans she's letting out. She tries to say please, she tries to moan oh god, Ivan but she's barely getting syllables out, panting all the rest,

because the answer is yes. She's coming again, squirming on his cock and trying to whimper yes, yes baby,

I'm gonna come again

fuck

I'm gonna come like a good little slut

Ivan

I'm coming --!

but as before the words barely make it out,coming across in a sort of gasped morse, hitching every time he fucks himself harder into her, sending her over the edge into quivering, shaking, screaming pleasure.

[Ivan] This time, Ivan lets her have it.

This time, when she shakes apart and tumbles over that edge, he slows down; he stops going at her quite so fast; goes at her just as hard. Fucks her in singular, brutal thrusts, slamming her hips into the bed every time, fucking her through her orgasm until her cries turn into something thin, overwhelmed, barely human, overcome.

He stops then. He slams deep and holds himself there, grinding against her as she rides out the last incandescent tail of her orgasm. As she's coming down, he's coming down too: coming down over her, sliding his forearms under her shoulders, drawing her up against him and fusing their torsos together and kissing her, nipping at her lips and kissing her, murmuring that's it. that's it, that's a good little slut. that's how good little whores come. that's my good, filthy little whore. breathe. breathe, baby. that's my good little slut.


And then the lull is over. And then he's lowering his head and biting her neck, biting her shoulder once, sharply, as he grinds his hips into hers with a low, rough grunt. Again; before he pushes himself up on his hands, rises up on his knees, slides back on the bed, dragging her with him. He's still inside her; stays inside her; keeps her planted on his cock while he moves them back to the edge of the bed. His belt isn't long enough. It pulls tight, pulls her taut, makes him give a short, wordless exclamation of impatience as he leans over her and yanks and tugs until -- by brute force -- the knot at the far end slips asunder.

Then he's wrapping his belt around his hand, wrapping it tight, leashing her to his fist. He's pulling her right to the edge of the bed and holding her wrists down by his belt, pinning her there on her back while he lowers his head and starts fucking her again -- a reckless battery of thrusts, hard and ferocious, slamming into her panting and grunting like an animal

but only for a moment or so before he pulls himself out of her without warning.

Yanks her forward. Yanks her off the bed, pushes her down on her knees, back to the foot of the bed, gripping his belt tighter in his hand while he takes his cock in hand and sets the head of it, hot, wet with her slick, wet with his precum, against her mouth.

"Open," he says: and it's so soft, so very nearly gentle. "Let's see you suck this hard cock you love so much. Show me what a greedy little whore you are. Suck me clean so I can fuck you full of cum."

[Hilary] This time, something shifts.

He's never done this before while she's coming. Not the stopping, the waiting, the hard grinding into her while he watches her buck and writhe in her orgasm. Ivan's given that to her before, maybe once or twice, and it's a rare thing, and yet not quite gentle, for all that. It's what he does near the end, when she's whimpering with those last aching pulses that seem to undo her inside.

Hilary shudders softly under his chest as he brings her close, pulls himself nearer to her. She's held. She's arched off the bed slightly, quivering all around his cock with tight, wet clenches, her arms still stretched out over her head. Those dark eyes of hers are fluttering open on that first nipping touch of Ivan's mouth to hers. Surely he kissed her before all this. Maybe he did. She can't remember, suddenly, anything before this. Before he was in her, dominating her, holding her like this, telling her she's good, and what she's doing is good, and she's his, and she's good.

breathe.

She inhales on the word itself as though it's an involuntary response to his voice, the sound of the air rattling into her mouth and then her throat and all the way down into her lungs, lifting her breasts against his chest. Wet, pink-rimmed eyes track the ceiling, but then she brings them back to him.

breathe, baby.

Her eyes close when she kisses him again, lifting her head off the bed to press her mouth against Ivan's, opening her lips to wrap softly around his lower one, sucking. It's gentle. Once, twice, her tongue flicking out to wet his lips briefly, and then she groans and starts kissing him harder. It's ravenous, all of a sudden, kissing him with a sort of starved intensity now, before he takes his mouth away and bites her neck, her shoulder

and starts fucking her again. Animalistic, now, a few rough thrusts before he's dragging her across the bed, her ass and shoulders tugging at the covers. Hilary gasps with a yelp when the mere motion of it all slams him into her, deep and hard. Leather scrapes up her wrists, nearly jerks completely off her hands. They're already red. They're already getting raw. She can't even feel it right now. She can feel him, though. She can see him when Ivan yanks the belt free and winds it around his fist.

The look in Hilary's eyes when he does that is molten. Her cunt is slick, wet with renewed pleasure at the mere image of him with that black strap of leather wrapped through and around his hand. And just like that, held down, she's ready for him again, ready for him to start fucking her again. When he does she thinks that's it, she arches her head back and moans, those small breasts of her bouncing gently with the force of his thrusts.

Which don't last, and she's not ready for that. Her hips start fucking air when Ivan pulls his cock out of her, winding and squirming on the bed as though if she just keeps going he'll give it back to her. Hilary's eyes fly open when she doesn't get it, when instead he hauls her forward and off the bed. She tumbles towards him, falling to his chest before he forces her down.

open.

Like before, when he told her to breathe, Hilary obeys as though she physically has no choice. Her lips part and she doesn't so much lean forward and engulf him with her mouth as wait for him to slide it into her. She's looking up at him when he does, something like adoration in her eyes. They close again as her lips do around him. Her hands are bound, giving her nothing to work his cock with but her lips and tongue, the bob of her head. The heels of her shoes dig into her ass where she kneels.

She can't feel that, either.

[Ivan] It's an altered state of mind, this. As intoxicating as any drug. They're on a different level now; who they were before, what happened before, may as well have been the lives of strangers. He can't remember what it's like not to feel like this. This savage, this dominant, this --

good. There's a rush in all this that he can't, or won't, get anywhere else. Doesn't want to get anywhere else. Doesn't want here, either, doesn't want at all, but is becoming slowly but surely addicted to. There's a rush in seeing her like this, seeing her go to her knees without a hint of complaint or resistance, seeing that pretty mouth of hers open up so he can slide his cock right in.

His lips part when hers close around the head of his cock. He pants out a slow breath, and then he wraps the belt another loop tighter around his fist. Barely four inches between her hands and his, now: her arms strung high over her head, the belt gripped in his palm like a leash.

And he rocks his hips forward. Thrusts against her mouth slow and deliberate, stroke after stroke, slow but uncareful, unflagging. "That's it," he breathes. "Suck it for me. Be a good girl and lick it clean for me. Suck it good for me, you sweet, dirty little cunt."

It's surreal to see him like this. This young man with his delicate, lovely face; his lean lovely body; those long lovely fingers. You wouldn't think him capable of this. He doesn't fit the image. He doesn't look like the type that would

push his free hand into a woman's hair suddenly like this. Grip her by the hair suddenly, grasp her so she can't pull away, and fuck his cock down her throat. It's brutal, and there's no warning: he holds her there, fucks her face for some savage, airless span of seconds, panting, grunting, groaning,

and just as warninglessly pulls back, pulls out of her mouth, pulls her head back by the hair and leans down to kiss her full on the mouth. That kiss is every bit as brutal as the way he fucked her: utterly dominating, taking her mouth like it's his to own and use as he will.

When it's over he pulls back. "Look at me," he says, and when she does he smiles. That's surreal, too: utterly at odds with what he's doing to her. "That's a good little whore," he breathes, and this time the kiss is softer, open-eyed. "That's my good little whore."

Ivan jerks her to her feet by the belt again. "Turn around," then, and "bend over. Open your legs. Wider. That's it." His hand flies across her ass before it opens over her midback, presses her down against the mattress. He's behind her again. He's pressing against her again, nudging his wet cock against her wet cunt, slapping his flesh to hers, letting her feel it.

This is a whisper, silky-soft: "Whose cock do you want?"

[Hilary] That's what she seems to want, what he knows she needs. The altered state, the separation from the pain mingled with the sudden and otherwise unachievable habitation of her own body, the otherwise impossible ownership of her desire by giving over control of its satisfaction to him. Maybe it's weak. Maybe it's a sign of just how broken she is. But it's her reality. It's becoming a part of his.

The way Ivan is holding her arms up makes it impossible for Hilary to push away from him, leverage herself against him, stop him from fucking her mouth like he does when he starts panting. There's no reconciling the way he is outside of these moments with what they're experiencing now. It's unthinkable that they would ever behave like this in public, at a club, at the court, out to dinner, at some moot. Not just the sexuality of it, but the power exchange: he's younger. She's married. Her wedding ring is on her finger, glittering up at him from where her hands are curled around the strap of leather she's holding onto, the strap that's holding onto her.

Later he's going to thread this belt back into his slacks as he gets dressed. No impressions of her fingernails or her jewelry, no hint of what that belt did to her wrists, of how he tied her down with it, held it like a leash, used it to keep her stretched out for his enjoyment. Just the tongue of the supple leather sliding effortlessly back through the buckle, tucking against his waist, warm from her skin.

There's no tears in her eyes right now, while he's fucking her throat, holding her hair to keep her mouth right where he wants it, where he can fuck it just as roughly as he might fuck her pussy. Nothing but a few strangled noises, nothing but the gasping for air she gives when he relents and leans over so he can yank her head back and kiss her.

"Ivan --!"

That's all she gets out when he lets go of her reddened, wet mouth, tasting of his cock, of her slick, her orgasm, the faintest hint of her toothpaste beneath it all. She looks up at him, trembling, and starts to cry as he's leaning down to kiss her again. Not in protest; she welcomes that kiss with tears and softness, welcomes him, welcomes this. Doesn't seem afraid of it.

Has never been afraid of him.

Hilary doesn't stumble as she rises. She sways on her feet slightly, because of the speed with which he brings her up, but she doesn't fall. She waits for him to turn her, and she starts to bend over slowly, spreading her legs for balance as much as to show him her cunt, spreading them further as he instructs her to. She lets out a small cry to be spanked again, her ass pink from all the times he's struck her so far. A second later her feet come up and he pushes her down, presses himself between her legs.

With a groan, she arches her back to try and rub against him, eager as ever for his cock, her slick glistening, and even though they didn't bother to turn on the lights when they came into the bedroom there's that one dim lamp that always seems on in hotel rooms, showing his sharp eyes how wet she is. Hilary shudders.

"Yours," she moans, opening her legs a little wider, tilting her hips back as though she could show him any more profoundly how badly she wants him to fuck her. "I want your cock, Ivan."

Her hands flex, her ribcage moving with her pulls for air. "I want you to get that cock inside me and fuck me with it. Fill me up. Come in me like I'm your little whore."

[Ivan] There's no waiting this time. No slow tease. He leans over her and he kisses her neck, kisses her temple, kisses her hard and needful and devouring and as soon as she's finished gasping out that one tattered request he slams himself back into her.

Whatever else, he's not immune to this. Any of it. He can't hold himself apart, unaffected. As dominant as he is, as much as he seems to be ripping whatever he wants from her: god, it blows his mind every time he slides into her again. Slams into her again. Fills her up like this, deep and thorough; bends his brow to her shoulder and lets loose a groan from the very bottom of his chest.

A moment after that he lifts his head. He holds himself over her by one elbow, his belt still grasped in his fist; his free hand holds her by the hip, holds her down. He starts fucking her. It's hard, and fast, and utterly without mercy or restraint. He pounds her like she's not flesh, not blood, nothing that could be hurt or damaged; like she's a thing, an object, an empty and convenient vessel to be filled

when he knows, he knows now, she's not. She's a human being; a real woman, complete, but not whole. She needs this in a way he cannot fully understand. She needs it to come together and coalesce again,

if only for a moment.

"Who's fucking you right now?" he murmurs in her ear, ragged, breathless. "Who's fucking that sweet, tight little pussy of yours?

"Say it. Say my name."

[Hilary] They could tell themselves that makes it okay, that the way Hilary is afterward makes the way he fucks her all right. Maybe that's even true, but in the end they're both selfish people. Ivan doesn't do this for her. He's not here for her. He's not here because she needs him, because she can't live without him, because she's not the one who walked out of his penthouse, seemingly done with him forever. Ivan's not fucking her like this because he doesn't get something out of it.

Though whether what he gets out of it is just the rush of being so fucking brutal, so animal, or if it's the roughness of the sex or

the way she is afterward,

is really unclear.


Most of the times that Ivan has fucked Hilary he's done it like this: bent over, his chest to her back, pounding himself into her with those ragged noises issuing from his throat, with her crying out and moaning for him, screaming for it, telling him yes, telling him please, telling him anything as long as he doesn't stop fucking her.

Giving it to her.

let me make you happy.


"Ivan," she moans again, pleadingly. "Ivan. Ivan, Ivan --"

over and over again, like she can't stop. Like they can't stop.

"Come inside me," Hilary gasps. "I want you to fill my pussy up with your cum. I wanna make you happy, baby. I wanna make you feel good."

[Ivan] His teeth catch at her ear; tug at whatever earring she may have on today -- let go just before it gets dangerous, just before there's a legitimate chance of tugging too sharply, injuring her, hurting her.

As though that were really a concern. As though somehow yanking her earring out accidentally is something to be avoided at all costs, while holding her down, fucking her raw, pushing her down, choking her on his cock -- is okay. Is all right.

He doesn't try to explain this to himself. He couldn't if he wanted to. He bites at her ear, and then he groans against her shoulder, and all the time he's fucking her; he's reaching down now, past her hip and past her lower abdomen, reaching between her legs with his left hand,

which is just as dexterous and practiced as his right, because of course it is, this is Ivan. He's playing with her now. He's fondling her again, that delicate flesh and sensitive center of her; fucking her with his hand while he fucks her with his cock. He's kissing her neck and pounding her and all this time he's murmuring to her,

"Say you're mine. Say this cunt belongs to me. Say you're mine, Hilary. Say it,"

as if this mattered. As if all this, everything else that he can't or won't get anywhere else, is imperfect and flawed without this one last piece; the keystone and crux of it all.

[Hilary] Which it is. It's meaningless if it's just the way he fucks her, hard and almost violent. It's not worth it if all it is is that he pumps her full of cock, if all it's about is getting her off. It's worthless without this.

"I'm yours," Hilary groans, and she bucks back against him, whimpering obediently. "Ivan, I'm yours. My pussy's yours to fuck. You can have me however you want, I'm yours. I'm yours."

Over and over, in rhythm with his thrusts, with her grinding back on him. She's wild now, no longer weakly counterthrusting because she can barely move with how he has her pinned to the bed. Now she seems infused with some kind of needful strength, moaning into the covers as she calls out his name and as she repeats that she's his

she belongs to him. Her cunt, her body. Her.

As though any of that were true. On some bizarre and immeasurable level it might even be that, that no matter who she fucks, no matter who he takes to bed and pleasures with the enthusiastic patience of a true hedonist, the more subtle dominance of a playboy, when it comes right down to it he does own her. She does belong to him, in a way it might be impossible for her to belong to anyone else.

[Ivan] Those words light some charge off in him. No words now; just vowels and noises, snarling in her ear as he -- quite simply put -- hammers her. The bedspread is rucked and mussed. The lamps on the wall are quivering. The sound of their bodies coming together fills the room -- that, and her cries, her screams, his groans while he fucks her beyond all sanity and sense.

It's not by his belt that Ivan holds her at the end. He lets go that strap of leather, lets it unwind from his fist where it's wrapped so tight and long that his hand, too, bears a red mark, an imprint of the bond that bound them. He lets go and he grips her wrists instead, splays his long fingers over her forearms and grips her with crushing, punishing force as he bites her shoulder.

He doesn't fondle her at the last. He cups his hand over her and holds her, holds her right there, slams into her as he roars against her shoulder, buries himself in her as he comes inside her.

Fills her. Marks her. Owns her --

if only for a while.


After that he's utterly spent. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- the moments immediately after are a kind of lunacy when he can't seem to stop fucking her even as it drives him beyond the limits of his own tolerance.

This time he doesn't keep going at her. He pushes deep and holds himself there; stops, panting, pulling breath after harsh breath from the air. Ivan is neither terribly large nor remarkably broad, but exhaustion makes him a heavy weight on her back. He's still jerking and pulsing inside her, and that in and of itself seems to be more than he can bear. Every involuntary motion makes him gasp; pulls a ragged, overcome noise from his throat.

No words at this point. He simply lies there with her, atop her, inside her, his hand still folded over her wrists.

[Hilary] The fact that sometimes they come together doesn't mean anything. Doesn't seem to, anyway. There's no long conversations afterward of how special that is, how you're my only-ever-something. Hilary loses herself in orgasms during sex like this in a way he may never have seen before, utterly disconnected from anything resembling shame, resembling fear, resembling restraint. She comes again and again, so that now when he starts holding her and fucking her and grunting in her ear like a rutting animal it seems like an extension of her earlier pleasure that she turns molten and incandescent with it now.

They're sweating and pulsing, her cunt and his cock making their own sort of heartbeat with the aftereffects of what they just did to each other. And no mistake: she's the one with marks on her wrists, with leather-burnt skin and pink handprints on her ass and bite marks in her shoulder and he's the one holding her down while he finishes fucking her senseless, just like he promised

but this isn't something he's doing to her. He isn't immune. He needs it, too.

Hilary's gasping now, panting for air just like Ivan is, whimpering softly sometimes when his cock twitches just so and makes another jolt of agonizing pleasure flick through her body, as though the sex itself is a mistress more dominating than any power Ivan himself could exert. She shudders, and she trembles, and her sweat mingles with his as sweetly as their cum.

Lying on her stomach, she doesn't ask him if he'll unbind her now, if he'll take off her shoes and her jewelry and hold her tenderly in bed. She just tries to survive the moment, her cheeks tear-tracked because of the way he kissed her, the way he called her good, the way he called her mine. And Hilary rides out the slowing, rippling waves of her last orgasm beneath him, a warm sort of sea to float on.

Through the curtains, the afternoon sunlight still sears through at them from the cracks, leaving brilliant gold paths across their bodies.

[Ivan] Moments on end go by before Ivan can even think to move again. Or think again, period. Moments go by and he's a bare flickering existence, a mind almost totally divorced from body, connected back only by white-hot pulses of pleasure that afterecho through him every time they pulse and clench on each other, as though their bodies spoke their own code.

Gradually, he recoalesces. Times like this he can almost understand that strange fusion that seems to happen when she gets fucked like this. He can almost understand how the act of fucking her like this can stimulate or catalyze some essential reaction, some process by which she can come back together in that great echoing void of hers

and reach him. And be reached in return.

When he moves again, it's a bare stirring -- just his hand over her wrists, fumbling and inexpert now, pulling the knots loose enough to push the belt off her hands. Then his fingers closing over her raw wrists, rubbing gently, holding.

He kisses her neck. He kisses her until he finds her face where it's turned to the side, finds her panting mouth. Kisses her then, the first time since he pulled her head back and forced a kiss as ravaging and rough as anything onto her. This is not ravaging. It's not rough. It's as close to gentle as anything between them is likely to come, and when it's over he rolls off her to the side, pulls her with him, her back to his chest.

His arm wrapping around her. He holds her, closing his eyes.

[Hilary] Before they fuck she has no patience for Ivan's arms around her. At best she tolerates it, patient if a bit bored, occupying her thoughts with other things while he gets whatever it is he wants from cradling her warm body against him. At worst she rejects him, annoyed and maybe even repelled, wanting to just snap at him to get on with it, already, which

might make him tell her to get out, you should go. Which might make him so angry he slams her to the bed and fucks her til she's screaming, fucks her like he wants to hurt her, like all he can feel suddenly is hate for her.

But this isn't before, and she isn't bored. She isn't tolerant. She isn't repulsed and she doesn't have room in her body for things like aggravation. She's peaceful right now, still and warm and quiet as a child waking from sleep, breathing with him as he rolls them onto her sides and -- frankly put -- snuggling back against him as though this is the most natural, the most obvious course in the world.

For him to hold her. For her to want it. For them not to separate yet, his cock pulling out of her as fast as he can stand it, for him to stay so buried in her. It's never quite been like this. But they've never fucked with anything close to understanding before, either.

Her eyes are closed when they kiss. Her wrists flinch from his touch, the skin reddened and sore, but she doesn't pull away. She just curls up in the hollow created by the curve of his body, breathing with him.

After a little while she turns her head slightly and looks at him, blinking once or twice, slowly. It seems she might say something, but there's nothing to say. So her head turns again, and she closes her eyes again, wrapping her hands around his hands and holding them to her chest. She kisses his knuckles softly, exhales, and rests.

[Ivan] There's nothing to say. There's nothing else to do, to strive for, to argue over, to fight about. Not right now.

She's tranquil now, the sort of peace that seems to settle over her after he's made her come over and over, made her cry, made her sob. She rests against him and wraps his hands close to her body. She closes his eyes, and he breathes against her back; exhales, slides his long lean leg over hers

and closes his eyes.


The afternoon sun shifts so slowly. Bars of light crawl up their backs, spill over their sides. Their shadows lengthen on this well-appointed, utterly rumpled bed.

An hour drips silently by.


When Ivan opens his eyes agian, she's still there. This surprises him a little. He thinks of the morning he woke with her in his bed, at his lakehouse. The only time he ever woke beside her in daylight. He thinks of the time he woke with her in his guest bed, in his penthouse. The only other time he ever woke beside her at all.

Her hands are warm with sleep. He reverses their hold, wraps his around hers. Touches her wrists gently, with a faint pang of regret now. He knows she likes it. He knows she needs it. The aftermath is still hard to look at: the raw red marks on her fine, soft skin.

They never went to Ibiza after all like they'd so loosely planned to. He doesn't know why that should occur to him now, but he folds his hands around her again, clasps them to her chest, clasps her body to his.

"Call your people," he murmurs. "Find some excuse why you won't be home tonight. Then go clean up and get dressed."

His thumb runs once over her wrist, lightly.

"We'll have to find some way to hide these when we go to dinner. Do you want me to heal you?"

-- as though it's not a given that she would. As though he understands, intuits, that to be healed is as much a loss as it is a gain for her.

[Hilary] There was no hate in it this time. There was, even, some measure of understanding, though it's somewhat one-sided: Ivan sees Hilary more clearly. Hilary knows herself a trifle better than she did a few weeks ago. So he doesn't fuck her angrily, even if he hit her and snarled at her and called her a slut and a whore. And afterward, he doesn't pull himself out of her,

so she doesn't read it as rejection,

so there's no need to grow cold and distant again, no fear to drive her back into that shattered reflection of a real person, the one that makes plays at dominance, holds up a pretense of indifference even when she's physically wrecked and wiping away the tears that always came from the most wonderful sex. Nothing to snap at each other over, nothing to do but what they do: this.

Hilary is serene, drowsy from sex, from orgasms in triplicate, from being used so athletically. She aches beautifully where Ivan's cock rests inside her, her wrists burning slightly as though to remind her that she's alive, that her body is real and talking to her. She breathes with a steady ease, and when he covers her legs with his, she thinks okay.

Okay.


Ivan sleeps first, and Hilary's trying to stay awake (be good) until she feels him grow slack and warm with unconsciousness. With a sigh she drifts off after him, like Jill following Jack down the mountain, tumbling into dark sleep with him even if their bodies remain sun-dappled.

And Ivan wakes first as well, finding her asleep in his arms, his waking mind recalling that night at his penthouse, that morning at his estate. Hilary clothed and exhausted, Hilary naked and unbound, crying because she couldn't stay,

and they both knew she didn't mean in that house, in that bed. That she didn't mean her physical, literal presence.

This time he wakes, and has a few moments of recollection and regret all to himself. It's the stroke of his fingers over the friction burns on her wrists that makes Hilary stir, a reaction to a slightly painful stimulus. She wakes like she's crawling out of a pit, slow and dragging and ascending all the while. One breath is a little deeper than the others, and she finds he's holding her hands now, covering them the way he covered her legs with his own.

"Okay, Ivan," she whispers, content. But he hasn't let her go yet, so she doesn't move to go do any of these things. He mentions the marks on her wrists and she turns slightly in his arms, twisting so that she can look at him. The look in her eyes is soft, but a bit stricken. The sound of her voice is a murmur, but with an undercurrent of pleading.

"Not yet?" she asks, as though it really is a negotiation, a request, and one she doesn't necessarily expect to be granted. "My sleeves are long," Hilary reasons in whisper. "Unless you want me to wear something else."

[Ivan] It was easier for Ivan this time, too. The boundaries were somehow more clearly defined in his mind. Or perhaps they were defined, finally. He understood what she wanted a little better. He even understood, to some small degree, why she wanted it. And needed it. And why it formed the bridge, the conduit, between who she is before and who she is after.

It was easier to fuck her the way she needed to be fucked -- and the way he, more and more, needs to fuck her -- without hating her for making him want it.

Ironic, then, that what proves difficult now is not the physical brutality, the borderline abuse, but this. The words, her submissiveness, the undercurrent of pleading, the sense that she would agree now to just about anything he asks of her. He knows that's not entirely true. Even so, it rattles him a little to hear her speak the way she does. Give in the way she does.

It's not that he's afraid he'll lose control, sink into some wild depravity. If he was going to do that, he would have already. It's something else altogether. Ivan can barely manage to claim responsibility for himself, his own actions. This sense of utter submission from Hilary -- it's a sort of responsibility. A sort of burden of care laid on him. He doesn't quite know what to do with it.

There's a short silence. Then he draws a short breath and kisses her shoulder.

"What you were wearing is fine. Go get cleaned up. I'll join you in a moment."

[Hilary] If she understood Ivan right now as well as he understands her -- and he does, no seeming about it, no fooling himself, he saw into her in those moments before he fucked her so clearly he may understand her better than herself at the moment -- she would recognize that to a man like him, the sense of responsibility for her well-being, for her safety, for some measure of her sanity, is a bit chilling. Maybe even repellant. That isn't who he is. That isn't his style. He may not be able to keep that up for long, may not be able to tolerate it at all.

Unfortunately, Hilary doesn't understand Ivan at all most of the time. His changeable moods, how he can go from fucking her into the ground and wanting to keep her with him to telling her to get out, go away. She doesn't realize that he's rattled, even though they're so close, even though they're still joined, even though she's looking right into those bright eyes of his. All she knows is what he told her once: he likes it when she resists. And then he likes it when she gives in.

Oblivious, and apparently quite blissful in her ignorance, Hilary gives a small smile and lets her eyes fall closed with quiet animal pleasure when he kisses her shoulder. They open again just as slowly. "Okay, Ivan," she whispers again. Then she -- the one who snarked that she was hardly dressed for dinner in the city when she got here -- waits for his arm and leg to lift from her, waits for him to withdraw his cock from her, and then she carefully slides off the edge of the bed, walking to the bathroom.

The door is left open. It always is. He can hear the water turn on, see flickers of her in the mirror through the door if he turns his head.

[Ivan] It's several minutes before Ivan moves from the bed. In those minutes he looks out the window; looks across the river at the skyscrapers of the Loop. Lights are coming on across the city. Sun's going into the west, and daylight is fading. He thinks of the vast horizon, the enormous spans of distance from here to the westernmost shore of the continent; from this planet to the sun it orbits. It fills him with a nameless ache he can neither name nor understand.

When he gets out of bed, he tugs the bedspread straight -- careless at best. They won't be coming back here after dinner. A thousand dollars or more put down for the privilege of coming here and fucking Hilary for a scant few hours; he supposes it's a good deal. Your little whore, she called herself. Wanted him to call her. Your expensive, fucked-up, hungry little whore.

He follows her into the bathroom. It's been some time since he's done this, but when he joins her in the shower it's as silent as ever. He looks at her, wet, drenched, skin flushed from the heat. Then he draws a short breath and reaches for the soap.


He washes himself, first. Soaps, shampoos, rinses; is quick about it, efficient.

Then he washes her. His hands glide smoothly over her back, over her hips, over her ass. He leans her against his chest and washes her fingers, her wrists, her arms. He lifts her arms and wraps them back behind his head; reaches around her to caress her breasts, run his hands down her body.

When he washes between her legs, he's shameless, matter of fact: his fingers sliding between her lips, alongside her clit, over and into her cunt. He doesn't linger to arouse her. If she's aroused, he barely seems to notice.

Ivan presses her forward when that's done. He sets her forearms against the shower wall and kneads her back, massages her, loosens the knots set into her shoulders by the length of time her wrists were bound over her head. His thumbs work down the length of her spine, then up again. He spends some time around her shoulderblades, and there's no training in his hands, no particular skill; nothing but intuition and an innate, growing familiarity with this long, lovely body of hers that he plies like a toy.

When his hands follow her spine down to the small of her back, he goes to his knees behind her. There's no interruption; no explanation. He spreads her open and puts his mouth against her cunt, and it seems every bit as objective and objectifying as anything else he's done to her.

With a slow, maddening patience, following some mysterious inner clock of his own, Ivan eats her out. It doesn't seem to matter if she's moaning, if she's winding her hips, if she's begging without words for more. He goes at her slowly, steady, pausing often; his tongue gentle on her clit, lapping at her cunt. If she moves too much, he holds her by the hips and forces her to stillness. If she struggles, he draws back abruptly, slaps her ass sharply.

Minutes trickle by. He doesn't say a word. There's no apparent reason or rhyme to it when, finally, he starts to go a little faster. Slides his fingers into her; fills her, doesn't fuck her; licks and laps and sucks at her until

she melts, she comes, she loses herself yet again.


When she's finished, he kisses her pulsing cunt. Draws his fingers out of her and licks them clean. Kisses the small of her back; her hip.

Then he gets to his feet and guides her to her knees; folds a towel on the floor of the shower to cushion her against the tub. He feeds her his cock. Lets her suck him until he comes, biting back groans, keeping quiet, keeping all but silent while his hand grasps and pulls at his own body, his chest and his side, the clenching musculature of his abdomen; while his other hand grips firmly in her hair and keeps her mouth on him.

When the last of his orgasm rolls out, he raises her back to her feet. His thumb traces over her lower lip; then he kisses her on the mouth, eyes open.

"That's my good little whore," he murmurs.


Afterward, he finishes washing her. Her legs, behind her knees, her ankles, between her toes. He's thorough. When he's finished their fingertips are wrinkled from the time they've spent in the shower. The bathroom is full of steam. Ivan is quicker than she is: no long hair to dry, no lotions and creams to deal with, no perfumes, no makeup. He doesn't even have to shave.

The hotel room is dark by then, the sky outside only barely touched by dusk. Ivan clicks on a few lights, then dresses. While he waits for Hilary to get ready he wanders out into the living room and pours himself a glass of wine. He checks his phone. He calls Dmitri and asks him to make reservations for two; someplace suitable is all the direction he gives.

Three, four minutes later a text comes through: an address, a name. Ivan puts his phone away and waits for Hilary to emerge.

[Hilary] In the bedroom Ivan lays in the rumpled bed that smells of Hilary's sex and Hilary's perfume and seems to hold echoes of her screams in the sumptuous fabric of the linens, and he's troubled. By the sky, the city, the land, the world floating among all the other worlds and all the many stars. He reflects on following the whim to fuck her here, the highest hotel floor in Trump Tower, one of the largest suites available, as though they were going to spend more than two or three hours enjoying the luxury.

This is the sort of thing couples might save up for all year to spend a special night in a special place. It isn't a Holiday Inn Express, paid for by the hour, where you take another man's wife so you can lash her to the bedposts with a leather belt and fuck her brains out. He knows married women. That isn't how you fuck a married woman. That isn't the routine. That isn't the pattern.

In the shower, Hilary stands with her eyes closed and lets the warmth drench her, turn her skin pink. She's boneless, weightless, mindless. Fuck her senseless, he kept saying. And rightfully so: she doesn't feel pain right now. Every stimulus sends her deeper into this welcoming, reassuring space. Even the rushing of the water past her ears seems to prolong the trance.

She doesn't reflect on what they just did, not in the same way. She doesn't think about the world. She thinks about Ivan, and about what Ivan did to her and what he might do to her and she thinks about what she would like him to do to her and doesn't go far enough to wonder if it's enough that one of them, at least, feels peace in the aftermath. If one of them, though not the other, feels like she's come home.

It's been a long time since he joined her in the shower. She's already washed herself by then but she doesn't say a word when he takes the soap. She looks over her shoulder at him, her eyes dark and slightly drowsy still from the sex and the heat and the ...bliss that he seems to give her. He washes himself and her head turns back around. She makes room for him. She gets out of his way, moves with his movements with the sort of awareness and even empathy that she never has otherwise, the unselfishness she's incapable of without being pushed to her utter limits.

Hilary doesn't touch him. But she responds when he touches her, arching her back and lifting her ass for him while he washes her skin, as the water runs down and sluices the suds away as soon as they're formed. She leans back on him when he pulls her closer and she reacts with an arcing, tremulous shudder as his hands wash over her wrists. Her arms are lazy around his neck when he folds them there.

Ivan can feel her breathing, which is steady. Her heartbeat, which is strong. He can sense her arousal when he touches her breasts, when his fingers slip between her legs and her thighs part to make it easier for him. He can feel her starting to rub herself gently on his hand, he can feel her breath quickening where she is pressed to his chest, encircled by his arms. If she's upset or disappointed that he doesn't fuck her right there, it doesn't show. It doesn't seem to exist any more than his concern for whether she's pleasured or not.

Like this, Hilary is pliant and easy. She moves when directed, as directed, and though his massage doesn't elicit moans from her throat, she does relax. The arousal fades slightly into comfort. She breathes steadily again, murmurs a thank you as he rubs her shoulders and works her spine, sighing the words out.

No startlement or pretense of innocence -- of course -- when he gets on his knees. No sudden look back at him. She opens her legs wider, tilts her hips towards him, and accepts what he does to her. Even as that light tonguing of her clit, that lapping at her cunt makes her start to whimper, even as her desire makes wetness fill his mouth with her taste, even as she does start to wriggle, and squirm, and try to fuck his mouth

-- his hand flies across her ass, a single sharp smack to get her back in line; when he starts eating her pussy again she's as wet as though he just stood up and gave her his cock again, biting back moans as his handprint fades on her skin --

she accepts it. What he gives to her or chooses to withhold. What he does to her. What he makes her want. She takes it, like she takes it when he fucks her hard and brutal the way he does. She lets out a loud moan when he starts to finger her, biting down on her lower lip to truncate it suddenly,

but moans again because he's not fingering her, he's not fucking her, he's just letting her feel it, flicking her clit with his tongue til she starts to cry out, til all those stars so far from the earth start to explode in her skull, til her arms slip a bit on the tile where she's braced, til she melts, til she loses herself, til she comes.


When he's finished with her, and she's taken it like a good little whore, he gives her a treat.


Ivan never tells her to stroke his cock, cup his balls, jerk him off, touch his nipples, any of it. Hilary lays her hands on his hips and doesn't touch him otherwise while she opens her mouth and slides it onto his cock. As blowjobs go it's as decadent as any time she's sucked on him, but the only time he let her make him come was in the car and she all but forced him to and he couldn't give himself over to it the way he can now.

But doesn't. He doesn't groan, doesn't mutter filth at her, doesn't do anything but grab her hair and hold her there to keep on fucking his cock with her mouth, keep sucking it, taste his precum, taste his cum, right there. Yes.

Hilary doesn't look up at him unless he tells her to. She closes her eyes and sucks his cock and moans around it, trying not to let her hands flex on his hips, trying not to go too fast, trying to pretend she's not exactly what he called her. Cock-hungry. Slut. But the look on her face, water on her lashes, is ...so blissful. So happy. So fucking engaged in what she's doing, so pleased to be pleasuring him, like this is part of the way he takes care of her afterward, like this is some kind of a reward because she was a good little whore.

Which he calls her, stroking her reddened lip and kissing her as her own eyes are fluttering open, too. Yes. She was a good little whore. She made him come again. She made him feel good.

Good, Hilary. You're good.


He washes her like she's incapable of doing it for herself, and she accepts that, too. She seems comfortable with it, as though this is something they do all the time, as though this is a ritual that they both know the steps to when it couldn't be further from the truth. She's smiling softly, shivering with silent laughter when the way he washes her toes makes her almost (but not quite) laugh.

When he turns off the water, that means they're done. It's time to get out, and he doesn't wrap her in a towel and dry her off and tell her to get ready, so Hilary does that herself. It takes her longer. Her hair has no soft curls at the bottom now, once it's dry, no perfect smoothness from product, but she's beautiful. It's hard to change that.

She has to go to get her bag after that, and she does this naked. She gathers up her strewn-about clothes, the lingerie, the panties that got so wet when he was teasing her through them. Ivan can see her as she gets dressed, through the open door between bedroom and living room. He can direct her if he likes. Tell her to wear this but not that. Leave it untucked. Undo that button. Or he can ignore her, wait for her to put herself back together again.

And Hilary, submissive and warm and feeling something she never feels, accepts. Of course.


The nap was longer than they meant it to be, than they originally thought. She skipped lunch, and now it's almost dinnertime. The sun is setting, and Ivan's drinking wine, his phone put back into his pocket.

And Hilary's dressed as before, her wrists hidden by her long sleeves, her shoes back in their heels. There's some shift in her. Maybe it's the time he left her alone between shower and now, the return to some sense, some adjustment to that strange trance of overwhelming pleasure.

She goes to the armchair where he put her coat and picks it up, then walks over to him. "May I have a sip?" she asks, the light in her eyes somewhere between coy, wicked Mrs. Durante and the woman who seemed overjoyed because he fucked her mouth half an hour or so ago.

She seems happy.

[Ivan] Ivan is seated by the time Hilary emerges. He hadn't given her any instruction while she dressed herself. He left her alone, ignored her, played with his phone, looked over the city. Drank his wine.

When she comes to him, he looks up. His eyes are dark and multihued at once; they can be expressive. Can also be closed, impenetrable as stones. He thinks she looks a little different now. A little more ... or, no. A little less entranced. A little cooler,

but happy. That's not something he sees often.

And she asks for a sip of his wine. He considers this, occupying his armchair like a throne: hands on each arm, wineglass gently held. After a moment he sits up, uncrossing his legs, planting his feet to give her room to stand between when he reaches his free arm around her, pulls her forward. His fingers open over her ass. There's a sense that, had she been wearing a skirt, he would have reached under it. Might have fondled her then and there.

Now, he simply leans forward and kisses her stomach: the still-flat plane of it beneath her breasts, above her navel. "Just a sip," he cautions her. Maybe he has the welfare of her unborn child in mind. More likely he just wants that edge of dominance; wants it as much as he understands, now,

she needs it.


When he takes the glass back from her, he drains it. Then he buttons his jacket and picks up the room keys. Slides his arm around her waist and escorts her out of the room, shutting the door behind them, turning out the lights.

Checkout is a matter of dropping the keys into the box in the lobby. Doormen sweep the doors open for them. They're a striking couple, even if she's underdressed for dinner and he's dressed more for nightlife than evening. Even if she's ten years his senior. Even if she is starkly, obviously not his.

His car is brought around. He opens the passenger's door for her like a gentleman, holding it by the lower edge so she doesn't bump her head. She wouldn't, anyway. The door slides into place; he comes around the other side and gets in.

Dinner turns out to be at the Signature Room, favorite haunt of their dear mutual friend Katherine Bellamonte. Perhaps he's tempting fate. Perhaps Dmitri didn't realize. They have a table in the corner, a view to die for that neither of them likely pays much mind to. He orders for her. He wouldn't for his starving swans; he wouldn't for her, even, under normal circumstances -- but these circumstances are different. The welts on her wrists are still there. His scent is still on her; washed away and perfumed away to the insensitive human nose, but unmistakable to a Garou in any other form. She's marked, claimed, owned, at least for the night; so perhaps it's something more like a lease. Regardless:

His. For now.


Conversation is light, held over steak and seafood, waterfowl, a good robust red wine. He doesn't shy away from asking about her family. Her husband. His children. He wants to know if his husband liked his gift; that watch from Ivan's jeweller. He asks how Tomas is enjoying the new school year. His final preparatory year now, isn't it, or does he have one more? He recalls the boy recently got his license; extends an offhand invitation for Tomas to join him the next time he takes the Bugatti out to the Chicagoland speedway. To make up for teasing him on the lake the day they met, maybe.

Ice cream for dessert, and the last of Ivan's wine drained. Then their tab discreetly delivered, which Ivan signs for and sends back, and all the while, all this time, all this civilized, false, pretentious fucking dinner,

his eyes are on her, barely ever leave her, move over her face, her throat, her wrists, her body. He watches her with a subtle, absolute intensity. Just beneath the laconic playboy's veneer is an animal hunger: like he's starving; like the food on the table has no taste or value to him; like she's the only sustenance he wants or needs.

When his centurion card is delivered back to him, Ivan puts it away in his billfold and stands with Hilary. They step back from their table and after all their carelessly impeccable table manners, all their effortlessly shallow dinner conversation, he puts his hand on her face and kisses her,

right there,

in front of everyone.


Downstairs again, his car is delivered to him. They get in. He drives north. Thirty minutes back to Winnetka, to that lakehouse she's been to only once, where he tied her to the bed so she could stay with him. That was the best time, she said of it later. The best time. The only time.

"When we get home," he says softly, "I'll need a half-hour or so to handle some business. You should make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything you like.

"When I'm finished, I'll come look for you. I want to find you naked and chained to my bed. You'll find the silk cuffs in my closet, in the black box in the right corner." He pauses a moment, considering the road ahead. "Leave your jewelry on."

[Hilary] It would be a poor Ragabash incapable of getting a general read on other people. Figuring out their weaknesses, discovering the ways to manipulate them, learning what buttons need pushing and what buttons can be pushed when necessary (or entertaining). Maybe he's already figured out that the time away from him, the time without his dominance pressing on her, the time spent just dressing herself and getting ready without instruction or interference from him brings her out, somewhat, from the real depths of that trance-like state he put her in.

Some of her guardedness returns. Some of her chill. Some of her disconnection -- though not enough that she entirely separates from herself yet. Enough that she separates from his will a little. The Hilary that enters the living room and asks him for a sip of wine is her, cohesive if not quite whole, but not quite a senseless pet.

This is the woman who seems happy, who still seems reasonably at peace, who he doesn't see often. Who he's never seen for this long, more than a bare handful of minutes in the shower or right before they splinter apart again. This time it lasts, as though time has slowed down for her. As though she finally has time to breathe.

His legs part and she intuits what he wants, is starting to step forward when his arm comes around her. She breathes in as his hand touches her body, her heart skipping once or twice, and watches him as he kisses her through the silky softness of her shirt. When he pulls back to give her the wine she seems to move forward a little more, leaning down.

Ivan hands her the glass and Hilary blinks once, looking at it for a second before she takes it. She watches him as she takes a sip. A small one. And hands it back, licking her lips, watching him with those dark, still eyes.

As they leave she puts on her coat, shoulders her bag. If her wrists pain her she doesn't reveal it with grimaces or winces. She waits for him, and does curl into his side as he puts his arm around her waist. There's an edge of dominance in that, too, the way he can steer her like this, the way she can't get too far from him. The way that even if it's profoundly obvious that she's not his, there's also the strong sense that somehow she belongs to him.


The way she's dressed is tolerable to the folk at the Signature Room only because it's early enough to suggest that maybe she's just there to have drinks with this young playboy, she worked today or she's rich enough that the Signature Room is sort of like Starbucks to her. She has no inkling of Ms. Bellamonte's preferences and so she isn't looking over her shoulder, checking other tables. She keeps her eyes drifting aimlessly or looking at Ivan, and there are probably some people here who think she's already drunk, or On Something, the way she looks slightly... out of it.

They are gossiped about by a few. They are ignored, otherwise. This is Chicago. It's not some small town where everyone knows everyone, even in the upper echelon of good society. People have their own problems. Their own affairs to carry out, though some people know better than to bring their paramour to the Signature Room, thankyouverymuch.

Hilary sits across from him when her chair is pulled out. She doesn't look at the view. Her coat is checked. Her bag is out of the way. She watches him as he orders for her, her gaze silent and intent. Everything tonight seems instigated by him: she doesn't drink or eat until he's lifted his glass or picked up his fork. She eats nothing he hasn't tasted yet. She refuses nothing he suggests she try. She eats small portions, because of course she does, though that may be because she doesn't stop eating until Ivan does. That may also be because eating slowly and not too much helps her avoid the seemingly inevitable heartburn she's had almost every night for a few weeks now.

These things are subtle. They're conversing, though, and the traces of submission are a little easier to miss when they start to talk. Dion liked the watch. Tomas is restless, but Tomas is sixteen. She honestly doesn't know for sure if this is his last year or not. Maybe he's ahead. Maybe he's behind. The truth is, Hilary knows very little about Dion's children, is only remotely invested in anything going on with them. They're children. They aren't hers. The one in her womb she doesn't even consider 'hers'. Her eyebrows flick with amusement when Ivan offers to let Tomas come with him to the speedway.

I'll let him know, she says, and even if it's the same sort of tone she's always used, this time somehow it seems like there's no chance she's lying, no chance she'll dismiss the empty promise and never say a word to the boy.

When dessert comes, she eats her ice cream slowly, and it's melting into its footed pewter bowl at the end, every bite that much smoother, silkier, wet on her tongue. It's likely that when he kisses her, when she starts to deepen it with unabashed eagerness, he can taste it in her mouth still.


On the drive up north Hilary doesn't mention her car or driver or whatever concerns she might have. She doesn't unbuckle herself and try to suck him off again. She's demure. She's quiet and pleasant and sometime halfway or so through the drive she leans over and lays her head on his shoulder. For as long as he'll let her. Her eyes close. She breathes as steadily as though she's going to go to sleep.

She murmurs thank you again, maybe for letting her rest her head on his body, maybe for taking her back to his house, maybe for all of it, everything, this ongoing gift of being in her own body and in her own mind without the fear of the bottom dropping out from under her if she so much as breathes wrong.

Below that there's nothing. Darkness. Wrath. Emptiness. Solitude. Cold. But she's not falling. She's warm, and she's not alone, and she's safe. She feels good. She's not alone in that, either. And even Hilary, obtuse in the matters of other people's hearts, can tell that.


When we get home, he says, like it's theirs, like it's normal, like she belongs there -- tonight, if no other time -- Hilary begins to lift her head from his shoulder so she can turn her face towards him, look at him while he's speaking to her. There's no need for her to nod, really, to say Yes, Ivan. Likely he knows that she'll let him go without a fuss, leave him alone without seeking him out, go to his bedroom and relax for a little while as he does whatever business he has this evening. No question about it. She might get herself some water. She might take her vitamins, send a message to the house staff to make up her stories.

It's another period of time she'll spend alone, longer than the last. That much longer to go back to the way she is otherwise. That much longer to withdraw from him, grow cold and distant. She doesn't seem afraid of that though, when he says a half-hour or so. She doesn't tell him to please hurry, don't leave her alone in that big dark house. She doesn't whine or wheedle. She smiles softly at him as they approach the vicinity of his house.

I'll come look for you, he says, and her heart beats a little faster. naked and chained he says, and arousal clenches deep inside her cunt, a warm spasm of lust. Ivan can hear her take a breath as he turns onto the road that leads to his estate.

"Yes, Ivan," she says anyway, though it's really unnecessary.


That's how it goes, then. Parking his car in one of the spaces of that vast garage, and leading her in through either the interior or the exterior path. It's gotten colder, and she holds her coat around her body for a few moments even after they go inside. Ivan still has no idea how this place makes her nervous because of how well it reminds her of the twisting, palatial houses of her childhood where she wandered alone in the dark because she couldn't sleep in a wet bed and she couldn't wake up an adult to confess she'd had a nightmare, help, please help me, I'm scared.

But when she walks into it tonight it seems a little less scary. She does stay close to him, against his side if he has his arm around her waist again, near him if he doesn't. Hilary doesn't try to kiss him on the cheek or nuzzle him before he heads off. She does, in fact, take the time she has

and she gets a glass of water from the kitchen. She goes to the bedroom and takes her vitamins, leaving the bottles on the bathroom counter because some gut instinct tells her it would be Bad to hide them in her purse and it is Good if Ivan knows everything, even if he doesn't care. Hilary follows that instinct with an ease and committment that she never would have otherwise, without second-guessing it, without questioning it, without fearing a multitude of possible outcomes or reactions. She drinks her water and refills the glass. She doesn't undress yet. She has time, and she doesn't want to get cold.

A message is sent to Estrella that she went to Chicago proper to do some shopping and will be staying there for the night to continue shopping tomorrow rather than driving back and forth. Driving makes her tense, raises her blood pressure. Driving makes her slightly motionsick. She gets tired more easily, wants to be able to just go back to a hotel room and rest in between shopping and going back home. And so on.

Ivan's working when Hilary lays down for a few minutes and waits out the wave of heartburn as she digests her dinner. She has some tablets to take. She waits for them to kick in and drinks a little more water, closes her eyes for a little while.


When he comes to his bedroom, though, Hilary's coat is put away out of sight. Her bag is in the bathroom, sitting on the counter next to the bottles of her vitamins, her blood pressure and heartburn medication. Her clothes are sitting on a chair, neatly folded, her panties and bra on top, her heels tucked to one side of the chair's feet.

She has rings on her fingers and gold around her throat, jewelry in her ears and silk cuffs hugging her already raw wrists, the chain looped around a bedpost. Hilary's lying on her back, the pillows arranged comfortably behind and around her, her body stretched out atop his comforter. She smells like she washed up a little. He'll notice later her breath smells like mint.

He may not notice that the mere sight of him makes her wet.

[Ivan] It's still early, in truth. It couldn't have been later than six that they arrived at the Signature Room. Dinner was leisurely, meandering through several courses, giving the wine time to breathe. Even so, it was only a little past eight when Ivan pulled up to his lakehouse. Home, he called it, because that's what it is to him. And -- for tonight, at least -- hers.

Half an hour, then. A little over. Thirty three, thirty four, thirty five minutes before he lets himself into his own bedroom, the house quieting and darkening around him as it shuts down for an early night. Ivan closes the door behind himself and doesn't bother to lock it. His bed is surrounded by windows -- all that darkness outside, which is vaguely and deeply terrifying to Hilary. Ivan hasn't figured that out yet. Ivan likes the windows. He likes seeing the stars from his bed. He likes the high ceilings, the cathedral quiet of his bedroom; the way the sun illuminates it almost every hour of the day.

No sunlight now. Just lamplight from the bedside nightstands, casting Hilary in a sort of golden glow that lends warmth and color to her otherwise pale skin.

He looks at her for a moment, standing at the door. Then he shrugs out of his coat, leaves that on a low, wide shelf just to the left of the door cleared for seemingly just that purpose. A place to leave things he wants his servants to put away, because clearly even the act of hanging up his own jacket was too much work to ask of a Fang.

He slides his belt off, too. The same one that bound her wrists, rubbed them raw. Leaves that on the shelf. She looks like she's washed up. Prepared for bed. That pleases him somehow. He smiles at her a little, a trace, and then he disappears into the master bathroom for a while. She can hear the tap run; can hear him brush his teeth, wash his face, flush the toilet, wash his hands. Shave, his electric razor buzzing briefly as he runs the heads over his jaw.

Then a small quiet. If she listens carefully, she can hear pills clack in their cases: Ivan, inspecting the medicines she's left on the counter. It's a strange act of trust. Or perhaps simply honesty: naked and brutal. He recognizes it as such.


On the way here, he let her rest on his shoulder. On the way in, he wrapped his arm around her again as they came up the walkway. It's a cool night outside, wet with the lake wind. If they had walked longer, he might have offered her his coat, as though beating her, slapping her, forcing her to suck cock

and taking care of her, being tender with her, working to restore her in the shower afterward were not mutually exclusive. They're not.


Coming out of the bathroom now. That door shut too. His shirt is shed coming across the floor; his pants at the foot of the bed. Socks, too. And underwear. Naked, he stands at the foot of the bed watching her. Naked, he crawls onto the bed, moving over her. He stretches past her to turn out the lights. One, and then the other. Moon's very nearly full, pale and cold through the windows. He checks the clasps around her wrists; checks the chain around the bedpost.

Then he comes down over her, in the dark, warm, close. He's said nothing to her at all. Says nothing to her at all as he reaches between her legs. She can feel him feeling for her, finding her, fondling her. He begins to kiss her neck as he plays with her. Kisses her mouth, when he feels her wetness. Devours whatever gasps and moans she might give as his fingers slip inside her

yet again.


This time he stays close to her as he fucks her. She can't wrap her arms around him, bound as they are, but he wraps his around her. Clasps her close to his lean body; chest to chest, abdomen to abdomen, thrusting slow and deep, grinding against her. It's not so brutal as it was earlier. It's still unfaltering, absolute: taking his pleasure from her wet cunt, her small breasts, her warm, beautiful body laid out for him.

And he whispers in her ear as he fucks her. Mutters about her cunt; how wet it is, how tight, how fucking sweet, such a sweet cunt, so good, yes. Mutters about what a good little whore she is, taking cock over

and over

and over with a whimper of complaint, taking it because she likes it, that's what she likes, isn't it.

Muttering about fucking that sweet tight cunt, wrecking it, filling it up. Making her filthy. Pumping her full of cum, just like she likes it. Because she's a good little whore. His sweet, warm, wet little whore. So good. So fucking good, that's such a good slut.

Such a good girl.


More than once, with little pause between. Pausing only a while, pausing only to lay his head on her breast, listening to her hammering heart, her straining breath. Turning his mouth to her skin then. Licking the salt from her skin. Licking his way to her breast, sucking at her there, sucking her nipples and nipping at her breasts, going at her until she's aroused again, arousing her again, arousing himself again and

fucking her again, hard again inside her without ever having withdrawn. Fucking her harder the second time, pounding her, nailing her to his bed, pounding his lust out into her

all over again.


A longer pause the second time. They've fucked so many times already. He's brought her off so many times already, and it's getting later. He turns her on her side. He slides into her from behind, holding her around the waist, holding her breasts, touching her between the legs.

The last time, and the slowest, and the gentlest. He thrusts so slowly, deep and sure. He brings her off with his hand more than his cock, feeling her writhe in his arms, writhe on his cock, work herself back onto him grinding and winding, crying out, shuddering.


After he finishes inside her, he holds her just like that. He doesn't unbind her. He holds her and listens to the night settling around them. The house, which was here before he was born and will be here long after he's dead, creaking and cracking in its joints as it cools. Her breathing. Her heartbeat.

The lake outside, lapping at the shore.

"Sleep," he whispers to her, kissing her shoulder. And then, though he can't quite explain why:

"You're safe here."

[Hilary] It was that first time he got into the shower with her and rubbed the tension out of her back under the water that struck the chord in her, so deep she barely felt the resonance. It was that which she ached for every time he pulled his cock out of her, what she missed without realizing it every time it wasn't a part of the experience. The tenderness and brutality aren't mutually exclusive; for Hilary, they're inextricable.

Somehow to Hilary -- who seems like she could survive anything if she had to, who seems like she'd claw her way back to whatever life she wants by whatever means necessary -- it isn't offensive for Ivan to tell her what to do. It isn't rude of him to order her meal for her. It doesn't make her feel trampled or marginalized when he dictates how much wine she can have. She doesn't feel worthless when he objectifies her body, when he touches her when and how he wants to, when he uses her for his pleasure, uses her and comes inside her like she was made just for that.

It makes her feel safe. It makes her feel calm. It makes her feel, strangely enough, good about herself.

Happy.


She's breathing a little faster by the time Ivan crawls naked over her bared, stretched-out body. She's watched him, stared at him as he stripped, is panting softly when he checks the chains to make sure they're secure. A quiet whimper leaves her, almost becoming his name, just before he sinks down over her body and between her legs.

A low moan in the dark, when he starts to stroke her. A louder one, a harsh gasp, when he pushes his fingers into her. Hilary groans into his mouth when he starts to fuck her with his hand.

But when he replaces his fingers with his cock, pushing deep into her cunt, she gives one soft gasp, and her arms pull as though she wants to hold him, but the chain keeps fast. She's quieter this time, breathing in time with his thrusts, sweat building on her skin, wetness slicking them both between her legs. She has no words for this. She gives herself over to it, whimpering at the words he gives to the inner curvatures of her ear while he strokes his cock into her pussy, slides it back, gives it to her again with a fluid roll of his hips. She rocks with him as he fucks her.

There are tears, this time, all these times. Slowly rolling from her eyes, closing her throat, making her tremble as she weeps. And there's no way he's hurting her now, nothing he's doing as he mutters that she's sweet, so good, good little whore, taking his cum, liking it. Sweet, warm, wet. His. He makes her come while he's talking to her, makes her come with a few hard, wracked cries of pleasure. He can feel her clenching around him, has her fucking him back as she squirms on his erection, whimpering his name.


For a little while they lay together and she lifts her head enough to nuzzle against him, once or twice, before she relents. She turns her head to the side, panting for air, while Ivan holds her and lays on her and listens to her pounding heart. Just a few moments. A sprinkling of minutes. Her entire body shudders when his lips wrap around her nipple to suck on her again.

Hilary's not even in this world the next time, her legs wrapped high and tight around him, just trying to take it, trying to survive it. She's aching, she's sore, she's so aroused she can't think, and any moment now she's going to shake apart, come away at the joints, shatter.


After that she's sobbing. Hard, wracking tears that have her entire body trembling, have her shuddering. It doesn't stop when he turns her on her side, but she quiets a little as he fills her again, even if she doesn't stop crying. There's a long, loud cry when he touches her clit, like she can't stand it. Screaming, when he comes. She can't writhe, she can't work herself on him, she can barely survive it this time, after everything else. She's shaking for a long time afterward, Ivan still inside her, holding her.

The night settles the house with deep creaks and subtle snaps. They can hear the lake and the breeze outside. Ivan can hear her weeping, pushed up against a physical limit and held there. He can feel her shivering in his arms with every sob, sniffing moisture out of her sinus cavities, wetting his pillow with her tears as though something very deep and tightly locked inside her has come unbound, unraveled, undone completely. It is not a bad thing.

But it is very hard to bear.


It takes a long time for Hilary to calm down again, for her to quiet, for her to stop crying. She is quivering still in his arms, but the tighter shudders are fewer and farther between. The closer he holds her, the more she settles. The more relaxed she becomes. And when she is -- relaxed, that is, transcendant from sheer physical exhaustion and sensory overload -- Hilary curls slightly in his embrace, her arms still stretched over her head and tied to the bedpost. She closes her eyes, so worn out that he can sense even from behind her how hard she's struggling to stay awake.

Sleep, he tells her, and she quakes slightly as even that last struggle begins to leave her, with his permission, with his instruction, with him there telling her it's okay. You're safe.

She's asleep only seconds later, her chest lifting and falling with the deep, heavy, rhythmic breaths of sleep. Hilary drops out from the world, perhaps leaving an aching, troubled Fang behind her, even if he only stays awake a little longer on his own. She doesn't know. She descends into a darkness that's warm and wanted for once, safer here in the bed of a man not her husband nor her peer than she can remember feeling anywhere else.


Ten, twelve hours Hilary sleeps. She stirs once at about the eight-hour mark and sleepily, mindlessly undoes the cuffs around her wrists if they're still there. Tucks her arms back to her chest and stays with Ivan, back against his body or burrowing under whatever covers he might have pulled around them. It wasn't even midnight when she fell asleep, but it's nearly noon when she wakes completely, opening her eyes slowly, trying to remember where she is. The lake outside. The sun illuminating Ivan's home, making it less scary, yet simultaneously remembering her of the last time she woke here

and how she knew she couldn't stay. Not forever.

[Ivan] The first time Ivan made her sob like this, it frightened him. Shook him to the core. He wondered if he'd hurt her irrevocably somehow. If he'd damaged her, brutalized her, made her bleed.

It was some time before he understood that she was never really weeping out of pain. Or at least, it was never physical pain. It was something more wracking than that, deeper; the inevitable pain that comes with being so utterly broken down, so unraveled, that one can be remade.

Like the peeling of a scab. Or: like birth.


Still; it's hard for him to fuck her that last time. It's hard for him, and at the same time, unthinkable for him not to. So he fucks her. He holds her, and touches her, and makes her bear it, makes her feel it and take it and exist in it so that somehow, somehow, this pleasure, these sensations, the way he overwhelms her utterly and breaks down every last defense

frees all those shattered motes of her self from their barriers and allows her to recoalesce. If only for a while.


Afterward, she sobs. And he holds her. And she quiets, and so he holds her closer, and slowly her sobbing turns to shuddering, turns to quivers, turns to breathing.

He tells her it's all right. Sleep. You're safe. She drops like a stone, out of consciousness, out of his reach once more. Leaves him her body to hold, warm against his own, softly breathing.


Perhaps he should be more troubled than he is. He's not, though. Not really troubled; but aching, yes, for no reason he can easily put into words. It has something to do with her. It has something to do with the lengths he needs to go to -- she needs to go to -- to let her feel a little bit human.

It has something to do with those pills and those bottles she left out for him to see. She didn't have to do that. She did it anyway, just like she cooked with him anyway, let him in a little bit the only way she knew how, only he didn't see it then.

I'm always there, she said to him, earlier. Every time. She's always been there -- not quite within reach, perhaps, but there. Beneath the shattered fragments. And that's what aches most.


When she's asleep, he reaches past her and undoes the cuffs. He's careful with her now, mindful of her tender wrists. As the night cools he pulls the covers over them, cocooning them both, and then he sleeps too.

When she stirs and turns to face him, he wakes briefly. He welcomes her close to his body, her arms tucked between them, his wrapping around her, as mindlessly as she slid her hands over her own wrists to make sure she was free again, freed, as if for these few hours, in unconsciousness, she no longer needed to be bound to stay where she is. To stay. It's early morning by then, the few birds that will overwinter here calling from the trees.

They sleep again.


It's close to noon when they wake. And she can't stay. She can never stay. And his eyes are open when hers open, but he hasn't been awake long. His blinks are slow; there's still a certain daze in his eyes. He looks at her across the small distance between.

This time, he doesn't think about breakfast. He doesn't kiss her. He doesn't kick her out of bed. He doesn't ask her when she needs to go, or how she'll get home, or...

any of that.

Ivan holds her. He only has a few more moments, and there's nothing else he can think of to do.

[Hilary] The details, first, cold and pragmatic: she will leave the bed. He'll heal her wrists with a gourd or she'll finally tell him she has an ointment she gets in Chinatown that helps the bruises vanish and the welts disappear twice as fast as normal, and she already heals twice as fast as any human. She'll have to shower, and take some time in there to get him off her skin. Cover herself up with a couple of dabs of perfume. Every scrap of clothing she puts on will take her farther away from him. Every moment she spends without his hands on her she'll be walking closer to the door, even if she's just sitting in a chair putting her shoes on.

Details. The way her eyes go darker, go colder, look at him like she isn't sure who he is, like there isn't anything behind her gaze but animal, primal hunger and survival instinct. The way she calmly puts away her vitamins again after taking her morning pills, the way they converse casually, maybe him offering her breakfast or his driver or this or that or her saying oh no, I'll eat in town, oh yes, I'd love a ride back to my car. The way things shift and change, as they must, because she can't have this all the time and he can't have her at all, really. Because if they stayed the way they are when they first wake it would be unthinkable for her to leave him, unthinkable for him to let her go, unbearable. And the only way Hilary, at least, can survive

is to change. Withdraw. She can't hold the pieces of herself together -- she needs Ivan for that, and he can't hold them together forever, either. Nobody has that kind of strength.

Except perhaps Hilary herself. But if she hasn't found it by now, she may never.


Before all that, though. Before she takes her bag and her coat and before his driver takes her back to Chicago, there's this.

Lying there in a cocoon of blankets, facing him, not remembering turning to face him, not remembering how she came unbound, knowing only by sheer logic that she is, in fact, unbound. That she's facing Ivan, sleeping with him like lovebirds and lovers sleep, waking with him as though they aren't really waking, at all.

One of the last things she does when she is herself, when she's with him -- while she can, while they still have a few more moments -- is close her eyes again and kiss him. Not deeply, not with passion, but with lingering traces of exhaustion. With softness, and something like tenderness, and something also like gratitude.

Hilary says nothing yet. She lets her mouth drift from his once more, tucks herself against his shoulder, and stays for a few more moments

which is all they ever really have.