Ivan Press

Hilary

Winter has left Chicago, and with it the cold that was too mild, the snow that was only halfhearted. Summer is here now, not the full eruption but the blush of it, the hints of warmth and wetness that will become night unto unbearable in coming weeks. The days begin so early now; the sun stays well into the evening before surrendering -- as it must -- to night.

Carlisle drives, and Darya sits in front, and Hilary sits in the back of the Aston Martin that Ivan gave her for Christmas, looking at that unique diamond on her right hand for a long time. This, too, was a Christmas gift. He showered her with gifts just a few months ago, poured jewelry and presents and white leather bondage gear all over her before handing her this gift and offering her that silly proposal.

Months later, he told her about Grey, and gaver her a collar that she rejected, and tore her apart. Hilary did not think pain came in greater measure than she felt that night, as the weight of her own reality came crashing down on her. If not the Athro Theurge maybe an Adren Ahroun who would kill Ivan to get to her. If not the Ahroun then perhaps a Galliard, twitchy and mad and rich and with so many favors to call in, some ugly creature who would try to get babies out of her. If not one thing, another, and she would go round and round and round until she was wrung out, used up, worthless to them.

She thought it could not hurt more than that night, realizing -- perhaps for the first time -- that the life that did not belong to her was actually one she wanted to take back.

And then they went to Novgorod.

--

In Russia, after meeting that elderly gentleman with the gorgeous sons and agreeing to be his new bride, their new stepmommy, Hilary found that she not only had a life that she wanted to possess and live out, but that she had a soul, that there was such a thing, and that it was walking around outside of her where any moment it might get ripped to pieces. So: a life, and a soul, and a home, and a love, and all these things were her own, and she found that she -- who is capable of almost anything -- did not have it in her to survive, if she let this happen again.

They plotted. She left Anton in his country house where he is now walking, babbling constantly, picking things up and throwing them down, his feet still curled up, not quite flattened and stable yet, his arms wobbling to either side of him all the time. She came back to Chicago and died a little inside at the mere loss of him, the separation from the one thing about her that she knows is still decent, still untouched, still vibrant and belonging to itself.

She meditated on her hatred and her madness.

She lived within her grief and her rage.

And when she emerged, when her carefully ignored prey came slinking back within her reach, she caught him by the tail.

She tore off his head.

--

The tatters she leaves behind her do not occupy her thoughts overmuch now. It is not a long distance to the lake house, or the cabin on the water beside it. She looks at her ring, and she looks out the window, and she does not call Ivan or tell him, in any way, that she has come out of her cave, that she is coming to the place he built her where she could be swallowed up and protected from being swallowed, all at once. Where she could dwell in that limbo, empty and pristine, between insanity and normalcy.

The wheels roll gently to a stop, and the parking brake is engaged, and Hilary waits for the door to be opened. It is dark now. She opens her purse as the overhead lights are fading, and when she finds what she is looking for, she turns its little crank and she flicks the little switch and light that is always surprising in its brightness floods the interior.

She smiles, a twitch of her lips, at it.

Shines it in Carlisle's eyes, when he opens the door, and holds it in her opposite hand as he helps her out.

Hilary walks towards the little bridge, as Carlisle unloads a couple of bags and carries them to the awning for her. She hesitates, not wanting him inside but truly not knowing what to do, so she permits him to bring them to the door. If need be, she can at least take them the last couple of inches. Carlisle walks back down the way, and he and Darya now have to decide what to do, since they made no arrangements with Ivan or his staff to stay in his mansion and since leaving Hilary is unthinkable and since going into that cabin would be a sin.

She realizes she doesn't know where any of the switches are, or can't remember. It has been quite some time since she was here, so she swivels her flashlight hither and yon, flicks switches, presses buttons, until lights come on. The flashlight is turned off and returned to her purse, and a little key card taken out instead.

--

Upstairs, in a narrow closet with a few drawers, there are her shoes and her practice shoes. There are her pins. Her leotard, the leg warmers that go up to the tops of her thighs, the tights, the little skirt, the sweater, a dozen different options.

She has destroyed those pretty white satin pointe shoes that Ivan gave her at Christmas. Slammed them in doors, singed them with fire, stripped them, bent them, sewed new ribbons on. They are dingy and brutalized now. She does not take them from their drawer.

Tonight she undresses, hangs up her clothes, and changes into a white leotard with the little cap sleves, the wisp of a tie-around skirt in pale, gauzy pink. She folds her legs and sits in front of the vast walls of mirrors to tie and pin up her long hair into a bun, the movements quick and practiced and familiar. She slips on a pair of regular ballet slippers, pads slowly across the room

long neck

strength in the core

shoulders back,

her arms down like wings at her sides. She bends so carefully, each leg straight, and turns on her music. It begins playing wherever the iPod was last time. Whenever that was.

The cabin is lit up on the water. The music fills the space, reflected off the windows and the floor. Hilary begins to warm up.

Hilary has her own key.

That means she has the right to come and go as she pleases. That means she does not have to tell anyone, not even Ivan, when she goes to the lakehouse. Not if it is midday, not if it is midnight. Not even if it has been weeks on end; not even if in all those weeks, while she was shut away and dying all over again in some private, quasi-figurative way, neither she nor her fickle, young, golden lover contacted one another.

Still: it must give Ivan's staff a bit of a startle, if not an outright fright, to see lights coming on of their own accord. To hear, if they venture too close, the quiet strains of piano music filtering through the wood and glass. To see, through those drawn shades that cover those endless panes of nearly-seamless glass, the silhouette of that slender black-eyed witch of a woman bending, stretching, dancing.

Ivan himself must not be home. If he was home, he would have come to Hilary instantly. Immediately. Before she even finished changing. Maybe he would have stopped her somewhere between the undressing and the redressing; maybe he would have bent her over those granite counters downstairs,

that altar of a bed,

those smooth hardwood barres in the studio. Maybe he would have simply watched her, eyes hot with appreciation, loving the way she looks, the way she moves, the way her eyes devour the light. He must not be home, but: perhaps his staff knows where to find him. Perhaps they call him, or text him, or track him down personally to deliver the message. Perhaps he's at some party somewhere, some gallery opening winding down into a more intimate, dangerous affair as the hanger-ons go home, as the gathering dwindles to the most select crowd. Perhaps he has a date, or perhaps he is alone; perhaps they are discussing something thoroughly boring to him and his eyes are wandering, his mind is wandering, he wants meat, bloody and raw, and Max appears at his side to whisper in his ear.

Perhaps his eyes gleam. Perhaps he excuses himself, and leaves the premises, and drives those miles between downtown and north shore, and turns onto his driveway, and parks, and walks down that short bridge, and --

None of that matters. Whether or not it happens, Hilary does not see any of it. For Hilary, it is as simple as this:

She lets herself into the studio. She binds slippers to her feet. She plays her music. She stretches her muscles. She bends herself over her straightened leg, bends until her brow nearly touches her knee, and when she straightens,

Ivan

is simply

there.

--

He stands at the top of the stairs. He is still and silent as a shadow, dark as a shadow: a black suit, a black shirt, a black tie visible only by its sheen. It takes a certain audacity to dress like that and not look utterly morbid. It takes a certain build, a certain height, a certain ability to carry oneself. Ivan does not look morbid. He looks -- golden, luminous, lucent, luciferous. The tone of his skin and hair radiant, his hands folded so elegantly behind his back.

"Krasivaya devushka," he murmurs.

This elevator, which only travels between two stories -- and not even particularly high-ceilinged stories -- does not ding. It does not chime or chirp. It moves whisper-soft, opens in silence, closes again just as mutely. Hilary does know it is moving, though, even past the music, because she is not insensate, no matter how detached from reality she often is. She does not think herself betrayed by the man who told her that hers was the only key card. She does not wonder if he used the talents Gaia gave him somehow.

Hilary is warming up, seated on the floor, and her brow does not nearly touch her knee, her brow touches the top of her shin. She is lithe. She is smooth. She is just as entertaining as any of the younger women he fucks, and far more flexible than many of them.

Ivan stands, all in black, having not seen her for weeks since he left her at her apartment, having not heard from her in all that time, only to find her suddenly here, ghostlike.

He speaks one of her names.

She finishes her stretch.

Slowly lifting her head when she is done, she looks at him, and does a spinal twist, her left foot on the outer side of her right thigh, her body turning, turning to the left, til her toes and her eyes face opposite directions. She unfurls again, sighing, and otherwise

ignores him.

That's a new one.

For a moment their eyes meet. For a moment he is looking at her and she is looking at him and she can see the simmering heat in his eyes. Then she turns; she twists loose those supple elongated muscles of her axis. His eyes are on her back, on her thigh, on the graceful taper of her leg. Hers is a rare grace, a rare talent. She could have been magnificent,

if she weren't so monstrously cold.

He begins to walk toward her. Those well-shod feet make not the slightest whisper on that smooth, springy floor. The ceilings are high enough not to oppress. Low enough not to diminish. It is brilliantly lit in here, strip after strip of lights casting a bright white light across the room. With the windowshades open, the studio would glow like a lantern in the dark. With the shades closed, as they are now, the light reflects back into the room. Batters shadows nearly to nothing. When Ivan stops beside Hilary, he does not shade her.

"Hilary," he says. Another of her names. And his hand coming to sift through her hair; his thumb tracing behind her ear, down the delicate curvature of her jaw.

She could have been magnificent, world-class, one of the best, if she weren't a Silver Fang. If she weren't of such precious blood, such perfectly distilled madness. She captivates, just by walking into the room, and that is merely her effect on mortals. It does not come close to describing what she does to those of their tribe. When they see her. When they smell her. When they, rare as it may be, are permitted to touch her hand.

Hilary stretches, and Hilary warms up slowly, rising to her feet as Ivan crosses the expansive dance studio to her. He should not be wearing those shoes in here, and she frowns vicious and petulantly at once at his feet before turning away, moving like she is in water.

Ivan says another name, and touches her behind her ear, which she jerks away from, because he is going to mess up her hair. She cannot bear to look at him, or turn into him, cannot bear to be touched by him. She moves away, swift and light and effortless, going to the barre.

To do plies.

Of course.

When she ignored him, Ivan thought it was a game. Of course that is the first thing he thinks: he who sometimes seems to think all of life is a game. A playground. His playground, to be exact.

But then -- he reaches out to touch her. She jerks away. She doesn't look at him; she doesn't come to him. She doesn't step into him the way she sometimes does, thoughtless and entitled as an animal, seeking and demanding the touch, the caresses, the pleasure that she is due. She does none of these things: she goes to the barre.

To do plies.

Ivan watches her. He is still again, watchful; a hunting sort of silence. The barre runs along that wall of mirrors, which is the only wall not made of transparent glass. In those mirrors Hilary can see her lover, the deliberate way he moves, the way he follows her. Comes to her side. Rests one lean hand on the barre, inches from hers.

"Hilary." A third time; and this time, with a certain note. Entreaty, or perhaps command. "Look at me."

They have not played together in months. They have not seen each other in weeks, because Hilary came back to Chicago from her son's first birthday and could not get out of bed for a fortnight.

She promised Edmund Grey a June wedding upon meeting him, and it is mid-May now. She has done nothing for that wedding, nothing she should have done. The planners from Edmund Grey's side have worked with Miranda, and Miranda has done her due diligence in both evasion and surrender, because she still is not sure what Hilary's sudden trip to Novgorod means for the future. She assumes it changes nothing; she prepares for a wedding that will happen in a month's time, a wedding that is so lavish that it would take most people a year or more to plan for. They are not most people. They are not people at all; they are Silver Fangs.

Two weeks, she's been checked out. Grey has not asked her to attend any events with him, has not courted her, has not been seen with her in public. He apologized in his note. It wouldn't be proper for her to have reached out to him in the past two weeks, anyway. Ladies do not ask gentlemen on dates. Two weeks, and only now, Ivan invading her dance studio, does she remember, and wonder

if he ever gave Grey an answer about marrying one of his daughters.

if he broached the idea of joining his pack, replacing the estranged Margaret as their Ragabash, welcomed into pack and family where he could stay close to Hilary even if it was the most dangerous thing they could do.

if he followed through on any of their clever, risky plans because their final decision was unthinkable, was pure madness, was hysterical, and when he left her he realized they could not jilt Edmund Grey, they could not shove him off and be together, it wouldn't work, nothing Hilary could say would matter.

--

Hilary looks at him with keen distrust, with suspicion, with anger, with resentment, with bitterness. She wears her hair up so rarely when he sees her. He is used to seeing it cascade around her, straight or curled or waving naturally as it did in Mexico when she was the fattest and angriest he has ever seen her. Now it is up in a tightly-pinned bun, her throat bare, her leotard and hairstyle only serving to make it more obvious the weight she's lost in the last two weeks. She knows he has not tried to reach her, because he knows that if he really wanted to see her, he would have fought through her servants, he would have appeared in her bedroom, he would have been there. She knows him. And she looks so irritated with him right now.

Nevermind that in Novgorod, they decided that she would tell Grey the story of her parents' great love and great doom. They decided that she wouldn't tell him about Anton, she wouldn't threaten to bind him in silver and cut off his cock while he slept, she wouldn't say anything so mad, she would just tell him that if they married, she would die. When one thinks about it -- and they do not -- it is perhaps a little sad that all she has had to do is tell Edmund the truth: that. she. is. broken. That he should not want her. That she hated her child in the womb. That she was a mad, mad, sociopathic thing. She wasn't going to tell him about her parents. But then she did. It's only been an hour or so, perhaps; yet Hilary wonders if Ivan has heard the news.

Hilary wonders, at the sight of him, if Edmund went back to the house and if they are going to come find her and if they are going to drag her back by the hair and if it doesn't matter at all that she's so wretched and insane and hateful, and her eyes are full of fire and spite and horror. It is so strange, after a brief respite of happiness for Anton's outing, Anton's birthday,

and the incalculable sorrow that overtook her when she left him.

--

He comes closer, and she is not looking at the mirrors or at him, but does her warm-ups and her exercises blithely, because every time she looks at him she looks rattled and vengeful, so instead she looks at the floor and her feet as she lowers, again and again, only to sweep gracefully back up.

Again he says her name, and tells her to look at him, and his voice cannot decide whether it is pleading or commanding, and so Hilary's ears cannot decide how to hear it.

Still she ignores him.

She lowers. She sweeps up. She lowers. She --

-- he grabs her by the bicep. He spins her around, he slams her shoulderblades to the mirror, grabs her jaw, forces her chin up. They're inches apart, and then less: he steps into her, lowers his head, comes eye to eye with her.

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

Her shoulders hit the mirror, her back arched over the barre, and the back of her head presses into the flat, cold, hard surface as well. Ivan grips her arm, and her hands grip the barre, and her breathing is already quickened, her breath caught and then held.

She feels

so warm.

Hilary exhales, watching him, her eyes impassive even if her features are not. "Do not be angry with me," she whispers, a half-existent plea.

[WAT WAT WAT IS GOING ON.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

[Well, he can tell he just turned her on. And there's something else, more aching, beneath that. Her 'don't be angry' seems a little more general than immediate.]

They're nothing but animals in the end. They're nothing but reflex arcs and instincts and drives, and the oldest of all is this one. The quickening of her breath. The flicker deep in his eyes.

His hand loosens on her jaw. Turns over. He trails the backs of his fingers down her throat; the flutter of pulse under her skin. Hilary is never tanned; even that July when he met her on the water she was shaded, she was half-covered, she hid from the sun like it was too bright for her darkness. Weeks of seclusion and she is white as winter. Look carefully and he'd see the map of her veins, that lifesblood giving warmth to her coldness.

His hand has fallen to the level of her breasts, and for a moment his knuckles sweep sideways toward those small, shapely breasts. They don't quite reach; his hand drops away. Both of them gripping her wrists now, like shackles. It's questionable whether he even does this deliberately anymore, or whether dominance has seeped into his blood like a poison.

"I'm not angry with you." His voice is low; he forces it to be even. He forces what he says to be true: to let go of that anger that flared in him to be ignored, and ignored, and ignored again. To let go of that privileged outrage of his. "You're my beautiful girl. I am not angry."

Another woman might close her eyes with that soft stroke down her throat. Might shudder. Might pant softly for wanting. Hilary keeps her eyes open, watching his face. Hilary keeps her lips together. She is pale and she is thin. The constrast of her dark hair and eyes makes that whiteness only more cutting.

Her heart is beating faster when his hand lowers, the backs of his knuckles running lightly, lightly near her breasts. It is not cold up here but it has not warmed up completely yet; her nipples press against the leotard, hardening all the more to that slow, almost-caress. He does not touch her, and she feels a hot clench between her thighs.

He's not angry. She's his beautiful girl. He's not angry.

He is lying a little. She wants to rub herself against him through his slacks. Instead she breathes: "But I'm a whore."

One could think of any number of adverse reactions a man might have to hear the love of his life and mother of his only child make a statement like that. Distress. Sorrow. Pain. Ache. Denial. Anger. Disgust. Revulsion. Hate, even.

Ivan's reaction: a quick flicker of delight and endearment. He doesn't get it. He thinks this is somewhat akin to Hilary waiting in the car in the dark because the lake cabin was dark, what if she couldn't find the light. He didn't quite get that, either.

"You are, aren't you." He comes closer still. Their bodies align, and then they touch. He presses her back against the barre, the cold mirror. "You're my pretty little whore."

Her brow furrows, and not in anger. Not in resentment. Her mouth is turned down, and her lips tremble slightly. He looks so delighted, so endeared, so pleased to hear her call herself a whore, they're playing. She was just playing. This is a game, just like he thought, and it's all right, because she's his pretty little whore.

Ivan speaks to her like that, soft and dark and wanting and cruel, and she thinks she might faint. He presses to her and she whimpers, her eyes closing, her jaw tilted back, her throat so bared that he could rip it out without having to try.

"I'm a whore," she whimpers, a second time, two bright spots appearing at her eyelashes where the tears are welling up.

Ivan is bright. Ivan is cruel. Ivan is beautiful and fickle and overprivileged and brutal and careless and above all, above all else, he is selfish.

For all that, he is not wholly blind. He is not wholly insensate to the emotions and inner lives of others, and most certainly not to Hilary's. He is not cruel to Hilary; not really. He is not careless with her. His love for her, though it might wax and wane like the moon, is not truly fickle. With her, he is not selfish. Not at all.

So: she repeats herself. She whimpers, she shows her throat, she

begins to cry

and his brow clouds. He lets go her wrists; brings his hands to cup her cheeks. Those deft fingers cradle the back of her head; sweep the tears from her cheek before they even really begin to fall. He takes a step back but he brings her with him, draws her upright and against him. His arms fold around her, then. He could not be this protective, this tender, to his own son.

Krasivaya devushka, he's called her.
Beautiful girl, he's called her.
Whore, he's called her.

"You're my love," he whispers now. "You are the center of my world. And I want to know why you're in tears."

She tears her face from his cupped hands, squirms from his touch even though she is against a wall, there is nowhere at all to go. She shakes her head away from his tender fingers, does not go with him when he draws her away from the mirror, pushes at him when he wraps his arms around her.

Hilary makes a sound when he speaks, turning her face so she doesn't have to look at him. It can only be described as an ugh. His love. Center of his world. She looks sickened. "I'm not in tears," she snaps, shuddering, struggling, thumping her thin fist on his chest, slumping against his chest, pressing her brow to his chest, sniffing, turning her head, resting against his chest, letting her knees go weak.

Once in a long while, Ivan gets possessed by the part of him that is young and foolish and romantic and might have, in another ironically saner life, held onto the gates at Hilary Durante's estate and screamed her name in a downpour. Once in a long, long while, he says the sort of things

that are so immediately and viciously rebuffed that he doesn't say anything like it again for weeks. Months. Or -- at least not until he's abused her so thoroughly that her walls are crumbled, her humanity briefly recoalesced and alight.

She's not there right now. And he says love, he says center of my world, and these are both truths that are sad because Hilary should never be the center of anyone's world.

She

says

ugh.

He -- laughs. There's a hint of an edge there. A sort of lightness that comes from stung pride. She pushes at him, and he is secretly vengeful: he tightens his arms. She hits his chest. He moves a hand into her hair and that hand tightens and in another moment he might have pulled her hair, wrenched back her head, bitten her neck like one of those bloodsuckers that sometimes slither through his debauched parties. He might have done these things, and they might have fucked viciously on her studio floor, but: oh. She stops resisting. She slumps. She goes weak.

He holds her up. He supports her. He -- dare we say it? -- cradles her like a lover.

"Then tell me why you're behaving so oddly."

Bobby pins dig into Ivan's palms when he disturbs her hair. She winces as they dig, too, into her scalp, but only because that is a natural human reaction. Hilary winces and breathes in sharply and does not resist him, only curling closer to him for the pain. She denies being in tears, but her eyes are wet even if nothing rolls down past her lashes and across her cheeks.

Ivan gentles. As much as he does. He holds her up, keeps her on her feet, forces her like that, and that helps.

She is silent for a long time. Maybe long enough that he asks again. Maybe long enough that he shakes her, or wants to. Maybe just long enough for him to say her name. To call her something. Then she crumples a bit further, her shoulders rounded down and her legs weak and her arms limp.

"I fucked Oliver Grey," she whispers against Ivan's shirt. "He was sniffing around me. I asked him if he was trying to find out what it would take for me to let him fuck my cunt, and make me scream for him, and make me messy with his cum. And he said yes and upstairs I took off my dress and he tore my panties and fucked me very hard, and then I licked him clean and he fucked my mouth. And my tits. He did it again over the vanity, and held me down, and after he touched my pussy he wiped his hand on my back. And when he was done, he..."

Let us be clear.

She tells Ivan this without thought of how it will make him feel, because she told him not to be angry with her and he said that he was not angry, that she was his beautiful girl and his whore. So hearing this now will not make him angry, because he just said he was not angry and she thinks this mean he will not be angry. She thinks it is a promise.

She tells Ivan this and it makes her wet. The raw flirtation, the brutal fuck, the way he could not tear himself away from her when she -- beautiful, submissive, glorious -- got on her knees and offered to lick him clean. She cannot, and does not, hide how aroused she is to speak of it, think of it, cannot hide how erotic it all was for her. But.

But.

But she sounds on the verge of tears at the end. At the when he was done. When it sounds like something horrific must have happened then. If she were considering Ivan's feelings or thoughts or the fact that he actually does not know where she has been or what she has been doing for the last two weeks, much less that she had dinner with the Greys tonight, she might think that all this is going to make a cold chill go up his spine, a murderous rage, something. But this is Hilary. She is not thinking about how Ivan feels.

"He just left," Hilary says, almost a sob, clinging to Ivan's chest now. "And I wanted you and you weren't there, and he wasn't you, and he didn't... and he didn't..."

she is sobbing now, shaking with it, overcome with the terror and pain and loss and fear that overcame her when the door clicked closed behind Oliver and all of her skin felt so suddenly cold.

Not too long ago at all, Ivan told Hilary that she was his love. The center of his world.

Quite a long time ago, Hilary told Ivan she hasn't fucked anyone else since longer ago than either of them really care to recall. That she wouldn't unless he told her to, if only he would collar her.

These are the skewed angles that frame this moment.

This is a sort of confession. A catharsis that shifts the burden from the confessor to the priest. Hilary tells Ivan in terrible, exact detail exactly what she did. Exactly what she allowed to be done to her. She doesn't tell him how much she enjoyed it, but she doesn't have to. Her body speaks for her. Her quickening pulse. The breath threading her words. The very smell of her arousal. She tells him these things, and

his hands go still. His breathing grows shallow. He lets her go, his arms drop to his sides, he hasn't even processed all of it yet, let alone how he feels about it.

But she goes on. She goes on, she tells him how it went on, and on, and on, and then it just ended. It just stopped. There was no denouement. There was no -- recovery, no caretaking. She was not bathed, she was not rubbed and massaged, she was not cradled as though she were as precious as she is. She was simply abandoned, left undone, left vulnerable, left broken open and riveted in her own consciousness and

alone in the dark.

She is clinging to Ivan. Ivan, who has become a marble creature, peels her hands from his body and turns away.

He turns away. He takes a few steps, aimless. He is facing away from that wall of mirrors; facing the blank shades that hide the black night. The wood floors seem to stretch away in all directions. He can't quite comprehend dimension right now, time and space; can't quite comprehend what she has just told him,

or what he feels,

or why he feels what he feels. He thinks inexplicably of Anton. He thinks of a day on the lake; a difficult day after a difficult night full of fighting, full of angry words. He thinks of the cold, polite silence between them. He thinks of her coming to him, wrapping her arm around his sleek chest, leaning against his back.

Telling him in that whisper, telling him the way she tells him things she wants to forget she ever had to tell him at all:

Don't leave me.

And he didn't.

He thinks of her hands cupped around that flashlight he gave her. Her eyes wide, her body trembling.

He turns back to her. He comes back to her, wherever she is now; standing or sitting or collapsed on the floor. He comes to her though his mind is a roar of confusion. He takes her by the wrist or by the hand; he pulls her to him rather forcefully, forcibly if necessary; pulls her close and wraps his arms around her,

tight, so tight,

whispers fiercely in her ear: "I'm here now."

Do not be angry with me.

I am a whore.

These are the things she said. And he professed his love for her, he told her how only she matters. Weeks ago he was willing to marry Grey's goddamn virgin daughter, impregnate her if he had to, ingratiate himself to their pack, be their new moon, leave Chicago and the penthouse and the lake house and this cabin and the Joffrey and his parties and the yacht and every fucking thing in his life to come closer to her once in a while. To get a chance, maybe a couple of times a year if they were lucky and more if they were risky, to hold her down and fuck his cum into her while she wailed, while she begged, while he helped her find herself, while he lost himself in her.

He would do anything for her.

He has done anything for her. Unthinkable things, sometimes.

Of course she would turn away when he says he loves her, in disgust, in revulsion, for how wretched must he be, to love such a thing as her?

--

At Christmas, he wondered if she wanted him to take her upstairs with Jonathan-called-John and... Max, was it? Maximillian Grant. The descendant of the general. Lay her out. Let them fuck her, fuck her himself, secretive and gasping in one of the bedrooms, hands over her mouth, hands pinning her arms and legs while someone grunted atop her. They both fucked her on Halloween, after all. No one could blame them for wanting a little more, and

if Hilary wanted it, Ivan would have done it. If she wanted that pretty young thing he spied in that casino overseas, if she would like that one, if she'd like to watch Ivan nailing her and discarding her, if she would like to be held down and forced to take it while another woman licked her to orgasm and Ivan slowly thrust his cock into Hilary's mouth. Such debauchery. Such sharing of both their bodies, if it would make her feel whatever it is she needs to feel.

But this is not that.

--

Grey's son Oliver. The Galliard. Already above Ivan in rank, above Ivan in brute strength, yet so alike him in so many other ways, including looks. Like his brothers and his father he sniffed at her during their luncheon at Oceanique. Like his brothers and his father he wanted her, to his core, instantly, because she existed, because she was not his, because she is so pure, so lovely, so fragile, so dark. But Hilary goaded him, and then Hilary fucked him.

Ivan was not there to go with her. Ivan was not there to watch. Ivan was not there to offer his permission, tacit or otherwise. Ivan was not there to show, by his presence, who really dominates her, who really owns her, who she really loves, whose cock she really needs inside of her. Ivan didn't even know she'd gone.

There's this: he gave her the collar the day he told her that males were coming for her, would keep coming for her, and that he could not keep her. She rejected his collar.

There's this: he saw how she was on the flight back from Novgorod. The way she wouldn't eat. The way she wouldn't speak to him. The way she shut him out, as though everything in her that might have had even a little love for him had died, been buried, turned to rot.

But no.

These things change nothing.

--

Hilary needs to tell him. She wants to tell him the things Oliver said, too, about fucking her after everyone went to bed, and how that aroused her. She wants to tell him that he threatened to come fuck her on her wedding day while she dressed, that he would bring friends, that they'd all have a turn in her pussy and her mouth, that she'd walk the aisle freshly fucked half a dozen times, that he'd make it a regular appointment to brutalize and eroticize his father's wife, and that she could not bear how much this turned her on. She thought she would die of pleasure, and she came, dissolving against him, moaning into his hand, clenching on his cock,

forgetting entirely who he was, and where she was, and what was happening.

She needs these things out of her mind. She needs to share them, in some twisted expression of loyalty and intimacy. Not for the sake of honesty and honor, certainly not that, but because they are together, she and Ivan, he is her vladelets and she is his krasivaya devushka. He is her god and he gave her a soul. He breathes life into marble and silver and makes her flesh and blood. She is the center of his world but he -- he creates the world. To have anything at all, anything in her mind or heart that he does not know, seems to her to be sacrelige. To be impossible.

But.

He is leaving her.

--

Ivan stops supporting Hilary with his hands on her body, and even mid-sentence she begins to slide down his body, sinking to the floor, sobbing against his knees, clutching at his pant legs, her legs an avant-garde tangle beneath her.

Hilary clings. Hilary tightens her hands into fists in his slacks, shaking, trembling, and

he is leaving her.

--

Ivan turns away, pulling his legs from her grasping hands, his shoes bad for the floor, quiet on the floor nonetheless, carrying him away from her, his back to her. The room shrinks and expands like it is breathing. The light in the room fuzzes at the edges, and everything becomes crystalline in his view before it hazes, then reverts to cold perfection.

He thinks of his son.

Her son.

Their son. Thinks of how odd she was in Novgorod, how aimless and volatile her humanity as well as her cruelty, how close to the surface her heart was, how that closeness and accessibility seemed to make her all the more breakable, all the more sick. He thinks of her coming to him, something very rare indeed, and asking him for something, also rare. One of the only things she has ever really asked of him, though there are times it seems that her demands are incalculable.

Don't leave me.

He thinks of this when he is leaving her.

Even if it is only a few feet.

--

She left him, two weeks ago. Checked out. Turned away. Went inside her building and never ever ever came out until now, inexplicably at the cabin, bright and gleaming and dancing.

She came back.

--

When Ivan turns, he sees Hilary sobbing on the floor, her legs folded artfully to the side, her palms on the wood, her sobs all-encompassing, her tears falling thick and heavy, her face reddened, her hair falling from its pretty ballerina bun, pins askew. She is crying so hard that each sucking breath sounds almost like a scream.

He left her. He just left her there. Locked in her body, tied to it, horrified by it, trapped, shrieking inside, and he left, and he left, and she cut herself into pieces with sharp kitchen shears and she fell into the hot, hot water and she waiting until everything was cold again, until she was cold again, until the water was cold again until she had nothing inside of her but all that rage, all that hatred but

none of this went away. It never, really, goes away.

--

Now she is screaming, clutching at the floor for purchase, as he comes back, and comes down to the floor, and yanks her to his body and she shakes to pieces, collapsing in on herself, sobbing into his neck, into his shirt, grateful and worshipful but oh, when he assures her that he is here, above all else she is

"Prinoshu iskrenniye izvineniya," she chokes out, haltingly, formally, stiffly, the only way she ever speaks Russian. "Ya by khotel poprosit' proshcheniya. Izvini, ya ne khotel tebya obidet'."

She dissolves again, now into French, which he cannot understand, but it is just the same thing, over and over, not from a phrase book.

I am sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. My love, I am so sorry.

[Russian:

I sincerely apologize.

I would like to apologize.

Sorry, I did not mean to offend [hurt] you.]

If they were anyone else, they'd be a mess right now. She's on the floor, palms to the wood, head bowed, hair coming undone. Her face is a mask of tears. He's on his knees, dropped to them as though gravity had simply overcome him; he's got his arms around her and he's pulled her up, wrenched her up and around and into his arms. His back is to the mirror. His legs tangle with hers. Her fingernails are white, clutching at his shirt, and he is holding her so tightly it's a wonder she can even draw breath to give those halting apologies in Russian. Those fluent, teardrenched ones in French.

They are who they are, though. They are the blessed, beautiful children of Falcon, and they are never a mess. They're fucking art in motion, even now: an exquisite tableau of heartbreak. Look at the turn of her waist, the curve of her spine. Look at his well-made hands wrapped around her shoulders; flicking through her hair. Pulling those pins out one by one by one, scattering them on the floor thoughtlessly. Until he can run his fingers through her hair unimpeded. Until he can stroke her hair, stroke her back, touch her like she really is some sort of precious pet, some sort of beloved creature who exists merely for him to adore.

He doesn't hold her quite so hard, then. He holds her close instead, lets her hide her face against his lean chest, lets her clutch at his shirt until her fingers pull it into wrinkles and seams, lets her weep into the fabric until it turns damp.

"Shhh," he whispers as she apologizes, apologizes, apologizes; gathers her legs between him, brackets her entirely in his limbs, kisses her temple and her cheek, the tracks of her tears. "It's forgiven. It's already forgotten.

"I don't care who you fuck." It comes out of his mouth before he realizes it's true: but it is. "I know who you love. I know who you call vladelets. You're mine. My darling girl. My krasivaya devushka."

While she sobs, repeating herself over and over in a language he cannot know but understands intuitively in this moment, Ivan begins plucking pins out of her hair. He finds them effortlessly, his deft fingers searching out the body-warmed slivers of dark metal within her dark hair. They clatter one by one to the ground, and her hair looses and begins to fall, in those thick coils and locks he loves so much. It comes like a veil over her face, and she hides behind it, and against him.

He strokes her like she belongs to him.

Which she does.

--

Hilary's sobs do not abate. She sobs so hard, so forcefully that she may make herself sick, even as he pets her. Even as he permits her to be close to him again, as he holds her, as he gives her those fond caresses. Only when he begins to kiss her, forgive her, forget, and tell her he doesn't care, because she loves him, he is her vladelets, and she is his,

does she begin to breathe again, even though she trembles, hyperventilating, crumpled in his arms. She is rather weak right now, all told.

--

Eventually, finally, she gives a soft shake of her head, weeping more quietly but weeping nonethless. There's no words to accompany her shaking, her body language of denial. Not for a while, at least. Not until she can breathe a little more normally, until she can sniff, until she is mostly just a tremulous tangle of limbs in his arms.

"He said he was going to make it a regular appointment," she whispers. "He said he was going to fuck me on my wedding day, and bring his friends. Ivan --" she looks up at him, tearstained, hopeless,

impossible in her grieving beauty.

"Ivan," she whispers again, his name accented the old way, the Russian way, the way it is meant. "I was so aroused. I was aroused at Christmas when those two boys were circling me." She ducks her head again, tucks herself to his chest, curls up between his legs and arms, curls like a child. "I liked it very much, on Halloween," she whispers, and he knows what she means. How could they forget?

Her hand closes, tightening, in the damp fabric of his shirtsleeve. "Not without you. Never again." She curls tighter to him, presses firmly into his chest, shaking with terror, with the remembered horror of those moments

after Oliver

left her.

And Ivan was not there.

It is not easy for Ivan to hear these things.

No matter his forgiveness, no matter his understanding of their bizarre love -- which sometimes welds the physical so brutally to the emotional, and sometimes cleaves the two entirely apart -- it is not easy for him to hear the things she did, the things that were done to her, the things that were said to her, the way she felt. The arousal that pulsed through her veins. The way she fucked that other wolf with her cunt and her mouth and tits and --

his eyes close. He doesn't withdraw from her again, but his eyes close and a flash of tension goes through him, flickers toward revulsion, subsides.

"Don't make me promises you may not keep," he whispers, "or that you may not want to keep. I don't want you to have to hold back. And I don't want to ever feel lied to or betrayed. You're mine. You'll always come back to me. I'll always take care of you when you do. That's enough for me."

[We're gonna pretend Hilary has emotions for a moment.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (2, 6) ( fail )

[Nope.]

Tension, resistance, revulsion -- she senses nothing. She only knows that he holds her, and tells her not to make him promises, and Hilary truthfully does not know what to do with this. She isn't making promises. She doesn't understand.

And she curls away from him now, towards the floor, tightening in on herself instead of against him,

her keening reflecting off the wooden floor.

"Stop," he is nearly begging her as she dissolves again, descends again, wails again. He was not there that first night with Anton. Of course he was not there: he left, he took Anton, he flew away with their baby boy. He was not there to hear the sounds she made then, but if he had been he might recognize the sounds she makes now. She curls away, but he doesn't let her -- he holds her, he pulls her back, he tightens his arms around her again and urges her to turn against his chest. "Please, Hilary, please don't cry."

She is not crying now, not anymore. Wailing, though. It resounds in the space he's created here, so open. The music still plays, piano keys being plucked and recorded and played back to them through a digital candy bar, yet Hilary's noise undercuts it.

Her fists tighten, the knuckles pressed through thin skin, the veins on the backs of her hands standing out. She wails, and she keens,

and then she begins screaming. It does not sound like pain. It almost sounds like rage.

"What?" He's somewhere in the nomansland between terror and frustration and incomprehension and desperation. "What is it? What -- "

-- and she begins screaming. And he grabs for her hands, her wrists, tries to pry those fingers loose, keep those hands still, keep her from hurting herself, something, anything.

"Hilary. Hilary!" He's shouting at her. "Stop. STOP IT. Stop."

They are far from anyone here. His servants -- and hers -- are in that great mansion that terrifies her so utterly, and perhaps they can hear Hilary from within those stone walls, but it is unlikely. They are as alone as they get.

Ivan stops her, before she starts hitting herself or scratching at herself or tearing her hair, and grabs her hands. He pins them and he feels her relax slightly in his grasp, so instantly. And he has felt her when she wants to resist, whether in play or truth; he knows the difference. That instantaneous, molten submission is the closest she gets to an unfettered expression of trust in him. He will protect her. He will keep her contained.

He will keep her from becoming nothing at all.

--

And he shouts at her to stop, and she stops. Just as suddenly as she pulled away and started, and just as suddenly as she submitted to his hands on her. She closes her lips and silences herself entirely, and this

brings her comfort.

Her temple on the floor, she stares at the wall.

--

She says nothing at first.

She does not want to wait so long that he asks again, because the asking makes the answer harder.

Hilary sighs.

--

"You don't want me, either," she whispers. "Because I'm a whore."

Her voice is quiet but not deadened. Not yet. She struggles for words, and leans on formality.

"You lie," she says, trying to make her voice arch, trying to make it light, but the words are so stiff, the words stumble in her throat and choke her. "You are angry. You do not forgive. You do care but you do not want to anymore. Because I'm a whore, and a slut, and so you're going to turn me away, and turn me out, and eventually there will be nothing between us at all."

She turns her eyes, more than her head, to look at him with a frustrated, annoyed frown.

"How can you be so cold?"

Silence and stillness falls over her like a muffling drape. She relaxes instantly. She submits. She goes away somewhere and stares at the wall. Stares at those white shades covering the black night. Like eyelids over her eyes.

Ivan,

after a while,

slips down to the floor himself. She is on her side, and so is he. He drapes his arm over her. Crosses his leg over hers. Holds her like that, as though they were in bed -- or as though she were a wild, mad thing that might take flight at any moment unless restrained.

Hilary has scarcely begun when Ivan begins to shake his head. He shakes his head in denial, firm and then painful, aching: when she says he doesn't want her. He is angry. He doesn't forgive. He doesn't want to care anymore, the chasm is opened, the blood is draining,

soon there will be nothing.

His turn to want to keen. He wraps his arms around her; he buries his face in that thick tangle of her hair. She smells like delicate soaps and shampoos. Their fragrance is not hers at all, or his, but she still smells like herself beneath it. Maddening, intoxicating. Mad. Intoxicated. Toxic. He holds her as tightly as he dares to; doesn't want to crush her. Doesn't want her to leave him.

"I love you," he whispers. It is choked. "I love you. Of course I'm angry. I love you and you fucked another wolf and I didn't know, I haven't seen you in weeks, I didn't even know where you were let alone that you were letting another man take you to that ... that place we share. Of course I'm angry. I never said I wasn't.

"But I do forgive you. No; I don't ... even think I have the right to forgive anything. I never collared you. You never let me. I have no right to you, no claim, nothing, except the knowledge that you are mine. It doesn't matter who wants you or who marries you or who fucks you or who you fuck. You're mine. You'll always come back to me. And I will never, ever turn you away so long as you come back, because -- "

he bites her, suddenly. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder, right through her leotard, and it is savage and wordless and more than a little mad but he doesn't know how else, what else, what other way he can express it:

" -- because I love you."

Perhaps he senses that she can't bear for him to look her in the eye. When she looks at him, asking him how he can be so cold to her, he doesn't lay down beside her and touch her face. He comes behind her, covers her, holds her down. She feels numb, head on the floor, face still wet, exhausted from the last two weeks, her body's hunger growing though she refused to feel it. She is drained from the evening, from John and Oliver and Edmund and Oliver and Edmund and John. From putting herself back together, shoddily and messily, in the bathroom. From screaming for Edmund, from throwing that lamp at Oliver, from telling John the truth, hating them all so much.

She is so very tired, and so very empty, and she is still in pieces from what happened as her bath was being filled.

It means something that he is angry. That it was another wolf she fucked. That she did it and he didn't know, didn't even know where she was. That it wasn't just fucking, that she let him take her there. It means many things. And she tries to hear him, that he hadn't seen her for weeks, that he didn't know where she was, and she recalls the first few weeks after Anton came into the world, and the way he was then. How mad he was. He thought she might be dead.

She tries to hear him say I never collared you. You never let me.

But what she does not have to try to understand is his teeth. They sink suddenly, savagely into her skin, biting her where it is sensitive, where it hurts, and she gasps, and she shakes apart, and she feels his anger and his adoration in that pain and shrieks softly, breathily.

Hilary weeps. "I don't want to come back to you. I don't want to go away from you," she says, crying openly again, trembling in his teeth. "It matters what they do to me. Why doesn't it matter to you what they do to me? Why won't you... why won't you protect me?"

She wants to pull away, but she is so exhausted now that even sleeping seems impossible. She hasn't drugged herself but with sedatives in weeks. She cannot feel numb. She cannot escape her body or her heart right now. She cannot come back from that edge where she was left. Not fully. Not whole.

"You gave me a collar before you told me about him!" she says, also, abruptly, angrily. She thrashes once, as though to struggle, but he pins her down and she relents, closing her eyes, letting out a sob. "And it was stupid and pretty and I couldn't wear it anywhere, I couldn't feel it on me every day, I would never get to wear it because you were going to let him have me! You ruined it!" Now she's shrieking at him. She doesn't fight him, but her body is quaking with anger and terror and confusion.

Meanwhile, a tantrum. "You ruined my warm-up! You ruined my birthday! You ruined everything!" She clenches a fist, thumps it weakly on the ground. "I don't want to be married, I don't want to go away and be fucked and then come back to you. I don't want you to not care where I go or what I do. You're supposed to be there. I want you there!" A shrill scream, that. Then a collapse. Even the last vestiges of effort go out of her.

"You're so stupid," she whimpers, rolling her forehead on the floor. "You're cruel and stupid and I hate you. I hate you and you're mean and you don't love me anymore," she says, hateful and pitiful at once, crumpling finally into flesh and bone and self-loathing.

[ACK HTML][GO AWAY]

Sometimes Hilary is a child. She is hateful and she is cruel and whatever innocence she had died long, long ago, but sometimes, somehow she is still a child. Like a bone broken young and broken wrong that will never, ever grow to its full length and strength, some part of her was irreparably damaged and arrested long before maturity.

And now, thirty-six years old, a mother, an orphan, a widow, an ex-wife, a ruiner of lives,

she. throws. a. tantrum.

Like a four year old deprived of candy. Like a one year old deprived of love and attention and nourishment. She sobs, screams, she shrieks, she spits a torrent of accusations and beratements; dissolves into spiteful incoherent insults. And through it all, all tangled up in the core of it, is a certain confusion. A certain sense of betrayal, and fear, and loneliness, and hurt.

A silence falls when she's finished. When she's face-to-the-floor, hateful, pitiful, crumpled and limp. All through it, Ivan has not pushed her away or even let go of her. He is afraid she will hurt herself. He is afraid she will lose her mind entirely if she perceives herself rejected again. He holds her: almost atop her, half-draped over her, keeping her in the warm shelter of his body. If she were someone else, someone sane, he might ask her now if she really believed all those things. If she really believed he doesn't love her anymore.

He doesn't ask her those things. He is quiet for a while.

Then he raises up on an elbow. He leans over her still more, his chest to her back. He nuzzles her, heavy and animal, rubbing his brow along the plane of her scapula; tracing the tip of his nose over the delicate prominence of her seventh vertebra.

Kissing her, very softly, behind the ear. And then settling again, settling onto his side and pulling her gently, draggingly from the floor, pulling her until she too curls on her side with her back to him.

"I love you," he tells her again. He'll say it until she believes it, or until the world dies in flame and ashes. One or the other. "And I'm sorry I wasn't there tonight. I'm sorry I haven't ... been there since we returned from Novgorod. I'm sorry. It's not that I don't love you anymore. It's just that sometimes ... sometimes I need ... I need to not care the way I care about you. Just for a little while.

"But it matters to me where you go, who you fuck, what they do to you. Hilary, it matters. It drives me a little crazy to think about it. It's only ... you liked it so much. You told me how much you liked it, and I didn't want to be unreasonable, I didn't want to keep you from something you enjoyed. I didn't want you to feel as though you weren't allowed to do anything without my presence. I wanted to give you permission to enjoy yourself how and where and when you wanted to.

"If that's not what you want, if you want me to always be there, then I will. I'll always be there. I'll always protect you. But I ... I don't know that I can stand to watch another wolf have you. It's different. It wouldn't be like it was on Halloween. I ... can't."

She tells him the most horrible things. That he ruins anything that might be nice for her. That he is cruel and mean. That she hates him, hates him. She spits all of this venom at him long before she gets around to the core of her own terror, the thing that made her refuse to acknowledge him when he walked in, the thing that made her tell him what she did tonight in a bizarre attempt to show him she belongs to him, plead with him not to dismiss her,

the thing that made her start keening, and then start screaming, as she crumpled to the floor:

you don't love me anymore.

And Ivan, who does not always comprehend her, who does not always want to even be near her, and yet understands her in ways no living creature ever has, understands that it will break her completely if he leaves her now. So: he stays. With her and next to her and over her, keeping her from clawing at her flesh or tearing at her hair, keeping her from digging her nails into the flooring, keeping her still when she starts shaking all over, her limbs quaking like aspen leaves ina breeze. She shakes, hiccuping, coughing, crying, because she is not sane, and she really believes these things.

Right now, at least.

--

Ivan waits until the shaking slows a bit, and nuzzles her and holds her and kisses her, dragging her up out of the muck and into his arms. She goes like a rag doll, limp and malleable, as he rolls her over and cradles her close. The floor is not very comfortable, but neither of them move to leave it yet.

Now she does not turn away in disgust, or scoff, at his declarations of love. And then he apologizes, which she takes in stride and with grace, nevermind that she rejected him before their plane even entirely left Russian, did not reach out to him or attempt to see him in the two weeks that have gone by since, nevermind that tonight she sucked another man's cock and fucked him twice and enjoyed it until she didn't until it was horrible until she was so scared and alone and wanting so badly to scream but knowing she couldn't.

Hilary crumples a bit as he tells her that it's not that he doesn't love her anymore, but it is just her way of shrinking further into his embrace. She does not pull away, or cry anew, or anything like that when he says what he does about caring for her. She knows. She does not fault him for it.

She can barely stand to care for anything for very long, herself.

--

He didn't want to be unreasonable.

An urge to laugh rises up in her, shrieking and uncomfortable, but it only comes out like a little whimper, a breath, and nothing like a laugh at all. But it is ludicrous. He didn't want to tell the woman he loves, the mother of his child, that he didn't want her to fuck around, because he didn't want to be unreasonable. He didn't want her to be held back from slutting around whenever and wherever she might like. Even with other wolves. And he would take her back, always, every time, grant his permission, give her his affection, like she's just... an animal who can't help her own unspeakable lusts. But an animal he likes to keep as a pet, nonetheless.

Hilary lies almost boneless in his arms now.

He tells her he'll always be there, he'll always protect her, and she just shudders, nodding before he's even done, begging, pleading, please, please, please, yes. Her breath rattles in her nostrils for a moment, shaken, ragged, uncertain, with the depth of her relief. She presses her spine, too easily felt these days, against his chest, as though she could be closer to him if she just split him open and slid inside, and then she would be invisible, and then she would always be warm and safe, living in his heart like a memory; like a shrine within his ribcage.

"I wanted him to be you," she whispers, after a while.

Hilary shakes her head, very slow. Her voice drops, lowering, sounding sick and heavy. "He wasn't you."

She's so painfully thin now. Oliver Grey rather liked it when he fucked her. Found her friability, her frailty, her fragility an erotic counterpoint to his own strength. Liked that she felt so light, so narrow, so breakable. But then Oliver Grey, like his father before him, has a rather skewed ideal of femininity.

Ivan, who knows Hilary, who knows her body so very well: he pangs to feel how much weight she'd lost even in those few weeks apart. He aches; he feels remorse, he feels a rare spark of guilt. She must have barely eaten. She must have barely taken care of herself at all, and he

was not there

to take care of her.

She doesn't voice the thoughts that go through her head. Someone, somewhere, somewhen must have taught Hilary to keep such things to herself. The horrific, gruesome images that strand out so delicately in her mind. The death and the dying, the cold-eyed fascination with life and its ending. Whatever else she gives to Ivan, whatever else she bares and reveals and surrenders, these things she keeps to herself.

She does not tell him about unzipping his skin. Cracking his bones. Disappearing into the jolting muscle of his heart, swallowed by the thunder and the darkness. How warm she would feel there, how invisible, how safe. Maybe she doesn't think he would understand. Maybe she thinks he would be frightened. And maybe he would be.

But he would understand.

"I know," Ivan whispers: to what she wanted. And again, to what was truth: "I know."

Moments pass. His arms move; they loosen ever so slightly. His hand comes to the center of her torso. Comes to the center of her chest, between her breasts, over her heart. He covers her pulse like that for a while, time passing, drawing out, dissipating.

"Let's go downstairs," he whispers. "I'll take care of you. You can dance tomorrow if you want. You can tell me everything tomorrow, if you want."

It's unfair that she is upset with him for not being there to watch her, to control her, to soothe her while she was at the Grey house. It's unfair that he feels guilt for her madness and its effects on her body. But if one tries to follow the lines of responsibility as they intersect with the lines of oft-forgiven insanity, one will lose their own mind in the attempt. In the end, they are Silver Fangs. They are searingly pure, piercingly beautiful, and the world cannot bear them and they cannot bear themselves.

Hilary is being held by her vladelets, in the place he made for her, brightly lit and shining as she is, a spot created just to give her something, make her a little happy. He asked her, in Novgorod, what it was that she would like. He had just dripped diamonds into her palm, diamonds attached to nipple clamps, a toy they have yet to make use of. And her answer made him ache --

I don't really want anything. I want this. You and I. Anton, This is good.

-- because it was the one gift he could not promise her. Neither of them are capable of holding onto it.

Nonetheless, he gives her things: like the ring she still wears on her right hand. The Aston Martin. The pots and pans, bangles and earrings and necklaces. The sable coat. The flashlight that nowadays she carries everywhere with her, just in case. Chocolate, when he wants to treat her. This lake house, built first and built to exacting specifications so that she would feel safe here, and the dance studio on top of it, built just to give her pleasure sometimes. He gives her anything, everything he can think of, every single thing an attempt to tell her:

I know you. I am your vladelets and I know you.

He knows her well enough that he might even understand if she told him that sometimes she wishes she could just crawl inside of his chest and close his ribs after her. Even as bloody and visceral and horrific as that sounds, he would know her even then. And love her, all the same.

--

Ivan wraps his arms closer around her, yet looser, and she breathes when he does. Her pulse is still a bit quick from anxiety, but slowing. She breathes more regularly, content now to know that he loves her anyway, he is not going to cast her away from him, he understands now that she does not want him to be reasonable, she does not want him to give her freedom, freedom is not safe for her, look what happened tonight. He will keep her safe and he will keep her controlled and when she wants to be fucked by a half-dozen strangers he will make sure none of them is a wolf who will catch her scent and try to take her, he will make sure none of them hurt her because that's special and that's for him and he will take care of her afterward, smoothing her hair and kissing her tears and washing it all away, holding her when she is utterly, utterly his own.

And when he is not there, she will not fuck anyone at all. She won't be allowed.

Hilary feels better. Hilary feels safer. Hilary curls up in his arms on the dance floor, and he suggests they go downstairs, he says he'll take care of her. She makes a small whimpering sound, and slowly, slowly, he begins to move her, finding her malleable and agreeable in body, though as soon as she rises even a little bit she's turning to him, draping her arms around his neck, tucking her head against his chest. The lovely piano music plays on.

"Spasibo," she says softly, into his still-damp shirt. "Spasibo, vladelets."