Ivan Press

[Hilary] Twenty minutes from San Miguel is a hacienda whose original structures were built in the early eighteenth century. The estate, now owned by one Espiridión Durante-Nieves, occupies almost one and a half hectares. Despite its age, it is no dirt-floored museum to a way of life long since past. The television room and wet bar sit alongside lock rooms for the silver service. Half of the available bedrooms -- and one of the gardens -- belong to the housekeeping staff, kept marginally separate from the main house.

Looking at the home from the main courtyard, one can see the antiquity of cobblestones nudged to the side of newer -- but still aged -- brick surrounding a long, pristine pool. The glacial blue water is flanked by palms and by carefully landscaped shrubs trimmed into evergreen pillars. Beyond that is the gazebo, a gleaming white dome of marble shading the dais. Mature trees dot the landscape, lofty and waving over the rooftops, silent witnesses to the home's history.

Most of the bedrooms are floored with a rich red tile, the beds feather-soft, the walls completed by artwork that remains covered and unseen, unappreciated, for years on end. Small windows complement vast glass doors leading out to the gardens, the courtyards, that weave through the mansion. The ceilings are high, the furniture nodding to the mingling of tradition and modernity. It is a beautiful place. When they came and took the dust cloths off of everything, when they came a week ahead and prepared the hacienda for the Durante family, the servants remembered what it was like to be here, live here, serve here.


Once upon a time, the house belonged to the Calderón family. They had no sons, and the estate passed into the inheritance of young, beautiful Ángela. Stunning, strong, beautiful Ángela. She was the eldest of four sisters. When Gilded Honor came, they tried to divert him. Take one of the younger sisters. Less of a dowry, just as much beauty. He was only a Cliath then, and worse -- he had renounced his half moon to follow the gibbous. He came again and again. He threatened. He roared. He stalked the perimeter of the home, his snarls in the dark intimidating the family of Kinfolk until they did as he asked and summoned the closest Garou family member she had.

He was obsessed. And her great-uncle, a Theurge, could see the madness already taking hold in his eyes. He was no fresh Cliath. His time of brief sanity was long over, and he could have torn even her higher-ranked relative apart in his desperation to have Ángela. For himself. As his own.

The hacienda passed, like this, into the name of Durante. Ángela became its mistress entirely. She lived in Mexico with her new mate and they used his connections and his renown and found mates for her three sisters. The hacienda received new construction, new decor. The servants were replaced. She conceived and bore a daughter. She lived alone in the estate for a long time during her pregnancy, her husband's obsessions turned back into intellectual pursuits, into politics. He achieved Fostern rank. She sat alone in the enormous, empty home, her hair long and dark over her shoulders as her belly grew, her eyes dark, her own threads of madness insinuating themselves into her mind, into her voice.


That was all a long time ago. The servants remember Ángela. Her mark is still in the decor, the artwork, everything. When the new mistress came to San Miguel de Allende she only re-hired many of the staff that had been let go years earlier. The salary was enough to make them quit their other jobs. They came, they prepared the home, and watched as their Galliard master and his new wife and Ángela's children spent their holidays there.

Then Espiridión went to Brazil, and Micaela returned to Paris, and Tomás went back to Chicago with Estrella, who had once been his and his sister's nanny a long, long time ago. She remembers Ángela, too.

With most of the family gone now, the staff has been reduced, if only slightly. There is a doula who comes to see Hilary every week, but Hilary needs little help. She has few questions, no apparent stress. What anxiety or unease the doula can sense is hard to tease out. She thinks the woman is depressed. She's wrong.

Mrs. Durante is quiet, though. Speaks fluent Spanish with the staff, when she speaks to them at all. She does not swim but she does take walks. She spends time in the gardens, and she reads. She has herself driven to shows -- ballet, theater, orchestra. She looks at the moon. She sleeps a great deal. She sometimes goes into the kitchen, watching the cook work, but she does not speak to him and he has learned to ignore her.

It is a long time until May. She drifts alone in the enormous, empty home, her hair long and dark over her shoulders. Her belly grows, but truth be told it is gradual, and barely noticable on the woman's slender form. First baby and all. Her eyes are dark, gleaming neither with warmth nor madness. If insanity is taking hold of her as it once took hold of beautiful, long-gone Ángela, if it will eventually take her down the same path it took the servants' first mistress, they cannot see it.


She's recieved two messages from a young man in Chicago in the time she's been here. She has answered neither.

[Ivan] Not two messages, but three.

There was one the week after she last departed his company, long before she came here. It was brief, and courteous, and frankly -- more lip service than heartfelt. I hope you're well, it read. Chicago is boring me. Call me sometime.

The second one was a week or so after that. It was shorter still. I'm envying your weather, is all it says, along with a digital snapshot of the first bitter blizzard of the season.

Then silence for weeks. Perhaps he's forgotten about her already -- fickle, foolish young man, with all that money could buy at the tips of his elegant claws. Thanksgiving comes and goes. The weeks of steadily deepening weather, the cold that grips the north; the Christmas trees, the carols in the malls, this year's technotrance remix of the carol of the bells shaking walls in clubs. Not a word, not a note, not a text

until three days after Christmas:

I want to see you.

A half-hour after the text, her cell phone rings. The caller calls twice, leaves no messages.


San Miguel de Allende is nearly half a mile above sea level, but its climate is mild. This far south, this deep in the Mexican peninsula, the winters have no bite. Day after day, the skies are clear; the rain comes in the late spring, the summer. It is midday. The sun has little slant, shafting straight through the azure waters of the long pool.

In the arcades flanking the main courtyard, the shadows are deep and black and cool. Hilary, walking but never swimming, is very nearly past Ivan when he moves.

Like some stereotypical Ragabash, he stands in the shadows, back to the fluted stone column that supports the semicircular arches to either side. He takes only a half-step toward her, only enough to be seen, only enough to catch her attention, and then he stands there. His brow is gently furrowed. He only looks at her.

[Hilary] Politeness, wishes for her health. Chicago is boring. Well, that's no surprise. He learned his manners but he doesn't do well without entertainment. Spoiled, entitled young thing that he is, surrounding himself with diversions of every shape, size, color, and extravagance. He'll be bored for a minute, and he'll wait for her to reply and then find something else to do when she doesn't.

Then the weather. It's in the seventies here, day after day, sunny and warm but not too hot, and enough of a breeze to make the boughs of the trees wave gently. It's like early summer here, though the nights are quite literally freezing. Hilary doesn't tell him that, he apparently already knows, he apparently looked, or he's just assuming. Anyway, it doesn't matter.


I want to see you.

She thinks of answering, then. Stay away.

I don't want to see you.

Leave me alone.

Thinks about it, but doesn't bother. He knows she doesn't want him to see her right now. She left well over a month ago and he's been doing just fine without her, and she's been doing just fine without him. Besides: just as before, he will be bored for a little while, waiting for her reply, and then he'll go find something else, someone else, to do.

It's afternoon. Her phone is inside, where she usually leaves it. Sometimes she forgets to even charge it for days, finds it dark and cool and has to summon the housekeeper to find the charger that was picked up and tucked away into some drawer. It's always in the same drawer, but she's forgetful lately. She feels stupid. Hates it. Today, though, it's awake and alive but not with her. When she goes back to her room she'll see two missed calls from the same number, the same person. It won't matter by then.

Not that it would have mattered anyway. Made a difference.

The sunlight makes her hair warm as milk chocolate, brings out faint hints of auburn. Her skin is still fair. She walks in the light but it's not enough, day after day, to darken her. She wears no hat today, though, no sunglasses as she would on the docks of the yacht club on the north shore. Some women, at this point, have a large round stomach jutting out. Hilary, for all her concern over her weight and her appearance, has what most women would still call a 'bump'.

No way to hide it, though, no way to conceal it without heavy coats and such. It's there. She's wearing a pair of cropped leggings in black, a loose top over that in a color similar to that of the pool's water. Its sleeves wave around her biceps, the hem covering well past her hips. It's comfortable. It's surprisingly stylish for a woman who doesn't expect visitors and only has servants to look at her. There are walls all around the property. Her feet are bare. Other than her wedding ring, she wears no jewelry. Not a gem. Not a bangle. Nothing but that large, pale pink diamond glinting on her left hand.

She does not caress her belly as she walks. She doesn't talk to it, though her doula told her a week ago that the baby can hear her now. Hilary can't remember what day it is, exactly, and then there's her phone going dead all the time. Dion and Micaela and Tomas all left just yesterday. She is, in some ways, grateful that she's alone now but for the servants. It's calm out here, and the peace is such that she walks past Ivan without seeing him, or sensing him.

Her hair drifts over her cheek and she half-irritably pushes it back behind one bare ear. He moves, then, enough to make her notice him. Even then she doesn't turn. She doesn't startle or gasp. She pauses, her fingertips against her hair, and then slowly swivels her head and looks at him for a long moment. Her eyes confirm his presence.

There's a moment. Him frowning. Her staring at him, her face placid. Then, only:

"You know, you're trespassing."

[Ivan] Trespassing, she says of him, as though all his trespasses of the past weren't a hundred times, a thousand times worse. The very word makes his eyes drop to her hips, to her thighs. Up again -- pausing briefly at her abdomen, that growing evidence.

"So call security," he says. It's a soft snarl. That furrow to his brow is no longer gentle. It's deepening, fierce, ferocious. He advances on her, "Call the guards. Call your men-at-arms. Call your fucking husband."

-- and he all but lunges for her, grasps her by the arm and yanks her against his body, spins her around, pushes her roughly against that cool stone column. The shadows were not warmed by his presence. He bends to her, but not to kiss her mouth. His hands are lean-fingered and rough, grasping a handful of her blouse, pushing it up or yanking it down, whichever was easier, baring her body to him right there in the midday shade, baring her as he bends to her and puts his mouth on her breast like he came all this way, flew or drove or -- god forbid -- moonbridged in for the very taste of her.

His arm is locked around her now, locking her to his body. His mouth on her breast is hungry and forceful, not at all gentle, sucking at her, closing teeth against her nipple. That hand that had wrenched her shirt aside plunges down her leggings, cups over her cunt. He lets out a low, growling, wanting sound against her flesh. Sucks at her harder.

[Hilary] She's never been afraid of him. She's never flinched from his rage or even his flashes of temper. Call it foolishness, call it not knowing any better, call it thinking she's as untouchable as she seems, but Hilary meets the eyes of Ahrouns with far more rank and strength and rage than Ivan, and seems as calm as a goddamn saint in the face of their snarling.

Ivan looks at her when she never wanted him to see her, stares at her, rakes his eyes over her, and he's muttering about security and guards and the truth is the men here who serve that purpose are tough enough to handle a surprising amount, but Hilary doesn't start screaming for help. She doesn't run.

As soon as Ivan lunges for her, though, she lashes out at him. Every ounce of brutality in the way he shoves her against the stone pillar he was lurking behind seems only to incense her, to infuriate her. It isn't fear that flashes in her dark eyes, neither of him or for the baby, but something closer to hatred when he starts yanking at her clothes. She doesn't shriek, or yell, or beg.

She strikes out at him, nails reaching for flesh. Her teeth are bared, but he knocks aside her arm and maybe that was thoughtless, maybe he doesn't even notice. She grabs at his hair, twists it as she pulls it from his scalp, her other hand balling into a fist to go for his head -- he deflects that -- then his neck, anything.

If she yells stop, if she screams at him, servants will come. It's always quiet here. So, too, is this struggle. He never gets to her cunt, doesn't get his hand into her leggings. She's shaking now, either from some suppressed terror or from just sheer fury. Hilary's breathing is elevated but if Ivan mistakes it for lust, anything close to lust, if he can't tell the difference, he's the worst scout the Nation has ever known. Even though what passes for a game in Hilary's world, what passes for playful sex, is something most people would shudder at, he has her scent in his nostrils, and the last thing she wants right now

is him. This.

[Ivan] It's a brief struggle, but it's ferocious. Her hands fly at him -- no weak little slaps, no coy little strikes. Fingers flexed. Nails scratching. He fends the first off, and the second, and then the third flies at him from the other side, that hand still fisted on her shirt, rucking up her blouse so he can go at her like that, like a wild animal, like a starved thing.

She grasps a fistful of his hair. Twists. It wrenches his mouth from her breast, his teeth scraping, then baring in an animal snarl. In the shadows his eyes flash like sun off steel; like lightning. Hers are pitch black, hard, without the faintest hint of want or relenting.

With a quick, torquing motion he pulls himself out of her grasp. Pushes away from her. Her shirt falls back into place, adhering lightly where his mouth had moistened her flesh. His chest rises and falls visibly -- lust or anger or something of both. He paces, but only a step back and forth, tightly reined and silent, and then

he just stares at her.

[Hilary] Luck doesn't enter into it. She knows she can't stop him. She knows that no damage she can do would be enough discouragement. She knows that it's up to him to either rape her or walk away. She knows it's helpless, and from a woman who has begged him to tie her up, hold her down, make her helpless so she can just let go for awhile, it might seem momentarily counter-intuitive that she would fight him so viciously.

Maybe by now he's looked at the roots of submissive behaviors, researched, tried to understand what it is that's 'wrong' with her and what it is she wanted from him. Maybe he just senses, has always sensed, how much control of what they've done lies in her hands alone.

They've never had safewords. Nothing for her to whisper in his ear when he lunges at her with all that angry, dark wanting, nothing to say for her to get across to him no, seriously, stop. Her shirt is loose enough that it falls when he lets it go, so the weals on her breast from his teeth won't be seen as they develop. Hilary's eyes are glittering with rage that never dampened.

God only knows what he was thinking.

"What is wrong with you?" she says, a rush of hot air more than a hiss, more than a shout, nowhere near a snap. She barely even sounds like herself.

[Ivan] What is wrong with him.

He doesn't answer her. He doesn't feel like answering her, by god, but he doesn't know how to answer either. What's wrong with him? Why is he here? What the fuck is he doing here, two thousand miles and what feels like two entire seasons away from Chicago, not only trespassing on the territory of his elder but assaulting his mate?

He's panting. Anger, adrenaline, rage has his baselines all spiked up. The lovely line of his jaw hardens, squares, as he clenches his teeth and swallows before he finally spits out a few words.

"I've fucked fifteen, twenty women since you left."

It's not a reason. It's not even a logical response. It's hateful, and it's angry, and coming from any other man this would be a litany of boasts, an inexcusable rant of self-absorption. Coming from him, it sounds closer to self-hatred.

"I fucked dancers and models. I fucked a stripper. I fucked a whore that charged two thousand dollars a night, and then I made her cry when I laid out her life for her. I fucked a married woman while her husband was stuck in christmas eve traffic. I fucked her daughter in her dorm room the next day, and then I told her her mother was better. I fucked a Silver Fang kin the day before yesterday. She was a goddamn virgin from a good family. They could have sold her to an Adren easily. Maybe an Athro. I told her we were never going to go anywhere. I told her I was never going to love her. She let me fuck her anyway. She wanted me to fuck her. She wanted me to ruin her because she thought I could save her from her gilded fucking cage."

A muscle flashes in his cheek, and he closes the distance, and he plants his hands on either side of her head and if he weren't worried about getting torn in half by that fucking Adren whose scent is still all over this house, he'd shout at her now.

"I didn't even want her. She was as well-bred as you. She was younger than you. Her tits were bigger. Her cunt was tighter. She looked at me like I was god, and I didn't want her. She bored me. I thought about you the entire time. I thought about you every time. I fucked her because I wanted to ruin her. I wanted that imaginary Adren mate of hers to fuck her one day and know I had her first. I wanted her to think of me when that day came and how I made her feel. I wanted them both to remember that I had her first, used her, threw her away.

"You should have seen the look on her face every time she came. You should have seen the look on her face when I got up and left.

"Now you tell me, Mrs. Durante. What the fuck is wrong with me?"

[Hilary] They both know why he's here. They both know about the unreturned messages, the way she laid atop him one night and told him she was going away, told him she would stay in contact somehow. They both know it's been a month and a half since he's seen her, heard anything from her, and they both know what that has to do with him coming here.

Pregnancy hasn't made her any less lovely. Her stomach has swollen, but it's still her, and looking at her face it's hard to remember the curve he saw and felt when he yanked her shirt up over her breasts so he could suck on her skin, agonizing for the taste of her, furious with her all at once. Neither of them seem to be noticing that her hand is on her rounded abdomen,

maybe just the way people do when they're catching their breath, as though if they don't hold onto themselves they'll dissolve.

Ivan goes off on quite the tear. Dancers and models. Women and their daughters. Whores and virgins, or at least one of each. Another woman and every recitation would be a slap across the face, and he'd see her flinch, but this is Hilary, and even if he's trying to get some kind of reaction, he likely knows better. She stares at him while he insults her via comparisons with a girl she'll never meet.

Closing the distance, he frames her with his arms, and she lifts her chin a bit to stare at him, a dangerous, dark gleam in her eyes and a dry expression on her face. Hilary Durante just goes on staring at him while he tells her he thought about her the whole time he fucked that virgin, wanting to hurt her, ruin her, implant himself into her memory by her body forever. He tries to get Hilary to think about him fucking another woman, him leaving another woman.

What the fuck is wrong with him.

The truth is, what he describes doesn't touch her. She doesn't feel the way other people feel. She doesn't care when she ruins this life, or that one. She doesn't think about the long-lasting psychological damage she leaves behind her. She perhaps doesn't even understand it. What Ivan describes to her is no more emotionally impacting to Hilary than considering what she ate for brunch last Sunday.

"You know I didn't want to see you," she says quietly. "The family left just yesterday. I couldn't call. I couldn't send you a letter. I didn't --"

A pause. From Hilary, who cares for no one. "I didn't want to answer you. I came here to get away."

To hide.

"And not just from you."

A tiny muscle flexes in her cheek. "I don't know what is wrong with you. You can fuck whomever you like," which comes haltingly, not because she's hesitant, but because she doesn't understand his litany of conquests, what bearing it has on all this. Does he think she'll be bothered? Is there some reaction she should be having that he's not seeing? Is that what he wants, forgiveness or permission or her blessing to go out and be an angry, black-souled slut?

She doesn't know. "You shouldn't be here."

[Ivan] In that silence between his last word and her first, he's looked away. He's not even looking at her when she begins to speak again -- haltingly -- and he's not looking at her when he answers her, tight on the temporary end of her words:

"You said you would. You said you would call or write."

-- she didn't want to. That makes his head turn back; for an instant his eyes are unguarded, and it's all too easy to see that that hurt. He turns away a second later, turns his back altogether while she pieces together some thin, imperfect explanation. Says what she thinks he might want to hear, and she's no better now at reading him than she ever was.

"I didn't come here for your permission," he says, and it nearly snaps off the ends of her words again. "I didn't tell you about the women I've fucked to seek your absolution or your recrimination. I told you so you would understand me when I say I don't know how to forget about you. I've tried. I can't. I need you to -- "

come back with me. let me see you. fuck me. something. He doesn't know what to say, how to finish that sentence. There's a silence. Then he tries again:

"I need you."

[Hilary] You said you would.

It could sound so much like a child's wailing: you promised, you promised!, full of anguish and disappointment and confusion and wrath. Not hard to imagine any child of Hilary's behaving that way, screaming in furious sorrow every time Mother breaks another promise, forgets she said she'd read a story, goes out with the lover the nanny pretends Mother doesn't have instead of taking Junior to the park

like she said she would.

The hard truth is that his hurt simultaneously stabs at her and annoys her, exasperates her as much as it worries her. That it bothers her at all says something about what he means to her. That he means anything at all to her. But Ivan turns away, can't see her face, can't let her see his. He tries to tell her what he needs, what he wants, what he can't do without, but it ends up where it always does.

That unfair place. He needs her. She knows that feeling, she knows that look in his eyes, the tone in his voice. She knows that when she needs him, too, he's repulsed. He recoils from her desperation for him, her attachment, just as much as he rages to defiant life when he thinks she might not.

Hilary is quiet for a long time after that. When she speaks, it's still low: "You can't be here," which is not quite a repetition. It may be a warning. Or a pleading. "If I promise to call you, or answer you, now that everyone's gone, will you please go away?"

[Ivan] Quick and mute, that shake of his head.

"That's not enough anymore. I need to see you. Goddammit, Hilary -- " he turns back, and the blind grasp of his hand this time is not for her flesh, not for her body, but for her hand. Her fingers, tangled in his.

"Is there somewhere we could go? Somewhere we can be alone for a while?"

[Hilary] He's out of his fucking mind. She's looking at him like that, too. Like he's some wild-eyed, crazed Fang like the whole lot of them seem to be. Like he's some teenager throwing rocks at her door and screaming for her, calling her a bitch then crying, begging her to just come out baby, baby, please. Please. Hilary stares at him as he goes for her hand, takes it. She lets him have it, but doesn't hold to him.

Then she slowly withdraws it, untangling their fingers, pulling her fair arm back to herself. Her eyes go downward as she speaks. "The guest bedroom," she says finally, like a surrender, like giving in to discomfort. "You'll recognize it. The furniture is all covered. No one was using it over the holidays."

Hilary looks at him again. Her eyes are small, black stones. Or pearls. "Don't try to have sex with me again."

[Ivan] There's a change in his eyes when she does that. Gives him something. Gives in. A quieting, perhaps; a lessening of that desperate edge. He nods, twice in quick succession.

"I'll wait for you there."

[Hilary] A starving hound, given a lick of blood, might only grow wilder, plead more loudly. Half a bowl of food only ignites the appetite, makes the saliva run that much more freely

but then we're comparing a wolf to a dog, and a woman to a meal, and he's more than a wolf, and she's more than a woman. Apples and oranges.

Even though she takes her hand back, Ivan seems at least marginally satisfied, or put off for a few more minutes. Soothed, somehow, though not completely. Sometimes it seems that the gift of being able to drive him out of his mind with lust and longing was the whole point, the only point, but that's just some. times. Just like how grabbing her, pushing her against stone, taking what he wants from her, would on some occasions make her tip her head back and bare her throat and say yes, say please, call him baby. some. times.

Not right now. Not this afternoon, sun gleaming down on the water as it laps gently at the sides of the pool when the breeze moves it in softly chopping little pseudo-waves.

It goes without saying that he'll step across the gauntlet, thinner here than in the urban sprawl of Chicago but not by much. It goes without saying that he will go find that guest room the only way he can that leaves utterly no chance that the servants will see him drifting through the house, where he shouldn't be, can't be.

Hilary turns away from him, walks away. Her bare feet pad on the sun-warmed brick that surrounds the pool.


The guest room is smaller than the master suites, and still well-appointed. Same tiled floor, simpler linens, but it hardly matters -- everything in here, from mirrors to paintings to furniture -- is covered with expansive white dust cloths. And there is, in fact, dust on those. There's the bed, and a bench at its feet, and a chair over near the patio doors, the thin curtains pulled over the glass. It's colder in here, the thick walls and the shade keeping it so. It feels abandoned.

The door clicks shut behind Hilary when she comes inside, and she locks it with the twist of a heavy knob above the doorhandle.

"You have to be quiet," she whispers to him, when her eyes find him, waiting -- like he said he would.

[Ivan] Of course he goes across the Gauntlet. Of course he finds the guest house from the other side, passing unseen as a ghost. Even in midday, even in the realm, he's silent as a shadow. He can pass almost as unseen as one. He doesn't take the risk, though. Even the dust on the floor makes him wary. He's careful not to leave prints, careful not to leave tracks, careful only to step where recent servants' passages have left preexisting shoeprints and scuffs. When she finally comes to him it's not until he can hear the cadence of her footsteps, not until he can smell her and recognize her, that he slips out from behind a shrouded mirror. Shows himself.

There's half a room of space between them. The air here is dim and cool. It's not his rage she feels, but his want is just as potent as any. When he moves, it's faster and more sudden than anyone could expect. He's in front of her in a second, and if she hadn't told him, hadn't forbidden him from it, he may well have pushed her against the wall already, lifted her onto his body, pulled down those black leggings she wears and --

and he closes his eyes for a second, his concentration fierce. Pushes it away, away, drives his want down until he can open his eyes again and look at her.

After all the turmoil, the near-violence of their meeting, this seems hushed and paltry:

"Why are you so reluctant to see me?"

[Hilary] Hilary can't smell Ivan's presence, and she can only dimly sense his rage, and she can't smell his lust, but when he steps out from behind the hiding place he found in this room, she sees it in his eyes or in the way his body moves. She feels his desire like a wave coming at her as he takes a few steps towards her, knows that if she hadn't told him no, don't he would be on her again, laying her out on the bed, on top of the damned dust cloth even, pushing and pulling and tearing her clothes away, suckling at her skin, trying to find a way inside her, Christ, please,

I want you.

She takes a half-step back as he's closing his eyes. The ball of her bare foot touches the dust on the floor, and truly the arch of her foot, the cant of her leg, has as much grace in it as the curl of a swan's neck. She doesn't ever bring her foot completely down, doesn't ever completely step away from him,

nor towards him.

"I told you back in Chicago," she whispers. "I don't want to... be like this, with you."

[Ivan] "You told me," and they're speaking -- arguing, at least on his part -- in whispers here, their voices barely louder than the sough of the wind through the brushland, the trees, "that you didn't want me to look at you with disgust and pity. Well, I see you. I see your face. I see your body. I'm not disgusted. I want you. I flew two thousand miles and ran another twenty because I missed you."

He does know what he wanted to say earlier, after all. It was all those things, and one by one, they were finding their way out of him, like splinters pushed from a wound:

"Come back with me."

[Hilary] Two thousand miles and twenty more. He might have run. He might have gotten into one of his lightning-fast cars and just driven if he wanted to, if he got it into his head that he had to see her now, he had to go now, he had to be moving and going and getting to her. She can imagine him now if she likes, can think of him sitting impatiently in his own jet, seething. Or planning.

Bastard. All that time to prepare to see her, and then stepping out of the shadows like he did.

Ivan tells her he wants her, as though she can't feel it like his hands are already on her. She can feel it like she felt his mouth, his body, all of him against her and demanding her. He tells her it isn't disgust he feels, nor pity, just longing. At least Ivan doesn't advance on her, come closer, because, truth be told, she doesn't know what she would do.

Hilary just stares at him. He tells her to come back and she looks at him like he's gone mad, all over again. "No!" she says abruptly, affronted, though her voice doesn't reach beyond the door and the walls. "Have you lost your mind? It's never been just about the way you look at me. It's how I feel, as well. Christ, Ivan, it's months left with all this," she says in annoyance, gesturing at her torso. "You think it won't get worse? You think you want to keep me with you, rub my feet, play daddy?"

She stops there, as though knowing there's a line. Knowing, and giving a damn. She steps back. Exhales. "Ivan," Hilary breathes, shaking her head, but there's a thread of ache in the way she says his name, a familiar sound, like the way she's sounded sometimes while lying under him, holding onto him, holding onto ties or chains, arching her back. A thread, a whisper, and then it's gone again: "No."

[Ivan] All through that, silence. Not a word from the Ragabash, none. In these cool, dim shadows, his eyes are different. Not mutable but veiled, shadowed, dark with a sort of bottomless hunger

that's not so very different from her own depthless rage. Even his leanness is different here -- the sharp arch of his cheekbones prominent, the cheeks themselves taut, strained, carved down to bones and sinew.

When she says his name like that his eyes flicker. Then that moment is past.

"I don't know what I want," he says after a while, softly. He holds his hand out to her after a time, palm up, fingers unfurled, looking at her, trying to tell her with his eyes and his hand and his arm and his body that all he wants, all he wants right now, is contact. Touch. "I want you to come closer."

So she does. So his hand rises, slides past her cheek and to the back of her sleek head. He doesn't pull her to him, lets her draw close of her own accord; but he cradles her when she's against him. He bends to her, and they're both long and graceful, and he opens his mouth and seizes her shoulder gently, gently between his teeth.

After a moment, a little firmer. Imprinting his teeth on her.

"I want you to be mine again," he murmurs. And this: this is not quite the same thing as saying I want to fuck you --

"I want you."

[Hilary] The intensity of Ivan's presence here, the shock of it, the way this began with him coming at her and her striking at him so furiously that this time, she actually landed a couple of smacks -- Hilary hasn't quite processed it yet, hasn't quite come to terms with the fact that this son of a bitch is here. She stares at him as he admits that he doesn't know what he wants, but that he wants her to come closer to him.

Trepidation doesn't entirely capture what he sees in her dark beads of eyes. Hesitation, reluctance -- all of it. She's wary of him, and it's obvious that Hilary doesn't trust that he won't grab her arms with bruising force and take her, touch her all over, push her down or --

Exhaling, Hilary takes a few steps towards him across the cool, hard tile. Its roughness against the soles of her feet is somewhere between the marble floor of her bathroom and the brick around the pool. She steps into his arm's reach, tipping her head back just enough to look at his face again.

He touches her, this time slowly, her face and not her clothes, her breast. Her breathing is tense, her eyes furtive as a beast's. Unwise to mistake her for prey, though. It takes a long time before Hilary comes closer, ages and eons before her feet are resting beside his and longer, still, before he can feel the roundness of her belly touch his abdomen, not quite so full that it presses against him or keeps them apart but a month and a half ago he never would have felt that, first.

Ivan's hand slides to the back of her head, and she finally comes to his chest, turning her head and laying her cheek against him. Her eyes are open, and her form doesn't completely relax, but she's there. Close to him. She breathes in when he puts his mouth on her, not from startlement but from unease. It relents, and she relaxes slightly again.

mine, his teeth say

and mine, he says a moment later.

She sighs. Maybe that in and of itelf is something of an answer to what he says, or a resignation. But again, he also said, and Hilary finally closes her eyes. She could tell him she was never his, can't ever be his, and he knows better, but she's also said

yours. every time.

and that's the truth, too.

"I want you, too," she whispers, after a silence. "But Ivan --"

She doesn't bother to say it, any of it. They both know.

[Ivan] They know. They both know. And there's nothing he can say to that; nothing that would make any of it untrue or better or, frankly, different. Still -- he holds her as she comes to him, and though she doesn't relax against him, though this is nothing like the way he was able to hold her the first night they slept together at his house,

or the night they slept together on his father's jet,

or the nights they spent together in Switzerland and France,

or the last night they had, the very last, in his penthouse,

it's still something. It's still more than he's had for so, so long, and that makes it precious. It makes him hold her in his teeth like that, like an animal, staking a claim he has no right to. It makes him hold her in the circle of his arms like that, like a man -- staking a claim he has no right to.

"Tell me when I can see you again," he says at last. "Tell me where, tell me when, tell me how; only don't tell me to wait until the summer. I can't stand it."

[Hilary] There's no telling if he expected better than this, or more. If he'd hoped with any realism that Hilary would be overjoyed to see him, glad to embrace him, kiss him, eager to find someplace to go and be alone with him. He's felt her so many times now, limp and warm and her porcelain skin flushed from exertion, beyond relaxation and into some sort of blissful, thoughtless state. He's felt her like that in his arms. He's felt her breathing against him as he strokes and kisses her flesh in the aftermath, every slight stimulation keeping her deep in that space.

This is so stiff and awkward by comparison to having her, really having her. And that, to him, is still precious. Hilary is uncomfortable, her eyes closed not because she is melting to his body but because she feels worn down by all his longing, his demanding, his feelings chasing her all the way to Mexico, stirring up her own exhausting emotions as a result. This was supposed to be a sanctuary from all that. The aching. The impossibility. The loss. The shame. The need.

"Please don't do this," she whispers, though it's a long time between his plea and her answer. "I can't tell you that right now."

Her brow furrows, tight. "You can see me again before then," she relents. "But I don't know when. I don't know."

[Ivan] It seems to be enough. Perhaps it has to be. His hand comes behind her neck -- he kisses her temple once, fiercely, and then lets her go.

"All right," he says. And, "If you want me to, I'll go now."

[Hilary] It might mean something that Hilary wasn't expecting that. Not the kiss -- it seems natural, the borderline violence of his lips on her body more and more familiar to her -- but that he lets her go. Like ripping off a band-aid. She would stumble if she were more heavily pregnant. She would stumble if she were another woman, without her practiced grace, without her own ironic balance.

She opens her eyes and takes a step back, looking at him. Up at him. She looks at him no differently than before, as though wondering how he could say such a thing to her. Come here, break the silence, break everything, and now leave her. As trite as it might sound, parting from him once was hard enough. Doing it again now is painful. Asking her to do it again over winter and spring, god knows how many times, is nigh unto unthinkable.

"Stay until I take my nap," she finally says, too quiet, the way she sometimes would tell him what she needed from him, the names she wanted him to call her, the things she wanted him to do to her. "Leave while I'm still asleep."

[Ivan] Truth be told, Ivan doesn't seem to understand that. He doesn't seem to understand that somehow, everything she feels or has or unlocks or becomes -- everything she needs from him -- is the very reason she can't see him right now. Can't stand that sort of ...

bareness. or truth. or absoluteness,

not when it's taken away from her time and again, because there's no way for her to stay in that space she goes to. There's no way for her to stay with him. They both know that, understand it utterly.

Still. He comes to her. He nearly assaults her. She's furious at him. Now they're here, talking in hushed and stripped whispers; he wrings a promise out of her and he prepares to leave, go, just go away like she asked of him. Only, she doesn't ask it of him now. And his eyes change; there's ache there, and pain as raw as a wound. He doesn't ask when she'll take her nap, or where. He says only this:

"I'll come to you."

[Hilary] These days, Hilary sleeps a lot. She watches the hours pass her by, sleeps in patches of sunlight. She drifts through the weeks, or has been, and will. The family just left yesterday. She has a lot of recovering to do. The last time Dion was around her she barely got to sleep, was barely left alone. She went to Ivan, then. She slept in his arms for the first time.

Hilary says nothing now, and turns, walking over to the bed that is much smaller than her own palatial one in the main master suite. With careful motions she drags the dustcloth off of it, revealing the covers and the pillows beneath. The duvet is blue and silver brocade, the gray sheets beneath it some silky version of cotton.

She doesn't get under the covers but lays atop them, and does so without a word. Her hand rests on one of the throw pillows lightly, fingers bent like broken wings.

[Ivan] It's not what he expected. There's dust on the dustcloths here; he knows she doesn't come here often. He can surmise no one comes here often. He can guess -- from the sprawl of the estate, the security, the servants -- that her own bedroom would be nothing short of resplendent. Luxurious. Palatial.

Yet it's to this bed she retreats. Like a dying thing, she lays atop the covers as soon as they're uncovered. Her hand rests strengthless on the pillows. That more than anything else draws his eye: so drained, so emptied, as though the fatigue he noted in Lausanne has only deepened. As though the exhaustion he noted the night she fled from Dion's presence to his has only worsened

because he's here.

There's a faint frown etching his brow when he comes to her. He doesn't undress, but he does reach out to her. He slips her shoes off, drops them to the floor. His hand covers hers for a moment. Then he crawls onto the bed behind her, moving closer by degrees, slipping his arm around her waist at last, drawing her back against his chest.

He's quiet now. He breathes quietly against her, holding her, waiting for her to relax into sleep.

[Hilary] This part of the house is a little more out of the way, a little more ignored. Even when the children and Dion were here, no one stayed here. Tomas took the second master suite. Micaela actually preferred the art studio and its lovely, well-lit loft. The servants have their own area, their own guest house. This room has been ignored for years. Not weeks. The servants don't bother to come here on a regular basis, and their other paths don't cross the hallway outside. Even when Ivan snuck in via the umbra, he saw almost no one.

Such a lonely place. It seems to be what she wants, though. The emptiness. The solitude. The quiet.

That Ivan's mind goes to the way she was back in August after Dion's mere presence -- and all his attention, his demands, his obsession, his need for her -- had exhausted her, well... that's no great shock. The man was here until yesterday. His scent is all over the grounds. He patrolled the land himself some nights, walking along the outer wall. His scent is no loner on Hilary, though, and Ivan can't trace her back to the male of the Unbroken Hearth when he lays behind her and wraps her in his arms.

Her hand is cool, her feet slightly so from being bare against the tile. The rest of her is warm, particularly her torso. Many women would not retreat to a warm climate while pregnant. She might come to regret it, but this is an escape. This is a sanctuary. And his frown returns, as though he recognizes finally the cost of invading it like this. The surrender inherent in the way she lies there before he comes to her, not so sweet, not so complete, as the way she would

kneel on the floor of his yacht's cockpit, laying her head on his leg. Or ask him softly for a sip of his wine, please. It's not the same as that. She just seems so ...lifeless.

So infinitely sad.

The bed moves as he lays with her, and Hilary exhales softly. She relaxes, which he might not expect. She molds to him, her belly a gentle but firm curve beneath his gathering arm, and she finds his hand with her own. Slips it under his palm. And as so many times before this, so many other moments, she stays silent. There is nothing she can say.

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't, after all, lie there until she sleeps. A few moments go by. Her relaxation is a surprise. This may be one too:

"You don't have to."

There's another silence before he clarifies -- a silence before he inhales, exhales, nuzzles her gently as though to rouse her a little. Entreat her.

"You don't have to see me again before this is over." His hand is a gentle pressure on her belly, indicative. "Not if you don't want to."

[Hilary] Hilary doesn't react to his nuzzling by twisting, turning her head to see him. She stays quite still, and her relaxation doesn't alter. She wasn't close to sleep yet anyway. She just breathes.

And exhales. "It's difficult," she says softly. "I made my peace with not seeing you again until I came back. I put it away. And it seemed right; I could come back and be with you like it was before, and just... pretend all of this didn't happen." All of this. The fucking fetus she's carrying.

The baby, a different mother would say. But then, a different mother wouldn't pine for the day when she can pretend she never even got pregnant.

"It isn't that I don't miss you," Hilary says, her voice falling even quieter. "It's that I could live with waiting. And I can't live with the fear that eventually you will come to the point where you see me and can't stand me, and then you'll never forget what I was like... when I was like this." There's a brief pause. "I'm terrified that every time you see me, you'll just be... weaning yourself off of me. Then I lose you, and there's nothing for me at the end of this but a baby."

[Ivan] What she says makes him ache. What she says makes him understand, too. There's a silence from the Ragabash behind her, the lean, golden creature whose blood has grown too rarefied over the millennia to much longer endure -- and then his arm tightens around her, holding her more firmly against his body.

"I can't make promises for the future," he says softly, "but I'm not weaning myself from you. If anything, I'm only falling deeper into this ... "

She's told him not to try to fuck her. Not to try anything. His hand doesn't rise to her breasts, then, but to her shoulder. His long fingers curve over the curvature of her shoulder, and his palm is smooth and warm on her arm.

" ... this addiction," he finishes. "If that's what this is."

[Hilary] He can't make promises, but he does -- just without the word. Hilary lies with him, more warm than hot, more relaxed than molten, more calm than aroused. Sad, more than hopeful, but that is always the way with her. Ivan's hand closes on her shoulder and she exhales, sighing slowly.

The woman he's holding carries a child that, in all honestly, probably isn't his. She's well-bred and even though she's in her thirties and on her second mate and only just now proving herself to be fertile, she's still what the tribe would consider too good for the likes of him. And the truth is, if he could have her, she sems to believe entirely that he wouldn't want her. That she would become a stone around his neck.

But he holds her, all the same, wanting her even now so badly that despite his restraint she can all but feel his desire burning him up from the inside. He calls this an addiction, but hesitates over the word, disclaims it.

"I'll see you again," Hilary whispers, after a long time. "I don't know when or where, but if I can stand it, I'll see you again before it's born."

No promises on her part either, then. Not really.

[Ivan] She hears a promise, only without the word, but what he really gave her was a description -- closer to distress than to devotion. Earlier, he asked her what was wrong with him. They asked each other that. He still doesn't have the answer to that, but he can at least tell her this.

This is what's happening to me, he's saying. This is what you've done to me.

And when she gives him a non-promise of her own, this time there's no vocal acknowledgment. Just a faint stirring behind her as he lifts his head, sets it down again. His hand returns from her shoulder; his fingers spread for hers. If she gives him her hand, he takes it. He winds their fingers together, returns his arm to her midsection, and holds her.

"All right," he says finally, and quietly. And after a small pause, "Sleep. I'll be here. But I'll leave before you wake."

[Hilary] Like they arranged. Like she asked him to. At least when she falls asleep she doesn't have to feel anything when he leaves. Some people would hate that, waking up and finding their lover gone, like a dream. Hilary asks for it, prefers it that way. No goodbye, no last embrace, no last kiss. If she has to for the sake of her sanity she can pretend he was never even here, just as she intends to pretend she was never pregnant, never had a baby, never went through this. Just erase the year, and move on.

God only knows how many times she's done that before, blacking out whole sentences of her life story with a heavy marker, censoring her existence so that she can live with it.

Hilary closes her eyes. Her hand is in his, though -- as with so much between them -- the impetus for connection comes from Ivan, the surrender to his will from Hilary. She hopes, if she hopes for anything, that he knows it does not mean she doesn't wish for closeness, or that he doesn't matter. She knows, if she knows anything, that he doesn't always know. Right now she can't tell him. She can't find the energy to stir herself and reach out to tell him how much she longs for him, as though that will only rouse the emotions themselves and make waking alone unbearable.

He's never held her like this but that he's found her already exhausted by others, or exhausted her himself. It's rare indeed that he's held Hilary on her way to sleep when he isn't following, and it's rare to hold her without having fucked her senseless first. It might feel a little strange. It might hurt. She might wake up later by herself and make believe he was a dream, he never came to visit. She might regret, later, going to sleep without saying goodbye, without telling him I need you, you have no idea how much I need you. When she opens her eyes she might not lend credence to the fact that Ivan came all the way to Mexico to be with her for less than an hour, if that was all she'd give him, and she might not believe that he held her and wanted her and told her he was only falling more deeply into her. She might not believe she fell asleep so quickly, and so peacefully, because he was there, and she'd missed him so badly.

But that is what happens.