Ivan
If it's code, Ivan doesn't quite understand it. He doesn't really understand anything that's happened tonight - not the invitation, not Dion's ridiculous farce of forgiveness, not Dion's equally ridiculous convictions of sin and taint; not the fury he felt, not the reason behind his opening his mouth and saying so very much he was better off never saying at all. None of it.
He certainly doesn't understand why, watching that vivid red dress disappear into the Maybach, he flashes to that gleam in Espiridion's eyes; the way Espiridion looked at the woman who was still, if only for a little while longer, his wife and mate. Before he remembered that she tainted his son with her house's sin, of course. Before he forgot
just how good she can smell, taste,
again.
For his part, Ivan drives his barely-legal-supermodel of a sham of a date back to her place. He doesn't even bother to make the effort of pretense. He drops her at the curb of her ultraexclusive luxury condo, and he kisses her on the cheek. She doesn't particularly care; she's just glad the entire insane night is over. They make promises to call, and neither of them mean it. She doesn't look back as she disappears through the door, the glass glistening closed behind her.
His cell phone chimes as he's about to drive away. Home now. Lovely to see you again. His fingers tap impatiently, uncertainly against his thigh. Then he sends a message back.
Home in Chicago, or home in Wilmette?
HilaryMy place, comes the almost immediate and slightly easier-to-understand text message, though the margin between the two is thin. Then one right after it, perhaps as he's tapping a reply -- or considering what the hell, what the fuck:
I'm going around the corner to get some donuts. Want some?
IvanWere Hilary in Ivan's immediate presence, or were she a more astute woman, she would certainly read bewilderment in Ivan's silence.
Eventually, a reply:
Where?
HilaryIt takes a few more moments for Ivan to get a response, but when he does, it's explained by the sheer length -- for Hilary, it might have taken forever, since as far as he knows she doesn't even own a computer and rarely touches her phone.
Good god, Ivan, just go to my apartment. It's on West Kinzie. Mostly made of glass. Ask Dmitri for help.
IvanThere's no reply to that. Ivan doesn't bother. He's uneasy from the events of the evening, unrestful and bristling from the hours with Dion. And now he's nettled by that text, irritated by the incomprehensibility of all the ones before it.
All of which simply says: Ivan is half-angry, stormy-browed, when he shows up at Hilary's door. But then, that's hardly anything unusual.
HilaryHilary has a key to Ivan's cabin by the lake, because it is in a sense hers -- the only thing they really share, other than a child they never see. He has no keys to anything of hers. So when he arrives at her building he can't simply stroll in, slip out of his shoes, and hunt her down in that glass cavern. He can go inside, of course, go up to the door, he has that much privilege even without falling back on his skills as a scout and spy. Maybe it's because he's on a list, the people in the lobby recognize him, or Hilary gave him the code for the front door, whatever.
But Ivan doesn't even get that far. He arrives at her building and is heading for the front door when he hears her call his name. She's walking around the corner from the little side-street called North Franklin, carrying a white paper bag. She's still wearing her gown, her hair still up in a crown of curls, gold and diamond comb glittering. In her other hand is a corner of her dress, holding it up from sweeping the street.
"You didn't tell me what kind you wanted," she says when she walks up to him, "so I got several. Some are gingerbread." She does not lift herself up on her toes to kiss him. There is the sense, somehow, that she'd like to.
IvanTruth be told, people calling his name when he's out and about is not a wholly unusual occurrence. He's known, and not merely the way people of their particular class are always known by, and to, one another. He's also known simply because he does things like throw parties in one of the most beautiful penthouses in the city for a hundred of the city's most beautiful people. And buy drinks for entire clubs. And go sailing with models, dancers, starlets.
Still. Hilary calls his name, and look how swiftly, how sharply he turns. Look how his eyes go over her, sweep her head to toe the way he didn't dare when her husband was about.
And - she has donuts in hand. He stares at the bag. And now he's not merely nettled but rather baffled, lost. His eyes come back to hers. She doesn't kiss him, but she wants to. He can tell. Or maybe he wishes she would. It doesn't matter - he puts his hand behind her neck and pulls her to him, hard, his eyes shutting hard, brow knitting ferociously as he mauls her face.
When he lets her go:
"Donuts? And why the obscure texts?"
HilaryHilary does not, in fact, allow this. Not standing on the sidewalk with no one standing around, not yet, not now. She doesn't do anything as dramatic as slap him, push back on his chest, or startle backwards. She simply sees that look in his eyes, that prophecy of motion in his body language, and she turns away firmly, pressing buttons beside the door to let them both in. She does not want him to kiss her right now. He gets that message clearly enough.
"The Doughnut Vault is around the corner," she tells him. "And sometimes I like donuts." The door clicks, a light turns green, and in all likelihood she only reaches to pull the door open if Ivan doesn't take the gentleman's hint and open it for her. "They weren't obscure, you were just being obtuse," she adds, which in all honesty is her forthright opinion. She lifts the corner of her skirt again, her heels tapping softly on the floor as she walks towards the elevator. Then she does the oddest thing:
looks over her shoulder at him, and smiles, looking so very pleased.
And inside, pressing the upward arrow button: "Don't I look pretty?" she laughs, and adopts a brief, mockingly coy pose as the elevator starts to swiftly ascend. "This really should be worn with gloves, but that would have been far too formal. Maybe when I go to the opera. But then I'll need a new gown. Hardly any of my old clothes fit. My breasts are ridiculous."
IvanThere's something animal, subhuman, intrinsic about the way his eyes fix on her as she turns away. He looks at the turn of her shoulders. He looks at the line of her back. She unlocks the door and he doesn't open the door for her; it doesn't seem to occur to him. It's not until she begins to pull the door open that he reaches past her and levers it forcefully open.
And she breezes in ahead of him. She talks about donuts. One has to wonder what the donut shop's owner thought when a woman like her, dressed as she is, looking like a woman who hardly touches desserts at all, and when she does eats only hundred-dollar dollops of sweetness -- when a woman like her walked in. She says she wasn't obscure; he was obtuse. He's still wondering why the fuck she couldn't just say --
come over. i want to see you again.
When she smiles at him over her shoulder he's still looking at her with those hungry eyes of his. She asks if she looks pretty, this bizarre lover of his, and if she were ten years younger or more insecure or insane in a wholly different way than she is he might think she was fishing for compliments. His eyes flash down her body. She talks about gloves; a spark in his memory, i could wear gloves, they were talking about whips and cuffs and gagging her with the flogger's handle while he fucked her from behind.
She talks about her breasts and he reaches past her to hit the elevator button. He's very close to her, his shirtfront almost touching her back, or those ridiculous breasts of hers. He's in her space, taking her scent, and as the elevator rises he mutters:
"I need to fuck you."
HilaryTonight she seems so effervescent. As though she just went out and had a lovely time, as though tonight weren't warped beyond recognition. Her eyes all but sparkle, matching the brilliance of her jewelry. Maybe she feels Ivan's eyes all over her, slinking over her back and her shoulders, following her when she moves, but she doesn't seem to. It's equally possible that she doesn't notice, is ignoring it, has no idea. Few women have as much power of denial as Hilary does.
She mentions gloves. He remembers.
Hilary doesn't startle away from him when he stands too close to her, sniffing at her, breathing her. She flicks her eyes downward, then over to him, as the doors slide open again. "Soon," she whispers, and walks out into her hallway, turning right to head towards her own door.
IvanHe almost kisses that word off her mouth. Soon, and the moue her lips form, the breath hissing between her teeth: kissed it all, sucked it all out of her, devoured it. It would have been a hard kiss, aggressive as the one he wanted to give her on the street, but
the doors open then and she slips away again. His hand closes to a loose fist, thumb swiping down the side of his finger. Then he follows her.
It takes a sort of trust for him to do this. Come here like this. Follow her like this. Her husband is still in the city. Her husband, whatever his disgust toward the outcome of her happy condition, still thinks he owns her. Might as well, by the laws of their society. For him to be here requires a certain trust that she won't fuck him over accidentally or otherwise. Except he doesn't really trust her, so maybe it's just raw outrageous daring. The same sort of thing that led him to keep right on fucking her while her husband was coming up to fetch her, to sniff her out, to track her down, to drag her back to his den and mount, himself.
Except he's not the daring sort either. He doesn't rush into the front lines. He'll never be a hero. Some might call him a coward; he'd call himself too smart for heroics. Whatever, whichever -- the point is, it's not daring that drives him to come across the city, come to her door, come to her place intending to fuck.
It's something far simpler than that. Raw and elemental. He just said it, low, almost snarling with desire:
he needs to fuck her.
Needs.
He's a step behind her all the way to her door. She starts to unlock it and he puts his hand on her, on her hip where cherry blossoms begin to cascade delicately down her thigh. He thinks of plum blossoms in the dead of winter, fucking her in the entryway of his penthouse. He thinks of fucking her over and over again, one instance after another, all the times he's had her, all the seasons, all the ways she's tasted
and smelled
and moaned for him.
His hand closes hard on her dress, crumpling it into his palm, stretching it over her hips. He presses against her from behind and he's so hard already, lowering his mouth to her shoulder and groaning as he bites at her bare skin. She sat across from him and he barely looked at her all night; didn't dare, or rather, was too smart to do so. Wasn't too smart to ask over and over what Dion intended to do with her, though, was he going to cast her aside, was he going to do something to her, was he going to abandon her already, when, when.
"Not soon," he says. They're both speaking so quietly, but it's not soft. "Now. Get out of this dress before I tear it off."
HilaryWhatever is happening to Ivan -- within Ivan -- is only mounting as they go up to her floor, down the hall towards her front door. Mounting, and seething, ready to boil over. He reaches for her outside and she turns away. He is about to move to her again when she walks out of the elevator, and maybe he thinks she's teasing him, doing this on purpose, can't she see how much he wants to --
Hilary has her keys in her hand, a small ring of them with a gleaming gold charm dangling down from the edge. She has lifted them up slide one into the door, but before she turns it Ivan is right there, grabbing her hip, the silk crushed in his palm, the embroidery rubbing against his fingertips. Rage is licking at the walls like a fire, and she doubts he even realizes it. She can feel it, though.
Just because she never shows any fear of it doesn't mean Hilary is unaware of it. She's aware of a lot of things that could hurt her. It doesn't mean she fears them. Fear makes only about as much sense to her, sometimes, as other emotions.
She stops there, the key in the door, Ivan pulling at her dress, his cock pressing against her ass, his teeth pressing into her skin. That makes her breathe in, like she can't help it, but here is where the trance-like subspace she enters when he dominates her falters. Sometimes a certain tone of his voice or a way he touches her makes her dissolve, makes her pliant, but this is the truth that they are learning and which so many already know:
the domitor is never truly the one in control.
Hilary turns her head. Her cheek brushes his hair where he's bent over her, biting her. His breath is hot where it curls across the faintly damp spot his mouth left when he tells her roughly no, not soon, now. Now.
She says nothing for a moment. Nor does she turn the key in the lock and take him inside with a little laugh, tease him until he wants to thrash her to bruises, nor does she nod her assent, invite his hands shredding the gown off of her. She's silent a moment, and then she whispers, so much like the way she said Soon -- that is, soft and perhaps a little hesitant:
"I feel...happy," she says, stumbling over the word because it's unfamiliar, and because she's not entirely certain of her right to use it. And this is ungentle, because there is no gentle way to say it without being at least partly dishonest, and because it is strange to her to be so honest to begin with: "And you're ruining it."
Her eyes lift to his, try to find his. Her hand is still on her key, and likely his erection is still pressed to her body, his hand still on her. She doesn't look angry. She doesn't look anything but faintly, dimly sad. Perhaps afraid -- so she does know that emotion -- of his reaction. "I want to be with you tonight. Don't... reduce it to this."
Belatedly, wary of angering him further, wary that he'll only doubt her, or something, or get overly sentimental -- which would be worse, to her -- or misunderstand, or something, but belatedly nonetheless: "Please, Ivan."
IvanThe domitor is never the one in control.
There are times when Ivan plays the role so well. When he's got Hilary bound and gagged, blindfolded and strung up; when he's pinned her and mounted her and fucked her while calling her horrible, hair-raising names, but even then, even when he seems to hold all the power and Hilary none at all, the truth is -
she has the power to say no. And he'll stop. And in the end, there is no truer control than that.
Stop, she says now, if not quite in words. Please, she says, you're ruining it - and that glittering, dangerous hunger goes out of Ivan's eyes, is replaced by something closer to pain. It's ironic; he was always the one who complained that she made it all about sex. Strange, that she's the one who asks him now to not reduce it to such.
In the end, Ivan doesn't let her go; he wraps his arms closer around her, pulls her against him, kissing whatever part of her body he can reach.
"How can you be happy?" he whispers.
HilaryIn the end, everything he does is for her. The way he fucks her over and over again until she's crying and shaking from overstimulation -- that's for her benefit, her pleasure, her peace of mind. The names he calls her, the way he hits her, the way he ties her down so he can use her all night -- that's because it makes her feel safe, it makes her feel happy, or as close to happy as she gets. He does it all to make her happy. He is apologetic when he can't go any further. He is exhausted from trying to please her.
So it's very strange right now to see her, smiling and effervescent, talking about how pretty she is, getting donuts at half past midnight, smiling at him and flirting, but mostly just existing. And smiling. Smiling for no reason at all.
How. How can she be happy.
Ivan relents. And she knew he would, because a part of her knows that he really is hers far more than she is his, and that is what works about this, that is what they both hate and both crave about this, though neither would ever really say it. It exists wordlessly, like most other things about them. Exists wordlessly because it just can't be put into words in the first place.
Hilary is held, then. She can still feel his hardness, feels him kissing her all over like even with what she said he can't help himself. She gives mercy; tilts her head so he can kiss her neck and feel her warmth and her pulse there. But a moment later she moves gently away, turning the key in the lock to let them in. "I just am," she tells him, which is not the evasion it would be from many women, but the simple truth. She could as easily say: I don't know, and I don't care.
"Come in," she tells him, as the door is being pushed open. "Come inside, and have a donut with me."
IvanThe laugh Ivan gives is a little lost, a little helpless. His hand slides off her hip as she steps forward. Then he follows her in, letting the door shut behind them.
"I'm not fond of donuts," he says. "But if you have coffee, I'll take a cup."
Stepping out of his shoes, then. Slipping out of his coat, which he hangs over the nearest surface. He undoes his tie as he steps into the living room he's entered once and only once before, when they brought Anton here from the hospital. The thought makes him frown, makes him turn back to her.
"You look beautiful," he tells her, at last answering her. "I would have told you earlier, but I think Dion would have thrown me off the roof." A pause. "And I love your tits. Forgive the French."
HilaryHelpless. What is there he can do about that? Interrogate her? Rake her over the coals? Strip her raw and take away the one thing he claims to want for her, the one thing he should want for her, rather than from her? No. So -- helpless -- he laughs, and lets her go, and follows her.
The bag of donuts gets set on the counter. "You'll have a donut with coffee or nothing at all," she says primly, perhaps serious, but the chances are equal that she's only making a joke. Hilary's seriousness is sometimes just as ludicrous as other people's humor, but god help you if you don't take her seriously. She sets her keys down as well, and the apartment is silent but not dark. The lights from Chicago are thrown through the glass that surrounds them, muted and filtered but bright nonetheless, casting long and velvety shadows.
Hilary, knowing how badly he wants to fuck her -- now, now, not soon, now, I need -- reaches to her side and undoes the long, hidden zipper to her gown as she walks over to the living room that Ivan wants to ignore. She slips it down and carefully, respecting the silk and the embroidery and the finery of it all, drapes the dress across the couch cushions. Underneath she's wearing a black half-slip and bustier. Her previously hidden heels are livid red satin, the soles black and shiny. She steps out of those, but does not remove anything else, walking over to the kitchen.
To make coffee, of course. And she reaches into the back and picks out a gingerbread donut, sticking it in her mouth as she walks to the grinder on the countertop and presses a button. Top of the line, of course -- there are grounds inside left there the last time the burr grinder was used, and water comes in through a thin and well-hidden pipe and the coffee begins brewing instantly, everything self-measuring and fancy and requiring very little effort on her part. Hilary is a cook, not a coffee snob.
Somewhere in there, Ivan tells her she looks beautiful, that Dion would have killed him if he'd said so, and that he loves her tits. Pardon his French. At that, Hilary looks over at him, bites through her donut, and smirks at him as she chews, daintier than she was when she held a donut in her teeth and walked around the kitchen. Having chewed and swallowed, she answers:
"Si c'est le mieux que vous pouvez faire, votre français est terrible." It's rather cheerful, all told, and still smirking at him. She takes another bite of her donut and gives a small twirl through the long galley of the kitchen. "Et mes seins t'aime aussi, Ivan. Vous me fesser aussi dur que vous le souhaitez. Mais vous êtes toujours très gentil avec mes seins."
While she says all this, the smell of coffee is filling the kitchen. She is cupping her hand over her right breast at et mes seins t'aime aussi and bending over a bit to display her cleavage, hopping back up and turning to give herself a little spank on the rear at fesser aussi dur que vous and stroking her fingers over the curves of her decolletage at gentil avec mes seins.
She winks, and takes another bite of her donut.
IvanAnd it occurs to Ivan - now that he isn't fixating solely on the way she looks, the way she smells, how very much not his she is, how very badly he needs her - that it's vanishingly rare to see Hilary happy. Not viciously pleased, not smirkingly amused, but happy. And it twists in him and swells in him at once, this realization and the emotion that accompanies it, because - yes - he wants this for her. And of all the things he could buy her, get her, give her, this is the one thing he's so rarely been able to bring her.
Not never, though. So perhaps that counts for something.
He smiles as she does. And as she tells him to learn French. "Will you learn Russian?" he barters, watching her press a button and start the long, complicated, fully automated process of brewing coffee.
Ivan[DLP! DAMMIT!]
None of the sounds coming from Hilary's mouth mean a thing to Ivan. It was like this in Port Grimaud, too, and Paris - she spoke, he let his mind wander. As though she really were the cougar, paying her young lover's way, arranging the details, pampering him. It was like this, only in Port Grimaud she usually wasn't wearing goddamn lingerie, and in Paris she usually wasn't touching herself, displaying herself.
He watches her from across the room. He hasn't followed her to the kitchen; leans instead against the back of her couch. His eyes are dark with desire. They follow her hands. Follow her body. His hand strays - he touches himself through his slacks thoughtlessly, almost absently.
And he shakes his head, a breath of a laugh escaping. "I don't understand," he says.
Hilary"You started it," she chides him, as far as the 'French' is concerned, as she takes out two plain and simple mugs, both of them the color of port. And over there he sits down on the couch that isn't currently holding her gown, strokes himself mindlessly while he watches her. "You ought to learn, anyway."
She does not offer to translate anything she just said. She stops, mercifully, stroking her breasts or cupping them in a flirtatious little dance around the kitchen, but that doesn't change anything. He still wants her, so badly. She's still dressed in lingerie, her hair still up, her jewelry still on, a bit of sugar on her lip that she licks off while she finds a gold-edged tray and arranges upon it a sugar bowl with tiny spoon, a little metal pitcher that she fills with heavy cream from the refrigerator, the two mugs. She smiles at her handiwork as she does all these unnecessary things, as pleased by them as by the donuts.
IvanAnd it occurs to Ivan - now that he isn't fixating solely on the way she looks, the way she smells, how very much not his she is, how very badly he needs her - that it's vanishingly rare to see Hilary happy. Not viciously pleased, not smirkingly amused, but happy. And it twists in him and swells in him at once, this realization and the emotion that accompanies it, because - yes - he wants this for her. And of all the things he could buy her, get her, give her, this is the one thing he's so rarely been able to bring her.
Not never, though. So perhaps that counts for something.
He smiles as she does. And as she tells him to learn French. "Will you learn Russian?" he barters, watching her press a button and start the long, complicated, fully automated process of brewing coffee.
HilaryIt had to have been important that she asked him to recognize how she felt, to let it be, to preserve it at the cost of satisfying himself. Even Hilary is aware of how rare this is. Maybe she doesn't assign the word 'precious', but she knows it will be a few hours, maybe less, before something grabs hold of her ankle and drags her back down. Right now, though, she's ever so light. She is walking on air, laughing, smirking and twinkling, and enjoying herself.
And perhaps it was important, too, that knowing how easily he could ruin it all, and how often he shows up at her door in a black mood, snarling and clawing until he fucks all his anger and his need into her and relents, she wanted him to come over. Be with her. Have a donut.
She glances at him at the question, and then glances at the ceiling. She thinks, setting a plate on the tray and stacking a few more donuts onto it, then says -- very slowly, very haltingly, recited like a child repeats back their lesson to an ancient tutor: "Я вÑе... еще учуÑÑŒ... руÑÑкий Ñзык."
It's not hard to see her saying this to a native speaker, to tell them to slow down, to write something out, to get a translator. And the truth is, her accent is... nonexistent. This is a woman who mastered French and Spanish and never considered learning the language so closely associated with House Crescent Moon. Compared to the grace and fluidity of her French, this sounds clunky, childish, and stilted.
Also: unexpected.
IvanSo unexpected is the Russian -- from someone who Ivan would have expected to ugh at the very thought of learning the language -- that Ivan's mouth flickers into a reflexive, startled smile.
"I'm impressed," he says. "I didn't think you spoke any Russian at all."
Then he switches. Slides into the heavy diphthonged vowels and sharp, tongue-caught consonants of the Russian language, faster and more fluently than she could possibly follow. He must know that. He doesn't apologize for it. He doesn't move; doesn't pantomime; sits relaxed and princely on her couch, his eyes on hers when he speaks. A more perceptive woman might read so much into his regard; his tone. A more astute woman might read want and ache and something very like wistfulness in the way he speaks to her then. Hilary: it's always hard to say what she sees, if she sees anything at all.
And when he's finished, that smile again -- not the surprised one, but a quieter one than the ones that usually grace his handsome, well-bred face; one a bit akin to the smile he shared with her a moment ago, when she was so pleased by ... well. Whatever it is that pleased her tonight.
"Is the coffee ready yet?" he asks.
[Ivan says, "I wanted you the moment I saw you. There's never been anyone like you, before you. There could have been a hundred other women on your yacht that day and you would have still stood alone. You're utterly incomparable. Peerless. I don't think I ever told you. I don't think you'd understand."]
Hilary"I'm learning," she says crisply, laying two folded napkins from a drawer into the tray along with everything else -- the cream, the sugar, the mugs, saucers, donuts, spoons. It's all quite elegant, chocolate brown and creamy white, accents of gold here and there. "Darya was hired particularly for that purpose, atop her other duties."
Her ears perk as Ivan begins speaking his family's language, and she flicks her eyes over at him. He doesn't intend for her to understand, and she doesn't. Maybe the hint of a syllable that sounds like something else, but beyond a few basic phrases -- I am still learning the Russian language, for example, or A pleasure to meet you, and of course плеаÑе and вы тханк -- Hilary is still learning at the level of a toddler. Vowel sounds. Alphabet. Her own son will speak it better than she can in a year or two.
She returns her attention to her work, though, because Ivan is speaking Russian, and she hasn't the faintest idea. He's not dancing around flirting with her, or stroking his cock and beckoning her over. He sounds urgent, but that could just be the way Russian is, like the way French always sounds so romantic and Spanish always sounds so passionate. Or maybe that's cultural bias. She glances at him as he finishes, returns to English.
"Oui," she says, lifting the stainless steel carafe from the warmer and setting it on the tray, giving a sharp twist to the lid to seal the liquid inside. Lifting it, she carries it to the coffee table
where they set Anton's carrier,
and sets it down. Her dress glimmers on the loveseat at a right angle to the couch Ivan chose. But she doesn't pour coffee for them, or insist again that he at least try a donut. Hilary turns to Ivan and kneels over his lap, the lace edge of her slip brushing his slacks over his thighs. She doesn't sink down, leaving -- as he may realize in a moment -- room for his hands between their bodies. The city lights hit the gemstones in the comb in her hair, strike off of her hair itself, gleam in its shine. Her hands are gentle on his shoulders, just above his pectoral muscles.
"Take it out for me," she whispers.
IvanThe scent of coffee is already rich in the air when Hilary brings the little tray with its napkins and cream and sugar, mugs and saucers and spoons. It's all very elegant; more, perhaps, than donuts deserve, but there it is. And Ivan's eyes are on her as she comes over, on her as she bends to set the tray down, on her as she kneels over him
and makes him draw a sip of air in
as her hands come to his shoulders. For such a fine, sleek thing, Ivan is surprisingly heavy-boned: those shoulders are broad, sheathed in supple musculature, and his hands are long-fingered when they come to her waist.
But only for a moment. She makes a request, which is so like the one she made the very first time he took her or she took him or they took each other to that hotel on the north shore, which is odd because that's what he was talking about, that's what he spoke of when he spoke without intending for her to ever understand what he said.
He touches her breast. He wraps his hands gently around her wrists, lifts her hands and kisses each one. Then he sets her hands back where they are and reaches down, his knuckles brushing her thighs as he undoes his belt, undoes his pants, pushes the soft material of his boxerbriefs down to take his cock out. All this time, all his superficial indolence, and he's still so hard for her; so aroused that he gasps when he passes his hand up the length of the shaft.
HilaryEven the damn donuts are artfully stacked, and this one is gingerbread and that one is glazed and this one is white and dark chocolate iced and this one is plain, soft. They're all rather small, not the enormous things bought at grocery stores but small-batch, hand-made around the corner. He doesn't want them. She's informed him he can't have coffee unless he also has donuts with her. As though this matters, is important somehow, have a donut with me.
Or:
Come home with me. Sit on my couch and have coffee and donuts. Pretend it was you and I out tonight. That we got in the same car and came home. That we got a whim for donuts at nearly one in the morning. That we took them home in our formal wear, your tie undone and me a little drunk still. Pretend that you're staying, and that you belong here, and stop trying to kiss me outside, because it reminds me that you can't, and it reminds me that I'm pretending. Pretend we're happy. Pretend this is real. Make me feel real. Let me feel real.
Eat a goddamn donut.
But right now, all that aside, she comes to him and touches him. She gets on his lap with the coffee and donuts behind her, the city behind him, and runs those precious hands of hers over his shirt, rustling it against his skin and her palms. She flickers a smile as he touches her, seeing the way he looks at her now, halfway between relieved and aching, and how he doesn't even waste time with surprise or asking her why, why now, what game is this, how dare she. She leans forward and lays soft little kisses over his brow and his temple as he puts his hand over the satin panel that covers her breast. She's not noticably more slender than the last time he had her, but she's been steadily trimming herself back down ever since the first of May, ruthlessly shedding what she doesn't want to remember.
Not all the time, at least.
She kisses his face; he kisses her wrists and hands as softly, perhaps achingly. And her hands go back to his shoulders, stroke over them, slide to his collar and begin unbuttoning him carefully. Ivan's hands displace the edge of her slip, but he doesn't bother to lift his hips and push his slacks down very far at all, jostling her atop him. He takes it out, just like she asked, and pants a breath out when he touches it.
Hilary has his shirt half undone when she pauses, looking down at his cock, at his hands over his cock, whispers: "Keep touching it," her voice trancelike, mesmerized. "Stroke it for me."
She asks him for this. As though she doesn't know that he'll give her anything, do anything, anything she asks, anything she wants. As though she's never seen him like this before. As though he's never let her have his cock, at all.
IvanThere's something aching and soft about this. The way they kiss each other. The way they touch each other. The softness of her voice and the hitch in his breath as he does as she says. Obeys her, one might say. Which is odd, because Hilary is -- was -- so averse to anything even remotely echoing of dominance. Only ever used it at the beginning, when she didn't know him, didn't know how he would react, didn't know how to push him into giving her what she wanted from him.
Something's changed since then. Something changed the first time they fucked in the cabin. Something changed in Mexico. Something changed in Lausanne, and in his penthouse the night they made Anton, and when he fucked her tied down to his bed at the lake and then stood up to leave her, cruelly, only to find himself unable to. Only to find himself coming back to her, gathering her up, holding her until she stopped trembling.
She asked him why, after. He didn't know how to answer her.
And it goes on from there. He could trace it back and back, the root of this strange and crushing attachment. And in the end the truth is what he's already given her, though not in a language she could understand. You are incomparable. He didn't think she would understand this, but she does; she understands because she told him, once,
There's no one else like me.
Ivan sets a rhythm, slow and firm. She can hear the shiver in his breath; the whisper of skin and fabric, his shirt brushing against his body where it's loosened, his hand sliding over his cock. After a moment his free hand leaves his body and finds hers. He puts his hand over her thigh as though he needs this contact, this connection, more than he needs the stimulation of his own hand. More than he needs the release of orgasm. He lifts his mouth to hers, searching; finds her somewhere in the midst of her breath, her lips, her hair falling over his face. The kiss is slow, and it is deep.
HilaryTry as they might -- and they have tried, both of them -- to hold themselves back from any further entanglement with each other, they have felt what's between them changing in drastic lurches, in panics, in sudden collapses. There's no telling how long this will last, if something is changing between them right now, if any of this will matter in the long run, or if this is as fleeting as so many other moments they've had. Moments like the ones where he sees into her, so deeply into her, and knows her for a few seconds.
Moments where she knows herself. For a few seconds.
Hilary just watches at first, holding herself up over his body after she finishes unbuttoning and parting his shirt off of his chest. She doesn't seem to react to his hand finding her thigh, holding onto her. Ivan lifts his mouth to kiss her and she ignores him, pulling away a bit so she can keep watching, looking down at his cock and not at his face, not into his eyes.
"Don't stop," she whispers, as though she's waiting, as though she's feeling his pleasure mount even as it crawls up his own spine. "Keep going."
IvanDenied again, Ivan makes a sound somewhere between frustration and ache; throws his head back to thump against the couch. "God damn it, Hilary," he says between his teeth, his hand moving to grasp at her hip briefly; open over her stomach. Then it falls back to himself, smooths down the bared plane of his lower abdomen, tension and pleasure setting definition into otherwise sleek, smooth muscle. He doesn't stop stroking himself off as his free hand slides past his groin, grips at his own inner thigh for a moment before cupping over his balls. He leans his head back against the couch, eyes closing.
The domitor is never truly in control, and by the same token, the domitor is never truly the one taking. He's always the one giving, and he gives her this, too. He gives her what she wants, and tonight, right now, she seems to want this. A show. To watch him touching himself, stroking himself, getting himself off
for her.
The rise and fall of his chest is sharp and fast between the parted flaps of his shirt. His tie is askew, undone, long strips winding loosely over each bicep, one end flapping against his side as he jerks himself off. His eyes stay closed. There's a certain vulnerability in this: being under her without being inside her, being watched by her without watching her, putting himself on display, giving himself over into some of the most mindblowing, debilitating sensations a man could know. His jaw is clenched. His nostrils flare on every inhale -- he makes a quiet, bitten-back sound that he can't quite stop, a stifled, short moan as he brings himself inexorably closer to the brink.
HilaryGod damn it, he says, but he doesn't mean it, and she doesn't laugh. She doesn't even acknowledge that he's swearing, that he's panting. He's been wanting to fuck her since he saw her on the street. Fuck her, likely hard, to own her again after that awful rooftop dinner with Dion. It doesn't even matter that she's wearing that male's jewelry, those human-seeming gemstones of claiming. Right now he's with her, and Dion is not. He's touching her thigh, and Dion is not.
Ivan's breathing is ragged now, panting, his eyes closed instead of staring at her, watching her watching him, He's starting to lose himself in this. He's starting to lose control, barely able to bite back his moans, his gasps, lost in whatever fantasy his mind is playing him to accompany the sensation of his palms stroking his cock, stroking his balls.
Hilary tips her head a bit as she watches him. And when he makes that little, half-stifled noise, she lets out a soft little sigh and lifts up her slip a bit, moving closer to him. Before Ivan quite knows what's happening his hand is hitting her cunt on every stroke, probably hard enough to hurt, but she's seeking out the tip of his cock without using her hands, smiling down at his body while she strokes her clit against the head. Strokes her slit over him. And, bringing him to her opening, begins working herself down on him. Slowly.
IvanNot on every stroke. The side of his knuckles strike her once, he feels it, he feels her and his eyes fly open. They look a little wild. He doesn't look human like this; he looks beautiful and he looks sleek and he looks like Ivan fucking Press, but Ivan fucking Press is not human and right now she can see it so clearly.
His breath exhales in a rush. He's panting, he's so hard, so aroused that when she strokes against him he jumps, a single concerted clench of every muscle in his body. The back of his head hits the top of her couch again and he gives a single harsh shout of pleasure, or perhaps just overstimulation. Then she's working herself down and he's raising his head, he's watching for a split instant before his hands leave his cock and
it doesn't seem to matter that she's this elegant thing, this lovely creature with her hair still swept up, her lingerie demure and electrifying all at once. He puts his hands on her face, he pulls her down to him and he kisses her hard enough to cut his lip on her teeth but he doesn't care; he groans into her mouth as she takes him into her body.
HilaryIvan forces a kiss on her, bites it out on her mouth where she hasn't allowed him to touch her all night, and Hilary
stops. She maddeningly, unbelievably stops sliding herself down onto him, holding him half inside of her pussy, which is slick and wet and so very fucking tight around him, while he groans into her mouth and cuts his lip and she waits for him to fucking let her go. When he does her eyes are dark, and her hands are still on his shoulders, and she's staring at him.
"I didn't want to yet," she says, before he can kiss her again, before he can demand to know why she keeps rejecting him. She isn't glaring at him, her brow is unwrinkled, but she looks a bit shaken, like now she's hanging on to something and the hold is more tenuous. She doesn't want to be angry right now. She truly doesn't. She just wants... this. And 'this' is stalled, driving him to a place where he can barely control what he wants, where he can't think, he can't likely even answer her, while she tries to find her way back to where she was when he wasn't pulling, grabbing, snarling, demanding, biting, kissing her when she doesn't want to kiss
not yet, not like that, not the way he keeps trying to maul her face, perhaps not at all right now,
with no more explanation for that want than for her happiness. But she's still halted, so much more in control of herself than he's ever seen her when they've started fucking, and she's watching him. "Should I stop?"
IvanHe doesn't just groan into her mouth - he curses outright, shouts it, Fuck!
She stares at him, eyes dark. Waiting. He thumps his head against the couch, grasps at the cushions with his fingers. Closes his eyes and breathes, breathes, opens his eyes again.
"What the fuck, Hilary," he spits, and he's somewhere between frustrated and needful, anger licking at the edges. "What the fuck do you want from me?"
HilaryWhich seems to answer that for her. She rises off of him immediately, merciless as she can be only because her heart really is fractured into hundred of pieces of charred, floating debris in some distant, cold darkness. Her slip falls over her legs and she steps away, not to demurely pour coffee and eat another donut but to step away from him, those traces of happiness long gone now, a frown destroying the purity of her expression, darkened by anger.
"I asked nothing of you but for you to come be with me tonight," she snaps. "And outside you try to grab me like you just did. In the elevator it's 'I need' and standing like a beast over me. In my hallway, no, 'not soon, now'," she reminds him, looking at him directly now, her voice coming dangerously close to mocking him, but it's anger that doesn't allow for that much forethought, not gentleness, "grabbing my dress and biting me and telling me you're going to tear it off. Grabbing my head like that and making me kiss you, kissing me like that, because it's what you want, because over and over tonight it's what you want, what you 'need', what you like, now, now, now."
She picks up a donut and throws it at his chest. It's the nearest thing, the easiest to grab. She'd as likely have hurled the mug, or the creamer pitcher, splattering the fluid everywhere, but the donut is what ends up in her hand. "When tonight did you get the impression I wanted you to grab me and crush me and kiss me like that? And how many times did I turn away when you tried? When did I show you I wanted you to be rough with me or use me like that, and how many times did I touch you softly or ask you to stop?
"How dare you snap about what I want from you?" she says, livid now, her cheeks spotted with bright pink against the alabaster.
IvanLike that, what remains of the mood tears in half. He comes off the couch in one motion. They could be ridiculous. She has sugary residue on her hand from throwing the donut. He has cream on his chest. She's livid in her lingerie. He's got his pants down, his cock out, his shirt askew on his body.
They're not ridiculous. They're goddamn Silver Fangs. They're mad and they're selfish and they're never, ever at peace, but they're beautiful even like this. And Ivan yanks his pants back up, fastens himself away as his temper flies out of his grasp.
"What I want?" he parrots back at her. "When is it ever about what I want, Hilary? When is it ever not about what you want, what you need, what I'll do for you because I think it might make you happy, or at least halfway human for a moment?" His volume is steadily rising; he's shouting at her now. "Do you understand what need means? Do you know what it's like to never know what you want or how you want it? Do you know what it's like to watch you get in a goddamn car with that pompous jackass of a husband you've got and wonder if he's going to sample what's his one more time before getting rid of you however he means to be rid of you?
"Do you know what it's like to wonder who the fuck else you're spreading your legs for when you're not with me? Do you know -- "
he cuts off on that, sharply. His mouth is a cruel line he swipes the back of his hand across. Then he lowers his head and starts buttoning his shirt, wordless.
HilaryIvan gets as far as his half-mad imagining of Dion wanting to sample what's his, and Hilary all but roars over him: "He tried!"
And he's never heard her voice like that, never. At her worst, right in that entrance hallway, when he threw their son in her face and her hold on sanity snapped in half for a few seconds, she shrieked and howled but it didn't sound like that. There's so much... power in her voice for a moment, so much wrath it's reminiscent of a true roar, the sound of an Ahroun hitting the battlefield, the sound of eons of ancestors behind her who are as cast to the four winds as the fragments of her own soul are.
There's so much more to that, though, than what she says. An Adren Galliard who had been a Fostern Philodox before he renounced, a man who in his lifetime could very well have become an Elder if he had just stayed to the path given him at birth, the man who is alternately obsessed with Hilary -- even hatefully obsessed -- and cut off more from human emotion than she is.
She's his wife and mate. She lives apart from him because she failed to birth him a child. And he tried. Tonight. Literal minutes before Ivan arrived, seconds before she sent that first bewildering message. Yet here she is. Dion failed somehow, or gave up, or Hilary stopped him, or --
well, he doesn't know, because that isn't what she says. She just shouts at him, and it hangs in the air as it is, all alone.
IvanThat stops him. Cuts him off like a knife through the larynx. He'd know; he's done it. There's a jagged, ragged silence, emotions flashing across his face too fast for anyone, let alone Hilary, to read. Somewhere in there is shock; somewhere, anger. Somewhere, regret, sudden and devastating. His breath leaves in a rush, and he stops trying to put his clothes back on; he stops trying to
leave. He always tries to leave when things go awry. Small wonder she doesn't trust him, doesn't trust him to stay - no matter what else he says, no matter how he claims to love her, care about her, hold her precious, he doesn't know how to stay.
But he stays now. He's still for a moment, gut-punched, those expressions chasing each other across the noble palette of his face. That face he inherited from his ancestors the same way he inherited his wealth - none of it his own doing, none of it his own work. Blessed, privileged boy; stupid, selfish boy. He drops back down on the couch then. He puts his head in his hands, closes his eyes.
He wants to ask her again: how can you be happy?
He asks her instead: "What happened?"
HilaryTo that -- to his drop to the couch, head in his hands -- Hilary brutally, ruthlessly gives an audible scoff and a roll of her eyes. "God good, Ivan," she says to him for the second time tonight, "if it had mattered that much, don't you think that would have been the first thing I told you?"
She does not try to pick anything up. She does get a napkin from the tray and begins wiping off her hand, her face like a storm during the daylight, shadowed and yet cut through with brightness at the same time. "He was pawing and mauling at me in the car, and said he wanted to come up and have me in this little nest of mine. So I batted my eyelashes and simpered and pawed back at him and fluttered that maybe we could make a new baby and he'd forgive me."
Hilary drops the napkin on the coffee table; it slides, and hits the floor. She doesn't bother picking that up, either. Her eyes pin Ivan again. "After he'd escorted me to the door and driven away, I was feeling rather delightful, and I thought it would be nice to spend an evening with you, maybe laze around like we do when we're out of the country or at the lake, have a little fuck, and maybe you could even stay here for the night and startle poor Darya in the morning."
She's still standing. "Now, to answer your earlier question, it is almost never about what you want, and you rankle and thrash over that almost every moment I spend with you. Since you claim to want me to be happy so often it's like a Catholic crossing himself, and since you were such a mess from the moment you arrived, I did endeavor to be clear with you about how I felt, and how I wished the evening to proceed in order to preserve that bit of delight. If you will expend yourself enough to think of how regularly I attempt to tell and show you what I want, and how I want it, and what will please me, even when you balk or grow frustrated with your confusion, you may happen upon the realization that on occasion, your anger and displeasure is not due to some teasing obfuscation or inability to communicate on my part, but your own spoiled, rotten little person not getting what he wants, when he wants it, exactly how he wants it."
There's a brief pause there. "Now it would be unfair of me to call you selfish without admitting that this isn't a flaw you carry alone. I'm not angry because you chewed at my face or wanted me right away. I'm not even angry that once again, you snap whenever I ask you to stop being so demanding of me when I'm resistant. I'm angry because you act as though this is all so new. As though you've never once been asked to back off when I tell you to stop pushing. As though this isn't something you've promised to do better at again and again and again."
Hilary makes a dismissive gesture, as though tossing something back over her shoulder or batting away a fly. "And to answer your other question, I don't want anything from you right now. Stay or go as you please. I am annoyed now, and in no mood to stand here bickering all night over the same goddamn argument we always have."
IvanIt's mindblowing that she's so fucking calm now. Or if not calm, then at least articulate. At least able to express herself coherently, in paragraph upon paragraph, when his mind is clawed to shreds. Somewhere in the middle of that, somewhere between your own, spoiled, rotten little person and unfair to call you selfish, somewhere in there he says:
"Stop."
And his eyes are still shut, as though he can't even bear the sight of her right now, as though she were a medusa petrifying in her beauty and wrath -- but his brow is furrowing hard now, pulling into tight creases as he says it again, "Stop. Stop. Hilary, just stop it."
HilaryShe doesn't hear that first 'stop', or she ignores it, or she revels in it because this is the word she tried to give him gently over and over:
Soon
I'm happy
-- which he ignored, and look at him now, look at him. It would be nice to say that Hilary is too kind for that, that Ivan is different enough and special enough that where he is concerned all of her warped senses realign and make sense and she can be gentle, yes, she doesn't take pleasure in suffering, no, she's human, she's something. It would be nice, but that isn't how things are. A part of her smirks on the inside and gloats, revels in his misery like she's a predator and it is hot, steaming blood trickling down her throat, yes.
But it would be far too awful to say that that is all she is. That there aren't other parts, just as broken, that are confused, that are horrified, that are shaken and even parts that are hurt, because doesn't he understand, couldn't he tell, she just wanted to be sweet to him for once. Have coffee and lounge around the apartment and eat donuts. Tease each other. Make love, like that's a thing, like that's a real thing they could do, that anyone could do, and didn't he have any idea that she was doing that for him, that she wasn't willing to give up her brief delight for the kind of raw, rough, dominating sex he wanted but still, still.
He was so hard. And touching himself, wanting her so badly. And why couldn't he see that that was part of why she came to him on the couch? What is wrong with him. Why is he so stupid.
So it all circles back around and around to anger, every emotion she tries to feel. Every drop of hurt, every ounce of confusion at how they ended up like this, and it comes back to that endless, bottomless wrath that breaks apart everything else. Sometimes she thinks she might even love him, and love Anton, and that she could really do it, she could go visit the baby and hold him and play with him and they'd all be so happy wouldn't they
except. That turns back into anger, too. And she sees things in her mind she'd rather not see, things she can't say to anyone, least of all Ivan, he wouldn't understand, and he probably wouldn't forgive her for those fantasies either, and then
she's angry at him again, for failing her. For never understanding her. For reminding her, for all his closeness, how goddamn alone she really is.
It's the second and third times he says it, Stop, very close together, that she stops. The words I'm not even angry that -- fall dead on her lips, and she looks at him in vague bewilderment, a little lost because her oration was cut off. She blinks, staring at him. She doesn't ask 'what' or 'what's wrong' or lambast him. But she does stop.
And that's the crux of it, isn't it. That for all the times she can seem almost human, all the times she's almost a real woman, almost a whole person, all the times she's almost warm and almost tender and almost close to him, almost knows what love is and how to share it with another living thing, all the times she's almost almost almost something --
for all that, she's not. She's irreparably broken. They both are, and she's had so much more damage to break under. She's had so many more years to shatter over and again, to fall away from what light there once was. And now sometimes a little bit of her can drift together, long enough to fool him into thinking maybe, maybe he can love a thing like her and not be ruined by her. Not be dashed to pieces the way she destroys everything else that comes into her orbit. Maybe he can be with her. Maybe he can help her hold herself together.
But it's so exhausting for her, and she can't keep it up, and in the end the only constants are her anger and her incomprehension. He suspects she never quite understands why the people around her break so very easily.
"You're cold, Hilary," he says at last. Softly. "Sometimes I think I see warmth in you. Sometimes I think you almost care for me. Once I even believed you loved me. But it's all gone in an instant and then nothing matters to you. Nothing touches you, and you break everything around you.
"I can't ... do this. I can't go to dinner with you and the insane thing that owns you; I can't watch him stake his claim on you with every word out of his mouth and then pretend it never happened. And if it's not him it's someone else, there's always someone; it'll never be me. Even if there's no one else, I can't keep ahold of you. You always drift away and then you're so...
"...cold."
A pause. Quieter still, then:
"You don't even see the difference between want and need. And I'm sorry if I was too aggressive for you, I'm sorry if I ruined your happy little night. I wanted to be happy for your sake. I'm not. I'm fucking miserable. I needed you close to me. I needed you with me. I needed you, and all you saw was selfishness."
HilarySo she's standing there, in her black bustier and her black half-slip, her hair more disheveled than it was before, her cheeks more flushed, her head tipped a bit to the side. She stares at him until he manages to speak, and some women would flinch, pull away, walk away, cry, lash out. But 'cold' doesn't surprise her or bother her. He says it again and again, all amounting to the same thing in the end, and the only time she even seems to react is when he says he once even believed she loved him. Her brow almost furrows.
As he goes on she looks out the window instead of at him, her head turned and her eyes watching the glass. For a moment she imagines snow falling outside, and wonders what that will look like, come winter. Won't it be lovely.
Ivan tells her what she is, and sums up their relationship one way, when she knows that in an hour he might sum it up another way. It's never really mattered. It doesn't really matter now, either. But at the end, she turns to look at him when he says he wanted to be happy for her sake, and he wasn't, he was fucking miserable. "I --" she almost interrupts again, but he's still talking, so she presses her lips hard together and waits.
"I didn't ask you to try and be happy," she says, her voice low. "I just wanted you to be here with me, miserable or not. But," she says, shrugging one shoulder, "that clearly that wasn't going to be enough unless you were grabbing my throat and mounting me. I'm sorry I wanted to be close to you in a different way for once," she apologizes, crisp and vengeful, coolly and remorselessly passive agressive. "So will you be swearing that we're just ruining each other and that there's nothing to me, and nothing to us, before you stalk out the door? Or would you like coffee first?"
Ivan"You don't even know," and this is sudden, snapped, his head coming up in a viciously smooth arc - despair to anger in the blink of an eye, "what I wanted. You shut me down before I could show you. So don't fucking assume I wanted to brutalize you."
A beat. Then he relents a notch -
"And no. I'm not pretending there's nothing between us. There's something there. I just don't know what it is to you." It's not much of a relenting; his anger mounts again. "So why don't you tell me, Hilary. What the hell is there to us, that you can stand there and rip me to shreds? What do you feel for me? What am I to you?"
Hilary"I told you," she says, her voice a little too level, which to him makes it heartless, "at the lake."
Ivan"Tell me again," and god, they can be vicious to each other; neither of them will give a single inch, "because I don't believe you anymore."
HilaryHer head tips. "You won't believe me if I say it again and again. You don't believe me having heard it before and believing it once. And we end up going in circles all over again." She's still a moment, then she turns away. "You know what I am. What I can be and what I can't be. And regardless, you paint me according to whatever you feel at the time. Tonight you've decided I'm heartless, and cold, and 'ripping you to shreds'. I don't see that there's anything I can do to change that other than becoming whatever you want right now and hoping I fake it well enough to fool you."
Hilary is at the tray, bending now to lift it again. "I was happy. I wanted you to be here with me while I was happy. That's all. That's what you are to me. But now I'm not happy, and I'm sick of this argument again and again, and I don't care if you stay or leave anymore."
IvanShe doesn't quite get around to lifting the tray. She bends; she reaches for it and he reaches for her. His hand catches her wrist. That grip is sudden, and then it gentles. His fingers slide down to hers. He's not looking at her; he's looking at her hand in his, and she's right about one thing, she's right about how fucking changeable he is, how inconstant, how quickly he changes his mind.
Perhaps they're both guilty of inconstancy. Neither of them can hold on to who they are for long.
"I don't want to go," he says, low. "I want to stay. Let's not argue anymore, okay? Let's not talk anymore. We can talk later if you want to and I'll try to explain; we can try to sort this out. But just ... come here, for now. All right?"
Hilary
What she expects is for Ivan to get up and leave at that. Because, after all, isn't that just the crux of it: she says she started out feeling one way and wanted him here, now she feels another way and doesn't care. That isn't what Ivan does, and he reaches for her hand instead. Hilary flinches away, dropping one edge of the tray. Cream sloshes across a napkin, a donut rolls to the ground, the sugar bowl jostles but -- surprisingly -- doesn't tip. The coffee carafe is too heavy to care much what happens.
Normally she likes it when he does what he's been doing all night, but there have been other times, times before now, when Hilary has been repulsed by the same treatment. And Ivan says he never knows what to do, and all is well and good if it's what she wants, but if she resists it's like the world just fell apart and he's so angry, so frustrated, wanting to know what the hell she wants from him, as though she's just slapped him across the face by stiffening or drawing away.
Small wonder she wasn't entirely sure, during that brief discussion that got close to the topic of safe words without ever quite getting to it, that pulling away from Ivan would be very useful to them. He doesn't like it when she resists him, as though she wouldn't resist him unless she hated him, unless she didn't care for him at all. She wouldn't say this, not that unless it were dire, unless she loathed him for not reading her mind. And Hilary, even were she far more sane, would not be able to comprehend this in him.
She flinches away, and expects the sky to crack in half again. Or maybe he was berated enough, maybe he's worried enough about losing her forever that he'll relent, maybe instead of raging he'll tuck his tail, because it's rare that she sees the middle ground between the two, particularly in any son of Falcon.
Hilary looks at him, unafraid, though she is waiting for what he'll do. She doesn't stop him from holding her hand, or touching her fingers, but that first reach, that first grip -- she flinched.
"You can stay here," she says to him when he's done, as though he were asking her permission to not be cast out. "But I want to walk away from you," she goes on, her voice quiet but not soft, "if you can just...live with it for a minute. Because I don't want to be that close to you."
There's a beat. "For now."
IvanShe drops the corner of the tray closest to him. He lets her go as though scalded. His silence is tense, but she's not afraid. She asks for not very much at all. She asks for a little time, and he, for once, relents.
"Okay," he says quietly. And after moment of thought, "If you don't mind, I'll take a shower."
HilaryThere are nights when she thinks of dancing with him. Not just the evening out across the Atlantic when she rested her hands on him, one on his shoulder and one cradled in his palm, as they waltzed across a floor half-full of people far older than either of them. Every arch of her body was lovely that night, even the bend of her wrist, the lengthening of her neck as he spun her out, not a trace of it reckless or uncontrolled. He could see, for the first time, what it means to be over-precise, to be too perfect as a dancer, to be marked down in competitions for a lack of passion or freedom in the movement.
But she thinks of dancing with him to strings, to music that aches, choreographing as she goes, and in this imagining he knows all of the steps. It's an idle thing to think about, dancing with him. He's very graceful, himself. Dion isn't, not in the same way. Nor was her first mate, who remains nameless, though he was better than Dion and had been taught from youth how to dance properly with a woman.
Hilary does think of him sometimes. More often than she used to. She wonders about the what-ifs that stem from the first: if he had not died. She would likely still be his mate, and nannies would be raising their children, and she would go on riding her horse across his estate, hiring and firing cooks on a monthly basis. She wonders if she would cheat on him. She never did when she was with him, but they were out in the middle of nowhere. She wonders, though, if she would have gone to find some fine young bucks to pleasure her. She wonders if she would have needed to. She thinks about dancing with him, too. His face and Ivan's face warp together and apart. Sometimes Ivan looks like her brother, and sometimes all this does is lead her thoughts to Anton, who was so very small and who evolution determined should look like his father at birth, only more like his mother as he grew past that first, security-defining instant of paternal recognition.
Hilary shakes her head: she doesn't mind. She picks up the tray again and deposits it in the kitchen, but does nothing else with it. She doesn't even go to check and see if the cream spilled on the carpet. There are donuts on the couch and floor. She doesn't even empty the coffee carafe. What Hilary does is walk away from Ivan, and when he gets up to cross the bare floors and enter her bedroom to go shower in her bathroom, she lets her mind wander.
Her bedroom is unchanged. The bed is made, everything is pristine white. The light overhead is not off; it rarely is. It is a dim, pale blue. Her bathroom is equally tidy, makeup and hair products tucked away neatly here and there, a robe hanging on a hook beside the shower, fresh towels rolled into baskets ready for use. The water comes on and it's already hot.
In the kitchen, Hilary reaches up and slides her comb out of her hair. It skitters on the countertop where she tosses it, careless despite its cost. She undoes the pins that keep her hair done up and lets it all fall, a chaos of dark curls that smell of her shampoo and of hairspray, shortened by the iron to dust her shoulders. She shakes it out, runs her fingers over her scalp here and there to loosen it, to relax where the hair pulled at her skin to achieve that Look. She leaves the pins with the comb, and after a moment or two of leaning against the counter, she walks to her bedroom.
Hilary hears the shower running but doesn't walk that way. She enters her closet, unclasping and dropping her bustier, dropping her slip. Ivan can't see her from where he is; she can't see him. She doesn't look. What she does is open a small drawer in her dresser to take out a pair of cotton panties that are, all the same, sinfully soft. She steps into them, draws them up, closes the drawer and opens another one.
When she walks back out into the apartment proper and then to the kitchen, Hilary is wearing a pair of dark blue satin shorts trimmed in lighter blue. Her top matches it, a short-sleeved button-up that has an extra fold of lining inside so not even the thread from the buttons' fixtures rubs against her precious skin. She should shower. Rinse off the night, and Dion, and wash her hair, and clean her face of makeup. Maybe later. She twists all those messy curls into a bun, and a particularly wild-looking one, and pins it in place with the same pins that were there earlier.
Hilary washes her hands. She lifts her apron -- plain, and black -- from its hook inside the door of the pantry, and loops it over her neck, ties it around her waist. Out comes the tomatoes, the board, the knife. It's a very nice knife, and she knows the last time it was sharpened, and what she has cut with it since then. She knows her knives as well as Ivan knows his own. Perhaps better; he doesn't have to eat what he cuts.
When Ivan leaves the shower and then leaves her bedroom, Hilary is chopping small yellow tomatoes to the same small cubes as the bowl of chopped red tomatoes already done. She works quickly, and glances up only briefly when she notices him out of the corner of her eye. Her attention goes back to her chopping. There's something mindlessly meditative about it, something incredibly familiar to her.
Ivan crosses to the couch as she's mixing different-colored tomatoes together, sits down as she's putting used utensils and dishes into the sink to wait for her maid. A new board, a new knife, the open and close of the fridge, and soon the smell of basil fills the kitchen, the apartment, his nostrils. He falls asleep to the steady thunk of her knife, and his half-asleep thoughts add the scent of garlic to the basil, the tomatoes. Then: bread, toasting. It's a half-gone loaf of ciabatta, but Ivan doesn't know that, and it likely doesn't matter.
When he wakes, it's a long time later. It's deep into the night -- three am or four, his body tells him, those senses that also tell him how to find north, how to find
her.
It's very dark. Hilary has turned off all of the lights now, and only the city gives some illumination to the interior of the apartment. She's sitting on one of the barstools at the long kitchen island. There's a round black platter in front of her with six bias-cut slices of bruschetta arranged like petals of a flower around a central bowl -- which is pewter, from the look of things, or brushed steel -- filled with tomatoes and basil. The handle of a small spoon is sticking out of the bowl. It's been long enough now that the oven is cool again, the bread is cold. Hilary is sitting there in her short pajamas, her hair undone again, one arm flat on the counter and the other cocked, her chin resting against the heel of her hand.
Her eyes close and open in a slow blink, but she doesn't move. She doesn't know he's awake now.
