Ivan Press

[Ivan] There's Dmitri. There's the Bentley, flawlessly white under the grey sky. She's on his arm again, and they're walking a little closer than they were; they're a little more unmistakably what they are to each other than they were, but it doesn't matter. He opens the door for her; follows her into that world of white leather and polished wood.

"Take us up the shoreline," Ivan tells Dmitri, and then the privacy screen slides closed again. The windows are closed and tinted. They're in their own world back here, cool and tranquil, the car so tuned for luxury and comfort that even imperfections in the road surface are barely felt.

Ivan reaches out to Hilary. He draws her to him, holds her against his side. He had meant to chain her down and fuck her again in here, perhaps. Turned her over her knee and spanked her until she was moaning against the leather seats. She's so changeable, though, the ragged pieces of her self forming and dissipating in the void of her personality, like fragments of a shattered moon glinting and fading in the light.

And he's so gentle with her now, his thumb tracing thoughtless arcs where it rests against her shoulder, her body held against his like she's something infinitely precious and breakable. He watches downtown Chicago slide by; watches the skyscrapers fall away to parklands and shoreline. He turns; he kisses her temple.

"I thought we might spend some time together in a hotel, or perhaps my lakehouse," he says. "Then tomorrow we can fly to Port Grimaud."

[Hilary] They walk out of the Public House more like a couple than they were when they entered, under the pretense they always use: that they are acquaintances, almost-peers climbing the same general social ladders. But Hilary doesn't hesitate to lean on him a little as they walk, stay close to him as he escorts her to his lawyer's car, which may as well be his. She gets in discreetly, scooting across the cushioned, leathered bench and waiting for him.

[i]up the shoreline[/i], Ivan tells the driver, without telling him any destination, any guess at where. Hilary takes a guess, thinks of Ivan taking her to that house, where the only way she feels safe and remotely sane is if he stays with her. Then again, safe and sane are rare commodities no matter where she is. It's summer now, though, and there will be less darkness. That's what she thinks of as the privacy screen closes again and the car rumbles back into traffic.

At first she looks out the tinted windows, but then Ivan draws her close and she curls against his side, flowing to him like water going down a hillside. Nestled against his shoulder, she almost hums with pleasure. She gives a small shiver at his thumb tracing lines on her flesh, and closes her eyes for as long as his lips press to her temple.

She glances downward as he speaks, looking at her panties still lying on the floorboards. It makes her smile a little, for some reason. Hilary turns her head to look up at him, still wearing that smile. There's no mischief or playfulness in it, perhaps strangely. Only a sort of gentle, pure pleasure, brought on more by the way his arm encircles her than by anything to do with hotels, lakehouses, flights to Port Grimaud, yacht races over the summer.

Looking at his eyes for just a moment, her pleasure fades -- or at least her smile does. She sits up a bit, stretching his arm around her, and looks at the backs of the front seats.

"I called you for a reason," she says quietly, as though just now remembering. "I'm afraid I'll forget if --"

if they keep fucking. If they go on the way they always do. Going here and there, finding different places to pleasure each other, different places to play, different ways to break each other down. If she lets herself think about a summer lying on her back, his mouth on her breasts, sweating away in some unairconditioned suite in some foreign port.

She glances at him then, as though asking permission to speak.

[Ivan] He can sense her pleasure: how pleased she is to curl beside him, to be close to him, to be touched and held and kept close, kept precious. It's with equal acuity that he senses when it fades, and it makes him look at him, search her face for the answer.

But she gives it to him. She called him for a reason, she says. His eyebrows lift a little. If, she says, and doesn't go on,

and he knows what she means. He leans into her and kisses her, long and soft. Then he draws back, sets his head against the rest, and nods for her to go on.

[Hilary] So easily now he slips into this dominant role, and all the countless submissions and gifts it requires: picking her up in a car that suits her, offering her anything he has to give or could acquire, paying attention to the most minute shifts in her demeanor, guessing at what she wants and, occasionally, what she needs.

With a posture of ownership he strokes her arm, holds her gently. With an attitude of command he pulls her to him and kisses her, takes a few long seconds of deep pleasure in her mouth, which is like some kind of drug to her. And with an air of largess he leans back, giving her a nod that she may go on.

She wants all of this. Needs it, even. Sometimes, at least.

Hilary stares at the backs of the seats. In her mind she did this in some high rise or over after-dinner drinks. Coolly. Very calmly, and rather quickly, mentioning it as though it doesn't matter to her at all. And in her mind, Ivan just nods and she knows he's shocked but he subdues it and doesn't question her at all, not one bit. In her imaginings, they leave it at that and move on and act as though the conversation never happens.

Of course now she's had that veneer of ice broken and chipped off a little, the way Ivan always breaks it, then melts the pieces. She is in the car that he used to pick her and her son up, where they were when he healed her, where she opened her eyes and held onto the newborn's foot as though she was the one needing warmth, closeness, and comfort, and not the baby.

She feels drugged. Fuzzy. So she just says it, not cool or collected at all but rather flatly, and very distantly:

"I was thinking. Perhaps once or twice a year we could set a time and-- " a short breath, silently taken, "you could show me pictures. And tell me about him."

In a few short sentences, the blood has drained quickly and dangerously out of her face. "It doesn't mean I want to talk about it," she says, the words clipping off at the end, firm and sharp no matter how quiet her voice. "I don't want you to throw it in my face whenever you get upset or because you think I'm out of my mind or heartless. I don't want you springing it on me."

There's anger in all of that, seething and roiling beneath the surface, as hungry for a single drop of blood as a shark, as ready to react to the slightest trigger. She closes her eyes, swaying -- or that may be the motion of the vehicle.

"But it doesn't go away. Just because we don't talk about it. He doesn't go away." Her eyes open, and for a moment it seems like she's somewhere far away, or very long ago, not talking about Anton at all. It passes. She clears her throat quietly, leaning back and looking out the window. "I would just like to know occasionally that he's well."

[Ivan] The silence is surprised, even shocked. It's been a month, nearly two months, since Anton was cut out of her and all evidence of him smoothed away, sealed away, healed away -- if only on her body. They've spoken of him only once since he was taken from her, and when they spoke of him she screamed like nothing human.

The truth is before her meltdown, Ivan had thought perhaps to show Hilary pictures, videos, as they were sent to him. He thought perhaps to share the nursemaids' bimonthly letters. The information is there. The infrastructure is there. They could be very involved parents, no matter the distance. They could be tyrannical, breathing down the necks of the nannies and the maids, forcing them to make daily logs of their activities, making sure their son grows up in exactly the environment they want... but they don't.

And they could never be very loving parents. And in that, distance matters -- but it isn't everything. They simply don't, or can't, [i]care enough.[/i] Ivan has never once called to direct the nannies to do something differently. And the bimonthly letters are glanced at, the pictures skimmed over, the videos flicked through.

He never thought Hilary would want to do even a fraction of that. Never thought she'd want to hear about him, Anton, again.

So there's a silence, a stillness that isn't a deliberate pause, an assertion of dominance. Just a stillness. Anger stirs through her, and he feels a little ashamed because she has every right to be angry. To feel she needs to ward away such behavior. The last and only time he mentioned Anton, he used it as a weapon. As the one unstoppable javelin that would shatter every shield, pierce every piece of armor she had.

It worked. He never wants to do that again.

Which may be why he's careful now; cautious as he speaks. "I have some letters already," he says, "and some pictures. I can tell you now. Or perhaps we could simply agree on some preset dates when we'll talk about him. And at other times ... we'll simply let him be gone."

[Hilary] "No," she says instantly, though still softly, when he says [i]I can tell you now --[/i]

And perhaps he stops there, but she doesn't move or change or speak again, so likely he continues, tells her they can arrange some other times. Like anniversaries."

So Hilary gives a small nod to that. It's what she had in mind. Some time she would know was coming. She isn't even sure yet if she only wants to speak of it once a year, make a nod to the boy's birthday like that, or if she wants more. She isn't sure how her wants will change over time. She never is, even when that time is only a few minutes. A matter of seconds.

She takes a breath, and lifts her head, then closes her eyes suddenly. It's only a small sway, but then she lays down. A little bit is all she had at the pub, but she isn't drunk. She lays down on the bench, putting her head on Ivan's lap, and puts her hand over his leg just above his knee.

"Not now," Hilary says, a little more stable with her eyes closed and his warmth under her cheek. "We'll arrange a time to discuss it in the future. Perhaps rent a conference room and go over it all."

And then walk away. And pack it all away in folders and a briefcase and leave him. Let him be gone. Put him back away, where he can't hurt her.

[Ivan] The second time she sways, Ivan is drawing her against him, down to his lap, almost before she starts to lean herself. He shifts as she slides down. If they weren't talking about Anton, he might think she was about to unzip him and put his cock in her mouth again, but --

no. That's out of the question right now. It doesn't even cross his mind.

His hand comes to her hair as she closes her eyes. He strokes her hair gently, soothingly, and this is subtly and inexplicably different from the way he stroked her hair in the women's room of Boston's. There's less dominance in his touch. More caution. More care.

"Just let me know when you'd like to schedule it," he says quietly. "I'll take care of the rest."

His palm comes to a rest, cupped gently over the top of her head. His other arm drapes her shoulder, the side of her arm, as though this alone could keep her warm.

"Rest awhile," he adds. "I'll wake you when we're there."

[Hilary] The last time he so much as mentioned the baby, Hilary turned feral until he held her down, forcing her to shake apart into sobs instead of screams. Talking even obliquely about Anton now she goes pallid gray beneath her already pale skin, sways as though faint, talks as though she's speaking from beyond the grave already, as though the words exhaust her soul as much as her body.

The way he treats her, though, one might think he cares about her. Maybe even loves her. The way he sees her, and the way he comforts her.

And the way she sinks into his embrace when it's offered, and the way she relaxes when she's resting on him, one might think she even trusts him.

If she hadn't brought up Anton, she would in fact be sucking his cock right now. Would have smiled at him and then gone for his zipper, had him lift his hips to draw his slacks down, and would have blown him with slow, soft, wet strokes of her mouth all the way up the North Shore. She thought about it. Made a choice, conscious and difficult, between going one way or the other. Pretending for another day that she never thinks about her son, or admitting that she can never truly forget any of the things that haunt her.

Ghosts stared at her, and whispered in her ears, so she said [i]enough. all right. I'll tell him.[/i]

She closes her eyes now and the ghosts go away for a little bit longer, or at least go quiet again. She is not physically worn out. But she is drained of energy now, drained of her ability to feel anything. So Hilary drifts off, dozing more than sleeping, her breathing steady but not so far gone that she wouldn't hear him if he spoke to her. Ivan's arm over her body keeps her warm, and Ivan's hand on her head keeps her safe.


A little while later she wakes on her own, rolling over onto her back. Her dress rides up her legs, coming dangerously close to baring her entire lower body. She looks out the window and asks, wonderingly: "Where are we now?"

[Ivan] When she wakes, her world is still swaying gently. The Bentley is in motion, and outside trees green with summer flash past against the grey sky.

That grey light casts over Ivan's face. He's looking out the window, lost in his own thoughts; he looks fine-featured, aristocratic, time-lost: some young nobleman out of some old story. Then she speaks and he looks down at her, and he's himself again, smiling to see her awake.

He touches her face gently, strokes back her hair as she turns. Her dress rides up. His hand passes a leisurely course down her body, pauses thoughtfully, caressingly at her breast; then moves on and smooths the edge down.

"Near my lakehouse," he says. "I know you don't like the house itself. So I want to show you something."

The Bentley turns under her. He helps her upright. They're going down that long, treeshaded private road to his lakehouse, and she can see that mansion sprawling to her left, the gardens and ivy in bloom. Then it's past, and they're following a gravel path that courses along the lakeshore, winds past a copse of pines.

There's a cabin there, standing on stilts over the lake itself, connected to the shore by a wooden pier-like deck. It's obviously new. The style doesn't even remotely resemble the architecture of the main house. It's very small -- the size and furnishings of a city studio -- and it's angular and modern, all glass and unfinished concrete and natural-stain wood.

Large windows everywhere. Plenty of lighting inside, bright and warm. Shades that close out the night.

"I thought we might be a little more comfortable here," he says quietly. There's a question in that; what he's really asking is:

[i]do you like it?

would you be more comfortable here?[/i]

[Hilary] Driving along the shore on a summer afternoon in a luxury car, Hilary wakes and forgets for a few seconds what they were discussing before she laid her head down. Drowsily, a small smile of pleasure on her lips, she glances up at Ivan but then out the window again. She puts her foot up against the opposite door and stretches her leg, arching her back and making a pleased noise. Then the other leg. She exhales, and meanwhile Ivan is stroking her breast, making her breathe in and sigh on the exhale.

As he tugs on the hemline of her dress to straighten it, she smooths her hand over the back of his and draws it between her legs, cupping his hand over her cunt for a moment. Whether he touches her or not is up to Ivan. Hilary enjoys it if he does. Hilary ignores it if he does not. And the car turns, and Ivan tells her he knows she doesn't like the lake house.

They drive down the private road. Hilary's eyes look out the window at the estate as they pass by it. "I lived in a house like that when I was very young," she says, though that doesn't mention the number of other mansions she lived in at other times. "I often had trouble sleeping at night. My room would frighten me and I'd go looking for my nurse. There was a bell, but I never believed she'd hear it. She'd sleep through it, or ignore it, I was convinced. So I'd leave bed and --"

Her brow furrows a bit, remembering something so very long ago. "I had a doll. When you squeezed it, its face would light up. It had this warm yellow glow."

The gravel rattles under the Bentley's tires. She taps a window and rolls it down, cool air filtering in, and the smell of the gardens Ivan likely rarely enjoys. Hilary breathes in. "I'd hug it to light it up and run down the hallways. I was too small to reach the lightswitches and I knew I'd be in trouble if I lit up the whole house and woke everyone up." A moment, the words dark as the memories of those hallways. "I would get lost. And the light on my doll would go out. I was always scared that the next time I'd squeeze it, it wouldn't come on. That the batteries would die while I was trying to find my nurse and then it would flicker and brown out."

Her head tips, and pine scents rush into the interior of the car. She breathes in, all but a gasp. The story ends there, without any true ending, any real conclusion, any more information. But it's more than he had before. She doesn't even connect it to his house, or to the other houses, or how that fear stayed with her long into adulthood. It's all very silly, really. Hilary likely would never flatout say [i]I'm afraid of the dark[/i]. She's a grown woman, for gods' sakes.

She thinks of Anton growing up in a wintery, dark place and wants to choke the life out of her own throat.

And then, peeking out of the trees and extending over the lake, there's the edge of a cabin no less modern than Ivan's penthouse, no bigger than a fraction of either of their apartments. It doesn't fit, but that's all right -- there are other mansions ringing the lake that aren't the ancient style like his, and most everyone's estate is so rich with greenery that they have thick shields.

But it isn't like his penthouse, either, all exposed glass and floating above the city. She sees half the shades drawn on vast windows, sees light streaming in through others. The water underneath it makes her nervous, but not very. It would only be the initial impact of body into water that would startle her. After that, just the blue closing overhead, and just the inevitable sinking downward into weightlessness. She could fall asleep thinking of that.

"Oh, Ivan," she whispers, not in some overcome, hushed tone of voice but the way a woman might react to be given flowers. Soft, touched, but more [i]that's so sweet[/i] than [i]I don't know what to say[/i]. Still: she peers out the window, rolling it down a bit more and leaning over to watch the little cabin grow larger as they come nearer.

"Make Dmitri leave," she murmurs, before the car has even stopped. As though she's saying: [i]he doesn't belong here.

it's not for him.[/i]

[Ivan] Drawn -- invited -- his hand follows hers between her legs, slipping under the hem of her dress to caress her pussy for a moment. Languidly. Lightly. As though he means not to arouse her at all, but merely to ...

assert his presence, perhaps. Feel her presence.

Those lean, clever fingers go still when she starts telling him about the house she grew up in. Large. So many rooms. Dark at night, and Hilary still a little girl, afraid of the nameless half-remembered, half-primordial terrors in the night. He doesn't ask if this was before or after her brother was killed and devoured in front of her. He supposes it doesn't matter. Even without that terrible trauma, children are always afraid of the dark. It reminds them of the truth that their parents lie to cover:

that they're not safe. They're never safe. The world is a large, alien, terrifying place, and it does not care at all for small, helpless things. It wants only to rip them open and devour their flesh.

He starts stroking her skin again as she goes on. Not her cunt now. Just her thigh, her side, touching her gently and comfortingly while she tells him about the glo-worm, and the lights she couldn't reach. Wasn't allowed to touch, anyway. The thought flashes through his mind that he didn't even exist in the time she speaks of. How ridiculous, that he fancies himself her protector and guardian now. How silly, that he thinks he can save her from the darkness.

He tries anyway. Long before she told him why she was afraid of darkness, of being swallowed, he tried to keep her in enclosed, safe, lit spaces. Shuttered out the night. Held her in the darkness. Bound her in place, so nothing, not even Hilary herself, could take her away from him.


The architect Max found to design this place wanted to build it directly over the lake. Stand at the window, he said, and you can look down to see the fish swimming beneath you. Ivan insisted on a deck; on water shallow enough to see the bottom on a clear day. The architect was mystified; why build it over the lake at all?

To separate it from the house, Ivan replied. I don't want to see it, or feel connected to it, when I'm in the cabin.

And then he insisted on windows, windows, glass everywhere, but shades. No, that overhang is too thick; it looks like it's about to close up and swallow everyone inside. And lights, inside. Lots of lights, and warm wood. The tub should be large enough for two. The bed, too.


[i]Oh Ivan,[/i] she says, soft and touched. It's enough. She's looking at the cabin, and she can't see the way he turns to hide a secret smile. Then she asks him to send Dmitri away, and Ivan lowers the privacy screen.

"Thank you, Dmitri," he says, "that's far enough. And tell Yuliya to leave any refreshments at the door, covered, on ice. We'll take it from here."

This time, Ivan gets out and comes around himself to open Hilary's door. He's smiling when he holds his hand out to her.

[Hilary] At one point while she speaks, Ivan is going on touching her, stroking her side, and he feels her tense, drawing away perhaps half an inch from his fingers. It isn't quite a flinch. If he insists she doesn't suddenly grow silent -- the words are as distant as she can make them already -- but she doesn't think he will insist. He told her, only a month ago, what it would take for him to know unequivocably that she was saying [i]no.[/i] That he couldn't think of a time she'd pull away from something she liked.

All he feels is the brief but distinct withdrawal from his touch right now, at least while she's talking about all that. All that horror. It doesn't matter much. Ivan removes his hand, or he doesn't, and she cuts off her words all the same before they get anywhere. And they roll down the gravel path towards the cabin on the lake, the visible depth of the water changeable depending on light or season or time of day and thus so much like the woman this place was -- in a way -- built for.

This is how Ivan protects her, as much as he can: whatever she dislikes, whatever causes her discomfort, he simply... removes from sight. Like that house over there, which he likes, which she could like if she were a different woman, but there's so little that Hilary [i]enjoys[/i] anyway. Sometimes it's hard to see how she can live in the world without her skin crawling at everything.

She slips her hand across the bench for a moment before the car quite rolls to a stop. He's telling Dmitri that will be enough, and her fingers crawl over and slip atop his, holding his hand with the barest contact while he informs his erstwhile, steadfast left-hand man how to continue from here.

Hilary vaguely wonders if Ivan's staff hates her. It's a passing thought. It doesn't matter to her.

She waits in the back of the car as Ivan exits and circles it. She reaches down, picking up her panties, and folds them neatly before tucking them into her clutch. By that time the door has opened, and she swings her long legs out, letting Ivan help her effortlessly to her feet. She brushes her hair off her shoulders, looks past Ivan at the cabin, and smiles.

"It's nice to have a staff of my own," she says, as the door closes behind her and they take a few steps together. "I can have Darya pack some things and have Carlisle bring it to the airport in the morning."

[Ivan] There really isn't much 'way' in the reasoning behind this little cabin. He built it for her. He built it for them, it's true, but they wouldn't be here -- wouldn't need it -- if she were another woman. Less tragically scarred. Less private.

Because in her own way, despite her wanton excesses, Hilary is an incredibly private person. She understands and treasures discretion. She's not much of a liar, but she's a very good obfuscato, r. She hides her tracks, hides her thoughts, hides what flickers of emotion and depth she may have every day -- though then again, that may simply be inability to connect.

Regardless. Here they are, walking up those few steps to the pier that connects mainland to cabin. And she smiles, is pleased at the thought of her own staff. He looks at her and is pleased because she's pleased.

"It's a real benefit to have staff you can trust," he agrees, "loyal to no one but you."

Their shoes thump hollowly over the planks. They can see the lakewater below, shallow, dropping gradually away. The sky is grey, and so is the water, and so is the back of the cabin they approach -- the only of its three exterior walls that isn't mostly wood-divided glass. One door opens on the south side, into the kitchenette area, the bathroom to their left; the other door is the vast sliding door that opens eastward onto the deck and, beyond it, the lake.

Briefly, her story comes back to him. Glo-worms, dark hallways. He wants to say something, wants to ask -- but he thinks if he does he'll simply scrape her raw. He looks at the cabin again, inspecting the windows and the shades with a critical eye. Then he gets the keys out, unlocks the side door, steps aside to let her in first. It still smells new inside; a subtle scent of newly sawn wood.

"I'll give you a key," he says. And quieter, "Do you want one for the penthouse as well?"

[Hilary] The way she whispered his name when she saw this place tells him clearly enough that she knows who he built it for, and why. This place is full of light, and full of shades to draw against anyone who might try to watch her, against anything out there that might be watching. And truth be told, there might be things out there that would like to watch them. A pure bred kinswoman like her. He's good at taking the target off of his back when he exerts his influence or does battle with other Garou, but still: just being what he is means he's a part of those battles, all the same.

But the other truth is this: no one, really, is going to be watching her. No one is going to hunt them down to this cabin and stare through the windows at them while they lie in bed together.

"That's really not necessary," she murmurs, concerning keys, as they step into the sunlit interior. She bends over and undoes one strap, then the other, that hold her sandals to her ankles. Straightening, she steps out of them, sets her bare feet on the polished wood floor. She moves into the space as though she's familiar with it already, as though she lives here. With a twist of her wrist she removes all of her thin gold bangles; tosses them on the floor. They scatter and clink against wood and each other. Hilary throws her clutch onto the bed, walking from one end to the other, over to the doors that open to the deck and the water.

"It's lovely."

[Ivan] And it is lovely. He doesn't apologize that it isn't larger; isn't more ornate, more impressive. He understands intuitively that she doesn't want something yawning and cavernous. He understands that she could easily find something gilt and glittering for herself. It is what it is: small but lovely, designed entirely with an eye toward what Hilary might find pleasant. Comfortable.

Safe.

She scatters her bangles on the floor. He steps around them, light and sure of foot. Her clutch dents the fresh bedcovers, and then she stands at the doors, which he slides open for her. The air inside is cool and dry, but the breath from the lake is humid, green-scented, warmer.

There are loungers outside. The deck isn't terribly long, but it's wide, and it goes all the way around. He watches her as she steps out or doesn't, then looks out over the water.

"I'd like it if you had a key," he says quietly. "I liked it when you came to my bed in San Miguel. Slipped in beside me before I was awake."

[Hilary] He'll never impress her with the intricacy or expense of gifts. Divorced she'll be within the year, but her financial state will not decline so precipitously that Hilary will lack for glamour. What made her sigh his name when they turned towards the cabin wasn't the size of it or the furnishings or even the fact that he made this grand gesture, this beautiful and expensive gift to her.

It was the nature of it. The secrecy of it. The way its construction reveals what he knows of her, and what he has intuited, and what he's remebered. There are doms in the world who would kill to be able to do something like this, to be able to afford something like this, for their submissive.

Which is, in essence and fact, what Hilary is to him. She strides into the place like she owns it, messes up what is pristine, goes to the doors and waits for them to be opened as though she'd never dream of doing such a thing for herself. And rather than growing angry, rather than feeling treated like a servant or being appalled at her treatment of the cabin, Ivan is... perhaps pleased. Certainly willing to accomodate her, and let her move about like a child or a pet brought home for the first time and needing to explore, needing to mark this place as hers, or at least a place where she's comfortable and belongs. And Ivan is patient, absolutely.

The doors slide open, and the air over the lake is chillier than the air in the city. It fills her nostrils and touches her face. She looks at the loungers -- two of them. She looks over at the corners of the deck wrapping about the cabin like weathered arms. She doesn't step out onto the planks though, and turns her head when he speaks, eyebrows lifting not at his words but merely at the sound of his voice, perking to attention.

He reminds her of the one time they were able to do exactly that: when she came to him at his hotel room and slipped right into bed. She remembers how very pregnant she was then, how miserably pregnant, and how it only got worse after that. But she remembers, too, his body's warmth against hers, and

how his arms around her would make the baby -- their son, Anton -- kick and tumble inside of her. Even now she doesn't romanticize that. Anton did the same thing when Dion was around, or any Garou. Any amount of rage.

Hilary reaches down and brushes her fingers against his knuckles. Like a knock on a door.

[Ivan] Sometimes, for all her blithe confidence, there's something so furtive and uncertain about Hilary. He feels her fingers against his like a sort of unspoken question. He thinks of the way she took the chocolate rabbit he brought her on a whim, half as a joke.

His fingers part. Back to back, their hands entwine, fingers lacing gently before he shifts his grip and folds his hand through hers, palm to palm. He notices that she doesn't step out onto the planks, where the water can be glimpsed dimly below. He says quietly, "If you don't like that it's built over water, I can have the lake filled in under the cabin."

[Hilary] Anything and everything she could want changed, improved, expanded, installed -- Hilary is quite sure Ivan would find a way to make it happen, even if it meant buying a new goddamn estate and building an entirely different lake cabin. He is nothing if not impulsive, and he is nothing if not extravagant. But when he says that he could have the lake filled in if she's uncomfortable with the water beneath them, she turns to him.

"Oh, no," she says. "It's lovely like this. Don't do that."

Leaning over, Hilary leaves a soft kiss on his smooth cheek. Turns her head after the first brush of lips to skin and gives a tender, seeking kiss to his mouth. Her eyes close while they touch, open when she draws back a few more inches. Her lashes are dark, shorter than you'd expect, accentuated by mascara. She touched up her lipstick in the bathroom after he fucked her cunt, made her clean his cock with her mouth. She still tastes vaguely of mint.

"May I buy some things to leave here?" she asks, as though saying

[i]while we're on the subject of keys.[/i]

[Ivan] He is nothing if not impulsive, nothing if not extravagant. And imbued with such a thoughtless sense of entitlement, really. Just look at the first solution he thinks of to the question of the lake beneath their feet: not to move the cabin, not even to build a new one, but simply to fill the lake in. Not to change anything of his own - but to force the world to change to his whim.

For her pleasure.

But, no, she says. It's lovely like this. And he settles, his hand firming on hers.

"Of course," he replies. "Please do." A pause, then a truth: "I would be very happy if you did."

[Hilary] He's a Ragabash and a very good one. He's not, however, the most honest or forthright of young men, though he has a certain kind of honor when it comes to the Nation. It does take him a pause to be honest, especially with her. Every time he lets her know how much pleasure he takes in her -- not in her cunt, not in thrashing her while he fucks her, but in her presence and what affection she's capable of -- she seems to turn cold on him. Draw away. Or lash out.

They stand in the doorway still, between the enclosed space and the open one. It takes her til now to realize why he hasn't drawn her outside, or why he suggested that he could fill in the lake: he thinks she's afraid of walking out onto the deck. So for that reason, she huffs a laugh, and he might think she's laughing at him for being happy if she'd leave things here.

Hilary tugs on his hand, pulling him towards the interior. "Then we'll go shopping," she says.

[Ivan] It takes little urging for him to draw back from the door. They leave it open, the lake breeze mingling moist with the conditioned air inside. He turns toward her, and of his own accord he comes close to her, lays his hand firmly, familiarly on the side of her face. Her feet are between his when he bends to her and kisses her, holding her by the hand and by her slender jaw.

There are no vast, shadowy rooms here. No long hallways like the gullets of monsters engulfing her, swallowing her whole. I think I might be in love with you, he said once. Perhaps this is the only way he knows how to show her. She cooks for him. He builds her a cabin. And beyond that -- well. All they have beyond that is the way they burn each other to the ground every time they fuck.

Which reminds him. He lays his brow to hers a moment, a slight smile quirking his mouth.

"I bought us some toys," he whispers. "They're under the bed. Perhaps later I'll show you."

[Hilary] There's a point on the edge of Hilary's personal space where Ivan trespasses at will, and where she instantly reacts somehow. This time he treads closer and she turns towards him, expectant and questioning at once, and then responsive. His hand touches her face; her chin lifts to press her cheek against that hand. He flanks her feet with his own and she presses against him bodily, leaning towards him rather than away. He tips her head back, kisses her like he owns her, and her spine subtly elongates as she meets him in it.

And this, too, is how they show whatever feelings they manage to have for each other, changeable and shifting as they might be: he swarms and surrounds and possesses her, and she submits. Not prettily, not in pretense, but with the same sort of beauty, ease, and grace found in the bend of a bough to the wind, the curve of a swan's neck, water following its channel around a curve.

They have this, too.

Shopping, she said, and she meant necessities, clothes, little things to keep here that would belong nowhere else. Little things that would stay here, to be used by no one else, because though they've been rather clear about the fact that whatever fucking and carousing they do apart has no bearing on what they are when they're togther, Hilary doubts Ivan will be bringing any of his starved swans, wounded pigeons, or little ducklings back here. So she'll take that small closet space to the side and she'll fill it with her own things, so that at a moment's notice she can come here. All the clothes left here will be like a uniform of sorts, a reminder of what she is and who she is and what all of this is --

though she hasn't gotten far enough to tell Ivan that's what she wants.

He kisses her, and murmurs about toys, and she makes a small, soft sound, halfheartedily restrained. She shivers, and puts her hands on his chest, caresses him through the thin, fine fabric of his shirt, kisses his clavicle where it peeks through the partially open collar. Her lips rest there, and her fingers reach down, bunching up and drawing up the hemline of her dress for a few moments, lifting it over her ass.

As though to remind him that she's so open, so available, so easy for him to pull over and fuck or play with at his leisure. As though to remind him of what they did in the car, after a month of not seeing each other and having very little contact, when he laid atop her and pulled her panties down, tossed them aside and told her he'd fuck her in the bathroom, then maybe again later if she behaved nicely for him.

As though to remind him of that rough, sudden fuck itself. And his hand on her cunt in the car again, and the breeze off the lake tickling her secretly.

Hilary lets her dress drop, and rests her cheek on Ivan's chest. "I want to keep some things here," she says, though this is obvious now after the comment about shopping. "That are just for here. Things you like," she adds, which is perhaps the most important part and not an afterthought as it might sound.

[Ivan] There's something so thoughtlessly sexual about Hilary sometimes. As though underneath all that refinement indeed lies an animal, unafraid of her own cravings, unaware of society's mores. They kiss, standing on the pale hardwood, under the stilled ceiling fan and the artfully slanting, light-collecting ceiling of the little cabin. His hand are on her body and her hands draw up the fabric of her skirt, show that body to him.

He takes the invitation. By the time the kiss tapers off, by the time she nuzzles against his upper chest, kisses the smooth bones and sleek flesh there that have grown so very familiar over this past year, his hands have moved themselves.

One is where it was, on her face, anchoring. The other follows her spine down, palms her ass. It stays there even when she lets the fabric fall again, draping his wrist; even when she says what it is she intends to buy.

He doesn't quite understand. He draws back a little, stroking her cheek with his thumb, considering her. "What do you mean?" he asks softly. "Outfits? Toys?"

[Hilary] "Yes," Hilary murmurs, the word elongated as though she hesitated over it, but he knows better. She closes her eyes, feeling his hand imprinting warmly on her skin, so close to her cunt. He can feel her breath, warm and humid, through his shirt. Her eyes open, finding his, and stay there.

"I'll need clothes and necessities of course," she whispers. The words themselves are as crisp and businesslike as though Max were here making a list, but Hilary's voice makes them soft, makes them very nearly shy,

so hopeful to please.

"I could shop alone," she offers, "but I'd like it if you told me what you like."

[Ivan] Something stirs in Ivan's chest, so rare and unfamiliar that he's only felt it a handful of times before. Once, memorably, when Hilary lay in his bed, her eyes moving in the dark, telling him he likes things that shatter easily, shatter into pieces. Once, when he flew home over a darkening continent, chasing the sun, falling into night.

Once, when she told him: [i]don't let me hurt him.[/i] Once...

so often, really, when she's near him of late. He wonders how it came to this. How he came to be so enraptured, so fascinated by this imperfect, broken, lovely shell of a woman. His eyes soften when she speaks like that, so softly, almost shy. He wonders if she can even see that. If she can understand.

He kisses her again, gentler this time. "I love you," he whispers. "God help me, but I love everything about you. Hilary..."

There's no purpose to that. No significant words follow it. He rests his brow to hers, closes his eyes, wraps his hand around to the back of her head. He simply names her to name her. Names her, so he can see her; feel her.

"Hilary."

[Hilary] When Ivan kisses her again she thinks he agrees. Thinks he's aroused. Thinks that yes, he'd like to take her out and pick and choose what she'll wear, dress her up or down as he pleases, tell her to surprise him with this lingerie or that, find toys he'd like to use on her, or this or that. But that isn't what he says when his lips leave hers, and the kiss itself is less commanding than it is tender.

Hilary stares up at him with a faint furrow forming between her brows. Her lips stay parted, then close together, moistened by the tip of her tongue.

It might be nice if she gasped again [i]Oh, Ivan![/i] and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed his mouth, and tumbled into bed with him. [i]I love you too, oh, I love you so![/i] or something like that, but if she did that, he'd know she was lying. He'd know she was pretending for him, to get the ring or the security or the hounds off her back, whatever reasons she's had in the past to lie to Garou who wanted the pretense of romance along with their claiming of a mate.

But Hilary stares at him, as though lost, and that furrow speaks of something else, too. And this, not so unlike what she said before but not just an echo, with no wryness or doubt:

"How do you know?"

[Ivan] It says something about them that of all the things they could say or do, this is what happens. Her furrowed brow. Her question. His brow wrinkling as well; his fair head shaking gently.

"I..."

It says something too, how uncertain he sounds. How this is almost a whisper, as though he were afraid to voice it.

"I feel it."

[Hilary] Still that lost look in her eyes, that soft timbre to her voice. "Is that how?" she echoes, stuck on this wondering how one can tell what that ache in their chest is, that feeling they associate with a single person.

Her arms slip around his waist, and he's not so much larger or wider than she is that she doesn't marvel at the compact tightness of his musculature and revel in the feel of it against her chest and inside her arms. She lays her head on his chest again now, closing her eyes in acceptance.

"Then I suppose I love you, too."

[Ivan] They're both sleek, elegant creatures; like cats or martens, carnivorous and agile. Against her, between her arms, Ivan's body is toned and tight, but smooth -- without the sharply defined musculature of a Garou more used to, or more inclined towards, combat and battle. She lays her head against his chest. He wraps his arms around her sides, across her back, and there's such sleek narrowness there, too; an echo and a remnant of her dancer's past.

He says little to that, in the end. He simply holds her. She supposes she loves him. He wonders if she can ever know for certain, and even if she could, he wonders if he could ever believe her. Their -- love, or relationship, or whatever term one might give to this strange exchange between their persons -- is fraught with so many unknowns.

"We'll stop off in Paris on our way to Port Grimaud," he murmurs to her, stroking her hair, rubbing her back, as though this were some sort of lullaby; some way to soothe her uncertainty when he can't even soothe his own. "And New York, on the way back. We'll go shopping and have it all shipped here. If there isn't enough room we'll just build a bigger cabin.

"We can do whatever we want. We don't have to be afraid. We can do anything we want."

[Hilary] It's uncertain who Ivan is reassuring with these last words and all these reminders of their wealth, their privilege, the fact that he can do [i]whatever he wants[/i]. Hasn't he already, after all? He fucks whoever he likes, including the mate of an Adren of his tribe, right under the Adren Elder's nose. He knocks her up with his own child in one ardent, aching communion, and since he definitely isn't going to parent the child, he can just drop it off in Russia. Go right back to fucking that married woman, that mated kin.

Who stands here in bare feet and half-naked under her dress in the place he built to keep a part of her, holding him in her arms and telling him that if all you have to do to know that you love someone is [i]feel it[/i], then maybe that means she loves him, too. And neither of them have any earthly idea whether or not, coming from her, that means anything at all.

It's gotten so dark in here, and yet the clouds haven't passed over the sun, haven't obscured the daylight streaming through the windows. It's just them. Just her, really, this black hole of a woman, sucking in everything and shattering it to oblivion, giving nothing back. She couldn't give anything back in truth if she wanted to, could she?

Could she.

"Oh, Paris," she says, her voice purring coyly, though the mockery is faint and as unmalicious as it gets with Hilary. She doesn't move, letting him pet her and hold her and keep her there. "I suppose I'll just be wearing this dress on the trip tomorrow, then."

Hilary is thoughtful a moment, then steps back and strips out of the dress. She pulls it up over her head and holds it out to him, her eyebrows up with a Good Idea, See, I'm Smart. "We should have one of your people dye it... purple! And have it ready for me in the morning."

[Ivan] Of course his eyes drop to her body when she reveals it like that. So shamelessly; so thoughtlessly that it seems shame never even occurs to her. Would never occur to someone like her. She hands him her dress, demands to have it dyed purple by the morning, and slowly the ache fades a little from Ivan's eyes. Slowly the corners of his mouth turn up, that slow sly smile of his as he leans across the distance and catches her mouth in a kiss wholly different from the tender, poignant one a moment ago.

This one has fire. This one has bite -- literally, his teeth catching her lower lip for a moment before he lets go.

"As my lady wishes," he smirks, though this, too, is as unmalicious as his mockery gets, "and I'll be sure they procure a few extra for when your dyed dress emerges an unmitigated disaster. Now..."

There's something utterly proprietary in the way he puts his hand on her body then: her waist, sliding up her ribcage, brushing her bra strap off her shoulder with a flick of his fingers, drawing the cup down until his fingers, instead, mold to her breast. His eyes follow every deft motion; come back to hers only now at the end.

"Are you nude for a reason? Or are you simply a tease?"

[Hilary] There's very little on Hilary now. That delicate bra he saw earlier, he meets again. The carefully manicured, dark stripe of hair between her legs. Rings on her fingers, including the one that marks her marriage to Dion and at least one anniversary thereafter. Sparkling, dangling earrings worth just as much. And what seems like miles of pristine, scarless white skin over the frame of a lean body with long limbs and that ever-trimming waist that gives him no hint that it ever held his son.

Nor do her eyes, twinkling and mocking at once, as she drops the dress that he doesn't take, leaving a puddle of red between them that he crosses in a moment, crushing the fabric under one shoe as he bties her lip, makes her lean up into it as though to drink his violence straight from his mouth.

"They won't make a disaster of it," she insists, smirking, her lower lip reddened. "And if they do, you should [i]spank[/i] those little maids of yours for mucking it up."

Ivan's hand is on her by then, stroking up her body, pulling her bra down, exposing one of her breasts. She's chattering while he does this, though her nipples harden to his touch and his eyes ignore her til the end, when he asks his other question.

Hilary does nothing but smile.

[Ivan] "They wouldn't like that," he muses, and musing, begins to stroke her breast. "They're not like you. They're timid little things; I'd frighten them away if I spanked them for their transgressions."

Begins to flick his fingertips over her nipple, tugs and rolls it between his fingers, plays with her in that half-absent way of his that seems to suggest

that he doesn't care. That he doesn't want her all that much at all. That the sight of her like this, all but naked, so fucking perfect and manicured, doesn't make his cock hard. That, offered the choice between reaching for her offered dress and reaching for her, period, he chose the other even without an invitation.

"Or maybe you wanted to watch," he suggests.

[Hilary] "No one's like me," she says drowsily, swimmingly, while Ivan plays with her. Her eyes drift close a moment. Open again, staring darkly at him. She doesn't look down to see if his cock his pressing against his slacks, if he's showing her just how goddamn much he wants her, how -- to put it crudely -- horny he is.

She's always liked them like this: not the elder-ranked Garou who deserved a kinswoman of her breeding and beauty and grace. The young, beautiful boys like Ivan, like Christian, like dozens of others. Well-muscled and smooth, hot to the touch, able to go for hours, willing to do just about anything she wanted of them if it meant that at some point she'd let them into her bed, her arms, her cunt. If she'd let them make her moan in their ear, set them off like a match set to dynamite.

Like she does to Ivan. As though he's no different than all of them, any of them

except she's stayed. Except that he understands her, or comes closer to it than she does herself most days. Except that he gives her what she needs, always, always brings her back to herself. Except that he was there when she was faced with her own inexplicable, inescapable humanity and begged him not to let her hurt it, to protect her soul from the damage she could do to it.

She steps closer, into that caressing hand of his, or is starting to. Her hand rises to his face, cupping his jaw as he rubs her nipple to a hard pink bead. And he mentions the idea that she might like to watch. Her brow furrows instantly, taut and lined in a frown.

"No," she says, her tone perhaps more vicious and venomous than even she means for it to be.

[Ivan] Ivan hardly expected Hilary to agree to a private show, though he certainly would have indulged her if she had. It still surprises him, though, to hear the vehemence and the venom in her no.

There's a beat or two of silence. His hand stills on her skin. He looks at her a moment, head tilted, half-feral.

"I wasn't serious, Hilary," he murmurs. "I'd do it if it made you happy. I'd do almost anything. But if that's not to your taste, then I won't."

A beat. Then:

"But I must confess, I'm confused. Not so long ago, you were so angry at the faintest sign of my jealousy."

[Hilary] She looks confused, then, his fingertips warm spots on her cheek. Her cheeks, which have warm spots of their own, high and red, the rush of blood visible through her fair skin. Hilary's breathing is agitated, though not quite rapid or incensed. She looks feral herself, though in a different way: furtive. Caught in that moment between fear and rage, and he knows how often one becomes the other, how rare it is to see anything but anger in the depths of those dark eyes of hers.

She's quiet a few moments, and that confusion comes when he says something about not so long ago and how she was angry, and she doesn't remember what he means, if he's talking about the men at the pub and if he thought she was angry then or if he's referring to something else. But she doesn't ask that. She says, simply:

"I don't want you to do this with anyone else. Not what you do with me."

Her eyes lower a moment as she says that, then lift back up to his. "Not the way it is with us." Her brow furrows again, lost suddenly, as though she's seeing a schism and trying to puzzle it out, build some kind of bridge between one thought and another. Or perhaps between one feeling and another: between whimsy and tenderness, between that tenderness and rage.

"Ivan, I --

"I was making a joke. I wasn't thinking of you spanking the maids like you do it to me," she finally finds her footing, whispering the words, looking scolded as her eyes drop again. "I thought of how shocked and humiliated and upset they'd be, how they'd cry and shriek, and..." the way her voice keeps getting quieter sounds like shame, though perhaps not for the right thing: "I thought it was funny."

She looks up at him through her lashes. "They're not like me. I don't want you to have anyone else like me."

[Ivan] [i]I thought it was funny.[/i]

It's hard to doubt that they aren't good people. That they're selfish, and sometimes cruel, sometimes vicious. So often - most damningly of all - simply careless.

Yet it's different between the two of them. Perhaps they cancel each other's callousness out somehow; more likely they simply recognize one another, bond to one another the way two of a species always do. That's dangerous thinking, though. So close to mateship.

Still. Her voice gets quieter and quieter. She looks ashamed. She looks scolded. She says she doesn't want him to have anyone else like her, and this is what she's ashamed of.

Ivan catches her face between his hands before her last word is done. He kisses her like that, sudden and fierce, brow furrowed with the force of that biting contact.

"I don't." Another kiss, as hard as the last, hard enough to bend her backward if he weren't holding her so hard. "There's no one else like you. I don't want anyone else but you."

He strokes his hands back over her cheeks, then. Touches her; caresses her. She's still all but naked. He hasn't forgotten.

"I like it," he admits, quiet himself, "when you... stake a claim on me. Or treat me like I'm yours." A faint flicker of a smile. "I liked it when you called me darling boy."

[Hilary] He sees that, at least: understands where that shame is rooted, that it has nothing to do with wanting to see some poor girls humiliated and horrified by being turned over their employer's knee and more to do with her own reaction to even the hint of sexualizing such a thing...

with anyone but her.

When she calls him her darling boy, it's a joke, a coy play as they sit around in public. A way of keeping him at distance, in a way, while people can see who they are and what they might be to each other. And here he tells her that he likes it. Tells her he likes it quite a bit, in fact, because the way he kisses her makes her lift her arms and wrap around him, hold him and hang from him as he crushes her body to his.

Still, that body is bared the way he had it before: one cup covers one breast, and that's all. Even that is slipping. She's pressing back against him as though they're slowdancing, and he's holding her like she might run away if he loosens his grip, kissing her like that kiss can't get deep enough into her until he's fucking her.

But that shame in her eyes, that... embarrassment.

That fear.

She shivers slightly against him as he strokes her, admitting to her that he likes to be possessed, likes to be hers, liked it when she called him what she did. Hilary looks at him mutely for a moment, her uneasiness plain enough to see: to be owned is one thing. To be tied down and used is one thing. The idea that she might have just as much claim and ownership over him, however, is like the ground under her feet rumbling and rolling.

Hilary holds onto his arms now, wordless, watching him. Sometimes it seems that this -- in the moments when she's not sure what he's going to do with her, how he's going to be with her, if he's going to be angry or rough or playful or a little bit vicious or if he's going to tie her up or if he's just going to hold her down, when he hasn't told her what he wants her to do --

this is most vulnerable Hilary gets. Not when he actually is locking her up or holding her down or pushing her thighs up to take it while he fucks her til he comes, not when he has her almost immobilized. She doesn't feel very vulnerable then. Oh, she feels safe. She feels so taken care of.

Right now, standing in the place he made for her over the water, bared except by one small scrap of lace over one tit, watching him in uncertain silence -- because what else is there that they could say to each other, after these confessions? -- and waiting for him to snap on her leash.

[Ivan] It's unusual, and maybe a little twisted, but most certainly a hallmark of who and what they are, that Ivan does not react to Hilary's so-obvious vulnerability with soothing words. Comforting embraces. Not any of that, but instead --

This. His hands hard on her face. His eyes flickering like a raptor's from her eyes to her mouth, her mouth to her tits, and back. When he goes for her, he's on her like a thunderbolt: grabbing her, mauling her face, tearing that last obstinate bra cup down to fill his palms with her breasts.

It flashes into his mind that he loves these new tits of hers, but

he doesn't dare say it, because he can't stand to break her again.

So he draws back from her instead, quite suddenly. His hands are rough when he turns her around; unclips that bra and tosses it aside and grabs her by the arm and hauls her to the bed. No platform bed here; no memory foam; nothing but an old-fashioned, luxurious bed, huge and soft, more than soft enough to cushion her landing when he throws her facedown over the edge

and pries her legs apart

and comes down over her

and unzips his pants to slam his hard cock into her for the second time in about as many hours.

[Hilary] When she's like this, almost anything Ivan gives her would be enough. Some kind of direction, some kind of guidance on what to be, and how, and what he wants from her. Ground under her feet, connecting flagstones to get her from this uncertainty to something warm and familiar, however brutal that warmth may be and however warped that familiarity. So when he pulls at her, fierce and wanting and predatory, her first reaction is a half-gasped sigh of relief, truncated by his mouth biting at hers, sucking the very air out of her.

Hilary wraps her arms around him then, sudden and silken. She moans in his mouth as his hands go onto her tits, a little bit fuller and heavier than they were

[i]before everything else[/i].

The feel of them doesn't make Ivan press closer to her though, even with her moaning, even as the bra he yanks away tightens and drags at her back, the clasps scraping against her skin lightly. For half a second only, then he's pulling quickly away, flipping her around to get it off completely. It falls, and she lets out a yelp when he grabs her arm, dragging her to the soft white cloud of a bed and hurling her onto it.

She goes without stumbling, his roughness never quite a match for her grace. She gasps as she hits the covers, shuddering as his hands grab and pull her legs apart, but that's when -- perhaps surprisingly -- he feels her struggling. Not making much noise except little sounds of effort and pleasure mingled, but all the same there she is, wriggling around under him, not to get away but to turn over.

"I want to see you," she says, pleading, not just pleading but begging him: "I want to see you."

[Ivan] That gives him pause, if only for a moment. Then he bites at her, sudden and aching-wanting, sinks his teeth into the fine white skin of her back. Hard enough to leave a mark. Hard enough to begin flushing red when he pushes up.

He doesn't so much pull out of her as he simply grabs her by the hips and pulls her off his cock, pushes and slides her up the bed, flips her on her back. Her legs tangle briefly with his arms before he pushes her knees apart again and climbs up over her, face savage, eyes blazing.

"Do you see me?" he whispers, meaningless; grabs her face and makes her look at him, makes her see. "Do you?"

He's inches from her when he fills her again. His head drops; he groans, grasping at her hair, the sheets. Finding her mouth and crushing another kiss to her before he lets her hair slip through his fingers; wraps his arms around her instead and

holds her,

holds her with his clothes rumpled between them, while he fucks her.

[Hilary] There's no answer to that, and none needed. Hilary is on her back against those thick white covers, sinking into the down. She's so rumpled already, so undone by the way he throws her around, a far cry from the sleek, elegant woman he toured the aquarium with earlier today. She's not the woman, even, who greeted him at the door a month ago in a satin slip and satin hair, opening her legs to him like she couldn't wait any more for it.

For this: his cock in her, his clothes tugged out of the way just enough to let him fuck her, his hands and mouth leaving marks on her body where he touches her. That's what she waits for when they're not together. That's what she waited for in the long dry months in Mexico. Those are the thoughts that made the hours pass.

She's too far gone as a human being to think of things like love for very long, or with any certainty. Those are tumultous, churning thoughts, as dangerous to her as a seastorm to a wooden raft, and she can bear them only when he's there, holding her up

or dragging her down.

Her legs don't wrap around him, but they open so easily for him, like gates that respond only to touch of the master of the house. Which he is: master of this house, master of her, whatever that means and doesn't mean when it comes to the two of them. She looks up at him, her jaw clenched in his hand, and there's such an ache in her eyes, a need, an imploring that might

just might

be the thing they keep trying to name, the thing they keep calling [i]love[/i].

She sees him, and he sees her, pushes into her, makes her tip her head back and whimper. It sounds like the beginning of crying, that shuddering, overcome sound that tells him she thinks she just might be dying, that she could die if he left her now. Hilary doesn't hold onto him, though. He presses down onto her and she opens her mouth to him when he kisses her, groaning up to him and arching her back. Her body blends with his, and he can feel her warmth through his thin shirt, feel the softness of her breasts against his ribcage, his heartbeat.

There's no sound around them but their own panting, the lapping of the lake at the shore, the wind moving over the surface of the water

like it did just before Creation.

[Ivan] No one would think of throwing that sleek, elegant woman at the aquarium around like this. No one would even remotely imagine that someone so obviously wealthy, so obviously proper no matter what sensuality simmered beneath her perfect skin, would want to be thrown around like this. Pushed down like this. Held down like this, and fucked like this.

But this is exactly what makes Hilary all but weep. It's arguably what she lives for; certainly, what makes her come alive. It makes him come alive too. As cliched as it sounds, Ivan isn't sure he was ever really alive before she pushed him to this brink. Challenged him like this, not so much bringing her will to bear against his as bringing his own will to bear against her.

Ignited him like this. Peeled back his perfect, jaded exterior and showed him just what was always lurking under his skin.

A memory comes to him - the way she said to him once, before anton, before san miguel, before lausanne, before any of this -

That she wanted it like that again. The way it was, when it began to be soul shakingly different. That she was frightened of that difference... but wanted it all the same.

That if she grew frightened, he should simply hold her down. Because she feels safe when she's restrained, bound, kept by someone she trusts

so the darkness, and the emptiness, couldn't swallow her whole.

Ivan takes Hilary's hand. He draws it to the side of his face, holds it there while he raises his head and kisses her. Finds her hand with his other, pins it to the mattress over her head, laces his fingers through hers. Holds her like that, his body weighing against hers, moving into hers; his mouth on hers over and over until their gasps run together.

"Look at me," he whispers, again and again, like a mantra. "Look at me. See me."

[Hilary] They do sense it, the mortals do: the breeding, the beauty, the impossible perfection. People do glance twice at them, wondering if they're celebrities, wondering why they seem so simultaneously intimately familiar and utterly alien, so ...well, [i]lovely[/i]. Wherever Ivan and Hilary go, they do gather attention, some of it more pleasant than others. They are Silver Fangs, and their pretty faces only mostly conceal the monsters and madness inside.

Only mostly conceal this: what they are together when they're alone. It's possible some rare folk can see through Hilary's smirking plays at coy dominance over her young paramour in public to the lurking, waiting strength in Ivan. It's possible that sometimes the way his hand rests on her lower back or how she never quite steps out of time with him when they're strolling hints at who is really collared, and who is really holding the lead.

Who is really holding who down, and making them do what they want. Who is really in control.

Which is the question, isn't it? He'd do anything for her, he's even said he'd do almost anything if it would make her happy, if it would please her, if she hinted at it. She told him he didn't really like his lake house -- how long ago was that? How quickly did he force the world to move so that this little cabin over the lake would be built? Just so he could take her here, out of the city and into his own personal territory, and not just keep her there but [i]keep her happy[/i].

And there's no denying how much thought went into it, how personally Ivan was involved with making sure the design was just so. The windows are large and many, but every one of them has a shade that keeps those within hidden but does not dissuade the light from entering. The water below is mostly hidden by the deck, but it's there, lapping against the stilts holding the house up, dark and hidden and not too deep until you get farther out. It's simple, which may seem strange at first: she's such a glamorous woman, after all, with her Jaguar and her [i]Cielo[/i] and her amicable divorce and her diamonds.

Of course he's seen her, and perhaps been closest to her, when she was literally barefoot and pregnant in some kitchen in San Miguel, expertly scraping out the flesh of a vanilla bean. And he's been with her on a bench on a tiny balcony with a worn-out metal railing in Meillerie, holding her atop him under a musty blanket and kissing her after staying up all night, and dawn was a long time coming to light that hidden, north-facing spot. Ivan has seen her face turned up to fireworks, a small, fragile smile hiding in the corners of her mouth.

He has given her a blank canvas here, a place with no memory and no expectation, and the only way he has to know what it means to her is the way she looks at him now as he takes her hand and pins her down, kisses her like he could know her by taste, crushes her to the bed as though it will stop her trembling.

Hilary's fingers are so tender on his cheek for a moment, brushing his jaw, her eyes drifting close when they kiss and opening again when he whispers to her, commands her,

pleads with her to know him.

She doesn't so much as blink.

[Ivan] He has seen her shuddering and overcome on a bed in a yacht over a thousand feet of water. He received her when she was weak and worn through, coming to him for something very much like refuge. He was with her when she laid their son between them and begged him not to let her hurt him.

He was the one who carried that son far, far away from her

so she could never hurt him. Or love him. Perhaps she could never have loved him at all.

He knows her, though, Ivan does. Not completely; but as well as anyone does, and perhaps could. Well enough to sometimes know, instinctively, how to please her. How to protect her. What he needs to protect her from.

Well enough to know how to build this cabin, this space free of memories and shadows. Well enough to see what it means to her. What all this means to her - the cabin, the silence, the way he lies over her, the way they look at each other.

He looks at her. She barely even blinks. He never looks away. Even when pleasure flashes over his face like lightning, striking the same nerve over and over, his eyes never close. Even when both his hands come to her face, even when he starts kissing her again and again, endlessly, he never turns his face from her, or to her shoulder, or against her throat.

Until the last, the very end, he holds her. His hands are on her face, or his arms are wrapped so tightly around her; but in the end, when the way he moves between her legs grows ferocious, when the way he thrusts into her grows desperate -

Ivan gasps [i]hold on to me. hold me[/i]. And he takes his hands from her; grabs the new sheets and the soft comforters by the handful, crushes them to wrinkles and rumples between his fingers, grips the bed to spare her flesh for perhaps the first time ever

while he lays his brow to hers and closes his eyes at last and comes inside her, groaning, shuddering, overcome.

[Hilary] She almost laughed at him in her hallway a month ago, almost laughed when he claimed he couldn't take care of her, he didn't know how. He was so shattered though, broken by his inability crashing into his inexplicable longing: to want to care for her, and be her guardian, and love her, and protect her, and do all of the sorts of things that people like 'mates' do,

and to look inside of himself and simultaneously want to run screaming, to look at himself and know that he's selfish, he's immature, he's disinterested in putitng that much effort or dedication into anything, he's simply not capable of being devoted. To look at his life, and his heart, and see his madness standing like a wall between them.

She almost wanted to laugh, and that's part of her madness. To stand there saying well she might just love him too, no really, she can. She knows what love is, and she can do it. She loved her brother, didn't she? Only she doesn't quite remember that. Only she doesn't quite know what happened to the place where that feeling lived. Only she knows she gave her son up in a heartbeat, and she'd do it again, by god. Only sometimes... she looks at Ivan and doesn't feel much of anything. Thinks he's lovely and diverting but of no more import to her than an expensive chair.

It sinks in her when she sees that. When she wants very badly to love him, or to alwayseverysecondeverymoment feel what she feels when he's deep inside of her -- bodily or in the other ways he's found under her skin. When she wants to feel close, and feel connected, and yet sighs in exhaustion at the thought of drumming it up out of the endless void inside, like summoning spirits across the veil.


But there are times like this.


And he's devoted now, wants to and can care for her, protect her, guard her, give her everything she needs from him. And she loves him now, adores him, feels not only human but connected to every fucking heartbeat in the world, like they're echoing in her ears from a thousand directions, filling her with something other than wrath and loneliness. She clutches him where she can now, holds him in her leg and -- when he lets go of her hands -- her arms, arching up to press every inch of herself against him, crying out in his ear,

something like his name, or a song, or sobs, or love.

It's rare to the point of bewildering that Hilary doesn't come -- often repeatedly -- long before Ivan. Her orgasms come in chaotic waves sometimes, and he's far enough from his own to watch her, laughing in vicious pleasure at how quickly she comes undone for him, how wild she gets when he gives her that sweet hard cock of his, laughing as her screams send jolts of joy through the surfaces of his skin.

It's rare, but this is how it goes today. They kiss like they actually are making some kind of love, eyes on each other, holding each other to this world when it seems so likely that they'll fall away, that gravity has died. Her legs and arms finally hold him, even as he's gasping for her to keep him near, and his lovely clothes wrinkle and crush under her grasp -- she's so much stronger than she looks, really, shot through with adrenaline and want. And it's when he grows ferocious, animalistic with lust, desperate with how close he is, that he feels Hilary responding. Feels her coming with him, suddenly active and [i]fucking him back[/i] the way she can't, or doesn't dare to, when she's thrown into that strange place of submission she goes to. She whimpers in his ear, trembling apart into pieces, begging him not to stop, don't stop, [i]Ivan[/i]...

clenching around him at the last, taking him inside, coming with him, coming truly together, coming.

[Ivan] It's times like this that Ivan understands, if only for a moment, why Hilary cries in the aftermath of what they do to each other. It has very little to do with whatever physical pain he inflicts. It has everything to do with how she feels. With the fact that she feels at all - that what she feels is overwhelming - that what she feels is, ultimately, only temporary.

Superficially they're so different Both so rich, so lovely, so shining; yet he's so extroverted, so bold, so arrogant, with his ready charm and easy attachments. She's so elegant, so subtle, so sophisticated, with her sly flirtations and her air of unattainability. But beneath the skin they're so painfully similar. In the end, neither of them is capable of forming the sort of lasting, committed bond that binds man to wife, wolf to mate.

And the real tragedy is that they don't even know their own loss most the time. It's only times like this, when he's so deep inside her, so connected to her, so resonant and so overcome, that Ivan even understands his own alienation. And it's only times like this, he thinks, that Hilary even knows how to love.

That's a heartbreaking truth. It would make anyone weep.

Except Ivan isn't thinking at all right now. There's nothing in his mind but the sort of blasted clarity of orgasm; the moments that stretch apart, the wildfire pleasure ripping unstoppably through him to meet some answering conflagration in her. Nothing but the way she's made him feel, in touch, held, embraced,

contact, union, primordial unity.

It's some time before he recognizes those harsh sounds torn from his own throat, shuddering out of him every time his cock pulses, every time his body bucks, every time her cunt tightens, every time her legs clench around him. Some time before he feels the ache in his forearms from gripping the sheets so hard. Some time before he realizes how heavily he weighs this singular, strange lover of his into the bed; how deep he is inside her; how tightly she's holding him back.

It's some time before he moves at all. Lifts his head and opens his eyes, looks at her with the blasted eyes of a survivor of some great cataclysm; the witness of some revelation.

He says nothing at all. He just looks at her, looks for her in those black eyes of hers.

Sweat is wet in his hair and sticking his shirt to his back. Ivan is shuddering, all but shivering, in her arms. He pries his hands from the sheets. He wraps his arms around her instead, slides his arms under the arch of her back and grips her close. He stays inside her, the way he was in san miguel, and lausanne, and his penthouse the night anton was conceived, and a hundred other times.

He doesn't want to let go of her. He doesn't let go.

[Hilary] Speaking only with that superficiality, anyone looking at them would be able to see what one sees in the other. What a woman like Hilary should want from a man like Ivan is written all over him, everywhere he goes.

For instance, the second time they 'met' he entered the club with a full entourage, had himself announced like a celebrity, and bought thousands upon thousands of drinks. He's young, rich, pretty, wild, and flaunts it. Of course a bored married woman of his social strata would be taken with that opportunity for excitement, that opportunity to prove to herself and the world that she's [i]still got it[/i].

And of course, wouldn't a man like that be intrigued by one of the only people in that nightclub who didn't go rushing to the bar screaming his name? A woman who is older but hardly looks it, a woman who is used to his glamour and riches and not easy to impress, a woman who might actually prove a [i]challenge[/i] for him to pursue -- but not so much of a challenge he runs the risk of actually caring?


They are those people. They are so deeply [i]those people[/i] that even they forget what it's like to be the way they are right now, which is so different they may as well have transmuted their very souls, left those dark spirits somewhere else and escaped for a little while into light, warmth, and safety.

He knows her, and she knows him, and for a little while that is all they could ever want. All they could ever imagine.


When he lifts his head she looks back at him for a moment there, stares back at him while she struggles to breathe. She can't help but look haunted. Perhaps a little desperate,

or afraid.


Then he comes close again. Holds her tightly to him, buried in her and buried with her. Hilary has him enfolded in her arms and stays with him there, shaking and gasping for breath underneath him, half-crushed even by his slender body, panting. Every breath she takes presses her ribcage into his chest, a rapid intermittent swell, like riding the roll of deep, deep waves. She starts to slow down, and gradually he feels the muscles in her back relaxing against his forearms, her trembling thighs relaxing around his hips, her breathing get easier, as though she's falling asleep rather than coming down from orgasm.

Her hairline is damp, her hair sticking to her forehead, her cheeks, in dark wet curls. She has her eyes closed finally, her head back, her throat bared and exposed like she's forgotten he's an animal and a predator, or like it's the only thing she remembers about him. Her arms still hold him so close. So tightly. And whispers something in his ear.

Because it's the only time he might believe her. Because it's the only time she can be sure.

She whispers it, and she whispers his name afterward, so quiet he may later wonder if he imagined it.

[Ivan] It's never been quite like this before. Never left him feeling quite so overcome; never made her hold him quite so close. Certainly, she's never said it like this before, as though she really can, and does. And he's never really believed her before.

Ivan stirs again when his lover whispers in his ear. He nuzzles gently against the side of her throat as she bares it. Kisses the long flash of tendon in her neck. She can feel him breathing, a long exhale like a sigh. He moves inside her a little, drawing back, sliding deeper, a slow intimation or imitation of what they just did. The way she feels, so tight, so wet, sends another slow shudder down his back. He bites her shoulder gently in response.

"What are we going to do?" he whispers. "Where the hell are we going with this?"

He doesn't really expect her to answer; he doesn't think there is an answer. Most times, he doesn't even think there's a question. His hand slides up her back, cups her neck, the back of her head. He finds her mouth and kisses her again; can't help but moan softly against her lips when some errant spark of pleasure makes his cock stir inside her.

A moment later he subsides again, lying against her, over and around and inside her.

[Hilary] It's like he can't move. Can't speak, can't bear to get up and wash himself and smoothly invite her for a sail or a swim or a hundred other things to entertain them. It's like he can't do anything but lie there atop and inside her, wracked with -- all of this. [i]Where do we go from here?[/i] he may as well have asked her, and Hilary has no answer.

She does not, however, ignore the question. She holds him, kissing him and caressing him in return. Her hands stroke over the long planes of his back, the smooth dip of his spine. Her fingertips, soft and manicured, run over the curve of his ass, and she closes her eyes for a moment, lost in the sensation of him. Involuntarily, her pussy squeezes him into her, slow and tight, gently taking his mind apart by pieces.

When her body relaxes, she lets out a long sigh, a chain of easy breath. Her legs are so very long, so smooth to the touch, with just the faintest hint of the muscles in her thighs and calves that still remember what it was like to dance the way she did, competing at a world-class level. Her body will never forget that. Will never forget, either, what it was like to carry Anton --

even if, truth be told, dancing was a part of her life for far longer than the baby boy was.

She stretches out beneath Ivan gradually, her arms leaving him and reaching up over her head, laying against the soft covers. She looks at the ceiling, her cheek against his hair, and drowsily says: "We don't have to go anywhere."

[Ivan] This isn't, by far, the roughest sex they've had. Or the most athletic. Or even the farthest they've taken each other; the most orgasms they've wrung from each other; any of that.

It is, quite simply, different. More than he can handle in a way that's not immediately evident even to himself. And now he can't move, can't pull himself together, can't find all the glittering, protective pieces of his charisma and charm.

When her body answers his, clenching down, drawing in, he grasps at her back, groans as though wounded. Please, he whispers, as though either of them could grant the sort of mercy he seeks.

Time passes. She relaxes. He survives. Gradually his heart doesn't hammer so fast anymore. By the time her arms fall away, he can bear that small separation again, and doesn't cry out at the loss.

It wasn't really a question he asked, but it's an answer she gives. And hearing it, Ivan moves again, raising his head, looking for her eyes.

"Okay," he says softly, as though testing these words, this alien concept. "We'll just stay here, then."

For once, he doesn't ask when, how long, why, what else. For once, he doesn't immediately starting thinking - even to himself - of diversions, activities, things to do just to keep himself from being bored, bored, so dreadfully bored.

He just lays his head down again, kissing her throat, covering her breast with his hand.

"We'll just stay here," he repeats, soft.