Ivan Press

[Ivan] Before this, it's wholly possible Ivan entertained vague fantasies of occasionally updating Hilary on the status of her son. Their child. Perhaps his caretakers will send along notes, pictures, videos. Perhaps he could share them with her. Perhaps she would be as coolly and uninvestedly interested as he will be. As he thinks he'll be.

Even on the plane from Chicago to Novgorod, watching his son wail because the pressure in his inner ears was too much for him to handle, Ivan wondered if that was true. If he really could be uninvested in this thing that only exists because he made it exist. This thing that will grow up to look more and more like him. This thing that is his in a way that nothing else on the planet ever was or could be.

There was an odd hollowness on the flight back. An empty space where the carrier used to be. Since then he's received two letters from the caretakers, weekly updates like he'd requested. He hasn't looked at either, hasn't really thought about sharing them with Hilary.

Most likely won't, now.


And he's still holding her. He's actually holding her now -- his hand slipped from her mouth when it became clear she was done making that noise, that shrieking howl no one human should ever make. He wrapped both his arms around her and held her against his body and at least, like this, he didn't have to look at the empty holes that were her eyes.

She closes those eyes now. He doesn't see that, either. He holds her and his hands are moving on her automatically, rubbing her back, stroking over her, soothing her. Shhh, shhh. Just shhh.

"It's okay," he murmurs to her. "I'm sorry. It's okay. We're okay."

It's possible he's lying again.

[Hilary] She knows all too well what it is to have caretakers and guardians and not parents. Knowing what lies Anton will grow up with, she wonders what lies her own caretakers told her -- if, on her deathbed, Rose-Marie wasn't trying to tell her some previously unknown truth. Hilary has to wonder now if, ten or fifteen or twenty years down the line, some servant will feel a fit of guilt and want to tell the boy:

your mother is alive. she's always been alive. she's in America.

She wonders if she'll ever be free. She knows she won't be. At least with her parents and Emmerich, she knew they were dead. All dead, and the haunting they gave her held no prospect of one day coming face to face with them, and what she lost.


Hilary gradually calms completely, til even those shudders and jerks cease. She reaches past Ivan and picks up her slip, dragging it over to her. The silk whispers over his knee, and she hugs it to herself, in between the two of them like she needs to hold onto something. She lowers her head and stops staring, even with eyes closed, at the ceiling. She rests her head on Ivan's shoulder, like he can, somehow, take care of her. Even if they both know he can't. Even if no one is asking him to.

"Just let him be gone," she whispers, and that is the last thing she says about Anton for a very long time. It is the only time she will even say him. She won't even say 'it'. It is one of only two commandments:

don't let me hurt him.
just let him be gone.


Time passes. She seems tired now. "I'm sorry, Ivan," she whispers. "I just can't."

[Ivan] Once upon a time -- not so very long ago, though it feels like a lifetime ago already -- she told him, half asleep, half sleepwalking as she laid their child between them for the first, last and only time:

don't let me hurt him, okay?

He was half-awake himself. He looked at her through blurry eyes. He might have put his hand on his infant son's tiny head, careful of the soft spot where his bones hadn't even fused completely yet. Okay, he murmured, and reached across the boy to lay his hand on the mother, his arm bridging that gap and sheltering the child.

Just a few hours like that. Less even, perhaps. When he woke later, woke and took the boy away, something she said once drifted through his mind like a cruel joke:

of course when Dion is home, we live together as a family.


She gives him a second commandment tonight. One he'll obey the way she obeys when he says shhh, when he says give me your wrists, when he says suck that cock for me. It's so much simpler than the things he tells her to do sometimes. So much easier, and so much harder at once.

Just let him be gone.

There's a very small hesitation, and then he nods. "Okay."


Time passes. Eventually, she apologizes to him. And tells him again: she just can't. He moves a little. He's nowhere near sleep, but he feels almost as tired as she seems now. Worn out and hollow. His hand stirs on her back. His head turns a little toward her.

"You can't, what?" he whispers back.

[Hilary] "I don't know," she whispers, the words half-laughing but hitching, unable to voice something like laughter right now. "I just can't."

Anything, she must mean. She can't care about everything that's changed right now, can't be what he wants her to be, do or say what he wants her to do and say. She can't be the way she was, and she can't be anything else right now.

She exhales in a great rush of air, held against him and staying there. "Can't we just...stop?" Breathes in, exhales again, slower. "I don't know what I mean. I don't want you to go. I wanted to see you. I want you to stay. I wanted to fuck; I've been waiting so long." She lays her forehead against his shoulder, her own shoulders rounding downward with every breath. "Maybe we should go back to your place tonight, though."

Not in my bed. Not in that bed. Not now.

[Ivan] Hilary, who so rarely shows any insight into another's motives and emotions and inner life, likely doesn't expect Ivan to seem so -- relieved at the answer. It's a subtle thing, but unmistakable: a relaxation in his shoulders, in the way he holds her.

He doesn't explain it. He just kisses her shoulder softly.

And they're still on the floor, huddling together all-but-naked: like adam and eve after the fall. Hiding in one another. Begging for some sort of respite: stop, stop, please stop. Sheltering from wrath and storm; battered in the aftermath of that terribly cruel thing he said to her, and the way she melted down when he said it. She seems shaken, exhausted. He feels shaken, frightened.

And she talks about fucking again. Of course she does; it's the only way she has, the only way she knows, to reconnect. To put her pieces back together. More and more, Ivan is starting to realize the same might be true for him, too. At least, true of the pieces being with her shatters him into.

She's been waiting so long, she says, and he gives a faint huff of not-quite-humor. She's been waiting. And then --

she says, go back to your place tonight.


Ivan isn't sure she's ever said that before. Even if she has, it was never like this. It never could have been like this. There were always servants to be wary of, loyal to their master. There was always a stepson, jealous and resentful. There was always the spectre of her husband, her mate, the one that the human world and the garou nation and gaia herself declared to be her one true lord and master. She could have never before simply

asked to be with him like this, without worry of retribution. And god help him, but there's a surge of something like elation in him. A bolt of raw triumphant joy that he did not expect. Could not have prepared for.


He kisses her again. Her shoulder. And then he draws back a little, and he finds that he can look at her face again. Her eyes aren't staring like that anymore. She doesn't look like something possessed anymore; something hollowed out, carved empty of anything but horror and hate. He touches her face again, gently, taking her face between his hands to kiss her mouth, very gently.

"Okay," he says. "I'm parked downstairs."

[Hilary] Any other time, and she might be curious about that wash of relief through him. As it is, Hilary barely even notices it. Even to the level she does notice it, she doesn't care. She, too, is hollowed out, emptied out, exhausted. She literally does not have the energy to look deeper into Ivan, to understand him. She can barely understand herself, and her self-awareness is limited only to what is useful for self-preservation. It takes everything she has right now just to hold herself together within that boundary he created initially by grabbing her, stopping her from hurting him, hurting herself.

He moves away a bit. She maintains the line.

I wanted to fuck, she says, but they already did. Maybe he reads it as saying she wants to again, or before that meltdown that was what she wanted to keep doing, or -- Hilary doesn't have a clue, and Ivan isn't talking to her about what he's thinking, what ambient thoughts might be floating through his mind. Words aren't coming easily to her right now; she doesn't know why she wants to explain to him why she called him here in the first place. She certainly can't stop herself from shifting tenses, from talking about what she wanted before he came over to what she wanted when he was there to what's changed, now, what she wants now that she's a shattered glass chalice again.

She can't explain herself to him. She can't say all the things that would cause a woman to have a shrieking, thrashing fit on the ground at the mention of that infant in Novgorod.


Tonight they can go back to his place without fear of reprisal. Scandal, certainly, if they flaunt it, but they won't. They each know at least a little something about discretion, though Hilary's education in its use was a little more strict. God only knows what that stepson of hers will do now; if he'll come over here and try to get in, bang on the doors, all but howl outside for her to let him in, let him him, please, please. Or if he's too proud. Or if he'll hate her. God only knows.

For what it's worth, though, she belongs only to herself now. The divorce isn't final, of course, won't be for a long time. There's got to be a waiting period before Dion even officially files. There's going to be a gradual separation of finances. Then, when the gossip about her lost baby and what it's done to the marriage has faded and people have found something new to talk about, they will quietly file for divorce. Jointly. No contest. No argument. 'Full agreement' is the term. It goes much faster that way.

She will accept whatever he wants to give her. It is better than death.

Hilary doesn't notice Ivan's elation at the phrase, though. She just wants to sleep with him, and right now, after that, she cannot bear to go to the bed where they have slept together only once. And then, with their child. She thought she was ready. She isn't now.


It may be that her eyes will never look or feel warm, particularly. But at least they aren't dead now, looking at him as he touches her face again. She's kissed, but she can't return it. She would -- but, as she told him: I can't. Can't do anything, it seems. She just nods, closing her eyes for a moment, and opening them again.

"I'll clean up and pack a little bag," she says quietly, but does not move to rise.

[Ivan] "Okay."

For a while, Ivan doesn't move either. Neither of them move. He holds her. She allows herself to be held. He shattered the fragile glass walls that held her grief and madness back earlier, and when he saw what he had done, how violently and self-destructively she responded, he gave her new walls. A boundary. Something he delineated, and now she exists inside those confines again, obeying his will the way she always does after he destroys her and puts her back together again. Except --

this too is different.


Eventually he does move. He nuzzles and nudges her, shifts against her until he's rising to his feet, pulling her with him. Carrying her again if he has to, which will remind him starkly of the other time, the only other time he had to carry her like this. Everything keeps coming back to that day, that child, that boy of theirs.

Let him be gone.
Don't let me hurt him.

Don't let me hurt her again, Ivan begs whatever entities might listen. A silent, half-conscious sort of plea, and one he's made before, a long time ago, when every time he laid hands on her he hurt her a little more. Brutalized her a little more. Was driven by his own darkness, that darkness she recognized but did not understand any more than she understands her own, to push a little closer to some unforgivable brink. He's not sure that prayer was ever answered, either.

Still: bringing her to her feet. Bringing her with him, one way or another. Telling her, "It's okay. I'll run a bath. We'll clean up, and then if you tell me what you need and where to find it, I'll pack for you.

"And then we can leave. You don't have to -- we can go to my place."

[Hilary] On some level, all his fears of her dependence on him are for nothing. Perhaps he even senses that, and that's how he can bear this -- any of this. Perhaps that's how he can even tolerate his attachment to her, much less her attachment to him. Hilary, whose parents abandoned her, whose caretakers grew old and died, whose brother is long gone, who has now gone through two mates and three children,

does not tend to rely overmuch, not in truth, on anyone but herself.


Eventually they nuzzle and shift and unfold from each other, Ivan rising and Hilary going with him, still clutching that silk slip to her chest. It dangles between her breasts and across her torso, which is still too rounded and soft for her liking. He does not need to carry her this time. She's shaken, staring at his chest at first, but she holds together. For now. Left alone, left to her own devices and her own thoughts, she dwells rather peacefully in that mist of hers, unperturbed and unbroken.

She can't hear the prayer he utters, but she takes a step with him, then another, as he uses words that she supposes have meaning, have a language and coherence that is only barely within her reach.

"I don't have to what?"

[Ivan] They're passing through her living room on the way to the master bath when she asks. They haven't passed through the bedroom yet; that bed where they guarded their son like true devoted parents, if only for the space of a few hours. That's where her question comes -- while his arm is around her shoulders, guiding and guarding as though she were some fragile, cracked thing on the verge of collapsing to dust.

He doesn't know if that's true. Sometimes he thinks, broken and damaged as she is, Hilary is stronger than most would give her credit for. Even so, there's just a beat of hesitation. A reluctance to risk triggering that sort of meltdown again, that sort of shrieking insanity. Then he answers her honestly:

"Sleep in that bed." Honestly -- softly. "You don't have to sleep in that bed tonight."

In the bathroom, he kneels to twist the faucet open and plugs the drain. As the tub begins to fill, the roar of falling water changes and muffles, deepens. He tests the water with his hand. Water still clings to his fingers as he reaches back for her hand, handing her into the tub. The last time they bathed together, bathed and not showered, was in Lausanne -- in that absurdly opulent suite with the doors that opened out onto the terrace, overlooking that deep mountain lake. Across that expanse of water they could see the opposite shore, and somewhere there was Meillerie, where sunbleached houses clung to the switchback roads that climbed the steep lakeside hills. Strange, but those two weeks in Switzerland, in France, were some of the happiest memories he has with her. With anyone.

The water rises again as he steps in, sinks down behind her. It's very warm, almost hot. He reaches past her to turn off the faucet when the bath is deep enough, and then he reaches for a washcloth, a shower puff, a scrub; anything she might have. It's almost ritualistic, the way he begins to wash her -- patiently and thoroughly, his touch familiar and oddly uneroticized; simply caring, caregiving, washing every inch of her.

[Hilary] There's very little delineation of space in this apartment. Two rooms closed away, and their respective bathrooms and closets. A kitchen that is just two lines of counter and cooking space, overlooking an emptiness between itself and a wall of glass. This corner, that corner. One for living space, one for... emptiness. There's nothing in the quadrant leading up to Hilary's own bedroom, just a doorway to that tiny glass box of a balcony. They drift through it the way she always drifts through it; the come to the door and pass through her bedroom. It's a mess in her apartment, truth be told; she had no maids here to clean up. Dion slept in the other room, though, since he was going to divorce her and since she'd just had surgery.

He was pleased to see that Ivan had healed her. That, perhaps, did much to forestall any vengeance on his part. But really, vengeance was always the purview of his son. They can be glad Tomas was not born true.

In any case, they walk into her bedroom, her unmade bed, the ambient blue lighting she's kept on since Anton was taken -- though Ivan couldn't know that. He tells her, honestly and softly, that he doesn't have to sleep there tonight, and another woman might weep. Quietly, but weep all the same. Hilary just closes her eyes a moment, and opens them, and nods.

"Thank you."


Water fills the large, garden-style tub slowly. It's more than big enough for both of them. Hilary leaves her lingerie... anywhere. She waits, physical but absent, til Ivan's hand lifts hers and draws her over, guides her into the water. She sinks down when he sets a hand on her shoulder and gives a gentle push to indicate which way she should go. Ivan comes after her, and his legs go to either side of her, and he picks up the loofah that is soft terry on one side, an exfoliating scrubbing surface on the other side, and begins to wash her. Wash it all away.

She's silent, but relaxed. Her arms lift when he lifts them, lower when he's done washing her sides and underarms. Ivan sweeps her thick hair aside, washes her back perhaps more than is really necessary. He finds a bruise on the side of her hand, partly on her wristbone, where she was hitting it against the wall during her fit. There are no such bumps on her head when he runs his fingers through her scalp. He washes cum off of her inner thighs, and she's leaning back against his chest during this, resting her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed and her breath steady.

It's perhaps the most attentive washing he's ever given her. The slowest. Time unfurls and is not wasted but need not be lived quite as fully, every single second counted.

In the end, every inch of her has been touched somehow, softly, by his hands or the soft side of her loofah. Her toes, and between them. The curve and cleft of her ass. The undersides of her breasts and her nipples that never fed a child. Her navel, where if one isn't careful dirt and sweat will collect and begin to itch. Her neck, and her shoulders, and her long, pale fingers. Her skin is awake and it is exhausting, and it is utterly necessary.

They let the water drain away, and rise to their feet. Ivan shields her with his body when he turns on the dual showerheads. The water at first is a shock of cold, then suddenly warm, soothing away the startlement that only Ivan feels anyway. He has her wrapped up in his arms then, cradled,

protected from the cold.


They shower away residue of water, of cum, of soap, of sweat, all of it. Hilary is slightly more active, opening her eyes more and moving of her own accord more. She turns to him, wrapping her arms around his torso and holding him. She strokes his back and his sides, almost wanting, but unless Ivan draws her hand to his cock, she does not go there herself. Though if he were to do so, she would find some way of adoring him now. The thought comes to her to touch him, but she doesn't do it on her own; once, he acted displeased that all she wanted him for was sex. She doesn't want him to think that right now. Not right now, when even she knows how much she needs him to stay with her.

In the end, they're clean. In a manner of speaking.


Her towels are thick, and new, and soft. She lets him dry her, and that's when she smiles at him. It's a small, sad little thing when it comes, her eyes touching his for a moment. It's the most tender look she knows how to give him, and it's terribly sad, and a little bit frightening that it comes from her. She touches his face, rivulets of water running from the ends of her hair down her back.

It seems she might say something. She doesn't. She leans forward and kisses him softly, says instead: "Don't worry. It will be all right. It always is."

[Ivan] Sometimes, for all her thirty-some-odd years of existence on this planet, her three and a half decades of living, Hilary's ways of dealing with the world -- of coping with its horrors and its stark, cutting beauties -- are so primitive. So simple. So childlike. Pushed too far, she simply screams for it to stop. She screams until she's stopped by gentle, physical force. And after that, she's obedient, worn out, waiting to see where she's directed. Waiting to be led and bathed and cared for and made to feel warm again. Safe again.

Even when some measure of will returns to her, she defers to Ivan's. She turns to him and wraps her arms around him, holds on to him as much as she simply holds him. Earlier, before he slapped her in the face with their child, her son, she was capable of telling him she wanted him. Wanted to fuck. It's possible she wants to again, right now; it's also possible she thinks perhaps he would want to. As reward for taking care of her, perhaps.

It's entirely possible she doesn't know what she wants.

So she waits to see what he wants. Is afraid to send him reeling away from her again. She waits, and doesn't touch him in a way that she knows will arouse him, and even though the thought is on his mind, crosses it gently and warmly, he doesn't begin to touch her. Kiss her. Spread her open, slide inside her,

take her all over again.

He doesn't, because -- he doesn't know why. If he hadn't pressed earlier, if she hadn't come completely undone, he would've wanted to take her to the couch and fuck her again there. Slowly, perhaps, firmly and gently the way they almost never do. Now the moment seems too fragile. In a way, perhaps he, too, didn't want to send her falling away from him again. Submerging into some flawed simulacrum of adoring lover she seems to go into sometimes when she thinks he wants something from her; thinks she should make him feel good somehow.


They hold each other in the shower. In some strange way, Hilary wants to submit, serve, be a good girl for him. In some strange way, Ivan wants to ward, protect, guard, care for her.


Later on, she smiles at him as he dries her. It reminds him of the way she smiled at him on his yacht, after they showered, when she saw him looking at her in the mirror. It's the most tender look she knows how to give him, and sometimes he wonders if this, too, is a sort of social mimicry. The only way she knows, the only way she's learned, of expressing anything close to whatever inexpressible secrets she holds in her heart.

When she touches his face, he turns into her hand. He kisses her fingertips: it feels like soft adoration. She tells him it will be all right. His mouth moves a little, a sad little smile of his own. He wants to say,

no. it won't. it's never all right, never. it's just that sooner or later, we manage to pretend it's all right, and so we move on.

He doesn't say it. He accepts that kiss, returns it, and then cups her face in his elegant hand as it tapers off. "I know," he says instead and kisses her again - just as softly. "I know."


He leads her out of the master suite, still wrapped in her towel. He asks her where to find the little bag she wanted to pack, and what she wants to pack. Perhaps another woman wouldn't want her young, illicit lover looking through her shelves and drawers and closets; wouldn't be comfortable with what he might find there. Perhaps Hilary is different in this, too. Like a child in this, too: open and unabashed, willing to be cared for in this way, too.

[Hilary] "You don't need to pack for me," she says to him, still quiet, as though someone is sleeping nearby. They're alone, though. No maids, no servants, no husband, no baby.

Hilary is in a light robe now, a soft waffle pattern in white that drapes over her and half-falls off her shoulder, comes close to baring her breast. Doesn't, not quite, which manages to make it alluring rather than engulfing. They aren't fucking again, not in the shower or on the bathroom floor, or suddenly going to her bed as though all the avoidance doesn't matter. They both thought about it, passingly, demurred for reasons they likely wouldn't share and couldn't verbalize if they tried. But they don't.

And she is, truth be told, not quite as far gone as he thinks she is. Not leaning so heavily on him as he feels, not clinging to him or holding onto him. Just holding him. Just touching him. Shattered, but put back together. Held within the boundaries of her own will.

He washes her, and doesn't realize that on some level, she moves the way she does because it is just the way they are together. That is just how it works, when they're together. He thinks of so much of what she does: social mimicry. Sometimes that's true. Right now, though, she's half-absent and half gone but every moment she was coming back into herself, reforming, and she is not the broken glass she was in the entryway.

"You don't," she repeats, resistant and annoyed in this vague, distant way that isn't quite true emotion. "I'm not a child."

[Ivan] That stops him for a second. He looks at her for a second: she in her waffled light robe, he in a towel, another one draped behind his neck. A moment's consideration, and then he nods.

"Okay," he says quietly.

They're only a few feet out of her bedroom. Her apartment has much in common with his, actually -- a vast, wide-open floorplan. No traditional living room, dining room, game room, den, kitchen subdivision; just an uninterrupted stretch of space from one side to another, glass all along one wall. His clothes are on the floor in front of the front door. Hers are -- well. She was wearing a slip. It's in the bathroom now.

He turns toward her after a moment. She's resistant. Has the strength to be resistant, so -- yes: not a child, not so terribly regressed now. Coming back together. He comes close to her and she knows he's going to kiss her again even before he bends to her. Puts his hand behind her neck, her hair wet and cool between his fingers. His other hand cups the side of her neck, but when his lips touch hers, slides down over her shoulder, into her robe. He cradles her breast in his hand for a moment, almost as though he were measuring its heft and weight, different now from before. This time, his kiss has a measure of heat in it, glimmering in his eyes still when he draws away.

"I'll wait for you here," he says. A small pause. "Why don't you pack for a few days?"

[Hilary] Usually if she dismisses him, breezes at him, gets annoyed at him, Ivan blows up. Not quite to the level of her earlier shrieking meltdown, but he snaps. He tries to get away from her rather than demolish her -- as he knows he eventually would, if pushed far enough. Ragabashes don't frenzy easily or often. It does happen. Can. And it doesn't take a frenzy -- it doesn't even take a werewolf -- to do serious damage to someone not as strong as you are. Physically.

But this time, he says: okay, soft like that, and he's walking out of her bedroom, which she doesn't understand. Her eyes narrow as he passes through the doorway, but she's following him. She never steps across the threshold, staring at him with those dark and darkened eyes of hers as he stands naked on those bamboo floors, their discarded clothing hidden away in that little entry hallway.

Her eyes lighten faintly when he turns back, a little less ready to -- yes, primitively, primally -- lash out at him again for anything, anything at all she might find a foothold in to give her some emotion beyond this floating confusion.

Ivan touches her, and there's a relaxation to her neck after a moment. Kisses her, his hands on her neck, and the vast majority of women would react badly to this, varying levels of badly, either in flickers of tension or slapping him across the face. The vast majority of women are sane. A rare and special few of them don't even consider their bodies to be their enemy. Hilary does not seem to mind Ivan's hands all over her neck, back and side and sometimes even her throat.

Still: it's when his hand runs down her form that she relaxes another step. Touches her breast and possesses her in a way with that caress, owns her. He knows she can resist him. He knows she won't. Isn't.

As he draws back, her hand comes up to keep his where it is, held over her breast as he speaks to her. Hilary nods. "All right," she says, acquiescing so easily he might wonder if she'd just go along with anything.

Or if she just... wants to. If that sounds nice. If, for once, she can stay longer than a night with him.

"I'll make crepes in the morning," she adds, and lets go of his hand so he can take it away if he likes.

[Ivan] The first time Ivan ever laid eyes on this woman who would later become his lover, his possibly-beloved, and certainly his obsession, she seemed so cool, so arch, so elegant, so refined. He never could have guessed at the nature and shape of her madness, though even from that first moment he could smell her purity, scent her breeding; knew beyond a doubt it was there.

He never could have guessed that in her darkest moments she regresses into darkness, into benthic depths, into fog. He never could have guessed that beneath that cool superficial layer, beneath Mrs. Durante on the flybridge of her yacht, there was a side to her that was strangely, ferally innocent. Like a small, neglected child. Like a wild, furtive animal, no apex predator, but a hunter and a meateater nonetheless.

He sees that feralness flicker in her eyes as he turns away, and as he turns back. He feels the way she responds when he puts his hands on her, kisses her, touches her and caresses her. After a moment -- a human gesture, this -- she holds his hand where it is. Over her breast, over her heartbeat.

And she acquiesces to his -- it wasn't even a demand. A request, but phrased the way he phrases such things to her: a statement in the form of a question. He smiles, though, unbidden and unhidden; this alone proves that he wasn't certain of her answer.

Crepes, she says. He laughs a little. His hand moves when she releases it, but only to caress -- thoughtful, gentle, thumb sweeping the inner curvature of her breast. He kisses her brow this time, touching her body like that: almost reverently.

"I'd like that," he replies.

There's a sense that he doesn't quite want to step away. A sense that given another moment, he might flick the sides of her robe apart and put his mouth to her body again. He does, however, draw away in the end. "I'll be outside," he reminds her, and turns to go.


And outside is where he is when she emerges a little later. He's dressed again: put on the same clothes he pulled off when he couldn't wait, couldn't delay, couldn't bear not being inside her for another moment. His slacks are a little rumpled. His shirt still falls the same way, heavy, silk-woven. His hair is drying, and it curls a little.

He has his phone out. It looks a little different: somehow got a new toy. He's finishing up a text as she comes to him, straightening up from where he leans so indolently against the wall. The phone slides away. He holds his hand out for her bag; such a gentleman.

"I was thinking about your cars," he says rather offhandedly as he pulls the front door open, "and the gifts from Dion. Why don't you keep them? I asked Max to add you as an authorized signer on my accounts. I doubt you'll rob me blind."