Ivan Press

Hilary

What happened downstairs is, for two people like this, impossible to explain and unthinkable to repeat. Hilary does not know how to tell him what she thinks or how she feels, especially right now. She is emptied out, purged, and yet through all of it one thing remained untouched, unassaulted, left sacred. It's here now, just as it was here on the stone table in front of everyone, and it's in those words they choose. Touched on by those words, really, though not encapsulated. There is something between them, stronger than perhaps either of them realized before, strong enough to not be broken.

Hilary wonders idly if any of them -- not just the people who were on her but those watching, every last guest -- are upset at how they were used. She would not normally think about them as people, as individuals that perhaps should not be used and trampled on so thoughtlessly. Perhaps it's the ecstasy that makes her suddenly so empathetic, but perhaps it's just the emptiness in her that can, for a little while, be filled with fine threads of humanity. She closes her eyes while Ivan strokes her arm, holding her, and she realizes that they really were used, all those people. It never occurs to her that she was, that Ivan was. Of course not. She would never let that happen to him.

Her hand moves to his chest, covers his pectoral muscle, his heart, and she sighs softly in contentment against him.

Once more they empty the water and refill it, rinsing themselves clean and then soaking for awhile longer, every last drop of sweat and dirt and memory washed down the drain. It's quiet up here now, the water lapping and their breathing the only noises they listen to.

The music downstairs is the last thing to do, after guests have all departed, after the staff has begun covering food and cleaning up. The maid who covered Hilary with the robe offers to drive the leftovers to a shelter down in the South Loop; no one really cares what she does with it, so that is what happens. Courtesy of Ivan Press, Happy Halloween. They store the alcohol. Max pays vendors and hired help as they go, passing over checks inside envelopes, checks with rather shocking bonuses. Hazard pay, of a sort. No one told them they were going to be working an orgy, after all.

Russian is the only language in the penthouse for awhile. They are checking rooms and closets and bathrooms and the terrace, closing up shop, putting out the fire. Max makes notes of furniture to be hauled away and incinerated and replaced with nearly identical but slightly upgraded, updated, even more fashionable pieces. She makes a note of a few drops of blood in one of the bathrooms, the name of the guest she suspects, and Wednesday night? written beside it, as though to suggest a dinner date, rather than an execution. Other servants are delegated to get in touch with Ms. de Broqueville's staff and inform them that their mistress will be staying for a night or two. Arrangements are made between the two groups of Help, for tonight and tomorrow and perhaps another night and day, depending. Her dress and its veil are to be sent out for dry-cleaning. Someone gets to work cleaning absolutely nothing off of that silvery mask.

The people who linger in the lobby and outside on the street are given fifteen, twenty minutes before Evgeny goes down there and his mere presence and his dark eyes indicate that they should find other after-parties to go to. The white Bentley has returned by then, and he and Carlisle stand outside. Carlisle is smoking. He shares, if Evgeny is so inclined. He wants to ask if that icy blonde is a lesbian or not, but he doesn't.

By the time Ivan stirs, feeling the water's temperature drop around his lover's skin, the penthouse and the building and the block are almost silent. He eases Hilary up, and she breathes in deeply as he helps her to her feet. She is wrapped in a fresh robe, and he sits her down on a little stool, kneeling while he puts bandages on her knees. It makes her smile, her wrinkled fingers touching his damp curls. She thinks -- and this is the strangest thing, and for once she knows it's strange, knows how bizarre she is but is at peace with it -- about Anton. Little fairhaired Anton, who will probably have wavy curls like Ivan's, but she doesn't know what color his eyes are. She only saw him the day he was born, the gray-blue that so many infants' eyes are at birth.

The truth is that over the months his eyes have darkened to near-black, and this sets him apart from every other relative in that blasted cold country. As he gets older they will tell him that he has his mother's eyes, over and over. She was dark-eyed, beautiful, graceful --

and they will only tell him one lie when they list off her traits like this: that she was kind. They will not be lying when they tell him that she loved him. He simply will not know that her was abandoned by choice and not death, he will not know that the only loving thing she could do for him was get him away from herself.

But he will grow up, black-eyed like his mother and slender like both of his parents, athletic, with a darkness in him, madness refined and pure. He will not be afraid of the dark, though it will speak to him from childhood. He will not be afraid of dedicating himself to something, perhaps will be so fucking committed and passionate that it terrifies even his packmates. But that is a long way off. For now he is learning to crawl, and his caregivers do not send Ivan the videos where Anton tries to get mobile and flops forward, wails when he hits the ground, til some nanny picks him up and coos to him in Russian, patting his back while he sucks on his fist and contemplates this 'crawling' business, uses his tiny underdeveloped brain to try and figure out which angle to come at it from next.

Hilary just thinks of how he looked the day he was born, bright pink and looking more like Ivan in those first few hours than he ever would again, evolution's little signal to fathers not to eat their young or kill the offspring of another male. She runs her knuckles down Ivan's cheek, and he looks up at her, green-eyed and at peace with her for once in their damn lives. He carries her to bed, and tonight there are no restraints, no ties, no bonds. Hilary doesn't need them, and doesn't ask for them. She was already held together and contained all night, kept in one piece as Ivan held her open to be fucked again and again and again by masked strangers who thought she was a whore and this was a game.

They sleep facing each other, legs touching, arms looped over one another's waists.

In the morning -- well, it's nearly noon though not quite -- there is a stand outside the door with a tray on it bearing food. It's simple, cold-service fare, refreshed frequently as it became clear how long Ivan and his lady were going to sleep. Fruit and cheeses, bread and butter, a carafe of coffee, a lovely glass pitcher with an enclosed core filled with ice, a bottle of painkillers, etcetera. There is a chrome luggage cart bearing Hilary's garment bag, overnight bag, and a few lidded boxes holding various pairs of shoes. Darya is with Ivan's maids, the group of them prattling away in Russian while they try to gossip about their employers -- so long as the Grown Up Servants like Dmitri and Max and Carlisle aren't listening in. Carlisle himself is having a coffee after returning the Bentley and picking up Hilary's Jaguar. It's only noon, and the furniture has already been replaced. That is all waiting for them as soon as they open the door, but before that:

Hilary strokes Ivan's hair as she wakes, watching him sleep for a few moments, remaining motionless lest her movement make him stir.

It is November first when they wake, and halfway across the world, their son is exactly half a year old.

Half a year old, and starting to crawl. Trying to anyway. Strong enough now to push up on his hands; not quite coordinated enough to make it across the rug to whatever voice coos to him from offscreen. He's a lovely baby, because of course he is, and he is loved: he has a nanny and a wetnurse and two maids, and they speak to him in Russian and sometimes in English, and a few months ago they brought in an eighteen-year-old boy, studious and serious and responsible and mild, who will be his faithful shadow for the rest of his life. Anton smiles a great deal in those videos Ivan gets from the caretakers. He reaches for things and he seems curious, insatiably curious; he likes to stare right at the camera, and once he tried to mouth the lens.

Sometimes Ivan thinks he sees a certain look in Anton's eyes. Dark eyes, so like his mother's in color - and so like hers in character when he's looking at the faces that call to him and coo to him, so like the look in her eyes sometimes when she wakes and she doesn't remember where or when she is -- when he looks at the voices and the faces and doesn't quite recognize them, can't quite attach them to the lost voices haunting his memory. It could just be Ivan's imagination, though. They're only videos. They aren't reality.

And anyway, Hilary doesn't know any of this yet. She's never asked, yet.

It is November first when they wake, and waking, Hilary lies very still so as not to disturb her lover. He is asleep, and he is peaceful in his sleep. He is golden and beautiful, a true son of the morning. It is hard to remember how he was last night, dark, dominant, demonic; it is hard to believe it ever happened. But there are their masks, the red and the white, set haphazardly on the nightstand.

She touches his hair very gently, and before too long he stirs, moves toward the touch: simple mammalian instinct toward contact, closeness. When his eyes open he finds the room awash in light, the lake vast and deep blue outside. He draws a breath -- the light never quite touches Hilary's eyes, which remain so dark that he's hard-pressed to find the divide between iris and pupil.

Breakfast waits outside, along with her things, a bottle of aspirin. Everything they might need. His bedroom has remained undisturbed, though. The door is shut and locked. Everything outside has been cleansed, refreshed, renewed already. Everything in here was never touched to begin with. That's important for them. No matter their excesses, no matter their debaucheries and depravities, they keep a part of themselves hidden away. Locked up and untouched, unassaulted, sacred. Sometimes they do share it with each other, though: show it to each other, reveal it like the secret and the vulnerability it is.

Her hand is on his face. He puts his on hers a moment later, their forearms crossing, his skin very warm from sleep. Ivan has beautiful hands, large and long-fingered and well-formed, the bones and tendons defined just enough to give the impression of strength without disrupting the impression of beauty. They are every bit a Ragabash's hands, the greatest tools of a thief and an assassin. They are gentle now, though, touching her face, stroking her lips.

"Hi," he whispers.

For a long time, she was thinking about setting up the time and date with Ivan for this, exactly: the six-month mark. Meet somewhere -- not here or her place, perhaps a conference room somewhere cold and impersonal and forgettable -- and go over the letters, the photographs, the videos. Hilary knows exactly what day it is today. She knows Anton's age down to the hour. Hilary doesn't even always remember her own age, or Ivan's. She doesn't know his birthday and she doesn't care. She never celebrates her own. But she knows what time it is in Russia. She knows how long Anton has been outside of her, and alive.

What she doesn't know is what color his eyes are.

Ivan's are green, opening in the morning light. The shades drew back of their own accord, slowly and silently and automated, to let in the day no matter how long she and her lover slept through it. His hair is blonde and his skin is gold. When he awakens he touches her, stroking her face. Her eyes close when his fingers graze over her lips.

She is still sore, aching, her body recovering but still feeling loose at the joints. Somehow all she can remember is the way he carried her upstairs and washed her. She can't even quite remember the rest of it, the sex and the strangers, and she doesn't think that's because of the pill she took. It's as though it happened to another person and she was only watching, watching the way she watched all those other people when she first entered the party. But she remembers Ivan carrying her, and bathing her, and holding her when she fell asleep.

Hilary kisses the pad of his thumb as it passes her mouth, and opens her eyes again. "Hi," she whispers back, and her breath is warm on his fingers. Her eyes close slowly, open once more, a slow and peaceful blink. "Would you like to go to the cabin today?" she asks him, the back of her hand gentle on his cheek, as though she's become the sort of woman -- however brief he knows this transformation will be -- who could love a man, mother a child, be human. "We can talk."

Ivan knows it won't last. This peace between them. This peace within her, and within himself. But it's so bone-deep so right that he can't imagine not having it. He can't remember what it was like not to feel this. They lie in bed together. They're facing each other for once. He didn't have to tie her down, for once, to keep her with him. All he had to do was give her up. And hold on to her. And realize that somehow, these things are not as mutually exclusive as they would seem.

He never would have thought he had it in him to do what he did last night. For all his decadence, Ivan has never wanted to share Hilary; has never quite been all right with the thought of her fucking other men when she's not with him. He never would have thought he could have done what he did last night and felt anything in the aftermath but disgust, revulsion, hate.

But he did. And he didn't hate her. He wasn't disgusted, or revolted, even as he held her for one stranger after another. He wasn't agonized, and he wasn't furious. He felt ...

so close to her. And so protective of her. And so connected to her, as though by divorcing the physical act from the emotional bond, he could feel the latter so much more strongly.

Now, in the light of day, the previous night seems half a hallucination. And the truth is, he can't think easily of what happened on the stone table anymore. He can't imagine it happening again. The thought makes his viscera roil now in uneasy arousal, makes him tense and thrum with possessiveness. She's mine, she's mine. No one else's; mine. It's easier now to think of what happened afterward. Taking her away. Carrying her upstairs. Cleaning her, caring for her,

and keeping her, because she could finally be kept. She could finally give herself to him to be kept.

"I'd like that," he murmurs. And his thumb slides off her mouth; he leans forward to kiss her, softly. "What do you want to talk about?"

It wasn't more than a few months ago that he wanted to know if it would please her to see him spank -- maybe even fuck, though that was only implied in the thinnest way -- another woman, and Hilary reacted by recoiling. And yet last night, which neither of them can quite bring to mind in full, he held her while she opened her legs and came over and over again on different cocks, fingers, tongues. None of the people who were there will ever see her on the street and remember what they did to her. She'll never look in their eyes and recognize them. They were stand-ins for Ivan, in a way. They were soulless. They were slaves. It was Ivan, always Ivan, who she was truly with.

Is with, now, more than she usually can be. She breathes in, breathes out, while they touch each other so very gently. He kisses her and her eyes close; they part and hers open again. "Last night," she whispers. "If you want to."

They're close enough that Hilary can feel a faint shiver of tension go through Ivan. Abate.

"I do," he says, slowly, as though making up his mind even as he speaks. "But ... it's strange for me to think about now. You may have to give me time, when we talk. To remember how I felt last night." A small pause. "Because right now, I wouldn't share you for the world."

"I wouldn't want you to," Hilary tells him, and she moves closer under the covers just then, even as the words are leaving her mouth. Her hand is on his cheek, and then her body is against his, her legs crisscrossing his shins. He can feel the graze of the bandages he put on her knees, remember why they were put there, how she whimpered when he was washing her and the soap stung the raw skin. How he held her, soothed her in the water. How gently he covered them, kissed them, before taking her to bed.

Hilary's hair is dark and cool, though tangled and askew, where it touches his chest. Her face turns toward his neck, her breath tickling his throat as she inhales and exhales, both deeply. "Are you hungry?"

That makes a smile steal across his mouth, unseen to her. His chest is smooth under her cheek, sculpted. He's beautiful enough to do what the model last night does. Too clever for that, though. And anyway -- Ivan, working for a living: unthinkable.

"Would you cook for me if I was?"

She huffs. "Not today," she informs him, her arm snaking around his waist, her hand opening over his back.

It's strange how accessible she is. Hilary is almost like a different person this morning (or afternoon, as it were). A new woman, though without any of the shampoo-commercial implications of such a phrase. Like this, when she is so openly and warmly with him, one might think they're the ones that are married. One might even think they're comfortable with one another. She didn't wear any jewelry last night, nothing as identifying as rings or bangles or earrings. The sheets have slipped down around their waists, exposing their arms to temperate and perfectly circulated air, exposing her upper half to his eyes. That slender back, that flawless skin.

"I'm still quite tired," she admits quietly.

She couldn't see that smile, and in truth, Ivan isn't sure she can hear it. He's not sure - no matter how warm she seems, how human - she has the physical capacity, the sheer neuronal connectivity necessary for deciphering complex and quiet emotion like that. She is so irrevocably broken, and that makes him sad, even as he recognizes

however dimly, however transiently

that the same could be said of him. Once - a few months ago, when they fought so bitterly - she said to him, you know I'm not right. It made him twist inside. Sometimes he wants so badly to be able to protect her: from hurt, from herself, from truth.

This, from the man who is afraid of being relied upon. This, from the consummate liar.

And he wants to protect her again now, when she admits how tired she is. It makes him think of last night in a flash, the way she scraped her knees raw when he fucked her; the way she shuddered and sobbed at the end, coming back into herself, closing herself away. No revulsion or hatred now, either. Just that twist in his heart, not quite pity. Caring, perhaps. It's still such a new emotion to him.

She couldn't see that smile, but she can hear him laughing softly, hear it through his chest wall, hear it in the air. His hand spreads over her back.

"Well, if I cook for you," he murmurs, "are you going to scold me for getting it wrong?"

They are holding each other like survivors of a shipwreck, arms around one another, hands opening over backs, protecting and clinging at once. Yet they huff little laughs and they talk quietly, they don't tremble or sob. They don't squeeze one another as though terrified to let go. Their posture is telling, but their voices are the relief from reality, the small bobbing boat that keeps them from drowning. Hilary has forgotten for the time being that she is not right, that she is broken. She can't remember what it feels like to be that withdrawn, that shattered, as she usually is. Right now she cares deeply for Ivan, and it's okay. She loves him, and it doesn't make her want to die. It just makes her want to stroke his back and lie here with him til hunger makes them move.

"Of course," she says lightly, smiling against his skin.

"Good," he replies, and kisses her temple. "I like it when you do that. I suppose that makes me a masochist." And he laughs again, quiet as the last. "You're a submissive, and I'm a masochist. What a pair we are."

And a breath in, "Shall we go?"

That makes her laugh. A real sound, however brief, and she kisses his neck at the end of it. They are tender. They are sweet. And she nuzzles him under the chin as he talks, displacing his head a bit and kissing his jawline, too. "You're not a masochist," she says gently, drawing back just enough that they can look at each other. "I am. We just have little rituals of ...equity. Ways we can tell each other what the truth really is, when we don't know how else to say it."

Hilary lays her head on the pillow, looking at him in the daylight. "Because somehow I know you care for me when you use the flogger. And somehow it tells you I care for you when I snap at you in the kitchen. I don't know why it works," she says, still touching his face, as though amazed by the texture of his skin. "It does, though. Doesn't it?"

When she comes back into view, he's looking at her. He used to always see her by day. On his yacht. At the country club. On the tennis court. Out at lunch. It occurs to him that he sees her more often by night now, as though with the birth of their son -- or perhaps with the gradual realization that what they're doing means something, matters -- they've had to move from day to night. Have had to hide from prying eyes, or from clarity itself.

He sees her by day now, though. And he realizes, too, that he misses it. Misses the subtle auburn in her hair when the sunlight hits it. Misses the luminescence of her skin, and misses, even, how unalterably dark her eyes are.

"It does," he agrees quietly. And he touches her hair, threads his fingers through, combs it out over the pillow behind her. She's so beautiful, he remembers someone saying last night. They have no idea, he thinks now. No idea who she is. No idea how terrible, and how beautiful, she can be. "It was ... like that last night, too."

And then he pushes up on his elbow, exhaling.

"Let's go," he says, a question shifting to a decision. "I want to be somewhere that's just ours."

The first time he saw her, she was a spot of darkness on a blazing July day, her eyes and her face and her body all kept in shadow despite being out on her yacht on the lake. And the next time was at a nightclub, her in gleaming white and diamonds, shining even in a black club barely lit by strobes and neons. But over and over when he had her, when he took her out on the water or fucked her in a hotel, it was daytime. She was a married woman, of course. He was a popular playboy. They both still are those things, but somehow giving each other their nights meant something. Being together when they should have been seen with other friends, models, etcetera, was somehow important.

Down in Mexico he saw her only in the day. She left him when the sun set and came back to him in the morning, crawled in bed with him. He awoke just like this, only she was heavy with his child then. Oh, it feels like forever ago. It's been almost a year. That was when her hair got long, got wild. She straightens it again now, and it is kept neatly trimmed and glossy as it was when he first met her. No matter, really, just... it's different. The way she was when she was pregnant is a way she won't be otherwise. A memory that is hard to recapture, like

last night.

Hilary breathes in, and nods. It was like that last night. Even if neither of them quite know how to explain it or describe it, that is what was happening. Somehow, that was caring. That was love. She leans over and kisses him softly, then he rises up and she stretches, nodding again in agreement. She is ready to be gone from this penthouse, even if -- when she goes downstairs -- she won't recognize the place she was last night. No DJ, no litter, no lights, no smoke. Even the coffee tables will be different.

Sliding out from under the covers, Hilary glances at the bandages on her knees as though curious as to how they got there, then simply puts her feet on the floor and stands up.

And almost instantly passes out.

Ivan is on the other side of the bed, untangling his foot from the sheets when Hilary drops with the strange fluidity of the truly unconscious. There's no warning, and little time to catch her. But catch her he does, all but leaping across the bed to do so, his arm slinging around her middle, drawing her back against his body as her knees give way.

When she wakes, she's back on the bed - sitting on the edge, leaning back against Ivan, who is holding her with his arms locked around her at diaphragm and shoulder. Who is also shouting for Dmitri, shouting for his maids, shouting for help, goddammit, where the FUCK are you, what the FUCK am I paying you for?

She couldn't have been out very long. The door has yet to burst open, though she can hear footsteps - many of them - running full-tilt down the hall.

The faint -- for that is what it is -- terrifies the shit out of Ivan. Makes him burst across his enormous platform altar of a bed, makes him somehow get to her as though blinking across space and time in order to keep her head from hitting the ground, makes him cradle her and get her onto the bed and hold her as though she's dying,

but Hilary is waking up, jostled and startled and batting at his hands ineffectually. She's disoriented for a moment, clearly unsure of what's going on, when one moment she was standing up and the next minute she's facing a completely different direction, looking at the ceiling rather than the wall. "Ivan --" she says, but he's shouting -- swearing -- at his servants, roaring at them, "Ivan I'm okay, stop, it's fine. Ivan!"

No, she wasn't out very long. A blind swoon, with any number of collected causes contributing. She reaches past his thigh for the sheets, hearing the footsteps. "Nom de dieu, soyez tranquille!"

Last night, not one of his guests could have guessed this woman meant anything at all to him. Not with the way he fucked her. Not with the way he allowed her to be fucked. Perhaps if they'd noticed the way he kissed her, the way he murmured so tenderly to her, the way he all but threw that last mouthbreather back and took her away -- perhaps then they might have had an inkling, but in truth

by then they were all so far gone. Driven so deeply into their most basic urges. Lust and fear. Sex and survival.

Yet right now, if his guests were here, not a single one could mistake that this woman means something to him. Means so much to him. She faints and he reacts like the world might dissolve; he's across the bed so fast that rage lingers in the aftermath, clings to his skin like a scent. He has her locked in his arms, he's imagining any number of horrors, he's bellowing for his staff, they're running for the door, which is locked, and as Hilary is trying to tell him she's okay, for the love of god, she hears one of them, one of the big Russians with the shoulders and the tattoos, slamming his weight into the door. Then someone else - a keyring jangling - a key fitting into the door, the door swinging open, Evgeny and Dmitri and Yuliya and one of those meek, nameless maids all bursting in at once, eyes wide.

By then Ivan isn't yelling anymore. But his arms still circle Hilary like this alone might keep her from harm. His teeth are bared; he looks like an animal. He barks at them: call a doctor, get some water, bring him his talens, now, now, now.

And of course Carlisle is there, his face barely visible in the throng of Russians, and he does not speak Russian nor French, so he can't understand what they're saying and he can't understand what Hilary is saying, because now she's just yanking the sheet over herself and swearing in a language Ivan doesn't speak, either. She's smacking him, first saying non, non and then snapping: "Ivan, no!"

She clutches the sheets around her chest and she didn't seem to mind getting up on a table naked last night but the servants are there and she gives up on Ivan and looks at them instead: "No doctor, leave the room, I'm fine, he's just being a pussy."

Hilary yanks hard on the sheets, leaving Ivan's dick open to the air, and pins her eyes on Carlisle in the mix, pointing directly at him. "If a doctor comes into this penthouse you are fired," she all but snarls, and he gives a single quick nod. She snaps her eyes to Dmitri. "I just fainted. Tell him women faint sometimes! I just need some juice!"

There is a maid, wide-eyed, who scrambles suddenly to the cart of food to obey.

Truthfully, Ivan naked with a woman the morning after isn't an altogether rare sight around these parts. Naked in his bed, with this woman - quite a deal rarer. He's so much more private with her, which at least to the more senior of his staff translates into how different she is. Ivan's junior staff is afraid of Hilary, afraid of what Ivan becomes when he's around Hilary. Amongst the senior - well.

Max detests Hilary, but then Max detests almost everyone. It's a cool, uncomplicated, professional sort of hate; it doesn't affect her work. Evgeny wishes she'd get in the goddamn kitchen more often, if nothing he makes is good enough. Kolya actually sort of likes her, because when she's around he gets to sail the Krasota more often. Yuliya recognizes that women such as her - so elite, so pampered, so intoxicating - exist, and that their existence is necessary. Yuliya also thinks, with Soviet-era Russian fatalism, that Ivan's little dalliance with her will get every last one of them killed one day, but then that is not her business to comment on.

And then there's Dmitri. Who of all of them comes closest to understanding Hilary. Or least: understanding that the woman is broken, deeply so. And that his own master is just as flawed. And that in some way, some strange and labyrinthine way, they are necessary to each other. And that in the end, what the staff thinks of it all makes absolutely not difference at all.

So he says something to Ivan, something that makes the Ragabash look at him suddenly, with mistrust, but then Dmitri is so unflappable and matter-of-fact that Ivan looks from him to Hilary, scowling, and then back.

"I swear to god if anything happens it's on your head, Dmitri," he snaps, all in one rush, and then - just as snappish, as impatient, "Well, hurry up, bring the fucking juice."

The poor scrambling maid almost bursts into tears. She brings the juice as fast as she can, dipping the customary curtsy as Ivan snatches the glass from her.

"Get out!" That's for all of them. "Don't bow, don't curtsey, get out."

This is new. The two of them in bed together and disturbed, servants rushing in. The servants are never allowed in this room when Hilary stays in it. No one is in there to usher her out or coolly inform her that there is a car waiting for her. One wonders how Max feels about Hilary in that light: she has never been tasked with kicking this particular bitch out. Evgeny has never had to refuse to let her come upstairs. It's Yuliya and her poor girls that have had to clean up after her the most. We all know what the maids think, how terrified they are of her, how they've heard her scream more than any of the other members of the staff.

It's laughable how Hilary covers herself today, after what she pulled last night. She does, though, muttering under her breath as she tries to cover herself up a bit more. She doesn't look at any of the servants again. Dmitri says something to Ivan, and Ivan snarls at Dmitri and at the maid, who nearly spills it, then hurries out. The funny thing is, Carlislie took this whole opportunity to sedately push the cart of breakfast foods and the luggage cart inside. He gives a sharp little bow before he leaves, to go back to his lunch -- and to Darya, to tell her there's nothing to be so flustered about.

Hilary takes the juice from Ivan as the servants all bow out and close the door, glaring at him, "Calm down," she mutters, and sips,

leaning back against his chest.

Ivan calming down will take more than a command to do so. Hilary coming close again, leaning back against him as though this were only natural, only normal, the only thing to do -- that helps. His arm secures around her. He lowers his mouth to her hair, nuzzles her introspectively and grumpishly for a moment.

"I was worried," he says quietly. "You fell."

She treats it all -- his staff, his penthouse, his body -- with such an attitude of entitlement. She sips her juice, vaguely annoyed that the maid didn't even offer her a straw, and never pauses to consider that the maid was lucky not to drop the glass as she carried it over out of bald fear. Ivan's fault for yelling at her. Ivan's fault -- or Max's, or Yuliya's -- for not hiring more stalwart help. Carlisle would have remembered to offer me a straw, she thinks to herself, taking another sip, adding: and Darya would have rimmed the glass in that pretty red sugar. But of course the Russians need three times as many people to do half as good a job.

Ivan is so warm against her. Warmer even than he was under the covers. She wasn't conscious for it, but it was the pulse of rage to give him speed so she wouldn't hit her head. She has noticed her head doesn't hurt, but she never hit the floor as far as she knows, so she imagines she just simply fell back onto the bed when she fainted. Hilary sips as he nuzzles her, and she lowers a hand to his naked thigh to pat it.

"I took ecstasy last night," she tells him, not sure if he knew this, as though this has more impact than getting fucked more than half a dozen times, losing fluids via sweat and cum and tears. "I'm sure I'm just dehydrated and need to eat. I'm quite all right, mon petit faucon. Stood up too quickly." Another sip, and she turns her head to nuzzle his neck. "We will go more slowly from here on, yes?"

In spite of himself, Ivan's mouth moves a little; the first stirrings of a smile. "You haven't called me that in a long time," he says. His hand comes over hers, stills it, holds it against his skin. The hairs on his leg are golden, too, visible largely by the limning of the sun. "I sort of missed it."

The last time she called him that -- perhaps the only time she called him that -- was more than a year ago. She wasn't pregnant. She was mocking him, teasing him in a way. She called Christian little names, calls all manner of pretty young men little nicknames. Today she said it with affection. Closeness. What closeness she can manage, that is. Hilary drinks some more of her juice, in small and careful sips, which only serve to awaken her appetite for something more. She glances over at the plates on the cart, wondering what's under the rounded, gleaming covers.

Her hand moves on his thigh, under his hand, massaging it in a way that -- right now, and after her faint, and after last night -- does not feel lascivious. She watches it, her hand in his hand, fingers between his fingers, her fingers against his flesh. "I have thought of calling you владелец," she murmurs. It is spoken carefully, with much practice, a difficult word to simply roll off the tongue when one is not familiar with the language yet. She has said it so many times, repeated it over and over, even as she was cooking, til it felt like it was a part of her. But still: she says it so precisely, with so much effort, and something like hesitance, because

they have not broached this, yet. She is married. She belongs literally to another wolf, even if he is divorcing her soon. Filing for divorce soon. But even today is the first time Ivan has mentioned that she's a submissive, and Hilary has only briefly alluded to it or mentioned it aloud in the past. She has never called him anything like this, though.

"But if you like that," Hilary says, whispering, "you should... give me a collar of some kind."

There's an echo of last night - both the stone table and the bathtub - in the way he holds her now. Her back to his chest. His arms secure around her, as though keeping her from slipping away, slipping under. She's sipping juice and contemplating breakfast, which Carlisle so thoughtfully wheeled in. Ivan has never even bothered to wonder what Carlisle, or any of his own staff for that matter, think of their affair. What the help thinks doesn't matter.

He strokes her, nuzzles her, treats her very gently as she recovers. Or he thinks she's recovering. From Hilary's point of view, she's probably merely having some juice. And talking about nicknames,

honorifics,

the things she wants to call him. He stills a little as that word rolls off her tongue. Hilary does not speak Russian well, but she speaks it the way she dances: very precisely, very perfectly, with every shred of her native accent erased. The imperfection is in the perfection. Ivan realizes suddenly that he doesn't even know what her native accent is. He's always assumed she was born and raised in America, like himself, but then sometimes when she's so far gone it's French that drips off her lips. I'm going to die, she said last night, I love you so much.

"Only when we're playing, I think," he answers after a while, quietly. "Publically, petit faucon and darling boy do just as well. And I rather like the way you say my name. Particularly when you say it like it's the only word you remember."

Thoughtfully, Ivan draws his hand up Hilary's body. He touches her neck, encircles it gently with his thumb, his fingers, his palm. A moment. Then he wraps his arms around her again, tightly, kissing her shoulder.

"I'll have a collar made," he adds. "Something suitable. It can be your Christmas present. Or a birthday remembrance. You know, I don't even know when your birthday is."

From Hilary's point of view, she is indeed merely sipping juice and talking with Ivan. There's nothing to recover from but a little wooziness. If she hadn't stood up that fast she'd be fine, if she'd eaten something last night, if she'd had something to drink earlier, but it's no matter. She lazes, nuzzling and caressing Ivan in bed as they lie half-under a single tangled sheet. If she could read his thoughts about her Russian, comparing it to her dancing, she would be incensed. Her dancing is perfect, god damn him. Her Russian is childish, stumbling, inexpert. They're completely different things. She might whip the sheets back and rise to her feet again with dizzying speed, only this time she would not fall no matter how spotty her vision got. She would simply go to the breakfast cart and throw a wedge of camembert at his chest.

It makes her smile, what he says. When they're playing. Her eyes close a bit with the movement of his hand, breathing in comfort and titillation both as he touches her neck like that. They are never truly in public. The public matters so little, and will only matter less as time goes on, as her marriage dissolves and she becomes as free a woman as the world thinks she is. When they leave the country, go to Europe, he has to have noticed that her pronunciation of his name gets a little closer to the original, less EYE-van. Softer on the consonants, longer on the vowels.

"I like the formality of it," she murmurs, of the Russian word she chose. And that makes sense: the little nicknames she gives him are almost condescending, teasing, mocking -- little rituals of equity. His name is so intimate, so close. He isn't 'Mr. Press' to her, never has been. But then there is this other word. Just for them. Just like:

a collar.

He says he'll get one made for her and her heart skips a beat. She twists a bit to look at him as he promises her a Christmas present or birthday gift of it, her eyes lit up a bit from within -- which they never are. Her eyes simply do not twinkle or shine or glow. But for a moment there's a spark inside of her. She smiles. "Not for Christmas, please," she tells him, leaning over to kiss his cheek, then his mouth, both soft and quick. "You shouldn't, til the divorce is final. It wouldn't feel right."

Hilary kisses him again, harder this time, a few drops of chilled juice splashing on his stomach and being soaked up by a fold of his sheets. She doesn't apologize. "March seventeenth," she tells him, naturally excluding the year, which is none of his or anyone's damn business.

"Very well," Ivan agrees, "not Christmas, then,"

and if there was more to that sentence it's lost, gone because she kisses him - harder this time, hard enough to close his eyes, make him mmph​ against her mouth.

When she draws back she tells him another date. And of course she excludes the year. Truth be told, Ivan is a little curious. It wouldn't matter, he doesn't think it would matter at all, but he wouldn't be who and what he is if he weren't at all curious. He knows she's over thirty. He doubts she's over forty, unless her self-imposed photophobia really was working wonders. Beyond that, it's so hard to tell. Sometimes it's hard even to remember that she's older than he is: when she's so far in subspace that she's groundless, vulnerable, oddly innocent, and so terrifyingly, addictively reliant on him.

"March seventeenth," he repeats, remembering the date. "What a pity; we've never actually spent your birthday together. I'll have to arrange something the next time it comes around."

That much is true. The year they met it happened in summer, a few months after her birthday. This past year she was in Mexico, and he visited in February and again in April. Dion had sent her some lovely gifts, expensive and eager. Some were actually for the baby. She was livid. It was her birthday.

Hilary reaches over and sets down the glass of juice -- it's mostly empty now. Turning and twisting back to Ivan, she slips her arms around his waist, laying her head down on his chest. Her arm misses the spot of juice on his body by a thin margin, or she might berate him for being a mess despite it being her fault. Her body is so slender, seems so unaffected by time. Her skin is perfect, almost entirely untouched by sunlight, with no scars to speak of. She's still graceful and strong and beautiful, her breasts firm but supple and filling his hands now when he cups them. Hilary's hair shines. Call it her photophobia, or her breeding, or the simple fact that she is kin to brighter, hotter blood than any other woman her age.

Whatever that age is.

"I'll be divorced by then," she muses. "He's going to file later this month. Maybe in a week or two. You could throw me a party."

They were going to go to the cabin. That's still on the agenda, Ivan supposes, though right now Hilary doesn't seem inclined to go anywhere at all. That's all right. She turns around and she slides her arms around him, rests her head on his chest. He reaches over and draws the sheets over their lower halves, warding off the coolness of the room that is comfortable when clothed and moving about; a little cold when naked and lounging in bed.

"A party," he says, amused. "I could do that. Maybe I'll have Max invite the same people that were here last night. See if anyone even suspects."

Hilary laughs. "I was just thinking that," she all but purrs, and turns her head to bite his pectoral muscle lightly. Most women would barely graze him with their teeth if they dared to do this at all. It's unusual for Hilary to do such a thing, perhaps unheard of, but she actually nips him, hard enough to sting a bit. It's like being bitten by a pup who is playing at lethal behavior, the flesh in question saved only by inexperience and teeth that are not as sharp as they will be. Could be.

"Though I'll wear my hair up. And be clothed. It will all be so civilized and posh none of them will believe they didn't dream up Halloween."

She sighs softly, laying against him again. "I can't wait." Kisses his chest. "Hungry," she snarls. "I'm going to eat you all up."

Ivan draws a hissing inhale as Hilary bites into his chest. The glancing slap of his hand off her ass feels a little like retaliation, but in reality it's closer to response. Then he lifts her, shifts her, slides her thighs past his hips, and suddenly their positioning is that much closer; that much more provocative.

"Are you now," he replies, half-smiling. "Well," and he stands, the muscles of his back tightening against his changed balance, the added weight as he carries her aloft, "I think we should eat."

He pauses in the middle of his room, halfway to the food cart, to kiss her. He takes his time kissing her; it's long and slow and, yes, hungering. And when he gets to the cart, they can see what his servants have prepared for them; fruits and cheese, milk, juice. Coffee in an insulated carafe. Tiny pastries.

And doughnuts from the place downstairs from Hilary's apartment. Carlisle's contribution, doubtlessly.

She can feel the difference. Today of all days, Hilary can feel the difference between punishment and overture. Ivan spanking her like that is at once comforting and arousing, and yet disturbing. She resists, too, and he can sense that -- not when he lifts her, but when the way he's shifting her around demands her legs part. Hilary gives a shake of her head, her hand on his chest not to push him back so much as imply such a gesture. "No, I don't want to," she says, briefly but potently childlike in tone, "I don't want that right now."

Her eyes flick from her hand on his chest to his face. "I'm sore," she tells him. "Like my joints are a little unhinged."

There's a quick flash of a wince over Ivan's face. He stops trying to part her legs immediately; he puts his hands on her face and draws her brow to his and

doesn't say anything, doesn't apologize, knows she doesn't want him to apologize, anyway, and least of all for what happened last night. Holds her, though. Holds her just like that, their bodies close, his hands on her face.

"Okay," he whispers, a little later. And kisses her gently, and smiles a little. There's a bit of ache in that expression. His hands, falling, touch her hips, touch her waist. "Stay here," he says. "I'll bring breakfast over."

The smile on her face is soft as she bows her head to his. Her hands come up to cover his wrists, holding him gently where he holds her. Neither of them mention things like apologies, or the reason why her lower half feels aching and off-kilter. Hilary doesn't remember how many cocks she took last night. She remembers Ivan's. She knows there was at least one woman. She knows she came until she was sobbing, holding on to Ivan to protect her, to contain her, to put her back together again. But she doesn't want him to be sorry for any of it. She doesn't feel sorry for any of it.

They kiss, and she does want him, even though every pulse of arousal feels like pressing on a bruise. Even that feels good to Hilary in a way, but she doesn't want pain right now. For once in her life, she doesn't want pain. She just wants this: closeness to him, closer than she is ever able to be on her own. He helped her with that. Tore himself up inside -- oh, she knows -- for the sake of this. So she smiles at him when that kiss parts, her hair falling across her face, and she nods.

Sinking back to the covers in the bed, Hilary reclines and waits for her breakfast. Oh yes: fruit and cheese, more juice. Coffee. Little pastries folded around fruit and creams. A small stack of plain, soft cake donuts, tied in a thin blue ribbon. She smiles when Ivan brings over breakfast on its tray, setting it down over her lap, pouring coffee for her, more juice. They settle together and eat lightly, Ivan more voraciously, his stomach quietly gnawing, wishing for meat even as Hilary is thinking that it couldn't have been that difficult to make them a decent hot breakfast. Nevermind that Evgeny had no idea when they were going to rouse themselves. She simply blames the Russians and their sub-par service.

It's hard to complain about a breakfast like this, though. It's simple, and she puts a dab of raspberry jam on a donut and makes Ivan try it, which makes her mention a Monte Cristo sandwich, which makes him suggest they go to Monte Cristo, which makes her slyly tease him about his tendency to promise to take her on these whirlwind trips every time he sees her, a new swank locale popping into his mind on each iteration. They kiss, slowly and softly, and for the first time she feels a pang of regret that this morning she can't be with him

because last night she was with him so deeply, clinging to him in spirit when her body was being wrecked.

A maid drops by while Ivan is peeling an apple on a razor-sharp knife, curtseying and apologizing softly as she brings a drycleaning bag to Hilary's rack of luggage, hanging up the gown inside. Hilary, realizing what it is, makes a sound in the back of her throat, something like a scoff, and flicks her hand. "No. Burn that," she says. "Have the mask destroyed as well." The maid's little eyes bulge. She curtseys and apologizes and scurries out again, her feet small and as silent as she can make them. "Ooh, clothes," Hilary goes on, as though finally noticing the cart. "I wonder what they brought me.

After that it's a miniature flurry of activity. Hilary wants Carlisle and Darya at the estate with the rest of Ivan's tagalong staff, all of them waiting around and being paid to stay nearby in case they're asked for while she and Ivan enjoy the cabin. Orders have to be sent to the merged group of servants to go ahead and prepare everything while Hilary goes through her shoes and her makeup and her luggage to dress herself, sit on a cushioned bench in Ivan's bathroom to do her makeup. She wants Darya to come up to do her hair, she wants Carlisle to come get her things and ferry them along to Ivan's lake house, she wants him to go on an errand back to her apartment on the way and pick up a few specific things, and so on.

Sitting there while the wide-eyed blonde girl twists the ends -- just the ends, mind you -- of Hilary's hair into loose spirals, Hilary dabs at her lip gloss and calls for Ivan, wherever he is. "I never asked," she says, when he's in earshot again, "what is your birthday, darling?"

Ivan does, indeed, want meat with his breakfast. His lifestyle lends itself to fine, rarefied things. Tiny pastries, the shells hundreds of paper-thin layers, the filling just sweet enough. Tiny cakes, light and airy. Elegant portions of seafood, fresh vegetables; dainty cups of soup. Sometimes it's a wonder that Evgeny's big hands, which used to bruise faces and break arms before he discovered a startling talent in the kitchen, can even mold the things he serves - much less make them as well as he does.

Yet once in a while - though few people ever see it - Ivan asks for meat, god damn it, red meat off the bone, bloody inside. Eats with his chest bare, silverware forgotten. Tears into it with his hands and teeth, leaves the table stuffed and messy, licking juice lazily off his fingers as he goes.

He thinks about licking meat juices off his fingers this morning. Last night was something of an exertion. Eating tiny pastries and trying that doughnut Hilary insists on serving him, Ivan reminds himself to have Evgeny prepare steak for dinner tonight. Something seared hot and fast. Something substantial, with a robust red on the side, and perhaps whipped potatoes drowned in melted cheese. Hilary's dress is brought back and he pays only enough attention to remark,

"I thought you looked quite lovely last night. Before you undressed, that is. Afterward, you were simply fucking gorgeous."

The dress and the mask that made her look quite lovely are taken away, then. Destroyed somewhere. They don't know where and they don't care; such things are beneath them.

Later, she's being prepared for the day in Ivan's bathroom, and he's contemplating his absurdly well-stocked closet. It feels a little like they're the ones who are married, he thinks. Who are bound together by vows and faith. When she calls, he comes out of the closet tying his tie by touch, his shirt-collar turned up against his jaw while he finishes the knot. She wants to know when his birthday is. His mouth quirks.

"The twelfth of August. 1988. A pitch-black moon and a hot summer sky, if you want to get poetic." He raises his eyes, looks at her through the mirror instead. "You know, I liked your hair the way it was in Mexico. You should wear it like that again sometime."

If Hilary ever stopped trying to get Evgeny to run crying into a closet somewhere from her scathing remarks about the only useful, artistic, and nonviolent thing he can do with his hands, she might learn a thing or two from him. She is not more talented than he is. She does not have his practice. The truth is, she was simply taught a refusal to be satisfied along with how to talk and how to walk. What if the staff got big heads? This sort of thing has to be managed from the beginning. Praise must be given sparingly and rarely, just enough to maintain loyalty, not enough to encourage affection or familiarity.

She has never seen Ivan eat like an animal. She might like it. Tonight they might eat steak, hers just as rare as his own, her portion smaller and her cut more tender, watching him as a drop of red, bloody juice rolls down his neck.

"Of course I was," she tells him, of being lovely. Swats at his hand as though to stay oh stop that when he talks of how she looked when she was naked. She wants the white one destroyed as well, tosses it after the maid to have her bend, pick it up, scurry out. The door closes. Hilary eats a ball of melon off of a toothpick, her teeth bared for a moment. That, too, is lovely.

If they are like a married couple, then they are the type where one is married for the sake of money, or neither need the cash and it's simply convenient. They would have to be using each other. They would need to be loveless, both with several bits of stuff on the side, rarely sharing a room, arguing over renovating the penthouse to give her a mistress's suite just as fine or finer than his. By comparison, Hilary's apartment in the city is pedestrian. They let anyone into that building. It's tawdry. She is torn though, wanting a different thing every week. A big house, a little house, a penthouse like Ivan's, an apartment utterly the opposite of what he has. A warehouse all to herself. Maybe she wants to live on a boat.

Hilary is wearing a pink satin robe, lingerie barely showing underneath, her clothes hung up nearby. She is going through a suede wrap that contains some jewelry, thoughtful while Darya puts a glossing spray on those curls she made, drawing back the topmost layer of Hilary's hair to pin it at the back of her crown, sweeping down a few tendrils with her tiny fingers. Darya really does have ridiculously small hands. Ivan strolls in, collar up and knotting his tie. Hilary glances at him in the mirror, and smirks at him. Rolls her eyes at the 'pitch-black moon' business, the poetry of it.

"Absolutely not," she scoffs. "It was like that because getting a decent haircut in Mexico -- or keeping a pretty style in that heat -- was a waste of effort. If you liked it so much, knock me up again and send me to Tahiti."

Knock me up again, she says, again the word that makes Ivan's eyes jump instantly to Darya's reflection. He doesn't know if the girl knows. Well. He knows now that the girl knows, and if she doesn't startle, then he knows she's always known.

He finishes knotting his tie, folds his collar crisply down, and then lays his hand on the back of Hilary's neck. It makes it a little harder for Darya to work, but it's momentary anyway. Just long enough for him to bend down, kiss Hilary's smooth cheek.

"You'd hate me," he says lightly, and straightens.

Darya doesn't react. She's wrinkling her brow, focusing on Hilary's hair, clipping it in place without tugging on Hilary's hair, because she gets snapped at if she does. Maybe she knows. Maybe she's always known. She does look up, though, looking into the mirror. Through the glass, her eyes meet Ivan's for a moment. She has an imploring look. That could just be the shape of her eyes, so big and round and blue, or the way her mouth always looks. She looks back down and picks up a smaller curling iron, tightening a few curls that spin down from Hilary's jeweled clip.

It isn't too hard for her to shift a bit out of the way, holding the iron so it doesn't burn anyone, when Ivan leans over and gives that little kiss. Hilary smirks, wrinkling her nose as though he's going to muss her makeup or something.

"Well, then you'll have to get used to having a well-coiffed mistress and not some pregnant earth-mother type in Mexico," Hilary says, just as lightly, where another woman might have told him she'd never hate him. That would be a lie. But Hilary's hate is as easy to access as any of her other broken emotions.

Darya finishes, and sets down the curling irons, unplugging them and beginning to put away Hilary's makeup for her. "Shoo," Hilary tells her, waving a hand. "Do it later. I'm going to get dressed. Make sure that tattooed beast Mr. Press employs takes fresh rosemary to the lake house."

Darya's eyes widen a bit. She's afraid of Evgeny, but she bobs into a little curtsey of her own and leaves, not yet knowing that Mr. Press's staff already likes her better than Carlisle simply because she knows her place and speaks their language. Hilary sheds her robe, draping it over the bench as she rises. "They all know," she tells Ivan, brushing a bit of lint off the back of his shoulders when she passes him. She moves on to her own clothes, already wearing her lingerie, garters keeping a pair of opaque black stockings held up. Her dress is a burnt sort of red, not far off from the color of his mask last night, and easy to put on: Hilary slips into it, wraps it around herself, secures a button, and then begins tying on the belt around it. The resulting plummet of a neckline has a bit of a ruffle, as do the ends of the three-quarter sleeves. "It seemed more practical. Your staff knows, mine knows -- gold or silver?"

She's holding up two different earrings. Regardless of what he says, she chooses the gold, putting the hoops in her ears and the bangles on her wrist.

"The tattooed beast," Ivan calls after Darya, amused, "prefers to be called Evgeny. He might take offense to the other term."

Then she's gone, this meek little maid of Hilary's. Hilary herself rises; she sheds her robe, which makes Ivan touch her back with his fingertips, musingly, just for the sake of touch. She brushes lint off his shoulders. He turns, following her, leaning himself against the wall and watching her button that button that magically transforms a scrap of fabric into a dress.

"Silver," he says, and she picks gold. His mouth quirks again, an ironic sort of smile. Almost a smirk. "Why do you bother to ask?"

And regardless of how she answers, Ivan puts his hand out as she starts to walk past him. His palm touches her abdomen. He holds her in place, and then he winds her back to himself, drawing her nearer to murmur in her ear.

"Perhaps when we're at the cabin, and if you're not too sore, you'll let me lick your pussy." His kiss falls on her earlobe this time. It's very soft. "I'll be quite gentle," he promises.

Darya murmurs an assent to Ivan in Russian, a language he has noticed she speaks almost exclusively around Hilary now, just before she leaves. Outside she rolls her eyes. Of course she knows Evgeny's name, what did those two think the staff were doing all day waiting for them to get out of bed, staring at a each other across the way like nervous seventh graders? She shakes her head and walks downstairs.

And Hilary gets dressed, which takes only moments now. "You help me decide," she claims, as though to soothe him. She's moving to sit, to put her shoes on, but Ivan reaches for her, pulling her against him where he can smell her hair product, her perfume, everything on her. She tips her head almost instantly to the side, exposing her throat to his mouth, a gesture of affection and -- more than that, but twined with it -- submission.

What he says makes her breathe in, exhale slowly. "Maybe," she whispers back, shuddering a little when he kisses her. It isn't something they do very often, what Ivan talks about. He likes to bend her over and lick her but sometimes she's so caught in her submission that it's jarring to have him on his knees, having him eating at her. They've never quite discussed it, but there are moments when she wants him hard and brutal, fucking her with his cock, using her like a warm hole, snarling at her that she's nothing more than his slut to fuck as he pleases,

and when he gets down to lick her pussy she doesn't know how to feel, or what to do.

But that's normally. And they are neither of them normal today. They are using both their staff. They are acting like a married couple going on vacation. Hilary seems open, warm, even human. Ivan is so tender. She smiles at him, rubs the very tip of her nose against his cheek, and slips away to go sit and put on a pair of black booties with tapering stacked heels. They have little ties in front. She looks up at him from where she sits, batting her lashes and holding out one leg.

That causes Ivan to smirk. But he goes to her nonetheless, and he goes to one knee like a storybook suitor, lays her heel on his thigh and begins to lace those laces up.

"The first time I had you," he remarks, "I took your shoes off for you while you tried to use them to put a hole in my chest. I couldn't quite decide whether to be aroused or irritated. I think I chose both in the end."

He finishes the first tie, pulling it delicately tight. He wants to kiss her knee; wants to kiss her everywhere. He keeps thinking about sex. Fucking her. Using her like a warm, wet hole

or making love to her they way they do, very rarely, on those dark nights when they don't say anything to each other as though the very act of speaking might shatter what they have. He sets her foot down, though. He doesn't kiss her, he doesn't start trying to tongue her pussy right here and now. Instead, Ivan holds his hands out for her other foot, repeats the performance there. And when that's finished, he stands; he holds his hands out to help her up.

"It's strange," he says quietly, "to feel so ... peaceful with you. I like it."

The way he knees, putting her foot on his leg, opens up her dress enough that he can look in her skirt and see her panties. No real matter; he saw them a moment ago on her, skin-colored with their own small ruffles and tiny black ribbons here and there. They aren't monumentally exciting, but neither are they a plain cotton tee and pair of Hanes. He speaks of the first time they fucked and the way he phrases it makes her eyes darken a touch with remembrance: the first time he had her. The first time she was his.

And he was horny and angry, and she loved it. He stayed horny and angry for a long time. And then the anger became more feigned and less genuine while the lust only grew, and she loved it even more. Loved him. In response, Hilary digs her heel into his thigh a bit, smiling as warmly as if she'd just reached out and touched his face. Ivan takes her other foot and laces up the bootie there as well, very simple and straightforward, not letting on just how much he wants to hold her down and have her again.

Her head tips to the side. And her eyes darken again as he goes on, though this time not with arousal or warmth. "It can't last," she whispers, like a secret, the way she sometimes tells him things she thinks he should already know, things she wants to pretend she isn't saying.

This time she does reach out, touching his face. "You know it can't last."

He looks at her then. Like the golden storybook prince: on one knee, bathed by sunlight, looking up into his true love's face. Last night he looked like a prince, too, albeit of a wholly different sort. Last night he looked like nothing human.

Her hand on his face soon finds itself covered. He touches her hand, holds her palm to his cheek. Turns his head. Kisses her softly, like a blessing.

"I know," he whispers. "It's okay. I'm not leaving."

And then he's standing, and then he's holding out his hands to help her up, though really it's more etiquette than necessity. They still haven't left his room since they retired here last night. Passing the breakfast cart, Ivan eats another honeydew ball, then reaches out to open the bedroom door.

Which is, strangely, what she needs to hear. What she needed to know without question last night as he shared her with is party guests. If he'd left her, if he'd walked away, if he'd watched from afar or perhaps even the couch, it wouldn't have been the same. It wouldn't have been okay. To know that she is broken, that she is shattered, inhuman, not right, and still be loved by him -- that's what Hilary needs. That's what lets her love him back, when she can. As rare as those times may be, that is how they work.

She leans forward, her leg still resting on his thigh in a strangely dominant posture, and kisses his mouth. "I love you," she whispers, and she has said this perhaps three, four times in all the time he's known her, may not say it again for another several months, may never say it again, but she says it now. Her fingers turn and her knuckles leave a gentle trail down his cheek, almost nose to nose with him, eye to eye. She said it last night, though. In French, her mind gone, that she loved him so much she was going to die from it. Hilary gives him another kiss, soft and gentle, and lets him help her to her feet when he rises.

He gets another ball of melon. She grabs another miniature gingerbread donut, and they leave, hand in hand. Someone else will come get the luggage, clean up breakfast, get Hilary's jewelry and makeup, sweep everything clean. Put away Ivan's mask.

Her coat is waiting for her downstairs, held by one of Ivan's maids to lay over her shoulders. It's woolen and black, warm enough for a November afternoon in Chicago. The maid is the one to sweep Hilary's hair out of her collar -- or begins to, but Ivan stops her and does it himself, touching her neck again. It makes Hilary smile at him.

In the car, they bypass the shorter route and go along the scenic one, looking out over the lake through Hilary's window, holding hands in the middle of the seat. He futzes around on his tablet; Hilary makes a phone call that is spoken entirely in French and contains no laughter. When she gets off, she peeks at Ivan's tablet, at the game he's playing, and she seems curious, leaning over and tapping on the touchscreen. They find a game -- one made for children, in fact -- where you bake and decorate colorful cartoon cakes. Hilary is delighted, playing it the rest of the way to the estate.

Til they're almost there and she hands back the tablet, blackscreened, her face in a worried pout. "I don't know what I did," she says,

but it won't work.

Nor will it ever again. And Christ only knows what Hilary did to it. She can only shrug, unaware that this toy is any more or less special or valuable than, say, a television.

They ignore the lake house, where other cars have gone into the garage already, where Darya and Carlisle and Evgeny and Yuliya and the maids and possibly Kolya will be staying, close at hand should their masters want them. Hilary is asking Ivan if she can have 'one of those things' -- she means his tablet -- and if all of them break that easily. "That one must have been very cheap," she's decided, as they exit the car and start on the little pathway to the cabin, where their luggage is waiting just outside the door. "You should get a better one next time."

As it turns out, Hilary never actually has to ask for 'one of those things'. She hands his back to him bricked, and where another twenty-three-year-old male might burst into furious shouting at this outcome, Ivan simply looks at it, turns it over in his hands a few times, shakes it once, sniffs at it a little, and then tosses it on the ground.

"Don't worry," he tells her, putting his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. "I'll get you another one."

So then they're at the cabin. And all the other cars in their small convoy have gone to the main house while they've taken the winding drive down to the lake. Their cabin is as they left it: tiny, simple, perched over the lake, connected to shore by a thin pier-like bridge. Any other vacation home and their luggage would await them inside, but not here. Here, no one goes into that cabin except Yuliya, and that's only when they aren't there. Only when she must, and only for the purpose of cleaning and dusting and changing the sheets.

"I'll get the best in the world," Ivan promises, laughing, as Hilary blames the electronic catastrophe on the poor deceased tablet. "And I'll get a few backups, too, in case you brick it again."

Ivan picks up their luggage as they approach the door. Hilary is the one to unlock it this time. Broad windows and the deep blue lake beyond. The cabin is a little chilly, so Ivan sets their things down and goes to turn up the heat a little.

That makes her so happy. She's pleased, convinced that the tablet he has was simply some cheap toy, worthless. He puts his arm around her, and she leans against his side, smiling happily that she's going to have a present where she can play little games like that. Her thoughts turn dark a moment, curious about what else is out there, if there are games that will let her see the things and look at the things that she imagines anyway, if she could carry that darkness around with her. It passes, though; she also likes covering imaginary chocolate cakes in strawberry frosting and little flowers.

Still, she does tell him later to get a better one than that, it was clearly cut-rate, so he assures her as their feet are crunching on the ground outside that he'll get her a much better one, the best, and backups. She blinks, confused: "Brick?" And doesn't get it whatsoever, doesn't tell him that she thinks they have gone to space, they should be able to make decent computers by now that don't break so easily. She is nothing if not prone to accidents with technology. It's a wonder she can drive.

Her keys are in her purse, and they jangle as she takes them out, opening the cabin for them. They don't come here often, haven't been here for weeks, and it's cold inside. Clean, of course, and Yuliya got here before they did to put fresh linens on everything, hang up robes and towels and the like. Ivan carries all the luggage, while Hilary hangs up her keys on a little hook near the door and removes her coat, putting it on a coat rack. As locales go, it is the simplest, homiest place either of them ever go to. It is still luxury, and she knows it -- she has lived in tiny apartments filled with old furniture, dying servants coughing and muttering in the next room.

Cold without her coat, she walks instantly over to Ivan, wrapping herself around him from behind, soaking in his warmth. "Oh, we need a fire," she shivers, laying her hands on his chest and her cheek on his back. For a moment she's quiet, content just like that, before she mentions what they woke up to: "Do you want to talk about last night?" she finally asks.

[Addendum: "Before... I can't anymore?"]

There's an entire part of Hilary's life that Ivan knows very little about. Knows only in the coarse brush-strokes of a few words: I've been poor before, I'm not afraid of that. Knows it, but cannot comprehend it, no more than ants can comprehend the nuclear forces that make the sun burn. Being poor; a Silver Fang, Hilary being poor -- these things are simply outside of his scope.

A week in Meillerie; a few days in San Miguel de Allende; this cabin on the lake. These are what Ivan thinks of as simple living. What he imagines it must be like to be -- well. Not quite ordinary, no. But close.

It's cold in here, and Hilary is cold without her coat. She comes to him and leans into her, takes his warmth for herself. She never thinks twice about that. He never thinks twice about giving it up to her. Earlier, before they left his penthouse, she whispered to him that she loves him. She says it so rarely; each iteration precious. She might never say it again. He puts his hand over hers, holds them against his heart. He loves her. Sometimes he doesn't know how to say it and make it sound genuine.

"I'll start a fire," he says, but he doesn't move away. She's still there. He can see their reflections dimly in the vast panes of glass lining nearly every wall. Her hands crossed over his chest. Her body leaning into his, the top of her head just visible over his shoulder. He takes a breath when she speaks again.

"Yes," quietly. "But come sit by the fire. We'll talk there."

She thinks Ivan tells her he loves her far more often than he actually does. When he puts his hand on her neck, soft and gentle, she thinks she hears it. When he ties her up in bed next to him, she feels loved whether he fucks her there or not. Every time he washes her, every time he rubs the knots out of her shoulders, every time he shows her how dear she is to him, his hands tell her that he loves her. She is quite certain he never believes her when she says it, not really. She has no way of showing it to him as clearly as she thinks he shows it to her.

Hilary's dress is thin, particularly for mid-autumn, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the fabric. The sun hasn't set yet, but it's late in the year and it won't be very long. She smiles, and nods, slipping her arms away from him and walking across the barren floor to the fireplace. They haven't really used it much, the cabin built in summer and the true cold weather finally hitting them. She doesn't bother taking off her shoes or anything, but lowers herselt to sit, legs to one side, on the sheepskin rug in front of it. She stares at it, wondering how to turn it on. Make it have fire in it.

She never stops to think of just how useless she would be on her own. How confusing the world would be. She doesn't know how to manage money, she doesn't know how basic things work. She doesn't know how to treat people except by paying them to do what she wants, give her what she wants. She doesn't know how to plan for various eventualities. She knows how to cook and how to dance, she knows how to fuck and how to twist a few words to turn a knife in someone's back. She doesn't know how to fill up her own gas tank.

Hilary decides to lie on her back, her legs crossed at the ankle, her hands on her belly, waiting for her lover.

Very likely Yuliya, in all her fatalism, is right. Hilary and Ivan's obsession with Hilary may very well be the end of him and all those who serve him, and are in turn dependent on him. Yet what Yuliya doesn't quite understand is how in a way, what Ivan has with Hilary makes him a little bit better than he was.

If nothing else, he has to be a little more responsible than he would be otherwise. She trust him so utterly. And she never stops to think of so many things, and so he thinks of them, and

the truth is sometimes Ivan worries about Hilary. He never used to worry, but he does now, and he worries what she'll do if he dies. He doesn't know anything about her finances. He suspects she knows very little, herself. He wonders how she intends to stay solvent for the rest of her life. Sometimes he has the urge to try to sign her onto all his accounts again, but they fought so horribly over that. He'll have to talk to Max, he thinks. He'll arrange to leave her something should something happen to him. He'll arrange to leave her everything.

Well. Her, and his son.

They part, and she goes to sit on the sheepskin rug. He goes to where the spare floor cushions are stored, taking them out of the cunning little storage shelf built into the wall, tossing them down for Hilary. She lies on her back, and the fur is thick and very, very soft, and he smiles to see her there. While she stretches out, he fetches wood from the rack, stacks them in the fireplace. He's not terribly good at this either. He cheats: turning on the gas, reaching in with a lighter to ignite it. Still, he knows enough to arrange the tinder right, sets the logs up to stack and interlock, gives the fire space to breathe, space to move.

Hanging the tongs back up, he returns to Hilary, stretching out on the rug beside her. The fireplace is left open, and it warms them. Soon the wood is popping, sparks spiraling up the chimney. Outside, everything is chill and blue; inside, everything is warm, the color of wood and fire. Ivan likes the contrast.

"Come here," Ivan murmurs, holding his arm out, opening a space for Hilary against his side. "Let's talk."

They don't fear Hilary because she is truly dangerous, or more mean than they can handle. They fear her because of her hold on Ivan, greater than any woman they've ever seen him with, greater even before she had his child. They fear her even when they have seen enough to know she is not using him for money, she does not seem to be there to get him to marry her, she even rejected it when he wanted to give her access to everything. They fear her because they have never seen Ivan like this. They fear her because they did not know Ivan was capable of this. They fear her because, with all those unknowns, there is no telling what will become of him. And if he falls, they do not know what becomes of them, either.

But who cares what the help thinks. She's here now, lying on his rug while he brings cushions to make it even more comfortable, while he makes fire to keep her warm even though they've also turned the heater up a bit. Hilary dressed as though they were going out somewhere, jewelry and makeup and heels and the works. Who knows -- they might go out, still. Who knows -- in ten minutes he might take it all off of her.

He worries. She thinks about silver versus gold, the red dress or the blue one. And should her son one day look into his father's past, the money he should have had but didn't, he will find that a great deal was left to a woman by the name of Hilary de Broqueville. A woman with near-black eyes, just like his. And a voice he has been searching for all his life.

Oh, but that's unlikely. Not even worth thinking about. Or learning Russian to prepare for.

Hilary looks at his open arm and smiles at it, then at his face. "I like it here," she says, and she means the cabin, but she also means lying flat on her back, posed almost like a corpse, turning her face again to look at the ceiling. She doesn't stop him from coming close to her, though -- far from it. Let's talk, he says, and she nods. And:

They are utterly silent for a very long time. The fire crackles. Wood pops. The room gets warmer from both heater and fire, and nobody says a word.

"Did you like it?" is the first thing that finally comes to her mind, asked very softly.

She likes it there. All right; so he comes closer instead, turning on his side, pulling a cushion under his head to pillow it. His arm crosses her stomach, a solid weight anchoring her to sheepskin, to hardwood, to the earth.

Fire burns. Room warms. Outside, midday tilts toward afternoon, and afternoon toward evening.

Did he like it, she wants to know. And that's a hard question, complicated and complex. He's quiet for a long time, thinking. Considering. Did he like it? He didn't hate it, that much is true. It turned him on, fucking her in front of everyone like that; that implication of claim, of dominance. It even turned him on, holding her open for so many strangers. Giving her to them because he could. And because she'd given herself to him. And because, in a strange way, she wanted it. Perhaps needed it. That sort of excess. That sort of utter and overwhelming capitulation to the flesh.

But did he like it. He has to think about that one. He thinks for a long time, his eyes downcast to the vague vicinity of her neck, her throat; his fingers moving idly over her abdomen. Eventually, he finds her eyes again.

"I liked ... feeling close to you," he murmurs. "I liked knowing you were enjoying it. I liked seeing your pleasure. Feeling you coming over and over again. I liked knowing I was keeping you safe, and that you trusted me to do that. I liked that it was always about us. It didn't matter who was fucking you. It was still ... us.

"Change anything, though, and I might not have liked it. If I was farther away from you. If I was just watching you give yourself to other men. If they were using you. If you were ... responding to them, forgetting me. If I wasn't there anymore, if that connection was gone. I can't -- I don't even like to think about it. I can't."

He's grown tense. He reminds himself to relax. He breathes for a while, quietly, and then:

"What about you?"

His hand moves to her stomach and she covers it for a moment, then closes her eyes as he speaks to her, as though his voice could lull her right back to sleep no matter how much coffee she had -- though she only had half a cup with their 'breakfast', in point of fact. Hilary strokes his arm, while they lie there in stockings and dress, shirt and tie. He comes closer to her when she wouldn't roll over and curl up against him the way she did in the car, after she broke his stupid toy.

After awhile, somewhere in there while he's speaking, she opens her eyes and turns her head, her hair sweeping across the white. She holds his hand a little tighter as he talks about the little differences that could have been, the things that could have broken the spell they were under, shattered it.

She nods when he asks her about herself. "I liked it," she whispers. "The way you were looking at me. I kept waiting for you to smash that first man's head against the fireplace." A flicker of a smile, cruel and cold, there and gone again. "I liked how you told him to get away from me. I loved the way you fucked me on that table. Like I was yours. Like I belonged to you. I liked them all watching us, touching themselves, turning into animals."

Hilary licks her lips, watching his eyes. "I liked that you used me. Or -- no." She thinks a moment, then rephrases: "I like that you did whatever you liked with me, even share my body. I knew nothing would happen that you didn't wish to happen. I knew it would stop when you wanted it to or when I needed it to, and everything else was because you willed it. I liked that you picked people who would get to fuck and lick my pussy or my breasts. I liked that you made rules about what they could and couldn't do with my body." This matters, this difference between 'me' and 'my body', this line between what was shared and what was not. She strokes her hand along his arm again, touches his fingers. "You protected me," she murmurs, "and you wanted me to feel pleasure."

Her heart is beating a little faster. And the truth is, she's also getting a little warm to the touch. Her pussy is getting a little wet. "I liked being fucked like that," Hilary admits, whispering it, watching him so closely, so wary of hurting him. "Like a whore. Or a toy you were going to share if people were good enough and did what you wanted." She breathes. "It's... your power. That turns me on. Someone else having control. But they never did. It was all you, even if they were using my pussy and tits to get off, everything was... you." She looks at his chest. "I like it when you're in control."

Now she turns, rolling toward him, cuddling up closer. "I felt like it was always you fucking me. Using their bodies to make me come like that. I --"

Hilary breathes deeper, reaching for his hand and putting it on her dress's him, pushing his fingers up under the fabric, drawing his hand til she feels his skin against the back of her thigh, just under her ass, where there is a break between her panties and her stockings. "I'm so wet now, Ivan," she whimpers, pleading it. "I don't know what to do, my pussy is so wet. Help me."

That she's so wary of hurting him now is something rare, too. Not because she usually wants to hurt him, no. Not that; never that. But usually it's so hard for her to see, to care. Usually she simply doesn't even think of it.

Her worry is misplaced, though. Ivan is not hurt. He's not angry. She says she liked it, being fucked like that. Something flares in his eyes, dark and deep. She can see him drawing a slow, measured breath, because

yes. It's exactly as she puts it. She gets it right, exactly right: that in the end, everything revolved around them. It didn't matter whose body was being used, who was being controlled and bent to Ivan's will, Hilary's lust. In the end, all the sex, all the fucking, all the connection was between the two of them.

And she's wet now. She doesn't even have to tell him. He can see it in her eyes. She tells him anyway, and that arouses him. She draws his hand to her body, and that makes him hard. She begs him

and he leans across and kisses her, sudden and firm, inhaling as his mouth finds hers. His hand grasps at her thigh, squeezes her flesh for a moment, possessive. Then it gentles. He caresses her, rubs his palm over her thigh; up higher under her dress, over her ass.

"Shh," he whispers. "Shh. Lay back. Let me take care of you."

Even now, as human and normal and emotional as she feels, it's hard. She watches his eyes but she can't see anything. They're green. Are they hurt or angry or upset somehow? She has no idea. But he lets her come close when she turns to him, and he's warm and near and earlier this afternoon he wanted to pull her on top of him. Earlier he told her about licking her pussy, being so gentle with her, giving her what she needs as sweetly as he can.

She's biting her lip, her breathing faster now, her want turned as mindless as it was even before he first took out his cock and fucked her last night on the table. His cock hardens and she can feel it through his slacks, against her thigh through her dress as it rucks up, and she lets out a cry as though he just slammed it into her, started fucking her the way he did at the party, hard and fast and brutal. Hilary all but shrieks into that kiss, grabbing at his shoulders, lifting her body to press fully against his even though she never opens her legs, won't open them, just rubs her front against his like a virgin who simply doesn't know what to do and is afraid of what she thinks she wants.

Her panties are silk, thin as gauze, and she moans when he rubs her ass. He tells her to lay back but she shakes her head, whimpering the word no, even as her hands are yanking on his belt, opening it up and then undoing his pants, all of it as fast as she can go, trembling with lust that came on her like a storm touching down,

destroying everything else in its path.

"I need it," she tells him, finding his cock inside of his slacks, pushing away clothes until she can draw him out, stroking him once, twice as she kisses him. Hilary doesn't lie back. Hilary doesn't bite her lip and wait for him to lick her pussy. She is nervous, though, oh she's terrified, she's taking so much control, telling him what to do, and her eyes are a little wild from it. But needful. Her need eclipses everything. And that is why her dress parts where it is tugged up, that is why she whispers to him to take her panties down, get them out of the way. She doesn't open her legs, wrap around him, take him inside.

Hilary kisses him and works his cock between her thighs, pressed long and hard against her pussy -- which is indeed dripping wet, as slippery with arousal as it was last night when he took her the first time -- and closes her legs on him. She lets out a groan at the feel of it, their clothing askew and yet stuck between them still in places, and starts

well. Using his cock. Rubbing herself on him, grinding close and tight, spreading her slick up and down him until it covers him. She clings to his shirt with clutching hands, fucking his cock as though her life depended on it, as though she'll lose her mind if she doesn't come.

So rarely does Hilary take initiative like this. Which isn't to say she's a listless, unresponsive lover - far from it - but she is a submissive. Noun, not adjective. Which is to say: she's a submissive even when she's not actively submitting. Sometimes, the things she does, the way she pushes him, is simply to make him more aggressive, more dominant, make him hold her down and slam her.

Not right now, though. Right now, she's actually taking charge. Taking hold of him and stroking him, telling him to ruck her dress up, stripping his pants down. She's nearly atop him when she closes her thighs over his cock. He gasps as she starts stroking him between her thighs, tight against her closed cunt; starts fucking him like that, crumpling his shirt between her hands, whimpering and moaning like she'll lose her mind if she doesn't have him somehow, like this, doesn't have his cock fucking her cunt in some capacity. Like she's already lost her mind.

"Oh, my god," he whispers. "God, you're so fucking wet."

And she is. She's working her body on him, her thighs tight together, and her slick spreading over his cock, between her thighs, everywhere, and he's reaching down to grab her ass, squeeze her ass in his palms, kisses her neck furiously as he rolls on his back to bring her fully over him. Then he's fucking her, holding her by the ass and thrusting against her the way he does when he's inside her. The shaft of his cock slides along her clit, over her cunt, again and again. He's hard and hot against her, he's biting at her neck and at her shoulder. He's going at her so hard, because he can't hurt her so easily like this, and because

quite frankly

he's wanted to fuck her since he saw her putting her classy, demure lingerie.

There's a chance -- more than a chance, almost a certainty -- that Ivan understands what Hilary is and what she needs better than she ever can. Were a team of psychiatrists and neurologists to get a hold of her one day, she would eventually be answering questions about killing and mutilating small animals, or her obsession with dead things -- not death, she would snap, dead things, the difference precise and vital -- or her inability to imagine the world from someone else's perspective. That other people have feelings more complicated or noteworthy than, say, the emotional state of an armchair, is a reality Hilary can only begin to grasp through rigorous effort, effort she is unlikely to put forth unless highly and consistently motivated.

No wonder she pushes people away. Abuses them if necessary to get them to back off. The most obtuse, self-involved teenager has more empathy and human compassion than Hilary can aspire to. And a truly insightful adult, whose powers of understanding and connectivity are well-developed? They would see through her in a second. Ivan isn't even one of these, and he knows what she is better than she does. Hilary could never tell someone in words what Ivan gets intuitively: submission is not something she does for play or for fun. She calls it 'play', but it's more like a meal, to her: beautiful, pleasurable, but ultimately the fulfillment of a true need. One cannot survive without eating. Hilary cannot get through life unless she has time to... play.

Look at her now: able to share emotion, able to talk about memories, able to name a feeling and even correct herself mid-sentence, able to show warmth and affection, able even to take control of sex with Ivan. None of it will last, or can last, but it is like the period after a successful treatment of illness: for a little while, she can be healthy and functioning and feel right, and it is dizzyingly happy for her. She's like this for a few moments or a few hours, after he's played with her for a night, after he's bruised her ass with the flogger or left bite marks in her shoulders. Even Hilary doesn't know right now how long this is going to last, after what they did last night.

As take-charge as she's being right now, pulling clothes aside and getting his cock between her legs like she wants, there is still that element of need: help me, she begged, like she couldn't bear what she was feeling, like he was the only thing that could make her feel better again. If he were to ask her, she would say that's true. She can't stand it. He's the only thing that helps. Right now, he is taking care of her, like he always takes care of her, even though sometimes it looks like domination or aggression.

Hilary lets out a small shriek of refusal when he starts to roll onto his back, pulling him back against her, lying on their sides. They are both free to move, yet both equally limited in that motion. Her hands are going up under the back of his shirt now, pulling at his skin, moaning openly to his chest. Ivan, overcome, starts to fuck her like that, even if he can't be in her, biting at her through her clothes. Somehow they get yanked aside, hard to say who did that, but then he's biting and licking her skin, grabbing her ass the way he does sometimes when he's on top of her, using her.

And like last night, when her arousal had flared like an oil fire before he ever touched her, she comes so quickly as soon as she has his cock. A wavering groan leaves her as her fingernails rake slowly down his back, her cunt pulsing against his cock, her hips quivering. He can feel her trembling even in her ass where he holds her, feel her grow hotter and wetter as the orgasm washes through her. "More," she gasps, still in the midst of it, though she's shaking now, though her cunt literally aches from the contractions of muscles that are still exhausted. She feels like she's falling apart, and she doesn't want to stop. "More," and sliding off of him. She rolls over onto her stomach, her ass a warm curve rising above the fur of the rug they lie on,

interrupted by the dark lines of her garters,

panties pulled down to her knees.

Hilary's desire rose so rapidly and unstoppably that there was no time to undress. Their clothes are yanked aside, pushed up, pushed down, pulled off. He's got her dress hiked up past her hips. She's pulled his tie askew, popped the top buttons off his shirt, pushed her hands up beneath to feel the sleek muscles of his back tensing and flexing under her hands

as he fucks her. She comes; she rakes her nails down his back, slowly, leaving red welts that will fade by the day's end. He bites her ferociously as she's shuddering shuddering, moaning that long shuddering moan of hers that makes him want to push her down and pound her.

When she slides off of him he makes a sound, a snarl of protest. Slaps her ass and tries to pull her back, but no. She's rolling on her stomach. He's pushing up on his knees and yanking his shirt off - pulls it over his head like a pullover, whips it down precariously close to the fireplace. Someone's pulled her panties down. He can't remember if it was her or him. She arches her back, raises her ass, she's fucking begging for it, he wants to slam his cock into her and pound her until she's screaming, until she's muffling her cries on the back of her wrists, biting her bicep because she's so fucking far gone.

But he doesn't. She can't handle that right now. She presents herself and he smacks that ass, slaps it even as he's pushing his pants down past his knees and coming in behind her. She feels him laying his cock against her cunt, slapping it up against her clit, and she feels him coming down over her. He's a sleek weight against her back, his voice in her ear soft and low as he tells her,

"Close your legs," even as he's moving her thighs, pushing them together, his cock caught between her legs now, the head of it sliding hard over her clit every time he thrusts, "that's it."

He pushes his hand into her hair, then. His grip is gentle and firm. He turns her head to the side so he can see her face, see the way her eyes are closed and her mouth is open, see how fucking overcome she is from the very start. And he starts fucking her all over again like this: hard and fast, much harder and faster than he'd dare to if he was inside her; slapping their bodies together, hammering her down against the rug.

"I thought about fucking your mouth last night," he mutters in her ear. "I thought about making you suck my cock while I flogged you. Make them all watch while you fingered yourself and moaned around my cock, came all over yourself while I flogged your sweet ass."

He kisses her mouth. Kisses her mouth and muffles her moans, kisses her and it's unspeakably soft, tender, even as he's hammering her so hard. Even as his hand tightens in her hair to pull her head back, bare her throat to his teeth.

"You know why I didn't?" He bites her. He licks the spot her bite, kisses the pounding pulse in her carotid. "Because I didn't want them to see that. It's too deep. It's ours. And you're mine. You're mine. I'll share your body but I won't share you."

Words. Those are words coming out of his mouth and she can't fathom how he can talk right now. Hilary can scarcely breathe. It's just those tremulous moans for her, ragged and undulating. Her hands grasp at the fur beneath their bodies when he comes over her again, pushing his cock between her thighs, right where it was before, hard against her pussy. Even as he's telling her to close her legs she's obeying, she's holding him right there, starting to fuck him even before he gets settled against her. Her ass bounces slightly every time he thrusts against her.

Hilary wriggles one of her hands down beneath her body, between her legs, to feel his cock every time it strokes cross her clit. The cup of her palm creates a gentle vacuum, a sensation of being pulled, drawn deeper, even when he isn't inside of her. She bits her lip, moaning at how hard he can go at her right now,

when she's so very sensitive, so very tender. Recovering.

There's a gasp when he grabs her hair, bares her neck, makes her turn her head so he can watch her as he gives it to her. She whines, fucking herself back against his cock just like before, making those pleading noises that somehow only make him more vicious, more aggressive. And though she can't talk, can barely think, she can understand all the words he's using. Just as before, talking about last night makes her so wet. Makes her whimper, thinking about his cock in her mouth, thinking about that flogger she gave him. They have one here, too. He picked it out, like he picked out all the other toys they keep in the cabin. They haven't used it yet. Often they are so tender when they come to the cabin, in no mood to play.

Hilary groans for his kiss as his mouth is leaving hers, wanting more, turning her face to rub it against the fur, overwhelmed. He yanks on her hair, pulling her head back, so he can see her, so he can bite her throat while he pounds her. mine, he says. You're mine. And she moans.

She's coming again, squirming under him, panting.

He's been so tender with her all morning. Or what passed for morning for them. He was so gentle when he woke, so careful with her, so worried when she fainted, so... adoring, really, as they came out here.

And now this. Ivan himself doesn't know where this came from. This storm of lust inside him; the way he's fucking her, taking her, making her

(his)

come again and again, squirming, far beyond words. He can feel her body trembling, writhing. She's pulling strands of fur out of the sheepskin rug they lie on. They're caught between her fingers, which are so delicate and graceful. A dancer's hands. He heard it somewhere: that a dancer's hands must be just as eloquent and lovely as her body. That she speaks as much with those hands as she does with the arch of her back, the point of her toes, the pivots and turns and leaps and falls.

He covers her hand with his. He collects them, both of them, clasps them together under his. Pins her hands, yes, but also

protects them. Protects her.

"Say my name." He scarcely gives her a moment to withstand that second orgasm before he's moving again, fucking her again, ramping her up all over again. "Say it, krasivaya devushka. I want to hear you say it for me."

"Ivan!" she's crying out, instantly, obedient to the point that she isn't even choosing, isn't processing whether or not she should obey him or not. The sound of his voice makes something in her snap,

and bow. She's crying again, thin and pale tears that are nowhere near the wracking sobs she sometimes gets pushed to. Ivan holds her hand down, pins her wrist, her other hand caught under her body, and she lets him. There's no resistance in her, no need for it now, nothing left in her but the will to please him, the comfort of knowing that she is, that she has, that last night he was close to her. She never knew if he was all right -- and turned on -- or if he was merely surviving it for her sake, but today he's shown her otherwise.

Hilary cries, and writhes under him as he fucks her, her dress torn askew and her lingerie yanked out of the way for him to have access to that cunt of hers, that pussy that belongs to him, and

she has no words for how happy she is. No words but his name, crying it out again just like she did last night, moaning it softly now, trembling as she tells him: "Come in me. Come inside me."

He wears that mantle of brutal dominance so easily now. Never really slips out of it, one might argue: even when he cares for her, takes care of her, it's a form of dominance. Or maybe it's the other way around. Dominance is how he shows her he loves her, just as scolding him, criticizing his futile attempts to cook, his 'subpar' technology, all of it, is a way for her to show him the same.

Regardless: he getting to be so good at this. He's so good at being so overtly dominant. So good at pinning her, hammering her, saying those things that set her off like a roman candle, doing those things that bring the tears, bring the release, bring whatever it is she needs from all this. And yet -

when she says that, gasps it, he shudders; the hard fast rhythm he's set falters for a second. Then a quick, sharp shake of his head.

"No," he pants, "you're too tender - I can't."

"Ivan!"

There it is again, only pleading now, that sharp sob that evolution dictates should set off certain alarms in the part of his brain that never fully achieved what we call 'humanity', back in the dark closets of primitive thought processes. "Ivan, please," she's crying now, not begging for him to make her come but begging for him to give her this, give it to her even though it may hurt her, hurt her so she knows he loves her,

"please."

"Okay."

He whispers that like a sort of surrender, though not to her. To what's between them, perhaps. He lets go her hand. Lets go her hair, folds his hands over her head, cups her face and her head and her, her, in his hands, protects her like that.

"Okay," again, murmured, "shh, shh. It's okay,"

his mouth falling on her cheek, her jaw, kissing her, finding her mouth and kissing her and that kiss rises, deepens, he reaches down and his knees part hers, she can feel him fitting the head of his cock against her cunt, sliding it in

so very slowly, that kiss falling apart now, he's groaning against her mouth as he sinks into her. "Oh, god," his hand on her hip, holding her. When he's deep inside her he reaches around, his fingers finding hers, nudging hers gently aside. He finds her clit with his fingertips, and even this is gentle, because he knows just how hard she was used last night, how many lovers had their turn, how many men and women went at her with lips and tongue and cock and hand,

even though in the end it was always him. And them.

"Ty v poryadke?" he murmurs. Perhaps he's forgotten she doesn't really speak this language.

The way that Ivan cups her head has no place in sex like this: sex that is brutal, sex that is dominating, sex that is wild and clothes-tearing and almost violent. But that is not what sex is for them. He agrees to fuck her, come in her, to comfort her. He touches her head like that to comfort her, though perhaps that comfort is more for him than Hilary. She whimpers, nodding, closing her eyes tight again and sniffing, the tears slowing a little. She gentles. She becomes placated, like the tender lover she really is somewhere beneath all the jagged edges of her psyche.

Ivan opens her legs and she lets him. He moves her, arranges her, and even in this there is a giving over: Hilary surrenders her body to him, as roughshod as it was ridden and as sensitive as she is. She gives herself, wounds and all, into his hands, and it is in that way exactly what happened last night. Her body is his. She trusts him with it.

Hilary's kiss is softer, sweeter, the response to his overture. The melody. He leads and she follows him, even as he slides into her. It makes her gasp, trembling as he moves himself into her, slowly, slowly, holding her still lest she move the wrong way and hurt herself. Hilary's cheeks are pale beneath bright spots of color, trembling, and yet after a few moments she calms again, soothed somehow rather than torn apart, and her breathing is ramped up from her orgasms but steady.

"I'm okay," she whispers to him, whispers like a secret, even though she has no clue what he just said. "It feels good, vladelets."

That sort of trust should frighten him. That sort of absolute, unconditional giving-over: it should terrify him, send him running from her as fast as his legs could carry him. As fast as he could delete her from his cell phone, his social networks, his life. As fast as Dmitri could stand downstairs stonefaced and tell her no, he's sorry, she must be mistaken; she is nothing to Ivan and never was.

And it does frighten him. Sometimes when she gives herself to him like this, it feels like the earth beneath him might crumple away. Except he doesn't run. It frightens him, and he stays

right here.

Master, she calls him. He hasn't given her a collar yet, but he will, and even this comforts her. Makes her feel held, and loved, and precious. So many people have told her she is. He's the only one to make her feel it, and he does it like this.

"I'm here," he murmurs to her. Like it's last night. Like she's lost in the dark and can't find him. But she's not: she's right here with him, and when the first time he moves inside her he can feel the response in her body even before she gives voice to it. The second time makes his eyes close, makes his brow drop to her temple; he stays close to her, gasping. He was already so close when she stopped him, told him to be inside her, come inside her, please. He's still so close, caught on a razor's edge; he touches her as he slides into her, feels her body taking him, it feels so good. The third stroke is faster, and the fourth, and then

he's fucking her, he's moving inside her smooth and fast, kissing her face, murmuring for her to stay with him, stay with him, stay, just stay.

Any other woman, perhaps, and he'd run. But any other woman and they never would have gotten this far. They never would have used each other more than once or twice. She never would have run to him just to have a couple of hours free from her husband, would never have sought him out as the one safe harbor, and he never would have let her come up. Let her sleep where he could keep her safe. Or taken her to his bed, kissing her all the while, making love to her in truth for perhaps the first time,

which is the moment they made Anton.

The word sounds sacred on her lips, when she's like this -- on her stomach, clothes pulled asunder, his hand clamped on her wrist still, his cock inside of her. She calls him that name, uses that word, to try and make him trust her as much as she's trusting him. He can feel the response of her body, wet and warm and tight, and feel how she calms despite aching pain. This is right. This is good. This is what she needs from him. He hasn't been inside of her since the first time last night, and this feels less like a reawakening and more like ...a completion.

Hilary covers his hand on her clit, holds him there, not stroking her but both of them simply holding her cunt, cupped over it the way he cupped his hands over her head. Protective. Gentle.

It's almost unthinkable that they can find this gentleness, this tenderness, in the midst of the storm they've unleashed on one another. What they call lovemaking would make the average person turn pale. It doesn't make it any less true, though.

So he holds her like that. He holds her with his hand over hers, over her cunt; he holds her with his hand over her head, and with his body keeping hers to the floor, and with his cock inside her. He holds her with his teeth, grunting against her bare shoulder as he fucks her. He holds her as the smooth fast way he moves into her turns into something most desperate, jagged, needful. Holds her as he loves her the best he can, and one of the one ways he knows how. Holds her until he can't hold himself together anymore,

falls apart, slams himself deep and holds himself right there, holds himself there because he doesn't want to hurt her fucking into her over and over - holds himself inside her as he comes inside her, groaning, shudders running all down his spine with every pulse of his cock.

When it's over, he relaxes over her. Goes boneless and strengthless, limp and heavy over her, panting. His hand over hers moves a little. Ivan kisses his lover's neck, trying to learn how to breathe again. He thinks of the things she calls him. Master. My love. Ivan. He thinks of these, and the way she says each, and closes his eyes.

It began in a rush. Trading brief memories of last night and how they felt about what they did and then suddenly she was on him. The arousal they'd kept banked all day flared to life and engulfed them like a flame, like a wave. And now it ends. She has her eyes closed, as she so often does, and he he has his body covering her, as warm and as reassuring as a blanket. The rug should be replaced, or at least cleaned. They haven't touched the perfectly made bed with the carefully integrated and hidden hooks in its frame. They don't always need toys. Or restraints any stronger than Ivan's own hands.

This time, Hilary doesn't begin sobbing, begging him to take her and wash her and hold her and make her okay again. But her body feels alive again, sore and tender but full of Ivan himself, and that makes her feel happy.

After awhile, her eyes open, and she nuzzles him as best she can, breathing with him. "Let's roast marshmallows," she whispers, sounding drowsy. "Eat rare steaks and order a fur coat for me to wear on the deck so we can fuck out there in wintertime. Fox fur." Her eyes close again.

Hilary's voice seems to call some wakefulness back into Ivan. He laughs under his breath, shifting, moving off of her to stretch his upper body out alongside hers. He draws his hand from under her abdomen, between her thighs. Traceries of her wetness cling, and he sucks these off lazily, slowly, thinking of marshmallows run sticky inside from heat. Rare steak, dripping with juice.

And he touches her. Runs his hand down her back, skimming sweat from the dip of her spine. So beautiful, so fine. Strange that such beauty conceals such darkness. Strange that such darkness can be so beautiful, and so beloved.

"Why fox?" he murmurs, smiling. "Why not Russian black sable?"

Ivan moves off of her, out of her, and her eyes roll back a bit beneath her lids. She breathes in deeply and out slowly, turning on her side with her back to him, tugging a cushion down to pillow her head. She just... lays there, worn out from that hurricane that just went through them, and catches her breath. Behind her, she can hear Ivan's mouth moving over his fingers. Her dress is yanked down her arm, baring one breast. Her skirt is rucked up, baring her naked ass, her lingerie. Her stockings cut darkly across the pale sheepskin. He touches her back through the silk of her dress, touches where sweat beads and sheens on her upper arm, her single bared shoulderblade, her upper thigh.

His words make her mouth curl into a small, fluttering smile. "If that's what you want to give me," she murmurs right back, "then that is what I will wear."

Stillness then, for a little while. "You should call Evgeny, though," she yawns. "We hardly ate a breakfast, and it's almost dinnertime. You need meat."

"I want to give you the best," he whispers, and any other man - her soon to be ex-husband, for one - would do this to attempt to buy her affection. Or buy access to her cunt. One or the other. That doesn't seem to be why Ivan's doing this, though. He already has her affection. He already has ... well. Access.

And he laughs, and the fire pops behind them, and he nuzzles her a little; then begins to undo her dress. Begins to peel her out of her clothes. They might still go out later. Or tomorrow. But for now, he wants her naked and warm by the fire. He doesn't want to see her dress cutting into her skin where it's pulled out of shape and too tight.

"Oh, I need meat, do I? You'll just subsist on fire-roasted marshmallows, I suppose."

She smirks to herself again. The best, he says. And she thinks of the sort of people he chose to fuck her. Tall, strapping young men who were beautiful even in their masks. Well-dressed, nothing ratty or cheap. That one gorgeous blonde, just Ivan's style, given to Hilary just to see if she'd like her, his own hands and eyes on the darker-haired beauty he was truly with. Only the best for his krasivaya devushka. She thinks of that, and reaches back, fumbling for his hand so they can be in touch.

But there he is, touching her. Undoing the bow of her belt, unbuttoning it inside with blind but deft fingers. Hilary drowses again, rolling over as he unwraps her from the dress. She rolls to face him and gets her other arm out of the sleeve, her neatly curled and clasped hair getting all mussed and flattened and tangled. Her eyes open to find his. Her panties are still down around her knees, hugging her stockings to her legs.

"You do need meat," she says primly. "You're far too thin for a werewolf." This being, perhaps, the first time anyone has ever suggested he is anything but perfect, but Hilary just nuzzles herself to his bicep as though -- skinny as he is -- he is her pillow. "And no. I will be having filet mignon, and if the sear is too thick or the meat overcooked, I will go hide pieces of it in the air conditioning vent of Evgeny's car. Or make him watch while we give it to a street dog."

She smiles. Whispers: "I'm teasing. He is such a very good cook. The little phyllo cups he made with the tiny lamb meatballs drizzled with pesto? That was inspired."

In the space of about ten seconds, Hilary turns Ivan's world upside down. Or at the least, does something very unexpected: one, tells him he is not perfect, and two, expresses anything other than disdain and disgust toward someone else's cooking.

"Believe it or not," Ivan replies, "Evgeny learned to cook in prison. Well, he started there, anyway. Apparently he did some great favors for a distant cousin of mine who is ... how do I put this delicately ... a fucking mobster. One of the favors was taking the fall for him, so of course my cousin made sure Evgeny's five years were done under the most pleasant conditions possible. They diverted him to a low-security prison, mostly women and kids, petty thieves and the like. They had rehabilitation courses. It was all very modern and progressive. He took intro to flavors, or whatever they called cooking 101.

"When he got out my cousin asked him what he wanted. A sort of parting gift before the debt was settled forever between them. Evgeny could have asked for just about anything, but he wanted to go to culinary school. So that's where he went."

A pause.

"You shouldn't tease him if he oversears the filet, though. You might make him cry. And ... wait a second," as though he's just processing the other thing she said, "are you calling me skinny?"

Normally somewhere in the middle of this story about a person whose existence Hilary only vaguely acknowledges, she would yawn, or roll over, or interrupt Ivan with a completely different topic she's been mulling over to keep herself entertained while he blathered on about his stupid cook. But right now, she listens, and smirks a bit to discover that Evgeny is a mobster. It means nothing to her, of course -- Ivan is a werewolf. They are Silver Fangs. Sometimes even Silver Fangs are naughty, naughty people, but it doesn't matter -- the law only applies to lower-class kinsman of the tribe, like Evgeny. He did his duty by the tribe, that's all. What else could be expected of him? It was sweet of his cousin to want to reward him.

"That is hilarious," she muses, of that big tattooed ex-mobster wanting to become a cook, and humbly going to a school where she knows from firsthand experience he was likely shouted at if his souffle fell. Ivan warns her that Evgeny might cry; Hilary wonders if Ivan has any idea what an apprenticeship under a Russian Masterchef would be like, and if the Russian mob could even potentially compare.

She wonders how Evgeny is with bread. She has never been very good at breadmaking.

wait a second Ivan says, and her eyebrows perk. He peers at her, asking if she's calling him skinny, and her brow flicks up. "Why do you think I call you mon petit faucon?" she asks coyly.

Hilary wonders if Ivan has any idea, but then really - she knows. Ivan has no idea what an apprenticeship under anyone is like. He has no idea what it's like to go to a proper school where you might actually get in trouble for not performing at par; where grades are not artificially inflated in proportion to how much your parents are paying; where acceptance to some of the most prestigious institutes of higher learning in the world are not dependent largely on how much your family donates to their next set of buildings. He has no idea what it's like to work for a living, to have a boss, any of that. The closest thing he has is the Garou Nation,

and look how well he plays with others there.

"Oh, I see," Ivan smirks. And he fairly grabs her, tumbles her under him - his pants still tangled around his knees, her panties still down around hers. "And would you like it better if I were a great big galumphing Neanderthal like your venerable husband, then? Perhaps I could pass gas in my sleep and crush you when we make love as well."

But Hilary knows. About school. About instructors who are taskmasters, striking your legs or arms with a cane if one is not high enough, if the other is not curved perfectly. She knows about chefs -- not the amenable chubby ones who go to work in private school cafeterias or the like, but the sort who are devoted to training the next wave of restraunteurs, for whom food is an art that cannot be allowed to fail. Hilary knows what it is like to practice something until your hands are raw and your knives are dulled, until your feet bleed, til you seriously consider whether or not you would rather perfect that lift with your partner or eat that slice of cheesecake.

Which you know will taste amazing, because you made it, and you were always good at things like cheesecakes.

Hilary knows these things, though she doesn't know the first thing about a college education, or an education in traditional areas that involves more than one student. She has never competed for answers or grades with anyone -- never was 'graded', even. She would mix up the A, B, C, D, and Fs of the United States with the TB, B, AB and I of France. She thinks school uniforms are adorable. She has never had to wear one.

Ivan makes her gasp when he grabs her, rolls her under him, his bare cock against her thighs, and at first she's smirking, responsive, but he mentions her husband and she smacks his cheek. It's about as light a swat as you could imagine giving, her brow wrinkling in a frown. "Don't be disgusting," she tells him, perhaps of everything he says. Venerable husband, etcetera.

The truth - and this is such a rare thing when Ivan is involved - is he was not altogether amused when she commented about his size, his fitness, the fact that he is, in fact, a good deal slimmer than the sort of man she typically brings home for herself. He knows that. He demonstrated that knowledge perfectly in all the men he chose for her last night: every one of them tall, built, young, beautiful. Perhaps he always thought she didn't notice; that everything else made up for it until she didn't see it at all.

It bothers him, now, that she brings it up so flippantly. As though it had always been there for her. And it bothers that it bothered at all. He didn't think he was so damn sensitive.

The truth is also: when she swats him, he's not altogether surprised. It still rankles him. He's not surprised, either, that she doesn't want to think about, talk about, her husband. Maybe that's why he brought Dion up at all. It was a jest... but there was a knife in it, hidden.

He takes the light slap without a flinch. Catches her hand before it can escape his cheek. "Now what," he replies lightly, a little too lightly, "is so disgusting about speaking of your lord husband?"

She sees the knife.

For a woman who can't read others, who doesn't understand that they have emotions most of the time, much less what those emotions are or what they mean, she sees it as clearly as if he had drawn it and laid it on a table between them, under a bare lightbulb, the steel glinting in her eyes. She's caught under him, and he catches her hand on his cheek the way he would if she were being tender with him, and what he says is barbed.

Hilary just stares up at him, bright enough to see the blade he's drawn. Not bright enough -- not human enough, even now -- to understand why. So she stares at him like this, her eyes asking the question she doesn't voice.

She can see the blade. He can see the question. And it twists in him like a blade of her own, makes his dangerous smile fade, makes his brow furrow. His hand leaves hers. He puts his hands on her face instead, and this somehow feels like less of a prison, less of a trap.

"I want to be..."

It's hard for him to say this. He doesn't quite have the words, and he has to stop in the middle to search for them. Into that silence their fire crackles merrily. The lake laps at the stilts under the cabin, though they can't hear that. The sun sinks a little closer to the western horizon, far across those plains.

"I want to be enough for you," he says at last. "I don't like thinking about you with other lovers. Seeking other lovers out because they have something I don't. Something you want. I know ... the sort of man you like. I know I don't quite fit the mold."

She knows -- in this state, a sort of protracted sub space -- that he is right. He's unhappy with her, annoyed for some reason, flinging barbs at her, and he must be right to do so, but she doesn't understand. Wasn't he the one who brought up Dion, talked about farting in bed, all that disgusting stuff? Wasn't he the one starting a fight? She just doesn't understand why. What she said that was so wrong. She never knows what she says that's wrong. But she says the wrong thing so very often, and people cry or run away from her, and it makes no sense.

Ivan touches her cheeks. She moves closer, away from the wet spot on the rug they made together, nearer to his warmth and the way she smells when his sweat rubs all over her. She likes that. It's nice to smell like him and be sore and remember how he used her. How much pleasure he took in fucking her, or hitting her, or whatever they do.

Her head tips at his explanation, though, still a little confused. Enough for her. Other lovers. It's not making any sense. Not until he mentions the sort of man she likes, and her eyebrows flick upward for a moment. He doesn't fit the mold.

Hilary is silent for a time. When she speaks again, she is rather quiet: "The woman last night," she murmurs. "And the models and heiresses and the virgin kinswoman you fucked while I was in Mexico -- they are usually blonde." She's noticed that. "Even the one you brought to dinner, she had big tits. Most of them do. Ten, fifteen years younger than me, every one of them. Or more." There's nothing accusatory in her tone as she relays all this. Only thinking over it, mulling it as she says it, still a little lost.

"Those are the people we use," she whispers. "They aren't us."

There's a pause. "I was only teasing," Hilary explains, as though he doesn't get that, as though she thinks she must not have done it right or he'd know it was a joke and wouldn't be upset. "Should I not?"

Shockingly, for a creature so perceptive, Ivan was not - until this moment - wholly aware that he had a 'type'. He knows full well that he has a predilection for beautiful young women engaged in some largely useless profession or another - models, entertainers, dancers, actresses, socialites, heiresses, beautiful people - but he never considered any similarities beyond that.

Blonde. Big tits, if possible. Leggy, certainly. His age, or possibly even younger. When she maps it for him, he sees it so clearly, and feels a little ashamed. And he rolls off her a little so that he isn't quite looming over her; is lying beside her instead, their legs twined, their bodies close.

She moves closer. He gathers her closer. He shakes his head when she asks; he says, "No. I like it when you tease. It's not you. It's only me, being overly sensitive."

A few moments' pause. And then his hand leaves her face, goes to her neck, her breast. He touches her, and the touch is oddly unsalacious; is gentle and tender, even as his thumb teases her nipple to a hard bud.

"I don't look for blondes with big tits," he says quietly. "That just seems to be the rule rather than the exception when one looks for suitably enviable companions to strut around town. It's just ... an image. One they're supposed to adopt, and one I'm supposed to like.

"I like your tits," and a ghost of a smile traces of his mouth. "I like your ass. I like your hair, and your mouth, and I especially like your cunt. You're -- " awkward now for once, stumbling over words that he must've fed any number of sweet young things over the years, and never once meant until now, " -- you are utterly beautiful to me. I've never seen anyone like you."

And a longer pause:

"Does it bother you, our ages?"

What he sees from the first word is that he applied that map to the single woman he chose for her last night, not even knowing if a woman would please or disgust her. Not knowing what type of woman Hilary might possibly find pleasing, he chose one he would like. It was unconscious, and perhaps not -- particularly in the moment -- understanding that what gave Hilary the greatest pleasure was making Ivan happy. When that blonde woman in the gold and black mask began to touch her, Hilary was so attuned already to Ivan's arousal that if he wanted to know now if she was turned on or if she was turned on because he was turned on, she would only be able to answer that there was no difference, at that point. They were one.

As he moves off of her, she stays close. Her hand moves to his now-bared chest, and she curls nearby, every part of her chilled unless it's touching him, nevermind the fire or the heater. She looks at the flames, and how their light dances off of his golden skin. He tells her it is okay to tease him, and she smiles for a moment. He likes something she does; it is hard not to be happy about that. Her eyes close when Ivan begins to run his hand over her, caressing her breast through that impossibly thin, useless lingerie. He likes something about her; it is hard not to be happy when he does this.

It's halfway through his description of her own attributes that she opens her eyes, not quite sure where this is going or why. But she trusts him. Even when he stumbles. And someone else might realize he wants to be told -- even may need to be told -- that she does love these things about him, too. His skin and his eyes, his musculature, his cock. He doesn't have to hold back, or use flowery language when he talks about her tits, her cunt, words most of those models would balk at unless they were blasted drunk and determined to get laid. She does not care what he calls it. Only that he enjoys it.

"No," she says. "It bothers me to think of it bothering you." It's that simple. And it makes her think of it, and she recoils a little from that. "I don't want to think about this. I don't. Ivan, please. I don't want reassurances or promises, I... I just don't want to think about it."

"It doesn't bother me," Ivan interrupts, even as Hilary is telling him she doesn't want promises, she doesn't want reassurances. She just doesn't want to think about it. "It never did."

And then he's quiet for a while. She recoils from thoughts, recoils a little into herself. He moves a little closer, and now his arm has slid around her; he urges her closer, urges her to curl against his chest the way she does. He kisses her brow. He breathes her in for a while.

"I don't ... fuck other women anymore," he says eventually. It's very quiet, like a confession he's half-ashamed of. Maybe he's just worried about how she'll react. If she'll laugh at him, how silly he is, what a sap, how pathetic. "At least I can't remember the last time I did. I just ... "

he trails off. He doesn't quite know where he was going with that.

The recoiling was so much internal, but he could feel it in her body, her arms, the way she dropped her eyes from his. But Ivan draws her back. He wants her back against him, and she's shaken but she comes. She's still wearing her stockings and heels, even. She bows her head to him and tucks her arms in, closing her eyes. Curled hair brushes his hands, crosses his arms. She does love him. She doesn't say it this time, though.

And after awhile, he tells her something utterly shocking. Hilary blinks, jerking back to look at his face. Hard to say what that stare means, except that moments later she merely nods. She understands. Her arms wrap around his middle. He can't remember the last time he did. That could mean anything. She doesn't ask for more specifics than that. They agreed a long time ago not to discuss each other's random lovers, other fucktoys.

"I haven't," she whispers to his chest, "since after I got pregnant." There's a long pause as she considers what she's saying. Technically she fucked about six? -- or seven? Maybe it was eight. She doesn't recall -- people last night. But he knows what she means. She trusts that he knows exactly what she means. "If you collar me, I won't again unless it pleases you." This time, an almost imperceptible whisper, saying the sacred and fearing being struck by lightning for it: "It will mean my body is yours, even when you aren't with me."

They never really agreed to not discuss one another's random lovers, per se. It was more: they realized discussing that would only lead to unmitigated disasters. Jealousies. Anger.

So they don't talk about it anymore. Except now they do. And they each learn a surprising fact about the other. Hedonistic, amoral, wicked as they are, they have not had any other lovers. Not since he can easily remember. Not since she conceived Anton. The knowledge burns a hole through him, seizes in his heart. It tastes like exhilaration. He tries very hard not to care so much,

but he does.

He's touching her face again, then. Stroking back her hair - so dark, not at all blonde, not even close - stroking her cheekbone. A faint flicker of a frown, more thoughtful than anything.

"I want you to be mine. Faithful to me." It's the first time they've said the word. It hangs in the air between them. "But ... I want you to be mine because you want to be. Not just because I've collared you."

All this time, too, she's simply assumed he's been keeping up the activities he had before he came to see her in Mexico, threw that little virgin in his face, how her cunt was so much tighter, her tits bigger, how she gave herself over to be ruined in hopes it would save her. Hilary knew better even then. Stupid little bitch. Not even the hardcore traditionalists really care anymore. Keep a bucket of sheep's blood under the bed so if she doesn't bleed on her wedding night you can still prove it to the waiting masses outside the window. So what if she's not a virgin -- maybe she broke her hymen in gymnastics or horseback riding. No one really cares, as long as she's fertile enough to breed and young enough to breed extensively.

And he's assumed she's taken other lovers. Back in the gym, back in the saddle, fucking any young playboy she could find, or stupid highschool lads, sons of country club ladies, etcetera. But now they find that this isn't true. He can't remember the last time he fucked another woman -- maybe it was Kristiana herself. And she knows the last time she fucked anyone other than Ivan was Christian. Oh, the coincidence. It would amuse her if she didn't assume that there have been others since that blonde virgin she never met. It would amuse her if she knew the girl's name.

But if she knew the girl's name, she'd find her and shave all her hair off in the middle of the night. And slap her.

Hilary is watching him now, as he strokes her hair, and she puts her hand on his waist. "Vladelets," she whispers, "you could not collar me if I did not submit to it."

She would not submit to it if she did not will it.

If Ivan knew that what he said of Kristiana had actually made an impression, that Hilary still remembers that she was younger, blonder, with larger tits and a tighter cunt - if Ivan knew all that was still in Hilary's mind, he would be surprised. Then again, he was surprised that she knew his type. That she'd watched him closely enough to notice that almost all the women he tended to collect in his orbit were, well. Just like Kristiana.

He supposes he never really believed Hilary cared enough. To some degree, he always doubted she cared at all. In his darkest imaginings she always left him and went to another, and another. Gave herself to them. Said the same things she said to him, behaved the same way, fell apart the same way, was theirs the same way. He never really dared to imagine

just how unique their relationship is. Not only in his life, but in hers.

He thinks he detects a note of fondness when she tells him he could not collar her at all if she did not submit to it. It makes him smile - it, and the way they touch each other gently, soothingly, healing over that brief spate of temper that she could not even properly understand. He nods a little. "I understand," he says, and then leans in to kiss her. It's quite soft.

"I'll give you a collar soon. As soon as your divorce is finalized. I'll just have to find something else to give you for your birthday. I'm sure I'll come up with something."

She uses that name again. He can always trust what she says when she prefaces it with that, know that she is speaking from need. Right now she can say it over and over, because she is happy, and he seems to like it. He seems to like the idea of having her collared, his, a bizarre and brutal sort of marriage where -- if he wants to -- he can invite a half-dozen gentlemen friends to a poker game, blindfold her, and have them pay in chips for what they want to do to her.

Not that he would. But he might. And he could. And there would be nothing wrong with it, she would let him know when she was done or if she didn't want to, and she could always trust him to attend to her, to be dominating her even if someone else is physically acting on her body.

And 'dominating' means so much more than anyone else might think. It is such a tender, attuned thing for him to do. Must be exhausting, she imagines, suddenly, out of nowhere getting this spark of realization. It must be so tiring for him to have all that on his shoulders. She decides, lying there on the rug, to think of a way to help him afterward. Make it better. Hilary doesn't imagine just yet that rubbing her shoulders and attending to her in more overt, obvious ways helps him come back down to reality, helps him be more lover and less domitor, the way that aftercare helps move her from 'submissive' to 'human'.

She kisses him. Quick and soft on the mouth, just when he does. They meet in the middle and she laughs, then kisses him again. Smiles. He promises her a collar soon, as soon as -- she imagines February, at this rate, that should be it -- her divorce is final. She doesn't try to guess at what he might give her; she just cuddles up to him and nuzzles. "Call Evgeny," she says. "I want meat."