Ivan Press

Ivan

Ivan's eyes find hers, hold hers, for a moment longer. For all his sleekly hyper-urban presence, Ivan has an animal's eyes, cunning and brilliant, mutable in its hues. He studies her like an animal, too, like a predator, a wolf,

a male to the female he protects.

"Let's go." It is no longer a question, though his tone is hardly changed. He takes the scotch from the waitress with a smile, passing it into Hilary's hands. "Mr. Carter was right about one thing; it's quieter upstairs."

Fewer children, too. No one to crash into Hilary's knees and look to her for help. The boy is tugging on Max's skirt now, and Max is looking down at him with mild bafflement before taking his hand, calling him 'honey' without meaning it, suppressing a sigh, looking for the fucking wayward nanny whose job it is to take care of this sort of thing.

Ivan is unaware of this. He has no idea how many tiny cogs and wheels must turn to keep his life moving as smoothly and luxuriously as it does. And it's not his business to know. That's what the staff is for, after all. And so, unaware, he escorts Hilary up the grand staircase in the living room. He keeps a discreet distance - a little to her left, a step or two behind, a drink in his own hand. From the second-floor landing they have a king's view of the living room: the black evening jackets and the white shoulders, the glittering white tree, the red and green and blue ribbons of the gifts beneath it.

No one is making illicit use of the guest rooms tonight. There might be an assignation or two in the back of a limo, in the powder room downstairs, but the bedrooms are far too obvious a destination. It's rather deserted upstairs. Two men and a women are strolling the gallery, looking at the art. There's a woman fixing her hair before the bathroom mirror in one of the guestrooms. At the end of the hall, they can hear voices from the library, which several of the older gentlemen have commandeered as their clubhouse tonight, but that door remains shut.

Passing the guests in the hall, Ivan exchanges smiles and nods, asks them if they're having a good time, tells them to try the steamed scallops, etcetera. At the end of the hall, without making a production of it, without so much as glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching,

he opens his bedroom door, ushers Hilary inside, and closes it behind them.

It is dark inside. The shades are open. The northern shoreline glitters to the left, but the lake yawns dark and empty before them - the sky a blue-black bowl coming down to meet an almost-invisible horizon. There are a few lights out there, cargo ships mostly. A touch of a button brings the shades whispering down as the lights glow to life.

They can still hear the guests dimly and indistinctly. "John always was a self-entitled dick," Ivan says quietly. He doesn't think Hilary really cares; he certainly doesn't think she's shocked or hurt by Jonathan Carter's behavior. Still, he feels compelled to say it. Say something. He saw the boy downstairs; he was blonde and fairskinned and quite helpless without his parents. "Poor Max, though. I don't think his relationship with Phoebe is going to last at this rate."

It's no longer a question. He knows by now not to ask, or push, for Hilary to want this or show him that she desires that, tell him no or yes. Sometimes she simply has no preference other than a desire for Ivan to do what he likes. It is not easy to adjust to. It is not human, or sane, for her to be like that in the first place. It's not what he's used to, either. Having an entourage of 'friends' who will do whatever he wants is one thing: they pretend they think he's brilliant, they convince him that they want what he wants, too. Hilary is so different; she does not adopt his desires, she submits to them, and this is what makes her happy.

They walk upstairs, her heels delicate on the steps, his feet soundless. They pass by his guests, Hilary taking small sips of scotch as she observes the decor as though she's never seen it before and is rather unimpressed all the same. She is not thinking about the little boy downstairs. It is as if he never existed. She is more interested in the view of the tree from up here, how tall it is, how bright, what it must have cost to get it up here. The team of experts paid to decorate it. The penthouse is rather full, though not as crowded as it was on Halloween. The noise of people is greater than the noise of the music, this time. No one is wearing a mask. Everyone is wearing a mask.

She walks into his bedroom, where he took her when they made Ivan, the first time she'd ever been in that altar of a bed of his, where they sacrificed everything. She looks out the window, but turns suddenly when he closes the shades. The lights blossom like flowers that only unfurl at night, but remain dim. She drinks again, and sets the glass on his nightstand, sans coaster. He mentions John, and he mentions Max, and it takes her a second to realize which one he means.

"Phoebe?" she asks, but there's little chance she's actually interested. She glances at the shades, closed now, then at him. "Open them again."

It's vanishingly rare that she gives him an order like that, a blunt request phrased like a demand. It almost never happens.

It's so rare, in fact, that it gives Ivan an instant's pause. He looks at her. Then, with a gesture deceptive in its thoughtless grace, he flicks the switch the other way.

The shades rise. Rather like the curtain on a stage, Ivan thinks, and thinking that, remembers the cabin at the lake, the dance studio atop it now. He crosses the room to her, the world at their feet; sets his own drink on some convenient table or tray or surface as he comes. His feet are silent. He stands beside her, his hands gently laced at his back, looking out to see what it is she looks at.

"Phoebe," he replies, though neither of them really care. "Max's girlfriend. Nice girl."

And he falls silent. After a moment, he takes a step closer, until her back touches his front. He lowers his head a little. Rubs his lean cheek slowly, gently along her temple. It is more animalistic, more tender a gesture than any of his guests would believe him capable of. Only at the end do his hands unlace, one arm coming to wrap around her waist.

Instead of the dim glow of the lights in Ivan's room, they return to the more distant, colder lights of the city and the faraway stars that they can only imagine look down on them. Hilary turns toward the glass to look out, knowing he's going to come to her, waiting for it.

He is silent behind her, a shadow at her back that she knows only when she feels the warmth radiating off of his body against her own. She sees the pale ghost of his face behind her shoulder in the reflection on the glass.

A moment, then, before he steps a few inches closer and they touch. She wonders how long he's wanted this. From the last time he saw her. From the moment she walked in. Or just now, suddenly, wanting to put her in his arms and feel her, smell her, be close to her. Some part of her understands that, and though this is shocking, she does not wonder at it.

Ivan's face musses her hair a bit, but Hilary doesn't hiss and pull away from him in annoyance. She tips her head, allows it, just as she permits his arm around her slender waist, the one that was so large half a year ago with child. Other than a remaining plumpness to her breasts, her body refuses to reveal what it once carried, what it was once used for... just as, every time Ivan heals her wrists or her bruises, her body conceals what he has used it for.

"I didn't get you anything," she says, quietly only because he's so very close. Matter-of-factly, without embarrassment or shame. "For Christmas, that is."

Even the glass in his penthouse is special. It's coated, antireflective, clear as crystal. In it, their shadows are barely visible, and she can't see the faint smile that flickers over his mouth.

"I didn't expect you to," he answers. And turns his head, and presses his lips to her temple, kisses her like he's wanted to kiss her since he saw her at the window. Since he saw her coming in the door. Since she left him, the last time she left him - weeks ago perhaps. Strange, for creatures so overwhelmingly drawn to one another, that they sometimes go weeks without ever meeting.

A moment later he steps away from her. His bedroom is, like the rest of the penthouse, enormous and full of light and space. There are a pair of armchairs near the window, pristine white and blonde wood, matched with footrests. Ivan drops into one, and from this angle he can see her profile; he can see down the shoreline of lake michigan, south past the Loop.

"Most of your gifts are at the cabin," he says. "We should go later, when the guests are gone. Or maybe before."

In this light, Hilary is marble. Her skin doesn't even have the decency to be porcelain or ghostlike, nothing so delicate as a piece of china or a wraith. Cold stone, though, tinged a bit with silvery gray -- yes. That, she pulls off easily right now. Her eyes are black voids, shadowed enough to seem overlarge and inhuman; her body is poised the way it is so often poised, untouchable and imbued with motionless grace. For the most part, she looks through the windows at the city. One has to wonder if she even sees the view or simply knows that if she stands like this and looks that way, that is what people will generally assume. They will not ask her if something is wrong, what she's thinking about.

Ivan may know that the view from his penthouse means very little to Hilary, at least emotionally. She recognizes the view as part of the luxury his family's money buys him. It's a part of the status he has due to that money, as far as his 'friends' are concerned. She even understands that for other people, being up high and having 'a view' means something. And it has to be a certain kind of view, too. Being up high isn't enough. Facing the right direction isn't enough. It's one more thing that supposedly matters.

This, from the woman who uncomplicatedly and inexplicably likes fireworks. Contemplating what is supposedly beautiful about 'a view' is draining to her, but fireworks she seems to enjoy without any help.

Ivan is touching her, and she feels warm enough, alive enough, human enough. She does move, and she does breathe, but it's possible he's holding her partly to make sure of these things. It's possible he wants her in his arms so that he can break the illusion that she is no more than a cold, hard, sculpted portrait of a human being. Even if it isn't the only reason, that may very well be a factor.

His lips touch her, too, so warm and affectionate and even tender. She wonders if he's going to be upset, later, if she isn't reacting much now. If he will throw accusations at her about how cold she is, how unfeeling, how ...this, or that, or something. Her eyes close a moment, wearied by the mere imagining, then open again. She does feel pleasure at the kiss, at his arms around her. She's not sure it's what he wants her to feel, or why it's so necessary that she express every little thing as though it's ten times as large and vital and powerful as it is, but she does know that Ivan has gotten better about letting her be, and accepting it. Not great at it, but ...better. Hilary's thought passes, and the plain and simple pleasure of just standing there being held goes back to playing at the edges of her sensation -- she is not suffused by it or engulfed in it, neither filled to bursting nor drowning. It's just there.

And then it isn't. She doesn't mourn it when Ivan steps away. She does, however, turn her head to follow him with her eyes. He sits, and the chair whispers a whumpf that she can barely hear. It's nearly silent in here, despite the string quartet downstairs, the penthouse full of people, the children, all of it. Of course it would be well-insulated in here. They can hear people passing by Ivan's doors occasionally, but little more than that.

Her eyebrow flicks. "Most of my gifts?"

And rather like marble, Hilary has so often been the sort of thing men have wanted to own, collect, pose. On their arm, accompanying them to some function or other. In their home, the very picture of gentility and grace. In their lives, a wife, a trophy, proof of rank and status, a thing to own, a womb to fill.

In front of their windows. Just like this: limned by the city's lights, remote and pristine.

Even Ivan is not immune to the way she looks. Ivan in particular is not immune. He looks at her as she speaks, and there is a darkening in his eyes, an appreciation as he looks at her with his head tipping back against the cushioning, his body laid out lazy and long. Her eyebrow flicks and his mouth quirks.

"Well, you didn't think there'd only be the one, did you?" Quel scandale, his tone says.

And then - because Ivan has never been satisfied with simply looking, has never been satisfied with simply imagining Hilary to be whatever he likes her to be; because Ivan has always, maddeningly insisted on seeing her, touching her, knowing her, being so deeply inside her that sometimes it makes her twist with revulsion and horror, makes her feel scraped out and emptied out and stretched too thin because why won't he stop asking questions -

Ivan holds his hand out to Hilary, his open palm a request to come closer. He takes her hand if she lets him. Draws her down over him if she lets him.

"You like gifts, I think," he says quietly. He's thinking of the chocolate bunny. He's thinking of fireworks over the lake. "The ones that are really yours, anyway. Am I wrong to think so?"

Sometimes she looks at him like she doesn't know who he is. Or rather: doesn't know who he is to her, who he's supposed to be. He is not her husband or a potential mate. She balks at the word 'lover'. There are plenty of words she balks at. Intellectually she knows that he has fathered a child with her and that he is, to the best of his ability -- or his sanity -- to do right by that child. Protect it, keep it healthy, consider its future. She knows that.

Hilary simply cannot bring herself to feel anything about it. Not by will. Not with any sort of modulation. Emotions come on her in waves that seem to erode and crush but never wash anything away, never swallow it down to the depths where it can't bother her anymore. She looks at him, knows who he is to the world and to the Nation and to Anton, but

sometimes none of that means anything to her.

He means something to her. But she only knows what that is occasionally, briefly, and ecstatically. It would kill her if it lasted, she's quite sure of that.

Hilary is walking to him before he even thinks to lift his hand. She comes at him slowly, her heels pressing into the carpet that is too plush, too fine, not to spring back as soon as she lifts her foot. Smoothly, without much preamble and without any explanation, she leans over, slides her arms around his neck, and lowers herself into his lap, sitting sideways across his legs. The warmth of her translates through her dress's satin.

"How could a gift not really be mine?" she wonders, but it's at least half rhetorical.

So Ivan doesn't lift his hand after all. He watches her as she comes to him. He likes that she moves slowly; not hasty, not frantic, not eager or uncertain. She comes to him like she has a right to this, like an animal returning to a place that is uncomplicatedly hers. He makes room for her, shifting, sliding his arm behind her back as she lowers herself.

She is warm. Her breast presses to his chest. He wants her very much suddenly: thinks of fucking her here, like this, lazily, while his guests socialize downstairs. His hand covers her knee; then slides to her thigh.

"Well," Ivan answers her half-rhetorical question anyway, "I've always thought so many gifts were given with expectations attached. Or as rewards for expectations fulfilled. Those always felt a little less ... mine, I suppose."

He's quiet a moment. Then, thoughtful:

"I wonder if that's why I'm so attached to you. You don't expect anything from me. And I never did anything to deserve you."

The way he sat down and began to look at her -- lazy, idle -- filled the room with a certain kind of heat. Hilary was aware of that even before she began to listen to the words coming out of his mouth, the welcome implicit in his body language. As she sinks onto his lap he holds her, puts his hand on her thigh, and she knew already that he was lusting for her, that he wants to either do it now, upstairs, or abandon his own party and take her somewhere else to fuck her.

Her dress is fitted close to her thighs. Standing, it stops just short of covering her knees. Sitting on him like this, it tugs upward a bit, but is still quite snug. He puts his hand on her thigh, though, and Hilary simply lifts her hips a bit, tugs at the satin til it gathers around her hips and the hemline reveals the tops of the stockings, and pulls his hand between her legs, against the higher regions of her inner thigh.

She sighs and settles again, and he's speaking, so she attends.

Hilary sighs again, a different sort of sound. "You almost sound romantic," she mentions, offhand. "Stop it." Somehow, her tone is almost gentle on that. She has her legs open just enough for his slender fingers to explore, for his palm to caress.

"If something is given to me, it's mine," she says, which is entirely logical. "If someone else wants something from me in exchange, it's still mine. They can be pleased or disappointed as they will if I do or do not perform whatever little trick they're secretly hoping for." Her head tips back a little, her eyes closing. She rolls her neck a bit. "It pleases me when you give me presents,"

her one real acquiescence. Admission. Confession.

Gift.

Ivan likes it when she does this. Takes his hand and draws it toward some part of her body she wants caressed. It reminds him a little of the way she told him to undress for her, so long ago. That made him angry, made him feel like a whore, but some part of him must have liked it, because it made him hard. Some part of him still likes that in those moments when she seems to know what she wants, she reaches for it without apology.

There's something so unconsciously shameless about her sexuality. One supposes it's another sign that Hilary is not quite, will never quite be on the same wavelength as the rest of human society.

So: she shifts his hand between her thighs. His words drift a little, and then he remembers what he's talking about. What he says bores her, though, and even though her tone is almost gentle his eyes flash, his laugh bares his teeth.

"Aren't you assertive tonight," he says,

but then the mood passes because he can touch her, so he does; his fingers are secretly under her hem and he rubs his palm over the inside of her thigh, grazes his fingers over her panties. As she's speaking again he lowers his mouth to her shoulder, and as her head tilts back it seems so natural for his to put that mouth to her throat. His teeth graze the slender bolt of muscle there. She claims to have not brought him any gifts, but the truth is

her presence is a gift; her acquiescence, her surrender to his sway, the way she gives in to the games they play because in the end none of them would be possible if she didn't - they are all gifts.

He wouldn't tell her that, though. She'd roll her eyes at him and call him romantic, which on her tongue sounds like a curse.

He's not talking now, anyway. He's rousing to her, but slowly; lazy with the season and the cold and the amount he drank downstairs. His weight has shifted subtly, and now he's holding her a little more firmly, something focused and almost predatory in the curve of his body to hers. Kissing her now - nipping at the skin of her neck, kissing her throat and her shoulders, her breasts through her dress; everything but her mouth. Under her dress, his hand cups her cunt, and he makes a sound that is not a word at all. It sounds like hunger. It sounds, strangely, like satisfaction as well.

Oh, he got very hard that hot, sunny afternoon in the Hotel Orrington. His cock was rigid before he even unfastened his belt, his shirt already gone, and she was sure he would fall apart inside as soon as he felt the warm softness of her mouth enveloping him. He was so angry, and it made her so wet to anticipate how he might finally snap. How hard he would finally fuck her. If he might grab her by the hair. If he would snarl at her, swear at her. Call her a whore so that he would feel like less of one.

Now she's putting his hand between her legs and sighing, tipping her head back. She doesn't ask him to touch her, doesn't tell him to slip his fingers in her pussy and give it to her, make her feel good. She tells him not to be romantic. Don't even come close.

And it bothers him and it doesn't bother him and he cares and he doesn't care.

Hilary moans softly when he puts his mouth on her throat, puts his teeth on her. She works her cunt against his hand, strokes herself against the pads of his fingers. She isn't wearing anything. Her wetness touches his fingers even before the recognition that there's no fabric there registers in his mind. His mouth on her breasts through her dress -- "Don't," she murmurs. "You'll leave spots on it." -- and everywhere but her mouth, but they're both whores for each other in a way, and neither one kisses the other's lips right now. Neither one seems to ask for it, need it, any of that.

Nothing under that dress of hers. He should have known. He should have but he didn't, and so when he discovers this he makes this sound against her neck, quiet and muffled and

so rapidly going out of his mind for her.

Oh, but he doesn't want to be rough and mindless. Not right now. Not tonight. He's having such a lovely civilized little party downstairs, and he wants to be civilized or at least sane. She tells him not to mouth her through her dress, she tells him no again and he lifts his head and looks at her with those animal's eyes of his, and

this is when he kisses her mouth, bites her lip and kisses her mouth with his eyes open but dark, dark. There is nothing shy or gentle or exploratory about that kiss. It is want and claim, and it seems to fulfill some need in him. The same need, perhaps, that drove him to usher her away from the crowds downstairs, away from the people who were staring at her and wondering maybe, could it be, away from them all and down the hall and straight into his room where the doors lock and the walls are thick.

When the kiss ends he seems momentarily placated. He nuzzles her for a moment. His eyes close then. He touches her then, fingers her under that snug-fitting dress of hers, fucks her

slowly, lazily

with his hand while he goes on rubbing his face against hers, kissing her again now, her cheek and her jaw, biting carefully at the crest of her ear.

"Pull your dress up," he murmurs, even as he's drawing his hand out from under it, even as he's unbuckling his belt onehanded, and then his fly. "Get it out of the way." He leaves her wetness on the front of his nice dress pants. Where she leans against his body, his shirt feels cool and crisp. His coat matches his slacks, his pocket square matches his tie. He is so impeccably put together, and so is she, and

something about this turns him on, too. Something about the need for discretion - a good old surreptitious fuck at a holiday party; the sort of thing that hasn't in and of itself excited him since ... who knows when. Everything about this turns him on, everything from the moment he led her to this room.

His satisfaction is always as short-lived as hers, his pacification just as brief. Ivan wants her; cannot bear to possess her. Hilary needs him to control her, love her; cannot stand for him to be romantic, to be caring. He wants some kind of civilized, lazy fuck upstairs while his guests enjoy drinks and treats downstairs; he wants to bite a hard kiss onto her mouth and lose his mind for her. She wants him to fuck her. She tells him no.

They are mad, mad things.

Under her skirt he feels the termination of her sheer black stockings and the beginning of her smooth flesh, softer there than closer to the knee. He feels the straps of her garter belt, he can run his fingers to find the buttons -- not clips tonight, not snaps, but archaic buttons that slide into neatly hemmed slits -- and he can feel where it hugs her hips, where satin under satin arches over her ass. But most mind-shreddingly, he can feel her pussy: her lips so very soft, her hair waxed into such a very artistic warping of nature, and her wetness so fucking hot on his fingertips.

Hilary submits to the kiss. There's no other word for it. She doesn't moan into his mouth or gasp. She doesn't feign surprise at the force of it; she doesn't whimper, either. She submits, which in some women would seem like boredom, like refusal, like a shutting-down and a shutting-out. A warning sign, really, a signal that all is not well. With Hilary, that submission is there to provoke him further. It's there to let him know he can do what he likes with her. It's there because when he kisses her like that, it floods Hilary with Ivan's lust,

as though she needs that to feel her own. To let her own take over.

There's his hand, fucking his long slender fingers into her, spreading slick around her lips, rubbing her clit with it, and the more slippery she gets, the more luxurious the touch is, and the more luxurious the touch, the more wetness gets on his fingers. She fucks his hand back, rolling her hips a little, rocking on his lap into his rythym. Her eyes are on him. From her expression, despite how intent her eyes are on his face, one might never realize that she has her paramour's hand up her skirt, third and fourth fingers up her cunt. Except she's breathing a little faster now, as Ivan nuzzles and kisses and bites at her, which are caresses she mostly ignores -- except the bite. That, of course, makes her shudder. Not as much as if he were less careful, but there you are. He's so sensitive about these things.

Pull your dress up.

Her cunt clenches on nothing when he withdraws his fingers. He doesn't lick them, doesn't force her to, doesn't wipe them off on her stocking or anything else: he just starts unfastening, his belt buckle giving a rattle and his zipper a metallic rip. Hilary does lean against him -- for balance, really, her thighs tight together suddenly. "I'll get cum on my dress," she whispers, her hands braced against his shoulders.

"Will you?"

He sounds indifferent. He looks anything but, his eyes dark and hot, the muscles of his face drawn with lust. He can smell her sex. Can smell her cunt, can smell her wetness and feel it on his fingers, making it hard to get his pants open but of course he manages. Of course. It turns him on, too, what she says. That she submits. That she protests. That she protests, and then submits. That she talks like his fucking her is a foregone conclusion.

Of course he's going to fuck her. Of course he's going to come in her, leave her marked in so profound and primitive a way that even those humans downstairs who are two hundred thousand inbred generations away from any semblance of wildness will know what the former Mrs. Durante was doing upstairs, and with whom.

He gets his fly open and pushes his underwear down, gets his cock out from under the waistband. He's hard already, of course. He leaves a trace of precum on her thigh as he slaps his cock against her, lets her feel the weight and heft and heat of it, tilts his chin up to catch her mouth again. The bite of a kiss is a punishment: how dare she deny him. He kisses her hard because he wants to smear her makeup, wants to watch her put herself back together again, later.

"You'll just have to try harder to stay clean and respectable, won't you? Pull your dress up, or I'll do it for you."

Another woman would ask him to please stop acting like this. She'd look at him a certain way and it would break his heart. Another woman might snap at him that if he's going to be a jackass he can fuck his hand. Another woman, including at least one blonde woman in this city, would probably just solve the problem by rising to her feet and leaving him there, stripping out of her dress and laying it gently on the bed, lying back or bending over, and if he didn't know what to do then, god help him.

Hilary is unlike any other woman Ivan will meet, in this city or any other. She is completely out of her fucking mind. She is twisted beyond recognition. She barely has any humanity to speak of, barely has a heart, would never convince anyone she has a soul. It should not shock anyone if she killed, if she killed viciously, if she felt absolutely nothing afterward but a return to the sheer boredom of living. If she even felt a little sad -- not from guilt or the loss of life, but because it did not thrill her as she might have hoped, make her feel anything important or real. She is not a good woman. She will never be a good woman, and the moments where she is anything close to lovable to Ivan are still not moments of goodness.

Will you? he says, uncaring, and kisses her to smear her lipstick -- which are a few shades darker than a bright cherry red -- which he does. She tears her face away at the end of the kiss, pulling away from his cock as he takes it in hand, shooting him a glare that comes close to baring her teeth at him. From any other woman, it would look like... disgust, maybe. Anger. Flat-out irritation with nothing else behind it.

"You're repellant," Hilary says, terse and hushed, as though they haven't been here a hundred times. As if he's a stranger coming onto her at his party. As though he doesn't know exactly what she really wants.

Another woman, and there would be nothing behind her disgust. Nothing beyond her anger. Another woman, and she might be getting up now, straightening her skirt, heading for the door and then the other door and then all the way down the elevator and out of his life. Bastard. Repulsive. Over-entitled prick.

She is not another woman. She said to him once, in one of those lazy sexual moods of hers: no one's like me. She's right about that on so many levels. It's not always a good thing, but

oh, how it suits him.

She tears away from his kiss. He grabs her by the back of the head, by the back of the neck, holds her still and kisses her again, harder. "Am I?" he challenges her, his whisper a cutting bolt of silk. "Is that what this wet cunt means? Kiss me again."

He kisses her before she can. Kisses her, and shoves his hand under her dress, shoves his fingers into her, roughly, uncarefully, not at all the way one would expect to treat a woman like this. Not even Jonathan, seething downstairs and wondering what the fuck, would treat her like this. The heel of Ivan's hand grinds against her clit. He's no longer embracing her with his other arm. He's holding her in place, even as his fingers are tugging at her dress, pulling it up, up, just like he'd threatened

(promised)

to.

Jonathan was treating her a little like this downstairs. He acted as though his cock entering her was a foregone conclusion, as though she would turn into a naked whore as soon as he got her alone, just like she was when she was masked on Halloween night. He acted like this was his due. Truthfully, he probably treats all women like that.

Ivan does not treat most women like this. Or didn't -- he admitted shortly after that orgy that she composed and he conducted that he hasn't been having other women anymore. Even in Monaco, when the thought crossed his mind, it never went anywhere. He knows, because she told him, that her body belongs to him now. That her sex belongs to him. That she won't fuck anyone else, be entered or touched by anyone else, if it does not please him. If he hasn't granted someone else his permission to play with his toy. The ownership is not reciprocal. He has promised her nothing; she does not want him to and would be dismayed if he did -- disappointed, even.

But he admitted that he hasn't. Isn't. Hasn't...really wanted to. She wouldn't fault him if he drilled into every little slut that crossed his path. If he spent all night tonight fucking the nannies of his parents' friends, if he bounced some trust-fund brat's art school girlfriend (who doesn't fit in with these people at all) on his lap til she started screaming. Hilary would not feel unloved, or forgotten, or abandoned, if Ivan spent the entire evening playing a slow game of seduction with that senator's wife downstairs, only to take her up to a guest room and feed her his cock.

She might, in fact, feel very loved, quite adored, if Ivan tied her up and made her watch. If he stared at her, eyes blazing, while he nailed another woman to the bed.

Is that what this wet cunt means? he all but snarls at her, and his hand is back between her legs, forcing her thighs apart, fucking his fingers into her so hard and so suddenly that she yelps. The fury in his manner now makes her tremble, which in another woman might indicate fear. It even looks a little like that, but that isn't what Hilary feels right now. She isn't frightened of him. He arouses her like this, taking her one step closer to the edge of pain.

It's all no use, really -- her struggling, her protests. The satin is already wrinkled. Crushed. She won't put herself back together after this.

Hilary tugs down on the hem of her skirt even as he's pulling it upward. She gives a whimper. She struggles against his arm holding her as tightly as it does. She does this even as her heart starts thudding in her chest, even as her cheeks grow pink from lust, even as she rubs her pussy against his hand, fucking his fingers with the slightest bounces of her hips, the tight little clenches of her cunt.

It has never occurred to Ivan to fuck another woman while Hilary watches, tied up and at his mercy. It's never occurred to him to enact what is essentially the opposite of what happened Halloween night: to fuck her over and over through other women's bodies, to wreck them one by one while he stared at her, and only her. To come to her afterward, pull her head back by the hair, feed her his cock still tasting of all those other nameless faceless bodies he's fucked --

or maybe it has occurred to him. Or maybe the thought has crossed his mind; maybe even in Monaco for a moment he thought about bringing that pretty young thing back to the hotel room, seeing if Hilary liked this one, if she'd like to watch this one, if...

but he didn't, for one reason or another. So much of that trip left him feeling cold and alone, but then, that's so often the truth with Hilary. Sometimes he feels like he's gained some ground since they first met. He knows he has. She would have never promised him the sort of fidelity -- ownership -- she's promised him. She would have never cared for him,

loved him,

when this all began. But at the same time it feels like the red queen's game. They run as fast as they can just to stay in place. Just to stay in touch.

But then there are moments like these. So dark, so delicious. There's no strain here. No insecurity. No worries that maybe she's moving on, maybe she doesn't care, maybe she doesn't love him the way he loves her, need him the way he needs her. There's nothing but a certain dark gravity, something pulling him down and down into depths that he's a little less afraid of every time he's here. He's prying her thighs apart and shoving his fingers into her. She's whimpering and he's catching that sound on his mouth, literally biting her with every kiss, whispering

Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth and take it,

and they sound like words of adoration and want, but they're so harsh. She rubs her pussy against him, which he allows. She starts to bounce on his hand, and he doesn't allow this. He bites her neck quite hard, he seizes her in his teeth to make her stop and holds her very tight, very still. And then he fucks her, grinding his palm against her clit, sliding his fingers into her and out, building a shattering rhythm that tenses every muscle in his arm, in his shoulder, fucks her until he knows she's about to come, he knows it because she's so wet and her pussy is undulating on his fingers, her thighs are quivering around his forearm and

he stops. He draws his hand out from under her dress, gives it a single sharp shake, disdainful almost, before giving his fingers to her to suck.

"Look how repellent you find me," he mocks. "Look what a rude, repulsive bastard I am. Look how much you don't want me to fuck that tight little cunt with this big hard cock of mine.

"I want you to pull your dress up. Pull your goddamn dress up and bite down on it so my lovely guests won't hear you screaming like the horny little slut you are when I put it in you."

He never had to feel things like 'cold' or 'alone' before her. If he did, he went out and he bought a club some drinks and made two hundred friends in a moment. If he did, he could fly to Monaco and find some pretty young thing, fuck her senseless, make her a dozen promises and break every one as soon as he got up out of her bed. He never had to recognize, really see, that he was cold or alone. He never had to recognize that he ever felt that way.

Now he knows those things as intimately as he knows her darker desires, her more twisted fantasies. He knows what it is like to lie in bed next to her and feel like he is lost, a million miles from anyone and anything, with no one to hear him if he screamed. No one to look at him and say I know you. He knows what he is missing, partly because she never gives it to him.

Well. Sometimes.

"No," she tells him, again, firmly now, even as she's squirming on his lap, whimpering when he bites kisses into her mouth, panting as he tells her to shut up. She is trembling from the orgasm he nearly gave her, her breathing ragged, and he's pushing his fingers at her face and she's twisting away, protesting, No, til

he opens her mouth and slides them in and she sucks at them, her eyes closed and her mouth hungry, licking between his digits, while he mocks her. While, in fact, his cock throbs for her.

Then she bites them. Bites those fingers she's been salivating on, tasting, licking clean. Bites a little hard, actually -- not enough to draw blood but hard enough that it would never be considered a play-bite by anyone but Hilary. She bites him, and he wants her to pull up her dress and wrinkle and ruin it and she's fighting him, fighting him at every turn, as though she was never the one to pull his hand up between her legs in the first place.

It's a dangerous game they're playing. They don't have safewords. Never did. He has no real way to know where the line is really drawn; nothing beyond his innate perceptiveness and what fragile attunement he might have to his lover. And she has no real way to tell him no, not when that word is being appropriated and twisted into something else entirely. A toy, a prop, a part of the game, something she's using to stoke his lust.

No, she said, when he tried to suck her tits through her dress. No, when he tried to ruck her dress up and bounce her on his lap. No, when his fingers are in her, and no, when he puts them in her mouth instead and she's sucking on his fingers, sucking herself off his fingers even while he's mocking her and she's

biting him, hard enough to make him snarl. Hard enough to edge him a little further into that darkness where lust and violence seem intermingled. Where the no he has to rely on - not the one from her mouth but the one from her body, when she closes up and draws away - grows that much harder to discern.

He snatches his fingers from her teeth. "Bitch!" he snarls at her, and perhaps for a moment she thinks he might hit her; the thought is in his mind; he can't tell if it's anger or lust anymore. He surges up from the armchair, but she doesn't have time to tumble off his lap; he has her gripped by the nape of the neck like an errant pet, shoves her, all but throws her against his bedroom window. Impacts is a dull thud. The glass is stronger than it looks; barely even bends. He's on her in an instant, pinning her to the glass with his body, whipping his coat to the floor, popping buttons off his shirt as he tears it open.

She can see his guests on the terrace below. Most of them are gathered over on the south end of the terrace, where doors open out from living room and dining area. None of them are looking up, but

it's risky, at any second any one of them could happen to look up and over this way, could see the former Mrs. Durante pinned up against the glass by her young, rich savage of a lover, could see him forcing her thighs apart and yanking her dress up until a seam threatens to burst. His pants are around his ankles. His shirt is hanging off one shoulder, one elbow. His tie is askew, absurdly still around his neck. He is nearly naked behind her, he's grabbing her by the straps of her garter belt to position her, to pull her hips back, slapping her ass to get her to arch her back and present her cunt for the fucking. When he has her where he wants her he takes his cock in hand, slaps it hard against her slit. Takes her by the hair, pulls her head back until her throat is bared to him.

And while his guests are grazing on caviar and oysters, lamb and tenderloin, while they're out on the terrace enjoying the view and the heated air, while they're discussing the opera season and their springtime travel plans,

Ivan is licking Hilary's throat, kissing her pulse, biting her neck and laughing at her:

"Go on. Say it again. Tell me 'no' again."

This is what she wanted.

Perhaps not exactly this -- the glass is frigid, and she has always been more interested in Hot torture than Cold, Blunt to Sharp, and Loud has never really seemed appealing to her -- but this sensation he gives her, using his body to channel his rage and his lust at once, twining them together at least for awhile, the way rage marries itself to any emotion, any feeling, and makes it stronger.

She thinks he might hit her, or grab her throat, and her pulse jumps in something she couldn't rightly call desire, but it is excitement. Interest. Curiosity, even. Anticipation, definitely. Ivan restrains himself this time: his knuckles don't strike across her cheek, his palm doesn't close around her jugular, but she sees the flash in his eyes where he almost, almost --

But then he's giving her what she wants, what she really wants. Hauling her up and shoving her ahead of him. She stumbles in her heels, precarious on the balls of her feet for a moment before she catches herself against the glass, before he slams her to it. Her palms are flat against it, her heat clouding the glass slightly around the outlines of her fingers. At first she's against it by her whole forearms, her cheek, but when he removes his hand from her neck, just her hands; just her brow.

Hilary opens her eyes and looks down at the people for a moment. She feels like she's a ghost, floating above all of them, watching.

But that is not unusual.

Ivan is a hot, snarling thing behind her, yanking his clothes off, grabbing at her hips, yanking her dress up, pulling her back to him by garters that only have a little bit of give, a little bit of elastic. She can't see his reflection very well; he's a ghost, too. So she looks back at him over her shoulder, her legs already spread, her back already arch, her ass lifted for him. There was no resistance there, not now, despite her repeated nos. Still he slaps her across her flesh because, she knows,

he enjoys the sound. He enjoys, though he will later ache with regret over it, the way her pale skin turns pink when he does it again and again. He can turn marble into flesh; see, this is how. He can make her human. Only he can. Only him. See. See what he can do with his hand. Like an artist. Like a god.

Hilary gasps when he yanks her head back. She closes her eyes again, whimpering.

"No," she tells him,

but it isn't obedience. It's defiance. It's provocation, ploy, pushing.

No, again. Not obedience. Something closer to defiance, a word thrown in his teeth like a stone.

It enrages him. It inflames him. He shoves her against the glass again, shoves her with both hands flat to her shoulderblades, hard enough to slam her entire body to it, hard enough to cause the dim reflections to distort and bulge for a second. A low resonance, a boom of collision far too quiet for the rest of the penthouse to hear.

Then he's on her again, like a beast, grabbing her hair, pulling her head back to snarl impudent little slut at her before he's pushing her forward again, holding her to the glass, and she knows he's going to fuck her now, she can feel it in the air like a lightning storm.

This time he doesn't even do her the favor of warning her. Doesn't even slap his cock against her. He's behind her, and then he just takes himself in hand and shoves it inside her, pistons his hips forward to fill her with every last inch. It is very fast, very rough. He knows how long it's been since she's had a cock inside her. He knows because she told him it would be him, only him, unless he gave his permission otherwise. He likes it, and if she yelps, if she screams he tells her to shut up, shut up and take it, take it because --

"You're mine. You're mine, and I'll just take what you won't give me."

A moment, then. She can look down. He can too, and see that they are floating above the guests. They are enshrined in glass, out of reach but not out of sight. He wants them to look up, those guests. He wants them to see what he's doing to her up here. Wants them to see.

See what he can do. Him, and only him, and no one but him. See how he can make her real, and vulnerable. See what power he wields, and how thin the line is, and how easily he would cross it when he's the only thing holding himself back. He: who barely understands control in the first place.

His hips are pressed tight to her buttocks. He is hot behind her, and the glass is so cold. His breath is steaming up the glass over her shoulder, her skin is steaming the glass where it touches it, outlining her in an aura of cloudy white. He is kissing her, kissing the side of her face and the line of her neck ferociously, as though every kiss were in and of itself a claim. He is throbbing where he is inside her. His hand never lets go of her hair. Dark and cool, those strands twist between his fingers. He's reaching up and around, pushing his arm between her torso and the glass to tug and tear at the neckline of her dress, pulling it down to fill his palm with her breasts, and by then he's already fucking her,

hammering her,

holding nothing back.

Earlier, coming up here, he thought about fucking her. Of course he did. He thought about fucking her slowly and luxuriously, though, lazily and gaspingly in the darkness of his room. He did not think of fucking her like this, but then he almost never does. Romantic, she called him, disdainful, and there's some truth in it. Ivan wants to be romantic, perhaps. At least, he wants to be civilized. He wanted this affair to be a civilized, pleasant pastime, once upon a time. It did not turn out that way. If it had, he would have been done with her a long time ago, and not

here, like this, on her, all over her, rutting with her like a beast, grunting in her ear as he pounds her from behind. The glass shudders with each impact. There is nothing gentle about any of this. It's so hard that the glass shudders with the force of it. It's very rough. They are not making love, but then, they so rarely ever do.

A tease. That's what it is, that's what it was, that's what she is sometimes. It's bizarre, and it's frightening, that she can be playful about all this. And that's what it is, what differentiates this from the broken, shattered woman whose way of curling up and turning away from him sends a signal to every part of his body that she doesn't want any more, that she's done, that he has to stop, or stop someone else, and protect her. This 'no' of hers is ...coy. She knows it will infuriate him and she likes it.

Hilary lets out a gasp, a shocked sound, the air knocked out of her when Ivan slams her to the glass again. There are other times when this sort of thing wouldn't do anything for her. It would annoy her that he did it against the glass and not the bed, that he wasn't following her mysterious imaginings just right. But generally: no. Most times, her will is so subsumed by her lust that all that matters is what Ivan feels, how turned on Ivan is, how hard he fucks her, how much proves to her that he desires her. That she is desirable at all.

So now she's whimpering, and he's breaking her, he can feel how he breaks her will, bends it over his own and ties it down, uses it, uses her. And Ivan: Ivan is fucking her, his control ragged, saying things that sound like rape, like this would be rape, if they were at all true. If she didn't want to give him this. If her coming to his stupid little party and going upstairs with him were not, from the beginning, things she was giving him tonight. If she weren't giving herself to him, over and over again, every time. If that weren't the point. If that weren't the glue that keeps them from walking out of each other's lives.

Hilary cries as he fucks her, send rapidly spiraling over the edge and into the darkness that stretches out past the limits of his terrace, his penthouse, his domain of pale wood and glass and bright, brigh light. She cries because she gives herself to him

and he accepts.

And for all that: for the roughness with which he takes her, for the way he is all but trying to hurt her, for the tears on her cheeks and the snarl in his throat,

he kisses her. Oh, he kisses her again and again, everywhere, and it's part ownership but mostly it's adoration, passion, a need and hunger for closeness to her that helps forge the connection she can't create on her own, can't even access unless he yanks it out of her. Her hair is a wreck now, the clip in it tangled somewhere in a knot of curls, his fingers tangled against her scalp. Her dress, too. He's going to get drops of cum on her dress, she knows it, she just knows it, he's going to stain her stockings, he's going to make a complete filthy mess out of her,

and these thoughts, as much as anything Ivan is doing to her, are making her clench around him, hold tightly to him, pull him in even deeper.

The halter of her gown is attached via a tiny button on the inside of her bodice. It's quite clever. That button tears, and loose threads come with it, as he yanks her bodice down so he can touch her breasts. As he shoves the black bustier underneath down, holds her breast, just

holds it. There's nothing gentle about this, even his kisses, but the way he simply holds her breast is as close to gentle as he can get right now. It feels gentle to Hilary, though one could say her perspective on what is and isn't gentle is a bit skewed. She had no thoughts tonight on how he would fuck her before she came here, but she knew he would. She knew because she would offer herself to him the way she always does: that is, in a way that doesn't seem like an offer at all, in a way that feels like resistance just so he can rip it down and make her submit. She thought: she'd give herself to him. And then he could do what he liked with her.

This. This is what he likes with her. With her and no other. With her, when he didn't know he liked it at all before her.

The things they do to each other would so easily be abusive. If he didn't have her consent, as obliquely as it may be given. If she didn't know he liked it, even if before her he never knew he liked it like this. If they didn't genuinely and bizarrely care for each other. If he didn't take care of her afterward, every time, every single time he ruins her like this.

It doesn't last long, this ravaging fuck against the glass. Downstairs, his hired quartet finishes one song and doesn't even make it through the next. His guests eat one canape, maybe two. Drink half a glass of champagne or wine. Someone somewhere wonders aloud when the gift exchange will begin. One of the children is surreptitiously picking at the wrapping on one, only to be caught and hauled off by his nanny.

And while this is happening, Ivan is inside Hilary. He is holding her against the window and railing her cunt from behind. He is fucking her as hard and as thoroughly as he's ever fucked her, taking and taking and taking and - giving, in some improbable way. He is biting her and kissing her, pulling her hair, holding her breast, and she is crying like he's hurting her, she's weeping in a way that once frightened and now

- twistedly perhaps -

satisfies him in some way. There. Now she feels it. Now he knows she feels it, he knows he's broken through to her at last, he's reached her and touched her and struck in such a way that shattered something, released something.

That's what it feels like, coming in her, every time. Like shattering. Like release. His orgasm is on him in moments. He's not just grunting but shouting past her shoulder, against her neck - making these hoarse animal sounds of pleasure and cataclysm as he pounds his cum into her, holding her so tightly it's hard to tell where their bodies separate. It's hard to breathe. It's hard to think.

There are no thoughts left when he's done with her. He's collapsing against her; it's the window that holds both of them up now, the glass cold, the winter limitless outside. No ice on the lake this year. Just blackness, a few points of light. Stars.

Partygoers, beneath. When he opens his eyes again he sees them, and he is lazy now, drifting, he's so far away from them that he almost thinks they wouldn't see him even if they looked up. That's not true, though, and he knows he should move now. He should take her away from this window, away from where she might be exposed and seen;

protect her.

Ivan kisses his lover. Softly now, not those biting fierce kisses of before. He kisses her neck, and the soft spot below her ear. He nuzzles her until she turns her face to him. He kisses the tear-tracks on her cheeks. Her mouth. His hand massages her breast. His hand combs through her hair. He flexes his hips against hers, flexes gently into her as though to remind her of who he is, where he is, how deeply he is inside her. "I love the way you say no," he murmurs.

And stepping back from the window, then. They've left sweat on the glass, handprints. His servants will take care of that. He keeps her close to him, his arms wrapped around her waist. The bed seems so far away. The armchairs are closer, and he sinks down into one, sprawls in one with his lover on his lap. He is still stroking her hair, touching her body, soothingly now. Coming back down.

Oh, he has to protect her now. From the awful people who will see her, ridicule her, gossip about her -- more than they do already -- or try to ruin her just to have something to distract themselves from the emptiness of their own lives. He has to protect her from the cold glass and the ache in her feet and he has to protect her from her shaking and her tears. It all comes now, after she's had her orgasm -- liquid, molten, undulating thing that it was, and only enough time for her to have one tonight -- and he's spent himself inside of her,

all that need, all that closeness. She's trembling, she's sniffing through her tears, and there's salt water on the glass with her fingerprints, as he gathers her up and takes her to his armchair, sinks onto it with her on his lap. She has satin torn around her neck, her bodice yanked down, her skirt yanked up, her inner thighs stained with his cum, her hair thrashed about by his grip. She looks like a different woman than she was downstairs.

She is.

But Hilary also molds her body to his in that chair, tucking her face close to his neck, wordless and accepting of the sort of gentle, tender caresses she would have outright rejected not ten minutes ago.

They are both ruins of what they were when they stepped into this room. It's not just the cum, the fluids, the bite marks, the mussed hair. It's not just the torn clothing, the popped buttons, his rumpled shirt still hanging off his body, her dress crumpled and wrinkled beyond repair. It's their state of mind, too. It's what remains when everything else has been broken down and torn apart. It's this strange, blasted silence in the aftermath, where at last they can simply be - without questioning, without doubting, without boredom, without disgust.

It's arguable that this is the whole point. To reach this sort of peace, where it's not unthinkable for them to be tender with each other. Where gentleness is not merely tolerated, but in its own way, necessary. Her body fits his, like this. His breathing is slow and even after a while, and even then he holds her, his eyes half-closed, blinking slowly.

Gradually the sounds of the party outside his bedroom drift back into his consciousness. He wonders how the hell he's going to get her out of here without rousing suspicion. He wonders if he could simply keep her here all night without rousing suspicion. People noticed her walking in. She wore a green dress, for god's sake, and everyone else is in red and white and black and shades thereof. There's a ridiculous, lavish gift for her under the tree. There are half a dozen men and one woman downstairs who fucked her a little under two months ago, and dozens others who watched. They remember her. They might wonder, and

oh, he doesn't care. Maybe he won't go down again either. He smiles to himself at the thought; let them entertain themselves for once. His bed isn't so far. He could sleep here. With Hilary. Has he ever done that before, here? He can't recall.

"Do you suppose," he whispers, "we could get away with not making another appearance tonight?"

Who they were downstairs, who they are when they're around the elite and the titled and the wealthy... they can forget so easily who those people are. Who Hilary de Broqueville or Hilary Durante is. Who Ivan Priselkov or Press is. Who they are supposed to be other than animals who, eons ago, were simply prettier and more noble and more driven to guide their brethern than all the other wolves. She yawns. She has forgotten to be concerned with all of those people down there who have never known what a wolf feels like when it's lying in your bed.

Ivan is smiling at the thought of not even bothering to go down again. Hilary is lazy against him, limp. He's thinking of sleep, wondering if he's slept here with her before, but he has. He's gone and gotten little fruits and cheeses for her, put them under glass, because he had her tied up and he knew she wouldn't unbind herself and go find food if she was hungry in the middle of the night. He's watched her little maidservant do her hair in front of his bathroom mirror, as though either of them belonged here. As though it were normal for Hilary to wake up in his bed.

But right now, neither history nor memory comes easily. She drowses against him. He murmurs a suggestion; she huffs a laugh at him.

"No," she murmurs, not defiant anymore but certainly teasing a bit, teasing him for thinking such a thing, for thinking anyone could be in a room with them and not notice, or for thinking that they could just leave and no one would put it together.

She twists in his lap, turning so her back is mostly but not entirely against his chest. His breathing matches hers. "Have Max send Darya up," she says loosely, her eyes closed. "You should go begin giving your guests their presents."

So far as their sexual escapades go, that was one of the rougher ones, but not one of the lengthier ones. There have been times when he's strung her up with her hands over her head. Fucked her for hours. There have been times - several, actually - when he tied her to the bed at night and used her whenever he liked. Compared to that, this was ...

well; a quickie. A sudden, impetuous overboiling of lust, because of the way his guests were drawn to her. Because of the way some of his guests, the ones who were clearly not taught any manners, were all but pawing at her. Sniffing at her. Circling her.

And because: she's here. And he can. And he hasn't, for a very long time.

Now they're limp and relaxed, minds clear and uncluttered. He really should get out of these clothes, but then she turns and settles, her slender back to his lean front, and it feels so right for his arms to be around her waist. His feet bracket hers on the footstool. Oh look: he still has his shoes on.

"I should shower first," he murmurs. Unseeingly, luxuriously, his hand wanders over her torso. He finds where he's shoved her bustier down and awry. He finds a fastening and undoes it. He finds a breast and holds it, covers it with his broad palm, those long fingers. The way he rubs his jaw against her temple reminds him of when they first stepped in here, and he was elegant and predatory, and she was cool and remote.

"You should come with me."

There's a difference in how Ivan goes at her when it's been a long time. He's so easy to provoke into that madness she likes so much, so much quicker to growl at her, bite her, pull her hair. That is the only way Hilary can tell the difference, or recognize that it's been ages since he's had her. She doesn't think of it much. The days pass as they always pass for her: slowly, assisted by drugs occasionally, meaninglessly. She feels so little until she's back in his presence.

Such as right now: she feels very warm, and very lazy. She wants to fuck more, but she knows he's going to take her to the cabin later and fuck her there, possibly several times, and she can wait. She likes waiting, sometimes. He caresses her, does something or other with her clothes. Hilary, eyes still closed, arches her back to make it easier for his fingers to unsnap her bustier, then relaxes again as he cups her breast in his hand. She wants him to suckle on it, lick and kiss and feast on her, but he doesn't, and she doesn't ask him to. It feels good simply to have him stroke her there, like a pet. Like a plaything.

"I'll just wash up a bit," she murmurs. "You should go quickly --" she hitches a bit, as he nuzzles her, rubbing his face all over her as though to mark her with his scent. She opens her eyes, looks drowsily at him, and they close again, her head tipped to accomodate his affection. "Your absence will be noted more than mine by your guests. I do need you to summon Darya, though. She has a second dress for me, and she has to fix my hair."

Her hand is on his hand. Her fingertips stroke idly between his knuckles. "We really must go, darling."

There's a certain disappointment in Ivan. He wants to shower with her. He wants to undress her slowly in his bathroom with all the mirrors. She no longer has anything to be ashamed of in her reflection: no pregnancy, no swollen belly. She is sleek and beautiful again as if those turbid months never happened at all. He saw it the day he gave her that new rehearsal studio, the one on top of the cabin because as far as he knows she still hasn't purchased a house.

He saw it when she walked the floors meditatively. Turned a few gentle pirouettes in front of the glass, lovely as a poem.

There is so much about Hilary that Ivan genuinely loves, and so much of it oddly unrelated to how they fuck. So much of it related instead to her strange, fragmentary life; those motes of self floating around that endless black void of her personality.

He wants to take her into his ridiculous shower with its multiple streams of water. He wants to hold her, and wash her, soothe her with his hands. Show her how much he really does adore her, because when he tells her so often she looks at him like a child, or a fool.

She's right, though. They really must go. He'll be missed before long. His presence is like that: magnetic and scintillating even in its shallowness. It is not possible to be in a room with him and not know it.

The same goes for her, really. But well; at least she's not hosting this party.

So he kisses her again. He leans around and kisses her mouth if she gives it to him; a soft kiss, but not quick. He lingers still. She mentions her girl Darya again. And a second dress. Ivan smirks.

"You do come prepared, don't you?" And he bites her, nips gently at her bottom lip.

Exhaling, Ivan shifts his hands to Hilary's hips, shifts her off him. He gets up, shedding his shirt and his shoes as he does, kicking his pants off the one ankle they're still around. The shower runs, but not for very long. He scrubs himself off and then dries himself on one of those deep, plush towels; prowls around his room naked and then gradually less and less naked until he's finely dressed again.

He reaches for her hand as he finishes doing his tie, bringing her knuckles to his lips as though they really were the decorous, courteous people they sometimes pretend to be. "I'll send Darya up," he promises, "and see you downstairs soon."

He's so tender.

He tries to be, at least. When the walls in him are broken down, too. When he can be close to her without panicking, when he can hold her and he can bear, for a little while, the thought that she might stay in his arms. That tenderness aches in him to pull her to the bath, run his hands over her, wash her, but he can feel that she isn't broken so far that she needs it. This, for what they just did, is enough for her: he holds her, nuzzles her, cups her breast and makes her feel like she's a beautiful, long-missed thing. Like she loves him, and he loves her.

They do. Sometimes. Perhaps even all of the time, and are yet unable to find their way to it more often than not. It comes in flickers, when he sees those fragments of humanity left to her. It comes in waves, when she is so shattered that his arms around her make everything suddenly

okay.

Sometimes it is all right for Ivan to stroke her hair, or tell her that he will give her anything, anything in his power to give, which is a great deal. He gave her a child and then, blessedly, took it away again, so far away she doesn't ever have to think of it again unless she wants to. He has given her summers in the middle of winter, eating mole with pomegranate seeds in Mexico, loving her even at her most miserable, longing for her, waiting for her. He built her a cabin because his lake house frightened her. He built her a dance studio because her husband divorced her and she had nowhere left to practice. He would give her anything, but sometimes... sometimes she can stand to recognize that this is a lovely thing, a frail thing he offers because he cannot always offer himself.

So he kisses her, and she lets him, molding her lips to his. Her eyes are still closed when he ends it. You do come prepared, don't you?

"I know you," she murmurs, her body warm and lazy atop his, head resting on his shoulder. It is a simple enough answer, but shocking coming from her. Shocking, partly because it is such an admission of that bond they both often deny.

A nip on her lower lip. It makes her chuckle, a dark and low sound.

And he showers, scrubs her scent off of himself, rinses away the sweat, and... Hilary just waits. She's half-dropped back into the armchair where he sank, and she curls up there, her cheek on the arm, watching him move around the bathroom through the open door. She's languid as a drowsy animal, her legs folded to the side, her body seemingly melted against the upholstery. Occasionally her eyelids droop in a slow blink, only to lift again.

When he comes back out, she hasn't really moved. And she watches him as he dresses, then, humming softly, moving her foot to some unheard beat. She really is like... a pet, now. Content to stay in her master's general area, slightly fascinated by his intricate movements, the thought he puts into everything while she... thinks of very little at all. When he comes back to her, lifting her hand, her arm is limp. She gives him a crooked smile. "Da, vladelʹtsa," she says, her obedience both sleepy and charming.

On those rare occasions when Hilary shows any insight into the nature of self or others, they often come like this: unadorned, uncomplicated, dropping from her lips like an absolute and self-evident truth. I know you, she says, and this is truth. It makes his eyes soften for a moment, and ache. And so that nip on her lower lip becomes a deeper thing, a kiss that borders on hard.

He loves the way she laughs, then. He loves, later, how she smiles at him, and how neither are really wholesome or sweet, and both send shafts of lust bolting through him. She gives him her hand the way she gives him her self: completely, giving up ownership so long as he has her.

And in return, he kisses her knuckles softly. Lays her hand back down instead of merely letting it slip and fall. For a moment he cups her head, strokes her cheek.

"Krasivaya devushka," he murmurs.

The door shuts softly behind him as he lets himself out. There are guests in the hall. He greets them directly and unashamedly, warmly; if anyone suspects a thing, no one opens their mouth. He has chosen clothes almost indistinguishable from what he wore into the bedroom. The cut of the jacket was different, so he left it behind, opting instead for the waistcoat. He's scuffed his hair dry. Only the very perceptive - and the truth is, these guests of his are hard-pressed to perceive anything beyond the ends of their own noses - would detect the difference.

Downstairs, he refills his drink; checks the time. It is nearly ten o' clock. He has a word with Max; there are two tasks for her. She completes the first while the musicians finish their piece and play a flourish. Then the second: with Max on hand to assist him with the pesky face-and-name-and-gift matching business, Ivan makes an announcement: presents! And the children, to their wild delight, are first.

The Ragabash has himself a seat before the tree. The musicians start playing again: classical carols, light and merry. Someone tosses a santa hat at Ivan, who goodnaturedly puts it on. The little girl that's first in line is nearly hopping out of her shoes in excitement.

While the guests are focused on the gifts, a quiet message passes from Max to one of the maids, and from her to Darya. Ivan is perhaps a dozen kids into the present-giving when Darya, mouse-quiet, slips into his bedroom with Hilary's second dress.

Beautiful girl, he calls her, before he leaves. And she remains hidden in his dim room, lit only by stars and the lights from the terrace below. She rolls over and she closes her eyes, lazing in his room, curled up right where he left her rather than bothering to get up and wander around. She doesn't look through his things; he knows she wouldn't. He goes back out to his guests, who mostly assume he was just freshening up or snorting cocaine the way they do at their parties, because they didn't see him enter his room with the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Durante and they would never think such a thing of her. Like them, if she has affairs with younger men, she does not go to their parties. So clearly: she could not be fucking Mr. Press.

Downstairs, he gets a Santa hat and he begins giving presents to absolutely horrible little boys and girls. Upstairs, Hilary dozes in his chair, her head on the armrest, her ankles crossed, her dress still askew.

The little girl that's first in line is named Annaleigh, which is actually a nickname for Annika Stoneleigh, but when she grows up a bit and enters prepatory school she'll probably go by the same nickname her mother got at the same school, which was "Kiki". Her hair is auburn and her shoes are patent. She squeals when she gets her gift, even before she starts to open it. Ivan gets thanked. Not Max, who went through the painstaking process of getting wishlist information from all these goddamn parents, who received the packages as they came to the penthouse, who made sure the maids all wrapped the gifts according to the design the party planner had come up with, which involves some rather intricately folded and layered black and silver paper with fluffy white chiffon bows. Ivan, of course, is the one who gets thanked.

Darya is there. She's dressed nicer than usual, but it's clear she's a servant, all the same. Low heels, more conservative than cute. Black dress, quarter-sleeved and not very daring. Her hair is a little curled at the ends, there's a sparkling snowflake barette clipped above one ear, and she's wearing earrings, but that's it. When one of Ivan's maids comes over and whispers in her ear, Darya smiles and thanks her in Russian. She goes and gets the garment bag, and the little satchel, and goes upstairs.

She knows which room is Ivan's. That says something, given how rarely she's been here, and the fact that she's only once -- maybe twice, at most -- been in that room. She gives a small knock, but it is an announcement, not a request. After that she slips in, closing the door behind her, and say this for her: Darya knows how to appear purposeful. No one, looking at her, would question that she's supposed to go in there. She certainly doesn't look like she's uncertain.

Hilary stirs on the chair, opening her eyes and staring at the girl. "That took long enough," she murmurs, as though it's Darya's fault. She sits up, half-bared still, and ruffls her hands through her hair. "Let's get on with it."

Perhaps ten, fifteen minutes later, Hilary comes downstairs. She's dressed exactly the same. Her hair is exactly the same. Her makeup is touched up. She, again, takes a glass of something off a passing tray and sips at it as she descends the stairs, entering the living room while everyone is oohing and aahing over the gifts given to the kids. Their oohs and aahs are as bored as the adults look right now. Hilary gets a few glances, mostly from the people whose do not have children at all and are therefore the most bored by this part, but she ignores the stares as always. People always stare at her.

Darya leaves Ivan's room a few moments later. She has the same garment bag and same satchel, but the contents of one are different now. That dress is torn, wrinkled, though still salvageable. The makeup case and the hair products and curling iron are tucked away just as neatly as before. Ivan's things are untouched -- even his clothes are where he dropped them. She did place the towels Hilary used to wash up in the chute; that's all. Wiped up any droplets of water. It's like she was never there. Hilary was. He can smell Hilary up there still if he likes. But there's no trace, no physical sign at least, of Darya.

The bags go back down to be returned to Carlisle. Darya returns to the kitchen where some of Ivan's servants dare to congregate for a few moments when Max's attention is elsewhere. She isn't shaken. Hilary is actually...nicer... at times like this. Easier to deal with than when she's just waking up in the morning or afternoon and snapping at everything. Calmer. Darya has no illusions about what Hilary's relationship with Mr. Press entails; all she knows is that it gentles Ms. de Broqueville.

Downstairs, forgetting about her servant again, Hilary tips her head to the side as she watches Ivan pretend to shake a present before handing it over to the little boy who is holding his hands out, wordlessly opening and closing them, bouncing on his toes, trying to be good and not whine pleeeeeaaaase. It's the same little boy who had to pee earlier.