Ivan Press

[Hilary] The last Ivan saw of Hilary was her sleeping in the bed he was departing, motionless from exhaustion. Her dark hair was spread over the pristine white pillowcase and fitted sheet, but her head wasn't on the pillow. She'd curled down below it, lying directly on the mattress next to her son, her head close to his body, her body one-half of the flanking shield she and Ivan could create around the newborn. Who he then took away, over the sea and deep into a country Hilary has never seen.

The last Ivan heard from Hilary was shortly thereafter, not long after his courier reached Dion's people in Brazil. She sent word that her husband was returning immediately to the United States, and not to contact her directly for 'awhile'. She's never been the most precise woman.

Then a messenger from Dion came to Ivan's servants, and to Ivan himself if he would receive it. You need not fear, or run, or hide, said the messenger, who memorized the words because Dion had not written this into a letter. I trust that the staff under your hire has been duly reprimanded for any negligence, or rewarded for their efforts. You are absolved, for the fault lies not with your guardianship. Sangre pura no siempre es sangre limpia.

When asked to translate, the messenger hesitated, and said: "Pure blood is not always clean blood."


Two weeks after Anton's deliverance into the world, Hilary sends the most infuriating message she has ever given to him. A text message one rainy Saturday morning:

Too cold to go anywhere. Come visit me?

[Ivan] There was no worried phone call after that message two weeks ago not to contact her for 'awhile'. No similar call after he receives the message from Dion's servant. No call today, either, worried or furious or some sick mingling of both, when her infuriatingly casual text reaches his phone.

There's just a return message:

Where are you?


And she tells him. And about ten minutes later -- they live so close, after all -- he shows up, doubleparking with utter disregard for law or others' convenience, walking in, taking the elevator up, taking the hall down, stopping at her door.

The post-op nurses stayed on for a week or so after Dion came home. If Hilary did not visit her apartment in that time, or if Dion indicated before that time that they were no longer needed, they left. What little information they might have fed Ivan has long since become old news. The apartment is unfamiliar to him now; for all he knows, she's painted the walls blood red and black on the other side, holds black mass daily over the butchered remains of her mate --

-- only Ivan isn't quite prone to such flights of fancy.

He knocks. He does not bring a gift this time, not even a chocolate easter bunny. Just himself, unsmiling.

[Hilary] What Ivan does know about the goings-on in this apartment is that it took Dion a couple of days to get back to Chicago. It's been, therefore, something like ten days since the nurses were dismissed. He didn't even know if she was keeping this place after that, if Dion took her back to their estate, if she went to live in the city apartment that her stepson has been occupying during the school year, if Dion is still in the country.

The door opens and beyond it he can see the windows speckled with raindrops. In front of it he can see Hilary, her hair straightened the way she often wore it before late in her pregnancy: glossy, rich, dark. Hilary, wearing a short satin slip. It's a rather classic piece of lingerie, trimmed in white lace. In two weeks she's already lost a significant amount of the weight she still had the last time he saw her.

She smiles at him, even though he's not.

[Ivan] Which isn't to say he's frowning at her -- because he's not. He's just looking at her, quizzical, perplexed. His eyes flick past her to the window, then back. He steps in

and grabs her by the shoulders, all but throws her against the wall, pins her there with his hands hard on her upper arms, gives her a single shake.

"What the fuck, Hilary." It's more breathed than shouted. It's like sentences don't even form anymore: "Two weeks. I didn't even know -- and then."

[Hilary] She reacts as could be expected of this woman, though perhaps not any other woman he might do this to. All but slammed against the wall, hands on her arms, jerking her once like he'd prefer to rattle some sense into her, she doesn't yelp or cry out but gives a hushed gasp, her eyes on his face for a moment. They drift down to his mouth, to his jaw, his throat, his chest through his clothes, before coming back up to his eyes.

Hilary doesn't struggle. She does reach over with her leg, giving the barely-within-reach door a solid push til it swings closed. The inside of her thigh is against the outside of his leg, bare skin to his always so very fine, tailored, perfect slacks. She lets it slide as she lowers her leg again.

"I didn't realize you'd be so worried," she says, her tone so closely bordering on contrite that it almost sounds like a taunt.

[Ivan] Ivan is, in fact, in perfectly tailored slacks. They're a very light gray, like the lake on a winter's morning. He's plainly, though expensively dressed -- his shirt is a simple pullover, saved from t-shirt infamy by its rather deep v-neck and the weight and hang of the material. The way she looks at him, though, he may as well not be wearing it at all. It's like she knows, remembers, the body beneath it: sleek and smooth, muscles hinted at rather than chiseled against his skin.

That subdued little gasp, the slide of her leg. There's a burn in his eyes when hers return to his, but it doesn't show on his face.

Much.

"Really?" His tone is almost flat. "You didn't realize, truly?"

[Hilary] Hilary knows him. And he knows she's far sharper than she pretends -- the woman is intelligent, though she's not an intellectual. She's got enough education, most of it private, to be able to carry on some entertaining conversations, but she grows bored with contemplating the deeper mysteries of life or even the mysteris of her deepest self. She's smarter than a woman who thinks opening the door in lingerie will make her forgiven for everything, and she knows Ivan is smarter than a man who would lose every thought in his head at the sight of a thin strap falling down her shoulder, looping atop the back of his hand.

And she's still smiling as she stares at him, all but wraps her leg around him, gasps instead of yelps when he puts her to the wall and shakes her. He hasn't let go of her arms; she pushes against him now a little bit, tries to lift her shoulders and back away from the wall to step towards him.

Ivan doesn't have to think much to remember the body under that pale pink sli; he can see it outlined under the satin, peek at the color of her skin through the lace. But it's so different from the last time he saw her, and the time before that. It's so different from the last time he held her. It's vastly changed from the body he last buried himself in, came in.

And that was months ago. February, wasn't it? That hotel room in San Miguel. Her fingers smelling of vanilla bean where they stroked over his skin, her mouth so warm. Her cunt almost too hot to stand. Months ago.

She's too smart to think she can seduce him in a slip that lets him see the hardness of her nipples, the swell of her breasts. She's still not as slender as she once was, but she's obviously taking advantage of the gourd he broke over her to heal her from that unnecessary surgery, working as quickly as possible back to a time when it never happened, it never was. And even like this, she's just... curvier. Softer. There's a welcome to the look of her body that he knows is a lie, except

she's always so very welcoming to him. Even when she's infuriating him.

"What good would it do you to worry?" she murmurs. "Nothing you could have done. But you're here now. You can see I'm all right. Espiridión didn't touch me."

[Ivan] She's no fool. Beneath that pretty trophy wife exterior is a genuine intelligent, if somewhat underdeveloped, left to fallow. Dance. Culinary arts. These things are reasonable for a kinswoman of the Silver Fangs. Deeply intellectual pursuits -- less so, though more to the point: perhaps Hilary herself simply never took an interest. Grew bored. Preferred enticing impressionable young men with bigger muscles than brains. Preferred researching whatever dark, unmentionable horrors it is she secretly researches on the internet

when she's not -- in an aching and somehow sad way -- researching herself. Trying to understand herself. She told him once she read about submissives; generalizations; that there are others at least a little like herself,

getting a little wet when manhandled like this. Forced against a wall. Snarled at.


Most submissives play with a safeword in place, though. Play under the implicit understanding that their dominant will never go too far. Will never genuinely hurt them against their will. No such safety net is in place for them.


Still. She's no fool, and she has to know that answering the door in her lingerie doesn't make up for don't contact me and a bewildering message from her mate and two weeks of impenetrable silence. It doesn't make up for how she was the last time they met. It doesn't make up for how she was for the last nine months, it doesn't bury it, it doesn't do away with it.

She must know this, too:

that for whatever reason, this sleek young man who can buy just about anything, have just about anything, has become rather hung up on her. Wants her above ... well. Pretty much everything else.

Her leg is nearly wrapped around him now. She murmurs to him softly, soothingly, like he's some animal to be gentled. He stares at her, his eyes nearly as dark as hers on this stormy day, in this interior hallway leading into her private apartment. She's decided to keep it, he sees. Decided to hold on to this one little piece of freedom, this one home that is hers and hers alone,

where she has invited him to her bed.

Espiridion didn't touch, she begins, and his hands shift suddenly to her face, hold her right there as he crushes a kiss to her mouth.

[Hilary] There's so much he doesn't know -- and couldn't know, couldn't predict, and will likely be shocked by when she tells him. What he knows is that they've been out of contact for two weeks, she's still here in this apartment, she's getting a little wet because he's being rough with her. And all of this is vaguely familiar with Hilary, the periods of starvation followed by interactions like this, which are sparks to dry tinder.

She doesn't have to do any research to know how to lure him in. He's different from other young men, from the ones built like diesel trucks to the sleek, lithe ones like Ivan. Always so very pretty, and boyishly, innocently so, as though the corruptive, corrosive darkness inside of her needs something outside to devour before she obviates herself. Always a bit repressed, so that she can hope they're hiding dark urges of their own, or are simply so desperate for a fuck their guards are down, their defenses are nonexistent, they'll do anything she wants, they can be driven to do so many things they never would if they just weren't so hungry.

And Ivan is special. He was, in a way, innocent before her, though his innocence was of his own darker nature. He's no fool, though, and his intellect strikes against her own, makes her recognize him as an equal and not simple prey. He's not very repressed at all, and even after sating himself with her once, twice, three times, he still wants her the way he always wants her, still ties her down and possesses her, snarls in her ear, not because he's too desperate for her pussy to hold himself back but because it's inside of him, too.

Hilary, without having to think about it, without analyzing an iota of this, feels a resonance when she's with him that other people might call connection, or understanding. She doesn't call it anything at all, doesn't recognize it; she only feels it, and pursues it. In her strange and twisted way, protects it by perpetuating it.

When Ivan gets closer then, grabs her face and kisses her -- brutally, forcefully -- Hilary's leg does indeed wrap around him. The slip is so short that if he should press himself against her, the front of his slacks will meet her bared cunt, the lace hiked up her hip. She gasps at the kiss, but it's cut off by the crush of his mouth. Her slip's strap falls further, fabric falling away from her breast. She doesn't reach to cover herself. She reaches for his body, pulls him against her, and moans.

[Ivan] It's inside of him, too.

That darkness in him that makes him want to push her down, smack her, tie her down, pound her -- makes him want to dominate her and possess her -- it's not something she put there. It's something she recognized. Drew out. Showed to him, laid bare to him, proved to him: that yes. He needs this, too.

And now look at him. His hands on her face are rough, grasping. His mouth is a demand. He kisses her and she moans and they press together and the strap of her slip, well, slips and she's half bare to him now, those new breasts of hers, softer and heavier and larger than before, bared to his sight. Only, he's not looking. He's eating at her mouth, and his hand draws down her neck, pauses over her throat as though he might choke her; passes on, weighs her breast in his palm. His turn to groan. His turn to grind ferociously against her, as though any second now he might wrest open his pants and fuck her right here and now,

as if none of the past nine months ever happened.

Because that's the point of all this, isn't it? Pretend it didn't happen. At least for now. Pretend, or prove, that nothing's changed, even if they've changed irrevocably; that in the vacuum left behind after the baby simply up and disappeared they still have each other. A connection. A similarity in their own, shared darkness.


Ivan all but rips the slip down. Both sides, peeling it down from her upper body. His mouth leaves hers then. He rears back and he looks at her, this body of hers he hasn't seen in months. Different now. That old body will never quite be back; she'll always been a little softer, a little more curved. A real woman now! some idiots might coo; it has nothing to do with that. It's simply yet another indelible mark. Once, there was this.

He puts his mouth to her breasts. Her son never did that; never had the chance. He does, and it's entirely a different sort of hunger. In another moment he's working the slip down her hips, pushing it down until he has her naked in her hallway and he's undoing his pants, he's dropping his slacks like he might turn her around and fuck her right here, before he's even seen the rest of her apartment.

[Hilary] Sometimes it must be so maddening to even think of her. It's possible he swears to himself a dozen times whenever he's away from her that he won't go back to her, he won't answer if she calls him, he won't descend into this madness again, he'll tell her off --

it's equally possible that he thinks of nothing else but her when they're apart. Fucking her. Finding a way to have her next time, push it a little more, be with her a little longer. It's possible, too, that Ivan strives to think of anything but Hilary, good or bad, rather than torment himself day after day, week after week.

All the time, this is what they come back to. Hilary, who sometimes has such nonstop thoughts about him they border on obsessive, whose mind is a dangerous place even for her own thoughts, who longs for him and shoves him away simultaneously, dresses to entice him. Makes noises to arouse him. Moves invitingly, wantonly, so that he'll come to her, and be with her again, and stay. And Ivan is here now, pressed against her now, and nothing they think outside of these moments seems to exist, much less matter.

Hilay has the grace of past athletic experience. She knows how to condition her body, how to elicit what she wants from it as much as she knows how to elicit a certain response from any of her young men. She will never be one of those women who simply never got her body back after having a child. She'll be slender and lithe and it will be hard for the naked, untrained eye to know any better.

But her breasts will always be a little softer now, a little heavier. Her hips will always be a trifle more curved. That cunt he loves so much will stay just as tight, though, and there won't be a scar on her. Let the sentimental coo what they like; Hilary is hardly a real anything.

Except when he takes her the way he does. Then, sometimes, she's in herself. Connects. And all the disparate, floating pieces of her soul fuse together for a little while.

Hilary pushes away from the wall, rubbing herself against him while he palms her breast, groans into her mouth at the feel of her. They writhe together against the wall, her slick leaving a trace of wetness on the front of his slacks, and god, it's been forever since he's felt her like this, her body pressed and open to him like this, not a drop of hesitation or wariness or discomfort in her. Just lust, dark and devouring, as hungry for him as he is for her.

That scrap of satin and lace lingerie ripples down her body and becomes a puddle of fabric on the entryway floor, forgotten. She's letting her leg down to let it fall, but once it's gone, Hilary puts her hands on his shoulders, meeting his eyes for half a second when he yanks back from mauling her mouth to look at her. Her eyes are black, always black, something demonic staring back at him instead of warmth, though they do have their own brand of intimacy. She looks at him looking at her, her lips bright red from his biting kisses, and she moves forward a bit as though she'd climb up on him then and there.

Her back hits the wall again when Ivan grabs her and leans over, taking her tit in his mouth, licking and sucking at her. She arches, letting out a cry that's so desperate it sounds half-pained; indeed, her brow is furrowed with it, her eyes closing.


Hilary has only the vaguest, drugged, hazy memory of Anton being laid in her arms, of someone moving her arms around him to hold him, of voices urging her to do something she couldn't understand. She only dimly remembers him putting his mouth on her and trying, but he didn't quite know how and she couldn't help him. She wasn't even there. So he resisted, fought, wailed and begged noisily for food from someone who would be there. Who would help him. Who would give him what he needed.

It would never be her. And she hardly even remembers her and her son's mutual rejection of each other the first time some nurse or another tried to get her to feed him, get him to accept her. It's a very far-away thing, a half-dream, a shadow going faster than light can travel across her mind.


Hilary puts her hand on Ivan's head and holds him there, moaning aloud even when his hands leave her to unfasten his pants. She gasps, hearing the shuffle of fabric: "Are you going to fuck me now?"

[Ivan] "Yes."

No minced words about that. No teasing, no making her wait. Not this time, anyway; it's been so long, and in the last two weeks he's thought of her in flashes and flickers, considered the way she looked sobbing over her child, considered the way she looked sobbing after getting fucked senseless, considered the way she looked the last time they were anywhere close to happy together, in mexico; considered

whether or not she was even still alive.


So, no. No lies, no stalling; just a hard truth. Yes. She keeps moving forward as if she might climb up on him just like that; he keeps pushing her back, purposefully or simply because he's going at her so ferociously. Her hand holds his mouth against her. She moans, she arches against him, he pulls his pants open and drops them to the floor.

And she might well expect to be turned around now. Flung against the wall, held there by the back of the neck perhaps while he smacks her ass and tells her to arch her back for him, present that sweet little cunt to get fucked.

Only -- that's not what happens. His legs are bare against hers, lean and strong and golden, long muscles and long bones. His feet plant apart for balance as he pulls her up on his body. Lifts her thighs over his hips and pulls her up, exactly the way she seemed about to climb up on him just moments ago. She can feel the sleek musculature beneath his shirt flex against her weight, and then she can see it because she pushes his shirt up or he does, and then he ducks his head out from under the hem, peels it off his arms like shedding a button-up. They're three steps in from her front door when he grabs her by the hips and lowers his head and

bites her rather viciously as he slides into her. His groan sounds like hunger and dark relief, both. One of his hands stays right where it is, holding her by the hip, holding her planted on his cock, right there. The other bunches into a fist; he hammers the wall by her head once as though it's the only outlet he can think of.

A moment later he thinks of another one. He grips a handful of her hair, pulls her head back, and kisses her throat just as viciously as he'd bitten her shoulder a moment ago. There's something ravenous and destructive and ultimately escapist about all this. They can't pretend the last nine months didn't happen. They can't pretend the last two weeks didn't happen -- except they can, so long as they're fucking each other. So long as they're not thinking.

So he fucks her. Fast, and hard, and with a jagged edge of desperation; grasping at her hip and her side, her hair, the back of her neck. At some point his mouth leaves her throat. He kisses her mouth instead, swallows her moans, swallows her whole.

[Hilary] The word makes her let loose a sound just like the one that escaped when he touched her breast. It's been so long that they aren't even bothering with overtures of normalcy, pleasantries, pretense. Their guards are down, because she's alive, and she's here, and he came to her. Outside it goes on raining, a steady patter of water droplets hitting the glass. The light coming through the clouds and windows is gray, stark, and cold.

When he tells her yes, Hilary starts then to tug his shirt up off of his body as he's dropping his pants. "Ivan --" is all she says after that, a gasp more than his name, a name that may as well be an honorific, a plea, a paean. It's hardly up to his chest when he lifts her up, spreading her legs around his waist. She can feel his body; he can see her cunt glistening. Ivan's apart from her for a moment to get that shirt all the way off, yanking it down his arms, and her hands are on his chest, stroking his body, fingertips finding and circling his nipple, then flicking it, rubbing it. She makes another soft murmur, a coo of pleasure at the mere feel of him, but it doesn't last.

Ivan locks his teeth in her shoulder, bites her hard, and slams his cock into her, and she screams. There's pain in it, surely, so much force and ferocity, the sharpness of his teeth in delicate skin and a hard cock pushing into a pussy that hasn't been filled so in a very long time. The Ragabash is slamming his fist into the wall, a wall that has no neighbors on the other side of it, and instead of just waiting for herself to get used to him, Hilary is squirming on his cock, trying to fuck herself on it before he can even stop seeing stars.

So he grabs her hair, yanking her head back and eating her throat, starts to fuck her, bouncing her between his hips and the wall, and all the while she's letting out those screams of hers, gasping and high, but not restrained. Not stifled. Not until he kisses her, and swallows every noise she makes.

Hilary rips her mouth away from him after a few moments, groaning once as she takes his face in her hands, making him look at her. "Call me your whore," she whispers, even as he's bucking his hips to fuck himself into her a little faster, a little harder. "Call me your dirty fucking slut."

[Ivan] It's nothing unusual for Ivan to grab Hilary while he's fucking her. To move her as he likes her by the hips, or to hold her to the bed by the shoulders, or to pin her wrists over her head, or -- any of that.

Something a little different this time, though. The way she keeps putting her hands on him. On the back of his head, holding her mouth to her breasts. On his face, holding him far enough and close enough at once to look at her. Look at her, see her, see the way her brow furrows and her mouth opens with every little gasping scream she lets out

every time he fucks into her.

His hands come up to her face too. Her thighs around his waist, the friction of her back against the wall, the weight and impetus of his body against and into hers -- that's about all that's keeping her up right now. Their hands are on each other, holding each other by the jaw, the face, the back of the head, holding each other right there as their eyes lock. Whore, she wants him to call her. She can see the word flash through his eyes like a heatwave. Dirty fucking slut.

He slaps her across the face.

Not hard; not nearly as hard as he's smacked her, struck her, belted her before. More with the fingers than the palm of the hand. But still: a slap, on the face, something he's never done before. He didn't do it because he thought it would excite her. He did it because --

he doesn't know. There's anger in his eyes now. Maybe there always was. Anger and a kind of desperate, frustrated fear. It has something to do with those two silent weeks. It has something to do with what she wants him to call her, which could never really be true; which those two silent weeks proved beyond all doubt could never be true. He grabs her face a second later and kisses her again anyway, though; a vampiric, punishing sort of kiss, slamming her against the wall, fucking her in hard, unrestrained throws of his hips.

"Mine," is what he calls her, his mouth moving on hers. Lying, "You're mine.

"You're a fucking whore, and you're mine. You're a dirty fucking slut," a brutal thrust, deep; an unrelenting grind of his hips against hers, deeper, holding it, "and you're mine."

And relenting at last. His hand stroking back through her hair, holding her by the back of the head again. He kisses her again, moaning against her mouth as he starts moving again, a little gentler than before. A little slower. Still deep; still those firm, long strokes, his agile body working between her thighs, plowing into hers.

"Mine," he whispers against her mouth, again and again. "Mine."

[Hilary] There have been times before when she's made him all but lose control, utterly. There have been times when he's pulled away from her, pulled out of her, gone to the other side of the room as though she's burnt him, as though she's on fire. And how hard that must be for him to have done even in the past, when all it takes to draw him back is her crawling over to him, whispering to him, lowering her mouth or her cunt back onto his cock and burning those last fraying threads of his restraint to ash.

There have been times when he's hit her, hurt her because she's asked him to, and because he wanted to, and he's begged her never to ask for that again. So she hasn't. Hilary doesn't ask him now to slap her across the face, take a belt and lash her with it, pinch her or bruise her. She hasn't; she won't. There's no telling how far she'd want him to go if he hadn't begged her not to ask that of him again. They don't use safewords, safety nets, full-stops. He hasn't suggested they institute any; Hilary hasn't, either. They simply don't acknowledge that it might be necessary, because so far, they've gotten nowhere near her limit.

Somehow that might be tangled up in why he slaps her now, furious and horny and aching all at once. Hilary doesn't know; Hilary isn't thinking. She gasps when he slaps her, not hard, but enough to make her face go to one side from sheer startlement. When she turns her face back to him, her mouth is open, her eyes wide, but not from fear. He didn't do it to excite her. She looks excited, all the same, grabbing his shoulders to ride his cock again, grinding herself down on him.

Ivan doesn't let her get away with that long. Grabs her, slams her to the wall -- makes her scream again as he starts to pound her pussy right there, makes her let out noises no human woman should be making while her lover is fucking her, kissing her while he's snarling

mine.

whore.

slut.

mine.

Hilary's mewling, squirming back on him when he gives her those deep, unmitigating grinds of his cock. Her cunt is pulsing around him, hot and slick, quivering with orgasm as he's telling her over and again: mine. fucking whore. mine. dirty. fucking. slut. mine. Ivan can feel how quickly she comes, how responsive she is and always is to him, how fucking wet she gets when he does this to her. How she arches her back, whimpers for him even as he's punishing her.

For what?

It's a tight orgasm, but it goes on for several seconds, even as Ivan is gentling a bit, kissing her now, stroking her hair like she's a pet, fucking her a little deeper, a little more steadily. Hilary's trembling with aftershocks of pleasure, clinging to his body and gasping whenever he gives her one of those long, slow swivels of his hips, one of those half-teasing grinds. She shudders every time he repeats the lie.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

"That's it," she mutters, whimpery and pleading. "That's it, give it to me. I'm your whore. Make me dirty; fuck me."

[Ivan] He lies over and over, calling her mine, mine, mine, but the moment she repeats that lie to him he can't seem to bear it. I'm your whore, she shudders, and he's kissing the words off her lips, stifling them with his mouth

before he stifles them with the palm of his hand. Clamps his hand over her open mouth, shutting her up, silencing her, just shut up, please, even as what few words escaped manage to sear right to the pit at the center of his consciousness where all that darkness, all that violent twisted want seems to live.

So much for gentleness. He's fucking her so hard again, covering her lying mouth and biting her white shoulder and pounding her, wrecking that sweet little cunt of hers that no childbirth ever ruined, of course not, look at her. Far too expensive to ruin. Far too priceless to give herself away so cheaply. Not to a child, not to a boy, not to any of her boys, all the stupid inexperienced youths that have studded for her in the past,

but they're not who he's angry at. He's not sure who he's angry at. Maybe Dion. Maybe some part of him, the same part that had some stupid wild fantasy of running off to siberia with her, hoped -- wished -- Dion really would forsake her after the so-called stillbirth. Hoped and wished he'd cast her out, forget about her, move on to the next pretty young purebred mad thing that might give him a trueborn heir

so Ivan could scoop up the woman who had, in fact, given him a trueborn heir. The irony could choke him.


Or maybe he's angry at her. For making him worry. For making him think maybe she was dead, for fuck's sake, nothing for two weeks and then this stupid, infuriating little text message like nothing's happened. For making him come to her; for answering the door in her shift like some textbook unfaithful wife; for making him want her when he very nearly wanted to strangle her. Or fly her away to Siberia.

For peeling back his golden exterior and showing him the darkness inside. For showing him how to feed it, and now that it had awoken there's not putting it back in the cage. Just look at him: going at her like a beast, holding her against the wall, muffling the cries she's letting out as he's grunting and sweating and slamming into her, biting down on her, grasping at her breasts and her hips and

look what she's done to him; just look. Look what she's unleashed in him. Look what she's made him realize he needs.


Or maybe he's just angry at himself. For being so foolish as to believe that somehow those nine strange months meant something. That things changed in that time, and what happened then would matter when it was over. That the conversation in the shade of the hacienda's arcade, the moments he spent holding her as she slept, the kisses at the school of art, the drive through the countryside, the lunch they had on their private terrace, the morning they spent asleep together, the few short and strange visits when she came back to gray and cold chicago -- even the bewildering, bizarre hours after the birth -- that they all meant something, changed something, changed her, changed them.

That she wouldn't try to sweep it all away like this. That he wouldn't let her, if she tried.


But he's here. She called, and he's here. She showed him she was in heat, let him smell her sex, and he's on top of her. He's fucking her against the wall and she's moaning against his hand and she's lying to him and telling him she's his and he keeps repeating that lie, and

he's so angry that he collapses into himself like a dying star, falls into that black pit of wrath that she's ever so familiar with. It swallows him whole, slams through him like a thunderbolt, and he realizes it's not wrath after all but blinding, synapse-frying pleasure; he's grabbing her by the hip and grinding her on him as he fucks into her, twice, three times, so fucking hard, shuddering and snarling and falling apart inside her for the first time in so,

so very long.


Afterward he can't hold her up anymore. She can cling to him if she wants, or if she can, but he can barely hold himself up. He holds on to her, though. His hand leaves her mouth; leaves her hip; he wraps his arms around her and holds on to her. She's shaking -- or perhaps that's himself. He can't tell anymore.

[Hilary] This is rabid, this is mad. They've done almost nothing but lie to each other since Ivan knocked on the door. Hilary pretending she couldn't possibly imagine he'd be worried when this is the man who suspects that Dion's first wife did not, in fact, die by her own hand. Ivan calling her his, over and over, til she repeats it back to him. There have been truths: she's not lying when she gasps every time he slams her against the wall. Her orgasm. The fact that Espiridion didn't touch her the whole time he was here. Not to hurt her; certainly not to fuck her.

So maybe she is his. But: Ivan covers her mouth as soon as she says so, and Hilary moans into his palm. There's sweat on her skin, shared with his, as hot and slick as her cunt's slide on his cock. She takes it, all of it, lets him ruin her, gives herself away to him like a whore -- cheaper than a whore. A slut, too hot for it to wait, too ready to do anything but open her door and tease him til he fucks her.

Mother of his child.


She'd still be talking to him now if he weren't covering her mouth while his hand roams over her breasts, squeezes her, bounces her tit in his palm just to feel it. She'd be moaning or screaming still, coming again for him -- she's in heat, after all, and he's studding for her, isn't he? Something like that. There's no sign of the woman who wanted not to leave him in November but couldn't bear to stay, no sign of the woman he assaulted by the pool and held until she slept so she could pretend he was a dream, no sign of the woman who scraped out the insides of a vanilla bean and chided him on how he cut a mango. No sign of the woman holding onto the baby's foot, crying because -- because of everything. No sign of the woman who, here and there, would touch him gently or look at him as though she was real, and so was he, and so was this.


Hilary is coming again, a moment before his orgasm hits, a moment so small it's nearly nonexistent. She'd buck her hips but he's holding her right there, giving it to her just like she said, fucking her even harder than he did last time, and last time he wasn't exactly gentle. Fucking her like last time was months ago, in another country, spilling his cum into another body.

Another woman. May as well be.

She shudders, drenching him as he fills her, unable to move her own body except how he moves her, how he fucks her hips back, how her makes her ass slap against the wall, how he puts her against it and just grinds. Her cunt clenches on him again, like before, but longer now, harder now. Her moans against his palm are sharper, shorter, each one truncated by new waves of enjoyment. She has her hands on him but she can't cling to him anymore, can't use her arms.

Ivan's hand drops away and she's gasping, panting, trembling around him. Doesn't say anything, because there's nothing she can say that will make it all right.

At least she knows it's not. That's something.

[Ivan] A rabid, mad fuck. She responds to him so easily. Kindling to a spark. He responds to her so darkly. Solid ground caving away to reveal the pit beneath. It was there all along, just hidden. Paved over. Built upon, all his ivory towers of privilege and prestige and cutting, bladed humor.

Shattered away now. Nothing left but the panting, ragged aftermath. He's the one that clings to her in the end. She has her hands on him, but in the end he's the one that always has to hold on to her, lest she simply

sink away.


Ivan sinks down after a while. It's a controlled collapse -- her back sliding against the wall, his knees folding. In the end he's kneeling and she's more or less on his lap; he's leaning into her and she's caught between him and the wall. He's still inside her, and she's so hot and wet he can hardly stand it. His palm is wet, as though the cries he gagged have stained his skin. His back is wet, the sides of his face; his hair is damp.

His eyes are closed. After a while, when his breathing isn't so harsh and fast, he moves. Nuzzles her blindly. Lays kisses on her skin where moments ago he bit her, gripped her with his teeth, gripped her with his hands with unthinking force. Her breasts feel heavier, fuller against his chest. She's different from the last time he fucked her, different from the time before, different from Lausanne, different from the first time. Sometimes it feels like he's always chasing a ghost. Connecting with an afterimage, when the woman herself has already moved on, changed, twisted.


"We can't pretend it never happened," he whispers to her sometime later. Give him this much: his voice is soft, gentle. His hand too, when he raises it and touches her temple, strokes back that long thick hair of hers. When he met her, she wore it straightened and sleek. Now she wears it thick and wavy, the way it was in San Miguel de Allende. He wonders if it means anything. He wonders when he'll stop trying to assign meaning to such things.

"Things have changed," he adds, quieter. "Haven't they?"

[Ivan] [change!

"When he met her, she wore it straightened and sleek. When she was in San Miguel de Allende, it was thick and wavy. It's straightened again now. He wonders if it means anything. He wonders when he'll stop trying to assign meaning to such things."]

[Hilary] They're shattered, and they can never tell that the other one feels what they do. Hilary, perhaps, too inward-thinking to realize that she's demolished the man she's with, always startled when Ivan -- or any of the others -- looks lost and half-panicked, broken somehow when she's finished with him. Ivan, seeing Hilary only through this veil of nothingness that clings to her like mist to statues in a cemetary. He could be seeing a shadow; he could be seeing a woman. It's hard for him to know.

Sometimes she looks at him and she could be seeing a man. Could be seeing Ivan. Could be seeing something with no more significance to her than a chair, or an empty wine bottle, or a gleaming suncatcher twisting in the breeze. Bright, beautiful, well-crafted, and breakable; she wouldn't miss it if it was gone.

Him. It. She won't miss it when it's gone. She won't miss him. Doesn't.


Hilary sinks down with Ivan, nuzzling him in return, kissing him softly here and there. They would look like lovers to anyone else: true lovers, adoring one another, intimate, close. If anyone were to walk in on them now, not knowing he was slapping her, snarling at her, pounding her, calling her a whore and slut... they wouldn't imagine it. Her cheek is no longer pink from where he struck her, but it was for a moment. His hair is wet; her hairline damp. His body is streaked with sweat; she feels his cum inside of her, her wet sticking their skins together, and revels in it. Hilary rubs her breasts lightly, gently on his chest, reveling in that, too.

All that glossy, silken hair -- it's changed, though it's straightened again. It's longer than it was when he met her, like her breasts are heavier and her hips are rounder, like her body is softer right now though she'll likely strive to make it sleek and slender again, not quite so instantly, obviously welcoming.

Ivan finds his words long before she does, stroking her hair as he kneels there, curled around and under her, holding her, supporting her on his lap. She keeps her legs around him but that puts all of her weight on his body, keeps him deep inside of her. We can't pretend, he says, and he means he can't. Things have changed, he says, but he has to ask her if it's true.

Over his shoulder, Hilary's dark eyes drift open, and she looks at the opposite wall.

"Espiridión is leaving me," she whispers, after a long time. Her hand is on the back of his neck, her hand is in the middle of his back. "It's not my fault, he said. It's something wrong with the blood of the House I was born to, he said." She's silent a moment. She doesn't sound worried, or scared, or upset. There is resistance in her voice, though, even if it's unclear where it comes from, why it's there. "He's a Galliard. I don't suppose, at this point, that I'll be mated again."

[Ivan] [EMPAFEE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Ivan] [LET'S PUT SOME EFFORT INTO IT.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7) [WP]