Ivan Press

[Hilary] Dinner is, not surprisingly, French. The easiest and fastest thing to throw together -- and for Hilary, this is nothing more than thrown together -- is steak au poivre. Of course he has strip steaks, and shallots, and Cognac. Everything else is just staples. She has no idea if Ivan ever watches his cook in the kitchen, or if he has attempted to make his own meals at some point, or if he realizes that her skill is more than what anyone who chooses to enter a kitchen is capable of. She wonders if he might realize that this dish is so second-nature to her that it requires no thought, little energy, almost no creativity. She doubts he has the insight to recognize that she is not trying to impress him but just feed him,

take care

of him, but then: sometimes she forgets how perceptive he can be.

Ivan is not allowed anywhere near the stove when the Cognac is put in the pan, flaring up. He has been relegated to non-cooking sous chef duties, because -- as Hilary so scathingly puts it -- she hopes she can trust him to at least not screw up slicing and assembling cheese and fruit on a platter. He earns corrections on even this, his bizarre lover looking at his work and shaking her head, putting down her own utensils, and crossing the kitchen over to him to start rearranging strawberries, roquefort, pears, almonds, brie, etorki and other delectables. She mutters Nous mangeons d'abord avec nos yeux at him as she begins doing so.

But she also tells him to contrast the colors. She tells him, as though he's just a child: make it pretty. like so. no, not so precise. like you're painting.

As though either of them ever do any painting, really.

So in the end, dinner is -- perhaps startlingly -- simple. Red meat, quickly seared and kept warm but bright red throughout the interior, served alongside nothing more complicated than fruit, cheese, and a baguette. Hilary lets him choose the wine. It's something of a gift to him, trusting him with that, but she supposes -- aloud -- that at least he knows something about how to drink.

By the time they sit down to sup, Hilary has still not removed her heels, only the jewelry adorning her wrists and fingers. These she puts back on after untying and hanging her apron, ring after ring, bangle after bangle. Dinner is grotesquely early -- it could be considered a very late lunch, even -- but the day outside is still rainy and gray. She asks, as they carry their plates and glasses and platter -- how novel, serving themselves so -- if they could eat near the windows. It's the most spectacular view in the city, next to Sears tower, and perhaps better because it's private. It makes even the rain-soaked, filthy city look at least artistic, if not lovely.

She sits by the window, and eases her feet out of her heels. The afternoon sun comes through the dark clouds and casts her in dingy white light, speckled with the shadows of raindrops, like teardrop-cut diamonds inverted against her cheek.


There really is no need to clean up. No children or pets or -- heaven forbid -- ants will be nosing around their meal if it's left out. Hilary has more than one glass of wine, entering a lulled and compliant state that is, nonetheless, difficult to deal with. She's quieter when she's drunk, her eyes not just dark but glassy, her stares long and penetrating and hard to understand, her mood even more baseline than usual. And yet, there's this: she becomes silently and gently affectionate, moving over to sit beside him, to lean against him, to rest her hands on his thigh as though to keep them warm. She welcomes his arm around her waist or her shoulders, his mouth to her neck, his hand on her breast, and it is at this last that she moans softly for the first time,

a sound so plaintive, so tenderly wanting, it sounds nothing at all like the demand and desperation of the woman who answered the door in lingerie and fucked him against her entryway's wall.

They long ago took her bag upstairs, Ivan dropping it inside his own room because with her husband gone again and his servants out of the penthouse and the days now ticking away towards her discreet divorce, there is absolutely no other place he would have her. Pregnant, unavailable to his lust, he still wanted her there. Even when he wasn't in the bed, he wanted her there. my bed, my bed, my bed as though this would give him ownership of her, as though it would bring him closer to her, as though this would keep her from simply floating down beneath the dark surfaces of her own mind, impossible to reach. That is where she will stay, and so that is where he took her bag, and that is where he takes her now.

She goes much more quickly up the stairs with him when she's not carrying his child.


Upstairs, the windows opened to the vast view and the rain and the dim midday, Hilary pauses in the midst of one deep, wine-flavored, soul-breathing kiss to put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She opens her eyes and focuses on his, and leans against him. "I have something for you," she tells him, very quietly,

almost as though fearing rejection,

even as the mention of Something causes a small firework of lust to go off in the black skies of her gaze.

[Ivan] The first time Ivan cooked with Hilary, he discovered just how demanding she was in the kitchen. Later he mentioned it, found it odd: such a submissive in the bedroom. Such an overbearing bitch in the kitchen. No wonder those nurses called Max spitting nails -- or crying.

To be fair, though, she isn't quite so vicious with him as she was with those nurses. And he -- well. His livelihood hardly depends on his ability to sear a steak. He's content playing sous-chef to Hilary, cutting fruit

(and being critiqued on his uneven slices, his bruised strawberries, his improperly cored pears)

and slicing cheese

(and getting reprimanded for the torn slices and the way they pair together so unartistically)

and simply laying down his utensils and watching over her shoulder as she ends up rearranging the platter herself, anyway. She mutters in French. He doesn't understand, and he's not meant to. He puts his hand on her back, though, idly and musingly stroking the dip of her spine as she makes food into art before his eyes.

He doesn't know just how talented she is in the kitchen. He knows, though, that Evgeny -- despite a misspent youth that earned him a body full of Russian prison tattoos -- is quite good; wouldn't be here if he weren't. He knows that Hilary is better. He can taste the difference, and that's the truth for so much of his expertise and knowledge: ever from the standpoint of the consumer. Never from the standpoint of the creator.

Ivan smiles when he's allowed to choose the wine. She treats him like a messy, ill-educated child, and for once he doesn't mind. He comes back with a nice red from the south of france, mentions that one of his many uncles actually spends his time -- what time he's not spending doing Family Business at the behest of his greatuncle -- importing fine wines. Specializes in discovering small, little-known vineyards, apparently, and sinks money in to make them something more. Investment, venture capitalism, millions and millions thrown at gambles that may or may not pan out: that, apparently, is considered a hobby in his family; a side pursuit to dabble in and drop when it grows tiresome.


It's too cold to eat outside so they eat near the windows, turning a couch around to face the view instead of the expansive spaces of the living room. Ivan lights the long, wall-embedded fireplace; it's far away enough that the gas flame burns silently, the madrone logs piled atop only occasionally popping. He sits beside Hilary, cutting his steak with precise, subdued motions, grazing the cheese and fruit platter he helped to prepare.

Whenever her wineglass runs down to its last quarter, he refills it. When she starts to lean against him, he puts his arm around her, eats one-handed after that. Eventually, he's not eating at all; his plate nearly cleared, set aside. A slice of pear is the last thing he samples. Its sweetness is still on his tongue when he turns to kiss her, his hand going first to her waist, then to her breast.

That first soft moan he catches in his mouth, tastes on his tongue. Swallows whole, muted in his kiss.


They're quick to retire to his room after that, climbing through the grey light, ascending the spiral staircase that vibrates faintly beneath their steps. Her heels are off. Their footfalls are very quiet, his fingers linked through hers as he leads her down the upstairs gallery, past the guest rooms and their sterile environments, not quite to the two-story library at the end of the hall, where a second set of stairs slashes its way back down to the first floor.

His bedroom door is closed, but when it opens her things are already there -- the bag set out of the way atop a luggage rack that magically appeared there before his servants departed. Clear grey light washes everything here, too. His hands have already worked to undo the zipper of her dress when she stops him, hands on his shoulders. His eyes are already darkened, a little dazed with lust. It takes him a moment to register, and then

he pulls her forward, kisses her again, then steps back with a nod.

"Okay," he murmurs. "What is it?"

[Hilary] She's only been in one of those other guest rooms once. She came here to escape, even when she and Ivan had all but given up on each other. He was a respite. He was, in this strange and aching way, a sanctuary she sought without questioning, or doubting why. Ivan might forget that sometimes -- when she wanted to run and hide, she went to him, the one she pushes away because he just won't stop 'raking her over the coals' sometimes. Hilary forgets that, too.

What she doesn't forget is the way he lifted her up when she got on top of him and took her into this bedroom, his bedroom. She doesn't forget him rolling her under him and taking her like that. They didn't have any restraints that time, they barely even got their clothes out of the way, and it was the first time they fucked that something felt... different.

And that's where the child came from. That exhausted, desperate rush to union and completion, followed by panic at Dion's arrival, and Hilary and Ivan running away from each other. That's how Anton was made, but what Hilary remembers isn't her husband's obsession with her threatening everything, but that even though he was mad at her, Ivan sent her upstairs to rest. Ivan, in his way, took care of her.


There's lace underneath his fingers when he unzips her dress, draws that tab down, down past the middle of her back. They could be a regular couple, almost, making half-drunk love after a lovely meal on a rainy day, and that would be enough. But they both know what they've been through today, and they both know what they're going to end up doing to each other.

They're not normal or regular people at all.

Hilary draws her arms out of her dress and puts her hands on his face when he kisses her the second time. That black sheath falls to her hips, and a nudge or two, a tug from Ivan's fingers, and it drops to her ankles. She is still leaning on him when he draws back, and then she returns to herself, taking a breath and stepping out of the puddle of black fabric. Her lingerie is equally funereal, a widow's veil over her breasts, her cunt, the curve of her ass. She's still wearing that pretty little headband. She walks over to the door where she dropped her heels when they first entered and picks them up. Sits on a little chair and bends over, strapping them back on her feet with slow motions. Slow because she's inebriated. Slow because it's almost ritualistic, putting them back on.

Standing, taller again, Hilary crosses over to that luggage rack and her overnight back, undoing the clasp and opening it up. She reaches up and tucks her fingers underneath her headband, drawing it off and down; her hair washes forward a bit, but there's a faint impression of where it sat in her hair all the same. Long fingers run through her hair while her other hand searches the bag and produces

a toy to share with her friend. He can't see it at first, til she looks over her shoulder at him, still a bit hesitant. When she turns, half-naked and wearing lingerie and heels and jewels and holding --

he could get whores to do this for him. ones with safewords and practice and daddy issues. wear whatever salacious costumes he wants them to, ankle-breaking high heels, even jewelry so he can pretend he's fucking a princess if he likes. he could get a whore just like this. even one holding

-- a suede flog, perhaps eighteen inches from the tip of the handle to the ends of the straps. The leather is black but for accents of deep blue, a midnight indigo: the wrist loop, the bow that adorns the base of the tails themselves. Two metal studs indicate the sheer build quality of the plaything. It looks new. It looks dark. It looks vaguely feminine, and yet somehow, that's more suggestive of the one who'll receive it than the one who will give it.

Punishment, that is.

The truth is, by virtue of the femininity of the flogger itself, it's obvious that it isn't really for Ivan. But of course it isn't. Hilary doesn't even hold it like she might use it, by the handle, the straps dangling down. She holds it in both hands, one palm cupped around the end of the handle, one hand holding the straps like a handful of ribbons. She does not cross over to Ivan, watching him, wary of his reaction.

[Ivan] When Hilary steps away from him, Ivan's hands follow her a ways, then let her go. Fall to his sides. He tips his head slightly to the side as she goes to find her heels: a feral, curious mannerism he may not be aware of himself. She puts them back on. He starts to take off his clothes for the second time today. The same set of clothes, for that matter -- the fitted, v-necked shirt that was more silk than cotton; the pressed slacks that, after all the exertions of the day, are now more rumpled than not.

He tosses his clothes aside while she's unclasping her bag, undoing her hair. His boxer-briefs are a blue so dark they may as well be black, and if she looks she can see the shape of his cock through them. He strokes himself through his underwear lightly, idly, the tips of his fingers passing along the length of his erection while he watches her, curious, a little wary. When she straightens he lowers his hand to his side. She turns around

and he stands very still, not a single muscle moving, hardly breathing when he sees what she holds.

She's wary too. They stand a room apart. She holds the flog in her hands; he thinks of a ceremony he saw as a cub, the bestowing of a klaive upon the daughter of a recently-fallen Garou. The ritesmaster had held the weapon like that -- like something cherished, something powerful and meaningful and holy, something he himself had no right to. She can see his throat move; he swallows.

"Do you want me to use that on you?" he asks softly. And a moment later, the same question only not quite, "Is that what you want?"

[Hilary] They're both in their underwear now, Hilary wet and Ivan hard, ignoring the occasional rolls of thunder outside in the distance.

She knows, on some level, that he likes her like this. She knows he wants her like this, that whether he accepts the flog or not he'll want to hold her down and fuck her and make her his the way he always does. Looking at him, never getting to see his hand stroking his cock through his underwear, though she'd have gone to him and get on her knees if she had.

That didn't happen, though, and now she's standing all that distance away, holding a flogger that is brand new, unused, sacred in the way that sometimes what he does to her seems sacred. Hilary can't read his reaction very well, and she doesn't try to understand him more deeply. She just nods, quietly, when he asks her those questions. "If you want to," she all but whispers.

"It doesn't have to hurt," she adds a moment later, as though to reassure him, because he told her -- no. He begged her once not to ask him to hurt her again, not to take him to that level of darkness again. It's Hilary's turn to swallow, uncharacteristically vulnerable. "But... I'd like it if you spanked me with it. Or ..."

She stops there, closing her mouth, not because she's shy or shamed but because of what he's seen before -- she doesn't want to tell him what to do. Doesn't want to instruct him, hold his hand, show him here, like this. not like that. Because that just defeats the purpose.

[Ivan] Another moment of stillness.

Then he holds his hand out to her. Palm up, waiting for the instrument to be laid in his palm. He could walk to her and take it. Some part of him very much wants to walk to her, take her in his arms, give her some measure of comfort so she doesn't feel so alone, so exposed, so vulnerable to his rejection. But that, too, seems to defeat the purpose.

So there's just his extended hand, his open palm. And he waits, waits while she comes to him in her lingerie and her heels, dressed like this -- provocatively -- as though it were part of the ritual. Part of this deadly-serious game between them.

The handle of the flog is leather-wrapped. It feels cool and smooth to his touch. He grips it in hand the way he might grip a sword or a dagger, solidly, running the soft suede thongs across his palm once in experiment. And then harder, laying down a blow across his own thigh to see what it feels like, to test the measure of his own strength.

When he lays the flog against her skin for the first time, it's very gentle: the bar of the handle behind her neck, the straps cool and soft against her back. By that alone he draws her forward those last two steps, draws her forward until her body is nearly flush against his.

His fingertips explore the curve of her hip and side; up across her ribcage, under the cup of her bra. He caresses her breast for a moment. Then he reaches around behind her and undoes the clasp, slides her bra down her arms and off, a black scrap on the floor. All this time, he faces her. All this time, he looks her in the eye.

Her panties, he leaves on. His touch is a little lazy, explorative, as it comes back around to her breasts. He fondles one, then the other. He caresses her nipples until they harden; squeezes them, tugs them, keeps her where she is by the handle laid across the back of her neck as he plays with her like that. Like he can claim some ownership over her. Like the real toy she's brought isn't the flog at all, but herself.

A long while he plays with her breasts, his hand occasionally drifting up to her neck, across her collarbones, down to her stomach; never past the waistband of her panties. A long while he plays with her like that, not speaking, watching her face. Toward the end, he holds her by the shoulder, holds her right there while he lowers his head to suck at her nipples, kiss her breasts.

When he's finished -- satisfied in some unspoken way -- the leather thongs against her back have warmed to her skin. He straightens and finds her eyes again. The look in his is complex; perhaps too much for her to decipher. "Beautiful," he says of her, a whisper. Then a little more audibly, "Stay where you are."


Ivan walks away from her then. He walks around the corner to his bathroom, or his closet. She can't hear him at all after he rounds the bend. After a while there are some muffled sounds in the closet. Then the clinking of a chain.

When he comes back, he has manacles in hand. Different from the ones they used on the Krasota; a little heavier. Padded and sturdy. He tucks the flog under his arm, growing more accustomed to its weight and swing by the moment. With agile fingers he undoes the first manacle, holds it between his hands.

"Your wrist," he says.