Ivan Press

[Resplendent Dusk] The guest bedroom's shower isn't quite so spacious and luxurious as the one in the master, but it's still a cut above your standard household fare. A very large cut above your standard household fare. This isn't the first time Hilary's spent time in one of Ivan's guest suites, but this may be the first time she's been aware enough to look around. To see the neatly folded towels and toiletries; the pristine, impersonal state of the bathroom that may as well be the bathroom of some luxury hotel.


The water is hot, though, and the bath gel smells faintly of citrus and spice. After she's been in a while, when the mirror is fogged over and swirls of steam drift under the hot, bright lamps, the frosted glass door of the tub slides back and Ivan steps in without comment. There's still blood on his skin from earlier, as much his as the twisted things'. He doesn't touch her until he's rinsed himself off, washed, soaped, shampooed, bathed.

Then he turns to her. His hands on her are the same as ever: dexterous and firm; without any learned skill, but with a certain talent and subtlety. He kneads down her back and over her shoulders. He lingers a moment over the brand-new skin where that nasty bite had fallen and healed, and then he draws her back against his chest and wraps his arms around her, lowering his head, holding her a while with his back to the spray.

Moments pass. The shower beats down on them steady as rain, an unending, unfaltering wash of warmth and wetness.

[Hilary Durante] Absolute fury. From the street while Tomas lay dazed on the ground, through the brief drive to Ivan's building, and to the gallery of his penthouse, that's all she's known from him. Rage that she didn't run, how dare she have a wrong estimation of his abilities, don't you ever do that again, you stupid bitch, go to the guest room --


I'm leaving you behind.

Ivan was thoroughly displeased with her, that much was clear right from the start. And right from the start, right when he jumped into it, she shut him out. Closed herself off, unable to weather that much blame and recrimination from him, unwilling to tolerate it from anyone. But especially from him. Especially Ivan, who she wants so badly to please, who she places a rather sick amount of faith in, who knows where her weaknesses are and could, at any moment, strike right at them.

The truth is, they just got back from Lausanne. He was with her for two weeks in Europe and it was easier not to notice the slight swelling even in that amount of time. It's harder to notice what's gradual. It would be different if he didn't see her for three months and suddenly she was there, ripe with pregnancy, visibly reminding him without nudity or touch that she doesn't belong to him, that she's carrying another man's child. Not his. Not his. Never really his.

The truth is, she believed that was the last time he'd bother with her. Come back from Switzerland and be finished, done, over. Tired of her, disgusted by her, ready to put her away until a couple of months after the baby's born, and she'd better have lost all the weight by the time he deigns to see her. The truth is, Ivan knows how vigilant her sense of blame is, how insane her sense of rejection is.

So when she walked away from him: I nearly died for you.

And that, and her answer, sapped some of the anger. Brought her back, a step or two, from how far she'd gone away from him. Not enough that she forgot, with his nuzzling and his asking her to please, next time, run, that he'd sent her to the guest room. That he might care, but that didn't mean he wanted her. Or even wanted whatever else it was they found belowdecks on his yacht before they ever left Chicago: things like that admission that his resistance to truly hurting her wasn't just avoidance of risk to someone else's pretty bauble, but a genuine ...care for her.

It's unfair how easy it is to break Hilary's faith, destroy that feeling he gives her that she's precious somehow. But there it is. It's in her blood, and infecting her mind, and there's little chance that this late in the game there's anything close to an escape from it.

Not no chance at all. But it's so thin, that thread. It's so hard to see in the blinding light of day.


It's hard for her to believe him when he tells her that all his reasons for pushing her away were practical, rather than burgeoning revulsion or holdovers of anger. She doesn't have any reason to think he's going to do what he does, which is come up to her while she's still showering. It's a long, luxurious thing, letting herself tip her head back under the steaming water long after the blood has been rinsed off and drained away. Multiple showerheads, of course; she would laugh if even Ivan's guest rooms only had the one.

Her clothes are on the floor of the bathroom as he walks in. Hosiery, the dress she had on under her coat, her shoes, the clip from her hair resting on the counter, jewelry laid atop a soft towel. Her body is the way it was the last time he saw her naked, the last time they fucked,

which was on the plane from Lausanne to Chicago. Which was slow, and hard, grinding, facing her away from him and pulling her back onto him by the hip, her eyes closed from sensory overload, her hands grasping at a pillow, his teeth bared as he told her to take it, fuck, that's it, take it. Which was followed by the way he held onto her afterward, panting, and the way she clung to the pillow and the sheets as though if she could hold onto the damn bed it would somehow keep her from losing something much more important.

Which was followed by landing, and civil goodbyes, and no mention of when they'd see each other again.

Which was less than 48 hours later, outside the ballet, before they were attacked by fomori.


Her body, naked, is the same. Or seems like it. Logically he knows better. Every single day there's some new internal change going on. Every single day it's growing inside of her, that thing that could only possibly be his if fate is cruel, and will only be Garou if Gaia is. But that thing that could, possibly, be half-created by his part in that strange, unexpected, poignant fuck

in his bed. Because he wanted her in his bed. Needed to have her there, right then, damn the consequences.

There's a noticable but not robust roundness to Hilary's midsection now, notable because he's known her to be so slender. People who have never met her before don't guess. But he knows. And he can see it, and feel it when he pulls her against him, after he's rubbed her back and touched the scarless flesh where she was wounded. He knows, as he holds her, and Hilary closes her eyes.

She doesn't tell him she wants him. She doesn't tell him anything at all. She just closes her eyes and leans back against him, turning her head so that her cheek touches his shoulder. Somewhere else in the penthouse they've gotten Tomas mostly cleaned up and they're giving him this pill that will make his head stop hurting, they promise. Your stepmother told us to give it to you. Just swallow it, you otrodʹe. Somewhere else in the penthouse, the reason Hilary couldn't run even when it became apparent that no, she really should, is falling into a drugged sleep, where he will have angry nightmares.

Her hands lift, and covers his hands where they cup her shoulders or lace together. She rests her fingertips between his knuckles, the way she did so many times during the two weeks they were together, so recent it's still as hazy as a dream.

[Resplendent Dusk] Ivan's hands are clasped over Hilary's middle. Over her abdomen, in fact, where even that faint swelling of her body is unmistakable because he knows what she was like before and he knows how she is now. Perhaps that discomfits hers; perhaps she barely notices as she puts her hands over his and rests the pads of her fingers between his knuckles.


He stirs at that. He kisses her temple, shifts his hands. He holds her a while longer, quiet now, breathing steadily.

Sometimes it's hard for Ivan to understand Hilary. She's such a creature of apparent contradiction. Her deep, black core of rage manifests as emptiness; a lack of all emotion. Her fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable, the dark forces that shape and warp her life at their meaningless whims leads somehow to her need to submit, to give up all control. Her insecurity, her belief that she is something broken and shattered and bad, bad, shows itself as aloofness and exclusion.

And sometimes, the more she needs him, the more she wants him, the more she goes away into herself.

After a time, Ivan unwraps himself from around her. He turns off the gleaming showerheads. Water beads on the dark polished stone that lines the shower space; the matching dark tub in which their bodies are glowingly fair. The shower doors are sheer, clear panes of glass that slide easily open. He guides her out and wraps a towel around her, soft and rich and white as cream.

He draws her close. And he kisses her, softly, slowly, the way he sometimes seems to need to and the way she almost always seems merely to tolerate. When it's over he rests against her for a moment.

And whispers, "Do you think you can stay quiet if I fucked you?"

[Hilary Durante] His affection bewilders her. It does not bother her. Sometimes that distance, that boredom, is simply an attempt to try and understand him. That he should be so very, very tender with her, like they're old lovers and better friends. When Ivan holds his hands over Hilary's abdomen and kisses her temple, holding her under the water without any apparent desire to let her go -- or go any further -- one would imagine the way he likes to fuck her is


lovemaking, his arms clasping her to his chest, their mouths meeting over and over again, neither of them making much sound beyond aching gasps and moans of one another's names.

They've fucked like that once. And it terrified her. Changed her.


Such a creature of contradiction. That he should like so very much to hold her down and fuck her til she's screaming, that he should have once upon a time enjoyed hurting her to the point that he sickened himself, wanted to run away from her. This. Himself. That he should be so angry, so volatile, so selfish, so brutal with her

and so tender, so gentle, so endearing, so wanting for her attention and affection. Whatever it is they seem to have, it's built on those contradictions. The ones in Hilary draw him to her. The ones in Ivan draw her ever deeper into him, bond her closer to him. He understands the rage, even if he doesn't understand the blankness it turns into. He understands the connection between having no control, and giving all control up, even if he doesn't understand how that connection works. He understands how broken she feels, how filthy, even as her coldness drives him mad.


He likes to be rough with her when he fucks her, because she comes so very hard, so easy, and the way she screams is -- to borrow a phrase -- lovely.

And he rubs her back when they shower, soothing her sore muscles. Heals her friction burns and her bite marks and her bruises. Holds her close in his arms as they sleep, nuzzling her neck and kissing her shoulder, whether he's tied her down into his bed or not.


Tonight it wasn't Ivan who hurt Hilary. Not physically. Still it's him who healed her, who wanted to bring her home, who rubbed her sore muscles and laid his hands across the fragile form that holds that unmentioned, unmentionable fetus who could have been lost with a well-placed blow, with enough damage done to Hilary herself. It's Ivan, unlikely and unofficial guardian, who helps her step out of the shower and wraps her up in one of those thick towels, covering her and keeping her warm.

Hilary is like a doll in some ways. She's silent, and beautiful, and watching him with dark, unfathomable eyes as he takes her hand to guide her from one place to another. She's still and quiet as he wraps her up in a towel and then his arms, lifting her face to his when she senses he wants her mouth, parting her lips for him when he starts to kiss her.

"No," she whispers, watching him through her still-damp lashes, a faint smile curling coyly at one corner of her lips, as though all the stress of the night has been forgotten, as if he never yelled at her, as if none of it happened, none of it matters. "Do you think you can, if you have to cover my mouth?"

[Resplendent Dusk] A flicker of a smile, fading into something a little darker, more intense. When he kisses her again it's different: there's a note of dominance in it, firm and unyielding, possessive. When their mouths part he kisses her on the brow as though in blessing.


"Go wait for me in bed," he whispers.


He takes time to brush his teeth after that. To shave. To towel off the last of the water from his body, until all that remains is the dampness in his hair. When he opens the door his shadow casts across the opposite wall; and then that's gone, too, the bathroom lamps clicking off, the only light that which seeps past the closed shade on the glass wall.

However she's chosen to lie in bed, he comes to kneel naked over her. He turns her on her back, arranges her as he likes: turns her on her back and undoes her towel. Lays that open like wrapping paper, like she's a gift; looks at her, running his fingers lightly, admiringly over her skin, shoulder to side to hip. When his hands reach her thighs he opens her thighs to either side of his hips. Sets her feet soles-down on the bedsheets. Reaches between her legs to stroke her pussy open too, his fingers sliding between her lips, pressing against the mouth of her cunt.

"Sweet," he whispers. "So sweet, such a sweet little slut."

He smears her wetness on her nipples. Bends to her like an animal, hands on either side of her; bends and licks at her, sucks at her, laps at her tits slowly until all that remains is the clean taste of her freshly washed skin. Her nipples are hardened by then, so he sucks at them a little longer, flicking them with his tongue: one to the other, back again, holding her down by the wrists if she tries to fold her arms around him.

When he's satisfied -- when he's had enough of those shapely little breasts, and not before -- he shifts over her. He grasps her wrists in one hand, reaches down with the other. He's erect, hot and ready and wanting; she felt him hardening against her belly, her thighs, as he sucked at her breasts. He guides himself to her cunt now, teasing her, stroking the head of his cock slowly, slowly over her slit, whispering all the while that she was sweet, so sweet, so good, such a sweet, good little cunt that he was going to fuck hard and slow and filthy; he was going to make a good little whore of her and fill her up with cum

just like she likes it.

"Beautiful," he's whispering when he's finally done teasing her; when he's finally sliding into her, stretching her out, fucking into her. "You're so fucking beautiful."


It turns out he lied to her. It's not slow like he promised; not that first stroke, at least. When he's past her lips, he grasps her by the hip; holds her stretched between her wrists and her hips, holds her down and slams his cock into her hard and ferocious, knowing it'll make it her cry, clapping his hand instantly over her mouth when she does. Then he's pinning her hands with his, pinning her hips with his, covering her mouth with his fingers still tasting faintly of her slick, his precum, muffling her as he starts railing her.

"Yeah, that's it," he pants in her ear, snarling on every stroke, "take it. Take that cock for me, you filthy, pretty little whore."

There's no mercy in it at all, and very little caution. A lesser bed would creak; a lighter headboard would bang on the wall. A less drugged stepson next door would hear them. Might still hear them if he didn't gag her with his hand like that, keeping whatever sounds she might make firmly in her own mouth.

[Hilary Durante] In the closets of the guest suites there are clothes for all manner of shapes and sizes of women, all styles. Dresses for dinner, workout clothes, shorts and tops for sailing. The household staff rotates them depending on season. There are neatly, individually wrapped toothbrushes in the drawers, single-use sizes of various toiletries. It's all very luxurious, of course, only the finest. They make his guests feel pampered, taken care of, their needs anticipated, but they simultaneously seem almost engineered to keep those same guests from feeling at home.

Home is -- no matter how good he looks here, how elegant and how beautiful Ivan seems in this lofty penthouse -- not here.

Home is closer to the side of him that hasn't forgotten he's a wolf. More than a wolf, more than a man. Instinct wars there with madness. It's a den by the water, dark and warm and comfortable, hidden away by a long winding driveway and lots of trees. It would be a good place to bring mate. Bring cubs. Keep them safe, keep them close to him.

And some other part of him, wild from staring too long at Helios and Luna, twisted with ancestry, shrieks as though being cut with glass at the very thought. Retreats. Blurs into nothingness, to fight another day.


This can't last. Not the way he held her in the shower, his hands over her middle. If he felt protective then, of her or of her baby, he didn't show it. She doesn't guess.

Ivan's almost always followed her into the water, since the beginning, since those summer afternoons in hotels up along the north shore. When he wanted to leave her, when he hated her, there he was, stepping into the showers with her and wrapping his arms around her. Holding her, or finding her turning into his arms. Rubbing her back, touching her without lust, touching her with some other feeling neither of them could or would put into words.

This time he didn't grow hard as he stood behind her, and she didn't rub against him, but to some degree their sex almost always begins with a pact. A deal. They know what they're getting into, even if not a word passes between them concerning the matter. And if he wanted her as he stood there, if he knew that she wanted him, it didn't show. Not til he asked her, and she so playfully answered with a question,

if they could be quiet.


They can't stay playful forever, or tender. What he is, what she is, what they are when they come together, isn't built to last. It can't go on. She knows, even now, that this is only going to get harder. A few months, he said, as though that helped. I'll find another way to get to you, he said, as though he's capable. As though she could stand to be near him, knowing he doesn't want her. As though, however well he thinks he could handle it, it's something he can fairly ask her to deal with.

They can't keep doing this, and she knows it. She puts her hands on his face when he kisses her like that in the bathroom, firm and ferocious, and it's such a rare thing for her to do it might startle him. She kisses him and it parts with a soft gasp, her eyes still closed but flickering, as he kisses her brow.


She brushed her teeth before she showered. She doesn't stay long, to comb or dry her hair. It's still soaking wet, not even towel-dried, and she doesn't bother. Hilary pads softly out the bathroom while Ivan stays behind. The towel he wrapped around her is lying on the floor between the bathroom door and the low, expansive platform bed, and she's lying on her side, her back to him. She could be asleep.

She could be the way she's always been. Not pregnant, not drifting away. She could be the way he once saw her, not so broken, not so vulnerable. She could be anything he wants, anyone. If he weren't a wolf, he could close his eyes or fuck her in the dark and forget who she is, but the scent of her fills the air when he lowers himself to the mattress and comes closer to her, and he knows her.

Hilary.


Her skin gleams, pale, when he touches her shoulder and rolls her onto her back. There's nothing on her to cover her, keep her warm, and her nipples are hard from being so wet and then being exposed to the air. Her skin is cool when he touches her the way he does, slow and light. She watches him, her dark eyes distant and impossible to make out in the lack of light. Ivan moves her and she's so pliant, so forgiving, so easy for him. So dangerous, really.

The first time she reacts to him is when he strokes her between her legs, dipping his fingertips into her to feel how wet she's become for him. Her slender back arches and her lashes fall to her cheeks, her long-fingered hands grasping at the bedspread beneath her. She's lying on a cold, wet spot from where her hair soaked the fabric, but she hasn't complained. She moves her hips once, aching for him, always aching for him.


Hilary is watching him as he licks her breasts after that, drowsy-eyed, adoring. His mouth warms her nipples til she's moaning softly under him. The insides of her thighs stroke, silky and cool, across the outsides of his hotter, firmer body. She doesn't try to hold him, draw him nearer,

keep him.


But he holds her down after that, and Hilary is looking up at him with her arms stretched over her head, pinned to the pillows. She whispers his name, but it's a movement of her lips, barely audible. They could be in a cave, they could be buried a hundred miles in a canyon, they could be lost to the rest of the world forever.

Ivan't hasn't touched her cunt since he parted her legs and flavored her breasts with her own arousal. When he finds her now with his cock she's wet as he always remembers her, wet enough it seems like she'll come if he just rubs himself against her, if he just teases her enough, if he mutters in her ear that she's such a fucking slut

which he does. She's growing taut under him, shivering with want, whimpering as though he's hurting her. She's on the verge of tears from longing, trying to move her pussy against his cock, his flat abdomen, his thigh, his hip, his wrist, whatever he gives her. Please, please she says, while he promises to fuck her,

and she's not being very quiet.

Her mouth opens to cry out, ragged and overcome, when he calls her beauti--

when he fills her cunt with his cock. He covers her, holds her down, hushes her screams with the palm of his hand even as tears start to leak from the corners of her eyes. The sounds she's making don't stop as he starts fucking her, the cries and the aching moans for more, the shuddering responses she gives when he tells her to take it. Take it. For him.

They fuck. Like they always do, like it doesn't even matter if he holds her down or if he hurts her or if she cries. Like for a brief stretch of time she's laid out for him, open to him, and if he wants he can sample everything there is of her. He can have her, just like she tells him.

His. Every time.

It's hard to tell if she's coming as soon as he enters her, as soon as those tears start, as soon as he starts to fuck her against the mattress. It's hard to tell when it begins, if it ever ends. He can feel her bucking under him, squirming as though she doesn't actually want to be held down when he knows damn well just why she's having an orgasm so fast, so soon, so goddamn hard like this. Just like he knows that if he keeps going he can make her come again, and again.

She might tell him now that she doesn't want him to stop. That she never wants this to stop. That she wants to be his, that she'll do anything, just give her this. Just keep her. Just love her. For fuck's sake, just love her. Instead, Hilary gasps against his hand, and she comes down from one orgasm before he's even quite hitting his stride of thrusting into that slick, hot center of her. Instead, she starts to fuck him back, wrapping one leg around his lower half for leverage so she can tilt her hips and take him a little harder, a little deeper.

Her lips press a soft kiss to his palm, because even if he let her go, she could never find the words to tell him how she feels about him right now, which seems to be the only time she can really feel anything.


In another room, Tomas sleeps the sleep of the exhausted, the drugged, the wounded. He sleeps as though he's within the grasp of the death he barely eluded tonight. He is bitter because he did not protect Hilary, angry and resentful because someone else did. He is overcome with guilt and revulsion that she took up a knife and had to use it. He hates her for being pregnant with his father's child, hates his father, hates himself, hates the world, doesn't realize for a second that he's only one of many lives she's ruined, many souls she's wrecked by touching them.

And he doesn't wake up, doesn't hear the muffled groaning, the gasping, the way Ivan fucks his stepmother. He doesn't know that when Ivan pins her down like that, gagging her cries with his hand, that it's because Hilary begs for it like that. He doesn't know that there's more to it than that, more to it than sex, that Hilary holds Ivan in her heart like a gem, precious and shining and cutting. He doesn't know that Ivan is the 'friend' she went to Europe with for two weeks, coming back and telling him she's pregnant.

He sleeps while Hilary fucks Ivan again, their naked bodies entwined in the dark, her hair drying in tangles and twisted locks as those sounds she makes when she comes are held tightly behind his palm.


They lie together afterward for awhile, and Hilary -- her wrists still locked to the bed by Ivan's half-idle grip -- kisses and licks her taste off of each of his fingers, her lips making tiny, soft sucking sounds against his flesh. She sighs, as soundlessly as she can, when Ivan covers her breast and kisses her neck, hard, coming so close to marking her without quite bruising her vulnerable, tender throat.

They don't talk. There's nothing to say that will help. That will change what happened tonight, what almost happened, what's going to happen after this.

As she does so, so rarely, Hilary eventually slides her body on top of Ivan's. She kisses him, his hands sculpting her out of the darkness, and as that kiss grows deeper she touches him, strokes him, gasping into his mouth as he grows harder as though she's the one being pleasured, the one being caressed. Just when he comes close to groaning she seals their mouths together and swallows the sound he makes when she mounts him, taking him inside herself again. She gives him her own whimpering, trembling moan, her hands moving into his hair, her body moving over his.

They've had sex something like this once. It isn't that she's in something like a dominant position. It's that he doesn't roll her on her back, pin her down, fuck her with snarls and mutters of filth in her ears. It's that she doesn't ask him to. It's that she doesn't wait for him to. It's that she kisses him like she does, fucking him slowly and with the luxury they couldn't afford the night he took her to his bed. It's that she doesn't, this time,

get so scared after the fact that she doesn't know what to do.

She buries her moans in his shoulder this time when she comes, gripping his arms and the bed under him, shaking so forcefully it seems she might just fall apart. It's that intense. It's that good. She's sweating, panting when it lets her go, still moving gently on his cock as though she can't quite bear to stop feeling him move inside of her. She draws back just enough to look at him, to find his eyes, and she kisses him again.

Softly, this time. Slow.

[Resplendent Dusk] That second time --


That's what he's starting to need from her. He never knew he wanted it the way it was the first time until he met her. He never knew there was something in him that craved that sort of roughness, that vicious dominance, that control

until she let him lay her out in that hotel room and spurred him on, on, always onward until he was doing things he hated himself for.

And later -- understood her for. Wanted for himself.

And he's only ever fucked her like that, so far. But the truth is there's any number of women out there who get off on a little kink. It doesn't have to be her. She's not the only one, the only source. It's not that he needs from her. It's this.

It's the feeling, when she rides out her pleasure on him like this and holds onto him like she'll fall off the face of the earth if she lets go, that he's the only one who's ever reached so far into her. It's the feeling that he's the only one who's ever reached her at all.

It's knowing she sees him. It's knowing for certain, which is so very hard with Hilary, that she's

right here

with him. She's his.


So he doesn't say much, that second time. He doesn't pin her wrists down or flip her on her stomach to pound her from behind. He doesn't do any of the things he can, and has, and knows will set her off like a roman candle; drown her in pleasure so intense she loses herself.

He holds on to her instead. When she starts to shake, he wraps his arms around her and holds her closer, tighter, their chests pressed together, the lean cords of muscle in his stomach flexing against hers as he flexes into her, fucks her like that, so slow and sure and deliberate, panting on every stroke. He fucks her until she's grasping at him, shuddering all around him.

He fucks her while she's falling apart, pulling her mouth to his shoulder to bury her moans while he bites into her shoulder to bury his own. When it's over she can't bear to stop moving, and he's gasping on every slide and lift, every grind. His mouth is searching for hers when she kisses him again -- it's soft on her end, but he meets her so firmly. Like instinct. Like something deeper than instinct -- intrinsic nature, mysterious and inexplicable, like iron to lodestone.


In the end, it's his love she seems to need: plainly, simply, agonizingly. She needs him to adore her, to love her, to think of her as good and beautiful and worthy because she's incapable of thinking that of herself.

And he is capable of that. In brief, searing moments, he is capable of looking at her and seeing true beauty. Not her fine skin or her lovely bones, but something deeper than that: the shattered pieces of light and beauty and personality and whatever good is within her, drifting in that endlessly angry void. He is capable, sometimes, of reaching out and catalyzing some change in her, sparking some reaction that fuses the pieces however briefly, however transiently, into this woman,

warm, undone, wet-cheeked from the pain of giving birth to herself,

that he holds in his arms right now. That he needs to hold in his arms, to see whole and coalesced and aware of him, knowing him, the way she needs to be seen through his eyes.

The rest -- that he is not capable of sustained commitment, that she is not even capable of sustained emotion, that they will never belong to each other, that she will never love him -- none of that seems to even matter. That's not what they need from one another, after all.


After a while he puts his hand gently on the back of her neck, and he kisses her again. He flexes into her, so slowly and gently that it seems the result and reaction of tidal forces at work. When he relaxes he settles his arms around her again, sighs an exhale.

"I do care for you so," he murmurs -- as though he were recounting some statement, some argument long since made by his body, hers, the wordless language between.

[Hilary Durante] They don't talk much in terms of what Hilary does to Ivan. She asks him to fuck her, and sometimes it sounds like she's hardly even a participant as much as a receptacle. It's a lie. It's an illusion to actually believe that's what it's like when they come together. No matter how many times he murmurs in her ear, mutters for her to take it, no matter how dominant that might sound, in the end it's always been like she's stealing something away from him. She's sucking his soul out from his mouth every time they kiss, vampiric and needful. Hungry. It's felt rare that she's given anything to him.


Her affection. Her tenderness. Her fleeting, elusive warmth. It's felt rare that she's had anything to give in the first place, much less the desire to give it to him.

But it's there. Care for him. Devotion and adoration that are more than just the fallout from her utter submission to his will. It doesn't feel safe, it doesn't feel comfortable, to stroke his hair back, smile at him, tell him she likes him, show him she wants to know him. It feels easier for her to lay her head on his thigh as she sits on the ground, and through that somehow hope he understands she does

love him. In her way. As much as she can.

Which is really, and here's the bitter truth of it, never going to be enough. Never enough to satisfy the need he has for it, and never enough to outweigh her madness, and never enough to change what he is at his core. The man can't even follow a totem or join a pack that isn't fated for dissipation. He needs an out. Hilary, wild-minded but no fool, knows this much: it wouldn't be safe to give Ivan all of herself anyway, even if she could. He would run. He would leave her behind.


Right now, though, her hands are gentle on his cheeks. She's tracing the bones of his face, those fine structures that make him both rakish and boyish, depending on the angle of his smile and the presence or absence of sunlight. She's kissing him softly, slowly, over and over, her lips caressing his mouth, grazing over his jawline, capturing and then releasing his earlobe.

There's no telling now what sort of woman she'd be if she hadn't been so shattered in childhood. Not even wounded, not just traumatized, but broken. She's barely even human sometimes. She's barely more than a monster. They can be thankful she wasn't born to Change, twice as mad as the kin of Falcon usually are and ten times as violent. They can mourn that she's going to be responsible for raising another generation of their twisted, fucked-up kind.

Or they can have this. Her kisses, and her skin turned warm from sex, and her submission evolving into something entirely different. No questions of what he's capable of, what she's capable of, what either of them really have in them to give or if they would want to give it if they could. None of that. Just his arms around her, and Hilary briefly human as she smiles at him so, so tenderly in the dark,

as though they'll see each other after tonight. As though Tomas isn't nearby. As though they could sustain this for longer than a few hours at a time. As though, no, they don't really need that from each other. Or anyone.


"I know," Hilary whispers back to him, and seems to mean it. She lays her head on his chest, his shoulder, closing her eyes. She could sleep like this, but she knows dimly that he has to leave. He can't stay here all night, fucking her in his guest bed, never quite sure when her stepson is going to wake up in a strange place and come looking for him.

Her breath passes like a ghost across his chest as they lie there, for some time, breathing together. He softens inside of her, and her body lies languid and relaxed, molten, atop his. She is staving off the inevitable for the longest time, and then she kisses his chest.

"I've decided to go to our estate in Mexico," she whispers, and it's hard to tell if this means she decided just now, or if this is something she made up her mind about sometime between his jet landing in Chicago and seeing him outside the ballet. "I don't want to be apart from you," Hilary goes on, staring at the way her palm lays on his naked chest, her skin even fairer than his. "And I'll miss you."

That confession stands alone. She doesn't talk of the agony, doesn't try to explain how when she's not near him she can hardly breathe, but that when she's with him she wants to run away from even the potential of his inevitable revulsion. Just: she will miss him. Ache for him.

"We'll spend Christmas there, but I'll be staying behind." She doesn't need to tell him til when: til it's born. Til this whole wretched pregnancy is over.

Her eyes close, and she breathes in deep, resting her brow against his right pectoral muscle. "Do not hate me."

[Resplendent Dusk] When her lips touch the smooth, hairless skin of his chest like that -- faintly sticky with sweat now, and salty -- Ivan's eyes open drowsily. He thinks perhaps she's about to curl into him to sleep. Or perhaps tell him he can't stay here, he can't sleep here, what if Tomas sees,


but it's not that at all.

His eyes snap fully open when he hears what it is she's really saying to him. His chest rises sharply, but the breath is silent. He too is silent, and still, until she's finished. Until she rests against him again.

"Don't go."

Those are the first words out of his mouth. He wasn't aware they were even there inside him. A few seconds of silence go by; then --

"I don't want you to go."

[Hilary Durante] Strangely, it makes her laugh. Not with delight, not even with humor. Not at him. It's a grieving sound, tugged out of her as though letting even a single breath of it go hurts. That breath shudders slightly in her chest as she holds him.


And she is holding him, resting against him, as though she was indeed going to sleep with him just like this. She's holding him as though she isn't quite ready for him to leave her here, doesn't want him to go

even as she's telling him she has to.

"I can't bear it," Hilary goes on, whispering still. This is a secret. All of it, an awful secret between them. That they are even capable of this much warmth, this kind of sweetness. Longing. Perish the thought that anyone else should know they are more than they seem.

"Wondering every time you touch me if it's going to be the last time. Wondering if you're already growing repulsed by me, wondering when it's going to start feeling like pity. Knowing that it's coming, even if that isn't how you feel yet." She rests her face against his shoulder, her breasts soft on his chest, her back still lean and smooth under his hands. "I can't stomach it, over and over, every time I see you."

[Resplendent Dusk] "It's not about the sex." It's all in a rush, a sort of helpless exasperation. "It's not about your body and whether or not I want to fuck you. There's more to what I feel for you than lust now.


"I want you. I want you to stay. You told me once that sex is the only way you know how to feel ... "

-- there's no additional adjective to add there. In the end he leaves it at that, " -- you know how to feel. And not just sex, but the sort of brutal, rough, masochistic sex you seemed to need.

"But not so long ago you told me that you wanted it the other way, too. The way you used to be bored by, and were still afraid of. But you were willing to try. You were willing to admit this was moving beyond just my cock in your cunt, that what we have is going beyond the sex.

"So why are you still anchored to your own sexuality? Why is whether or not you stay here, with me, in Chicago, still totally dependent on whether or not I'm going to fuck you?"

[Hilary Durante] Certain words punctuate the air between them -- a small amount of air, still heated by sex -- as Ivan speaks, and it feels as though something fragile is trembling, cracking between the seams, threatening to simply collapse in on itself. Don't hate me, she asked him, wanting only that. Let me go. Don't ask me to cope with this when I can't. Don't despise me for --


being weak, maybe. Or being different. Being what she is.

Hilary turns her head away. He tells her again, like he did weeks ago, that it's not about her body, that her body isn't her, or whatever it is he means. She keeps her eyes closed, her hair half-dried and scattered across his chest, heavier than it is when it's that soft, silken veil he's run his fingers through so many times. His cock, her cunt, why are you, totally dependent,

fuck you.

She cringes, slightly. It's a small thing, and more just a drawing into herself as she lies there with him, wishing she'd just followed her first thought and gone quietly away. Sent him a letter, something. Not told him. Not broken what they had just second ago by asking him to accept something he doesn't want.

It doesn't make her capitulate. It doesn't make her go back and say well, if you want me to stay, alright. It doesn't make her feel wanted, doesn't fulfill the terms of some test she didn't reveal she was giving him. It just aches.

"You don't understand," she exhales, finally. "You don't have a body, you are a body." It almost sounds like she's quoting something. Almost. "And you have no idea how it feels to swallow the knowledge that your body is hateful, and frightening, and filthy. Every day. So you can't know how it feels to have relief from that, even for a little while. What that means to me. What that's like."

Hilary pulls back a little, looking at him again now. Her brow is furrowed, deeply. "It's not that I can't bear to be around you and not having sex with you. It's not that I don't understand how much more there is to it than that. It's that I can't stand knowing you don't want that part of me. That it's hateful, and unnerving, and disgusting to you.

"Why don't you understand what that does to me? What I'm afraid it's going to do?" She swallows, her throat moving in the shadows, pale skin in the dark like fish under the water. "I hate that I'm pregnant. I don't want this. My body isn't mine anymore and it's sick and it's scary and you have no comprehension of how this is what I always feel, multipled. Only now every escape I used to take from it is blocked to me." Hilary breathes in, a bit raggedly, and her forehead descends to his chest again as though she's exhausted herself.

She sounds exhausted.

"I don't want you to see me like that. I just want to go away until it's over."

[Resplendent Dusk] No denying this much: Ivan is angry. And it's so very easy, especially for her, to see that anger directed at herself. To see it as hate: of who she is, what she is, what she does to him.


It's not that, though. When she cringes, when she turns away, he shifts. He draws her closer. Holds her: not roughly or hurtfully, forcing her to look at him, but --

tenderly. Gently. Pleadingly, as though asking without words for her to stay. Stay. Don't be so fragile and brittle and angry; just stay.

"I won't force you to do anything you don't want to," he says at last, softly now. "I can't, anyway. And I do understand that ... it's not just the sex, but it is the way I might look at you." A small pause; a bitter admission, "The way I probably will look at you soon.

"I do understand that you can't bear that sort of ... rejection. Not when it looks so much like revulsion. So if this is something you have to do, then I accept it.

"But please, please understand. I don't hate you. I don't think you're disgusting, or filthy, or ... any of the things I might have thought once when I didn't understand you. Or what I felt for you. Or what you made me feel when we're together. Hilary..."

His hand at the cheek, then. His hand stroking back her hair, stroking back until he raises himself on his elbow and finds her eyes with his.

"Hilary, there's no one else like you. And if I'm angry now, or if I'm resistant, it's because I don't want to be without you -- so suddenly, so inescapably."

[Hilary Durante] "I know," she murmurs again, as she did when he told her -- confessed to her -- how much he cares for her. So much.


Funny, that he tells her he can't force her. It's a truth, a profound one, and not one either of them -- or Hilary, at least -- have ever had to question. As much seeming trust and faith as she puts in him, as much power over her as she hands over to Ivan, it's possible an outside observer or Ivan himself might have gotten the wrong idea of what submission is.

It isn't the state of being coerced. It isn't surrender.

"I know you don't hate me," Hilary whispers to him, her cheek curving into his palm, her dark eyes their own deep pockets of shadow in this room, lost in her face. Only a little light glints there while she looks at Ivan, intermittent proof that she's alive. That she has a soul, somewhere in there

like fragments of shattered glass, falling so slowly they seem not to move, catching the moonlight as they turn.

"I know," she repeats, leaning towards him, kissing him again. It's a slow rush, a wave overtaking him, that kiss. As it ebbs she drifts away enough to whisper against his lips, her eyes still closed. "Take me again," she murmurs, her hands splayed over his ribs, against his sides. Her hips roll, moving him slightly inside of her, moving her body on top of his. "Ivan --"

[Resplendent Dusk] Beneath her hands, his sides are lean and taut, his ribs impressions of hard, arcing strength beneath a sleek sheath of muscle. That musculature flexes suddenly as he leans up to her -- catches her mouth even as she bends to him.



He remembers the first time he kissed her. The way she waited for him in the dark stairwell with the bass and the faceless humans all around. The way her chin lifted; her eyes so black. He thought she was fearless then. He didn't understand until much later that it wasn't fearlessness; it was emptiness, a hollow shell that he would only ever be able to crack so rarely, so rarely. To split asunder in seconds and instants and moments so that a lifetime's worth of emotion,

of sorrow and pain and anger and care,

could pour in through the cracks and overwhelm her, set her to tears. It was so long before he truly understood why she weeps like that when he fucks her like this. He didn't understand, that first night, that first kiss, when she looked at him and issued a wordless challenge, not a dare at all but something more sophisticated, more treacherous by far:

well?

And he kissed her then like he kisses her now.


Which is to say: slow, and deepening. But warmer this time. The same, and not the same. Nothing like the same. He moans into her mouth as she moves on his cock. He turns her under him, her back to the sheets, her hands sliding past his ribs to grasp at his back. Wrap around his neck.

He presses her into the pillows and he's lowering his head, sucking at those pretty little breasts, making himself harder with every passing second. He's never even withdrawn from her. They're still messy from their last round, and the round before that. Sticky and wet. Sweat, semen, the slick of her cunt: these base, primal, primitive things, the inescapable detritus of life on this planet that Hilary so often seems immune to, untouched by, above, like an angel or a saint or a stone cold statue.

She's not cold now. She's not stone at all but glass, fractured, always breaking. He pushes his hands through her hair, wraps his arms around him. He clasps her to his chest and his mouth finds her again, swallows that sound she makes when he starts to move inside her. Swallows the moans, the cries, the way she sounds

when he fucks her past the point of no return, takes her over that precipitous edge after which there's nothing but rawness, pleasure, overwhelming. When she comes under him he doesn't pin her down at all. Not her wrists, not her shoulders; he wraps her closer, grabs her hip, pulls her onto him, grinds into her, makes her ride out that orgasm, come on his cock, shatter around him, run molten, fall apart.


After that he's still for a while, which he rarely is. So often he fucks her right through her orgasm, right past it, on and on as though tearing his own pleasure from her. This time he stops. He lets her have that orgasm, and the shattered silence behind it. He kisses her softly as she trembles and gasps, grinds into her in slow, pulsing thrusts, and only when she's regained some semblance of coherence does he

wrap his arms around him, hold her firmly now as he starts to fuck her again, starts to fuck her in earnest, fucks her until he's groaning into her shoulder, biting into her shoulder to muffle his own grunts, gasping and moaning as he comes inside her. Fucks his cum into her. Takes her again. Marks her again. Makes her his again,

one more time,

before she goes away from him.


He's shaking a little after that. His back is wet with sweat. He kisses her neck and her face, her mouth: small, soft kisses that suck gently at her skin.

Eventually:

"Will you call, at least? Or write?"

[Hilary Durante] The first time Ivan saw Hilary, the first time he spoke to her, the first time he kissed her, the first time he undressed for her, she was a diversion. Intriguing. Something he wanted, familiar enough to know the steps, novel enough to be interested in dancing them. She was someone, as he said later, he figured he could fuck around with and have a pleasant evening with otherwise, someone discreet enough not to get his head taken off by her burly Galliard husband or the Silver Fang Elder of Chicago. A new playmate. Mutual usage. That's what he thought he was getting into, and would sooner or later get bored with and walk away from.
- Hide quoted text -


Except now he's here, hoping the baby isn't his and hating that it isn't his at once. Now he's holding her in his bed and kissing her slow, deeper, remembering her mouth tasting faintly of plums and vodka, their bodies not so much as touching them even though they're utterly entwined now.

Hilary and he roll together, the blankets rustling under them again, as he stretches her out into the warm depression his own body left. She strokes his back, wraps her arms around his neck, moans softly into his mouth as he shows her

yes. He's going to give her what she wants. He's going to take from her what she does, in fact, give him, even if it's the last time.

Especially.


Hilary's gasping softly, a disembodied voice in the shadows, by the time his mouth descends to her nipples, engulfing each breast in its turn in the wet warmth behind his lips. She tries to keep quiet, and holds onto his well-toned arms tighter and tighter as he grows harder and harder inside her pussy.

The mess of their sex is inescapable. The room smells like it. She feels him in her, all around her, his hands tangling her hair and his mouth leaving trails of saliva on her tits and her skin sticky, his cock making her wet every time he grinds his hips into her, kisses her a little harder. The reminder of her own physicality is at once intolerable to her, and yet unthinkable to live without.

She's never hated him for bringing her so ultimately, so deeply, back into her own body. She's never hated him for grabbing her wrists and pulling her hands forward and forcing them to build that bridge between mind and flesh, soul and bone. She's never hated him, for a moment, for this.

Making her feel filthy. And making her feel, at the same time, utterly sacred.

Precious.

Beloved.


Once. Only once, playful and half-coy, he held her down and covered her mouth and fucked her hard against his bed, grunting in her ear as he came, slamming his pleasure out into her as she came again and again on his cock. The way he takes her now is no rougher than the second time, no harder than the way they had sex when Hilary was brave enough to let herself get on top of him, even if she wasn't quite riding him. Ivan doesn't pin her down. He doesn't cover her mouth or capture her wrists.

And she arches her back when she comes, no long string of mind-blowing, mind-altering orgasms but fully embodied, inescapable pleasure taking her over. Hilary opens her mouth to moan and he swallows it, covers it, covers her, keeps her, all of her,

even her joy.

Don't stop, she whispers, mere heartbeats after she begins to come back to herself. Her lips move against his, half-kissing him still, as she urges him to start fucking her again. Don't stop, she gasps again, her hands free for once and holding his hips, rolling her own in counterthrust to bring him deeper into her again. To fuck her again, the way he's holding himself back from a she gives her those few fragile seconds to come back down from orgasm. She's still clenching around him, quivering, when he starts to go at her again.

Holds her while he does so, the way he has from the start, from the moment he came up into the shower with her. Holds her like he did when he muzzled her screams and fucked her, holds her like he did when she moaned her pleasure out into his shoulder, holds her like he means it when he says he can't stand losing her like this, letting her go like he knows he has to. Holds her while he groans into her flesh, tattoos his ecstasy into her skin with his teeth, the force of his thrusts moving her bodily on the bed.

She holds him, too. Her palms shockingly, frighteningly gentle on his cheeks when he starts to come back down, her temple resting against his, the smell of her hair in his nostrils, the world coming back to him in fragments beginning with the knowledge of the way she's touching him, the way she's holding him like a lover this time, the way she's whispering something in elusive French, nonsense or dreams, kissing him

as he kisses her.

It's a long time, it seems, before she answers, as though it takes her a long time to realize he said anything, or realize that it needs an answer. She nods, nothing more, pulling his face down to kiss her again, to seal them together again.