Ivan Press

Hilary de Broqueville

Last night, he came upon her living here, and why shouldn't she? He built this house for her. He built it over the water because the thought of drowning comforts her where the thought of being swallowed terrifies her. One more broken connection in her mind, one more twist in her insanity. This place belongs to her, and so he found her here, dancing. He peeled her clothes off and bathed her, even though it was another wolf who fucked her. It was Ivan who accepted her forgiveness, though, while Hilary never thought to ask for any.

He said that he should contact Edmund in the morning. Hammer in all the reasons he shouldn't take you for a wife under the guise of apologizing for your behavior. He said he should gain power, prestige, rank. He should earn clout to turn them away decisively.

And maybe -- if I'm strong enough, if the Tribe believes you've fallen enough -- I could even...

He never finished that thought. In spite of, or because of, her faith in him, her belief in his fairy tales.

--

Last night, she confessed what she wants, and he told her that it matters. Last night, she whispered that sometimes she will want him to go away and leave her alone, and pretend to care for Anton, and he made her get on top of him and fuck him like that because she wanted so, so badly to please him and she wanted so, so badly to get fucked, to be used, to make him happy, and that is what he wanted. That is how he wanted her.

But when he came, he was folding her under him, snarling, fucking her rough and firm on the last strokes before his orgasm took him. He hid her. Protected her while he used her pussy, just like she wanted. Just like, really, they both wanted.

--

It's morning now. The shades are open when she wakes. The sky is blue and the lake is blue. The world is quiet. Breakfast is on a wheeled cart, brought inside by Ivan and unpacked on the counter. He is freshly showered and wet-haired, dressed in clean pajama bottoms, sipping coffee and watching a movie on his tablet in the armchair by the fire.

How he hears her, how he notices that she awakens, she'll never know, and doesn't think to guess. She stirs, pushing up on one elbow in bed, looking blearily around. She is not clean, not showered, not alert. She has been fucked so many times in the past twenty-four hours, twice by Oliver and more than that by her beloved, by the only one who matters, the only one she remembers with any clarity, in a mind that does not remember many things clearly. She has been wrung out, and has slept deeply

Hilary blinks a few times, slowly, sleepily. She rubs her eye with the heel of her hand as he is smiling at her. And then she simply lays back down in their rumpled, luxuriously soft bedding, hiding from the light and curling up like an animal. This is how she dozes, yawning quietly and drifting off a bit, for a while longer.

--

Some time later, she stirs again. She rises, pulling the sheet around herself until it becomes too much work, which is when she gives up. She leaves it askew, walking across the already-warm cabin wearing nothing but her skin, her mussed hair, her dark eyes. Her feet pad silently down the steps to the sunken area before the fireplace, carry her to the armchair where he reclines, watching his movie, sipping his coffee, or done now. The backs of her fingers move against her cheek, a childish gesture. She is waiting for him to set his tablet aside and take out his earbuds, showing her that she can come to him.

She is waiting, then, so she can climb into his lap, legs spread to either side of his, her hands on his chest, his shoulders. She holds his eyes, so pale and fair, with her own pitch-dark ones. She sinks down on him, just that thin scrap of fine cotton between them, as her lower lip curls between her teeth for a moment. It escapes when she sighs, his warmth suffusing her. It isn't cold in here anymore. It's May. It's lovely. She was going to have a June wedding with that Theurge.

Hilary's manicured fingers stroke down his chest. He liked this last night: her on top of him, riding him, pleasing him. She is watching him, to see if he is pleased with her. If this arouses him, if he wants her like this again, if she is still his good girl.

But there's also this, very quietly:

"I want to play with my present," Hilary whispers. Her hand moves, right fingers grazing left breast, circling her nipple. That present. The clamps, the chain of diamonds. She whispers just as she did last night: like a secret. Like she wants him to force her. Only it won't really be forcing her.

No, she'll never know how he hears her. She'll never know how he notices that she awakens; only that he does. Because of course he does: he is her vladelets, and it is his job, his duty, his very purpose in life to know.

His eyes are on her, though, when she rises bleary out of the comforters. He is watching her, at once predatory and adoring, his green-gold eyes following her every move, those faceted and variegated irises glittering with held-back laughter. She rubs her eye and she is unwashed, unalert, unready to get up and so

she flops down again.

--

Minutes, hours, perhaps half a day later she stirs again. He does not come to wake her. He does not harry her from bed or disrupt her rest or -- anything of the sort. She sleeps, and he allows her to sleep. She sleeps the deep, untroubled, guiltless sleep of children and sociopaths, and he --

well. She doesn't know what he does to pass the time. Quite possibly she does not care, and would not think to care. Knows only that when she wakes again, he is still there.

There on those comfortable armchairs. There, no longer watching a movie but simply lounging, lazy and lean and languid and ever so indolently elegant: slouched, one knee drawn up, the toes tucked under the other calf. Arms laid along the arms of the chair. Fingers, so long and clever and deft, simply lax.

Like an animal himself, he is merely looking out those seamless windows. He is passing time with that infinite and thoughtless patience of a beast; something that can be quite satisfied with simply being satisfied. Every instinct fulfilled: fed, warm, secluded, mate near. He is watching the sun glitter on the water. He is watching the wind sway the distant trees. He is watching everything and nothing, the contents of his mind a mystery, the workings of his thoughts eldritch and bestial and instinctive.

And he is in her sight, which is how she likes it. She is comforted by his presence. He knows this, just as he knows she is comforted, somehow, by the thought of drowning. By that deep, submerged blue.

His head turns as she rises. He watches her without lifting from the armchair. Watches her pull at those sheets and then just give up it's too much bother. Watches her come across the cabin. She wears nothing; nothing but the sunlight dancing iridescent over the subtle texture of her skin. Her nipples are lovely and tight, her breasts pert, her abdomen supple and flat. Long limbs, impeccable balance. So graceful, and that strange animal innocence. She waits to see if he will pay her mind, and of course,

of course he would. He turns one hand palm-up; an invitation. She sinks down on his lap, light but solid, there, not a phantom after all. His chest is bare and his skin prickles to her touch. He glances down, watches her fingertips, her palms; the corner of his mouth turns up. He smirks at her wordlessly.

She has a small request.

She says it the way she always does: like she wants to pretend she never said it at all. And he lifts his chin, leans his head back against the armchair. Looks at her with a new light in his eyes now. Considering, assessing.

When he touches her, there's no hesitancy. There's no shyness. His hand is heavy on her skin; not so much a new claim as a reminder of a preexisting one. Mine, says that touch, sliding up her side. Mine, says his hand lifting her breast, his fingers tugging that nipple she'd been so kind to point out to him. Mine, says the way his hand sweeps over her shoulder and down her back; says the light smack he gives her backside; says the way he palms her ass and squeezes it.

"Go get those diamonds I gave you," he says softly; naming them, eschewing the pronoun. Pretending she hadn't just spoken of them. "They're in the closet. Top shelf on the left. There's a the wicker storage bin. Look for the little black box."

He catches her before she starts to get up. He puts his hands on her hips and holds her in place.

"Wait."

And when she looks at him:

"Aren't you going to kiss me good morning first?"

Just a few minutes. That's all it is for Hilary. A few minutes of her dozing, face hidden from the sunlight, naked but half-covered by soft cotton, fluffy down. It's warm enough to sparkle outside, spring being the proud and shameless season that it is, even when dissipating into a humid, lazy summer that never feels as brief as it is. In those few minutes, Ivan puts the tablet away, removes his earbuds. He doesn't change his clothes, he sets his empty cup aside, he lives in the place and time that is his: the cusp of summer, the den he built for and sometimes abandons to his -- what is she? His mate? Mother of his offspring, though that is a faraway thought. His doted-upon pet. His world. His toy. Or simply:

his.

She wakes and comes to him, and he hasn't moved. He wouldn't move, wouldn't leave. She would wake up, terrified. He's heard her calling for him before, panic edging into her voice, if she wakes and she can't see him or feel him. Hysteria walks close to Hilary, always. It is almost as close to her as grace.

Right now she is touching herself, fingers grazing her breast until Ivan takes over, which was, of course, what she was waiting for. Takes ownership of her this morning, cupping her tit and feeling its softness, the slight heaviness that, in a year now, they have both gotten used to, though it was not always so. He fingers her nipple, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, pinches her, strokes her a bit roughly til it hardens, and she's wet, and her eyes have a dark gleaming of want in them, a want that is turning into pain.

For a moment, though, she is vaguely affronted that he would send her to fetch something. Or not affronted: perhaps surprised? Perhaps confused, because he assumes some agency on her part that she is always afraid of taking. But he tells her to go, and she shrinks before that, obedient, starting to slide away. Ivan holds her. She is still looking at him, quizzical and innocent, still sleepy and lost, at odds with the body she wears, which is undeniably woman, has been mother.

Hilary hesitates a moment, then leans forward, bracing her hands lightly on his chest, turning her head and giving him a tiny, close-mouthed kiss on his cheek. It's chaste. It's tender and a bit infantile, which is also at odds with this: the way she grinds down on him, rubbing her pussy against him through that one thin layer of cotton, pleasuring herself like she doesn't even notice she's doing it.

Really now. That's the sort of kiss she gives him. Tiny and chaste, a sweet little peck on the cheek like maybe he was one of her socially-acceptable friends at her socially-acceptable parties. Does she even go to those anymore? Is that still a mask she wears? He doesn't know; on some level, on the same level that she is unaware of what he does when she closes her eyes, and unaware that the rest of the world even exists when she isn't looking at it -- on some level, he doesn't care.

He cares that she kisses him. He cares that it is an absurd, tiny little thing. He cares that she is grinding on him simultaneously, rubbing herself on him like she's hardly aware of it, can't help it, can't control herself any more than a pet or a toy could.

Or his world. His world is completely, madly out of control as well: a house of cards and lies.

--

When she draws back, perhaps looking at him to see if he liked that, if he's pleased with her, if she did well: he grabs her behind the head. By the hair. He grabs her and holds her and he is abruptly standing, surging off the armchair, all but toppling off his lap and she would fall if she weren't so graceful,

she would fall if he weren't holding her by the hair. He twists her mouth to his and he kisses her so hard, as though to punish her for that ridiculous thing she called a kiss a moment ago. He is moving as he kisses her, turning her in place, pressing her backward until her calves are against the armchair he's just vacated. His body heat still warms the cushions when he pushes her down in it. Straightens.

"Never mind," he says. His voice is entirely too light for the sort of kiss he just inflicted on her. "I'll get it."

Like he were a brother, perhaps, or an uncle, making the way she moves on him all the more grotesque paired with that kiss. It's disturbing, and it should be, and what's more unsettling is that Hilary doesn't think of it that way. She kisses him in that fragile, frail little way while she is all but fucking his lap.

She does draw back, slowly, because he isn't really reacting, and she wonders, and her body is slowing on his, her eyes opening, widening. Ivan grabs a fistful of her hair and she gasps, a sharp intake of breath that is soon sucked out and swallowed when he kisses her, wrenches her neck, treats her roughly and violently and presses her down into the chair.

Hilary is always supple. Hilary goes a bit limp as he does this, whimpering when he withdraws, looking up at him with that lost little gaze.

She exhales, breast moving with it, and says nothing.

One might say Hilary needs help -- the psychological sort -- except no amount of counseling could possibly heal all the cracks in her mind. The same could be said of Ivan, though he does seem to hide it a little better than Hilary does most days.

They don't look for psychological help. They don't look for any sort of help at all; that word, to them, is just a euphemism for servant. What they look for is this. What they take comfort in, and take pleasure in, and feel whole in, is this.

It's a bit sick. It's more than a little twisted. It toes the very edge of abuse and sometimes crosses over. She looks so lost; he looks so pleased with her. He can't resist putting his hand on her face, stroking her cheek and her chin and that recently-ravished mouth of hers.

Gentleness in his voice like a promise: "I'll be right back."

And he is. He isn't gone very long, and he's never out of her sight. In that glassy, light-filled space he is a sleek, stalking thing. He crosses the floor straight-backed and loose-limbed. Even their closet is well-lit and free of shadows. She would have had to stretch a little to reach this shelf, but he merely reaches up, pulls the basket from the shelf and the box from the basket.

It is unmistakably a jeweler's box, small and finely made. Ivan opens it and removes the contents and tosses the container carelessly back into the basket. He closes the door behind him and he comes back to her, pouring that priceless handful of diamonds from one palm to the other. She can hear the sound it makes: that precise, cold cadence.

They sing. The diamonds, that is, when she thinks she can hear them. They collide and they sing, unbearably hard, unbreakable. On a molecular level they are uniform perfection, atoms laced together in such a way as to withstand apocalypse.

These diamonds wear little clamps, softly padded, and Hilary looks up at Ivan as he rounds back to her, her lips parting as she touches herself. Not her breasts, this time. She has reached down, is playing with that wet little pussy she was so recently rubbing against him like an animal.

She feels as though she's been dreaming of this for months. It's been a night, a single evening, a fraction of a morning, that she's been dreaming of this. Maybe, if one rolls back time a bit more, it's been longer: since that afternoon they took Anton on his outing. Since he asked her, diamonds cool in her palm, what she wanted. And it was not diamonds. It was not a house, or a car, or anything in particular. It was all so small, and so simple, and simultaneously within his reach and unthinkable, impossible, breakable. Just like Hilary herself.

Hilary, who looks soft and sweet and delicate this morning, stroking herself while he walks over to her, watching him, adoring him.

Grateful to him.

It's days like this when Ivan's cruelty seems most unthinkable. When she's not some lazily razor-tongued soul-crusher. When she isn't slicing some poor young thing's ego to shreds. When she's not some faintly smirking, ever-so-conservatively-fashionable, sunglassed, behatted, mimosa'd bitch,

but instead this sweet, lost, innocent thing with a cracked psyche and a stained soul. When she's looking at him like that, trusting and adoring and grateful and soft: god, how could he, how could he, how could he possibly be so cruel to her.

Except, of course: it's that cruelty that she craves. It's his cruelty and his mastery and, past all that, the gentle vise of his possession. If he weren't such a monster himself, she would not love him at all. She would not tolerate him. Likely she would have shredded him like all the rest, and perhaps right now she would still be Mrs. Durante, and he would be

just another golden boy howling at her gates.

--

Those diamonds are absolute perfection; or close enough not to matter. What's an atom out of place here and there. What's a crack, a twist, a flaw here and there. Look how they shine. Look how they glitter and flash and sear in the light of day when he lets them drip from his closed fist -- a loop between these fingers, a trailing end between those. She is stroking herself and he's not even looking at her cunt, he's not even looking at those slender fingers and that wet flesh.

Sometimes he's stronger of mind and will than anyone has a right to be. He comes to her and he pushes his hand into her hair, those silky-sleek locks; he grips a handful of it firmly, by the roots where it won't hurt her too badly. He pulls her head back and he kisses her again, kisses her the way he'd kissed her before he left her, devouringly. Then his mouth all down her throat. Then his mouth on her breasts -- he's still holding her like that, arched to trembling, pristine -- he's kissing her breasts and licking her nipples and sucking until they're erect and sensitive and wet.

That's when he fits those clamps to her. Onehanded, with a deftness that belies the fact that he has never done this before, never put these on her before, never even toyed with the mechanism since the day he had them made for her. Here are the padded little cusps; here is where they fit. Here is the tiny little screw that tightens, and tightens, and tightens

until he sees that first flicker of exquisite pain across her brow. He stops; he rubs his thumb over the very tip of her nipple. And then he turns his attention to the other.

The truth is that he may yet come to despise her. Like this, more than a little fragile, more than a little lost. Some days -- many days -- she is nothing but a shattered soul arranged fitfully into a human shape, all sharp edges and scattered pieces. If he is honest with himself, and he seldom is, it may be true that he would grow very bored of her, very quickly, if she were always like this. If she were not sometimes that razor-tongued, smirking, conservative, mimosa-drinking bitch, if she were not capable of cruelty, if she really was innocent, if she were not a monster, he might still love her, but he would hardly be able to tolerate her. Not forever.

But then: it's wishful thinking to believe that either of them could tolerate the other forever.

He comes back over her, and you would not think one so lithe could be so looming, but he casts a shadow over Hilary. She plays with herself with a certain elegance in her fingers, but it's for naught; he doesn't look at her pussy, her wet sliding fingers, he doesn't stare at her, doesn't command her to open, show him, fuck yourself for me. So perhaps it's no wonder that she slows and stops as he leans over her, grasping her by the hair again, pulling at her scalp, starts eating her.

Her mouth and her throat. Her throat and her chest, lapping at her breasts, teasing her nipple. First one, then the other, though if he could pleasure her like this both at once there's no denying that he would. Hilary may as well be tied down, wrists together, bound, for all that she even attempts to touch him, to reach for him, anything. She arches, though, shivering. Gasping, when she feels the first clamp touch and then begin to close on her first nipple. Then she's making so much effort to be quiet, to be good, while he tightens it. To not whimper, to not show pain, to be good, to be lovely for him, to be perfect.

Except Ivan can tell when it's right there, right on the line between boring her and harming her, which is good, because Hilary can't ever seem to see how far is too far, how much is too much. Ivan can. And Ivan protects her thus: pausing, looking or not looking, at her wet and reddened nipple, stroking it.

Hilary shudders, crown to toes, her legs sliding against the upholstery and her rump scooting upward, her spine curling and arching, her skin quivering. She emits a soft sound, half gasp and half cry, turning her head to the side as that softer sound turns into a full-throated whimper. "Tie me," she whispers, her voice as tremulous as her flesh. "Tie me, please --"

The sounds she makes. The way she arches. Ivan's response is primitive and physiological: eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring, tongue flicking over his lips and across the cutting edge of his teeth. She whimpers, her head turned, her neck so white and vulnerable. He makes her endure his touch for a moment longer, a second longer, an instant longer than she can bear it

and then he draws away. "Soon," he answers, which is at once a promise and a tease.

The length of the chain is wrapped around his fist. He unravels it in soundless, dexterous turns of his wrist. There's just enough tension to keep the diamonds from rolling against her skin; not enough to pull at her. He gives her other nipple the same delicately callous treatment: licks it to erectness, fastens that gorgeous, priceless new toy to her.

His fingers untangle from her hair at last, then. He strokes her instead with that hand: combs her smooth dark hair back and back and back, strokes her like a pet, pets her like some beloved, feral thing that is not without her own claws and teeth. All the while, that chain of diamonds glitters across his palm, held motionless and gravity-less.

"Stand up," he murmurs. It doesn't seem to matter that her cheek is pressed to the smooth creamy back of that armchair. It doesn't seem to matter that she is already shuddering. He curls his fingers, and

for the first time, she feels that chain tug. It is a gentle, insistent pressure.

When he tugs her she feels it. She isn't completely gone yet; telling her to stand only got her shifting slightly, panting softly, turning her head and starting to get her arms beside her to push herself up. He tugs and she stops where she is, her eyes closing, her lips parting. Everything arrests for a moment, and one of her hands curls, tightens, grasps at the upholstery. Her brow is furrowed, her spine held taut.

When her eyes open she is looking at him, staring at him, something limpid and savage in her own eyes.

Her hand is between her legs as she stands, slowly, watching Ivan. Then her hand is reaching for him, sliding under the waist of those loose pants. Hilary holds his eyes; she looks feral, looks aggressive, and she is rarely so. He feels her wetness on her fingertips when she strokes them over his cock, smooths it against his skin.

He was going to tie her up. He had such plans for her. He was going to shackle her wrists together and string her from the ceiling. He was going to tie her to the footboard of the bed, bend her over there and fuck her while those diamonds swing from her tits. He was going to make her hold that chain in her teeth while he spanked her, slapped her, whipped her with that toy she brought once. To share.

He might still do any and all of these things.

Not right now, though. Not ... at the moment. Because at the moment she is slithering to her feet and he is thinking of snakes; venomous, wisdom, feminine, primordial. She is touching herself and then she is touching him and the centers of his eyes open up, his pupils black and feral. He doesn't move to stop her, though she knows he could. He's so sleek but he's so fast; he could have her spun around, her arm twisted behind her, in the blink of an eye. He could have her

bent over the bed,

diamonds flashing in the sunlight. He could have her.

He doesn't. He allows it: her hand down his pants. Her hand between her legs. Both these things are allowances, indulgences. And that chain is still caught on the crook of his fingers, his arm flexing and his fingers curling. He compensates for every inch she closes. He maintains it, that tautness in the line, that subtle reminder of domination.

Ivan's eyes are locked on Hilary's. His face doesn't change, but his gaze burns. He whispers, silk edged in mockery:

"Do you want to suck it?"

They have many toys. It was Hilary who started it, really. The flogger. Ivan picked it up handily, adding shackles and a riding crop and white leather and blindfolds and hooks in his goddamn ceiling, a restraint system on the damn bed in the center of this cabin, buying her a diamond collar, a string of diamonds on nipple clamps, another collar she hasn't yet seen. Some nights it seems he was born to this, born to dominate, to rule,

and he was. The blood that gives itself to such things sings in his veins almost as sweetly and purely as hers. She is a prize and a trophy, a jewel. He was born to own her. She was born to be owned.

But a little bit of her, you have to think,

comes from the same blood he does.

Hilary was also, in her way, born to be a queen.

--

They both know who controls her right now, though. The chain of diamonds hanging from her swollen red nipples, the chain he holds, the chain he tugs on occasionally as though to remind her who she belongs to, or simply to see the way she reacts, hear the way her breath hitches, the fight in her throat against moaning for him. She only touches herself because he doesn't snap at her to stop. She only touches his cock because he lets her. Graceful as she is, he's faster. He asks her what he does, one of those questions she normally hates being asked.

Hilary's body clenches. She looks helpless for a moment, less venomous. She gives him a plaintive little nod,

nod,

nod.

Oh, she wants. That's exactly what she wants.

He likes her venomous.

He likes her helpless, too. He likes her furious with desire. He likes her lashing at him with her nails and her teeth, calling him names in every language she knows. He likes her shuddering and unable to catch her breath, eyes closed, strands of her hair stuck to her skin with sweat, her thighs trembling, her cunt clenching.

He loves her. He enjoys her. Neither of them can promise forever, or even think very much about forever. But that's all right. Neither of them live very far beyond one second and the next. He certainly doesn't.

Which is why it is more cruelty than kindness when he smirks at her answer. When he hooks his wrist sharply; tugs on that chain; raises her to her toes, raises her mouth to his. A breath away. And like that, just like that, connected by nothing more than a scintillating string of diamonds and her hand in his pants,

he licks the fullness of her lower lip. Corner to corner, delicate as a cat.

"Soon," he says.

He drops the chain; lets her feel its weight for the first time. Its coolness, its hardness, the angles and facets of those stones rolling against her torso. Ivan turns his back and he walks away, back to that closet where they each keep a few changes of clothing. And where, apparently, he keeps his bag of dirty little tricks. Filthy little toys. She hears rustling, rattling, the clink of fine-forged chains. He is apparently keeping his promises.

Hilary cries out this time. That tug, that pull. She makes a sound that anyone else would interpret as pain; her servants and his both would hear it as pain, if they were close enough to hear anything, but they aren't, and by now they all know better.

When Hilary starts making those noises, it means something else entirely.

Ivan licks her mouth. She is panting, still caught in the quivering moment between pain and ecstasy, but then she's leaning forward, trying to kiss him, her hand coming out of his pants and reaching for him, cupping around his jaw, trying to hold him there. She thinks she's going to die if she doesn't kiss him. Now. Like this, hungry and possessive. She never kisses him like this, never holds his face in her hands, never moans against his tongue while keeping him where she --

Ivan ends it. He drops the chain against her belly, where the weight of all those tiny gemstones pulls softly at her nipples, which are so sensitive right now that even the brush of air as he moves makes her quiver. She swallows, and turns, and starts to follow him. He didn't tell her to stay. She is following him, as though he were still holding on to the chain.

She is following him -- or she would be, if she took more than two steps. But she doesn't. She takes one, she takes two, and then her vladelets is wheeling around with that surreal speed,

grabbing her face in both hands,

kissing her as hungrily as she'd tried to kiss him, and far more viciously. There is a sound there caught in his throat. It is more growl than groan. When the kiss ends his hand slides behind her neck, he grabs her there as one might grab a pup, a cub; swings her in a tight centrifugal arc and throws her,

quite literally throws her facedown on the bed. Pins her there a second, saying nothing, putting his hand behind her legs, spreading her roughly open and going to his knees and god even that is aggressive, the hard thump of his knees, the way his mouth goes at her cunt. It only goes on a second. It is, in its own way, a form of punishment. He knows she doesn't like this -- much.

And then he is walking away again. He is going to that secret closet of wondrous things. If she stays put this time --

-- if she's his sweet, good little plaything this time, he comes back with a treat.

Barefoot, Hilary is very quiet. She has a delicacy to her that, if necessary, could lend itself well to either precise violence or perfect stealth. Their son has not yet discovered his inheritance from them, but he will one day. He will be praised for it. If Hilary permits him to be sent to a private school -- all boys, of course -- then he will rule the place, get away with murder. A bastard son he might be, but perhaps by then no one will care even at the stuffiest, most traditional establishments, which are naturally the only ones Hilary would ever consider. And perhaps even then, he will be the bastard you don't want to cross. He will hurt you back, more than you hurt him, and you will never see him coming. Yet perhaps he will always seem the innocent, the cherubic, golden and lovely and ruthless and savage.

His mother takes only two steps before his father stops her in her tracks. Turns on her, grabs her, eats at her mouth again, again, her breasts pressing to his chest, which makes her whine and squirm against him. She is reaching for his pants, to push them down, gets them down an inch,

when he throws her, stumbling and falling she is, to the bed. Follows, hand still clenched among that thick hair, holding her down. She's hurting, oh, the diamonds tug at her nipples and the room is spinning and all she can feel beyond a bit of pain is desire, heady and thick and pulsing, as Ivan shoves her legs apart. She can hear him growling.

He finds her cunt wet, and bright pink, and open for him. He knows her taste now, knows the way it changes, knows how wet she can get. This is only the beginning, what he laps up from her flesh as she tightens up, angling herself to him, begging for more. This time. This time she begs for more, cries a little when he departs, and yes,

there are real tears in her eyes when she lifts her head from the rumpled bedding, looking at him, sniffling once. She rubs herself on the blankets. She's so quiet -- well. Not quiet. Wordless. She says almost nothing to him this morning. She is good this time, though. She stays put, her legs still open, her nipples aching.

Her taste is still on his tongue while he sorts through that box of goodies. Her taste is still on his tongue, her wetness on his face, when he comes back. She's facedown over the edge of the bed and he steps in behind her, steps right up to her with his groin to her bottom, his cock an unmistakable hardness beneath those thin, soft pants. Something falls across her back -- soft, pliable. Not manacles after all but one of his scarves, wool spun so fine that it is smooth and cool and almost liquid-soft to the touch.

He tangles her wrists in it. He pulls her arms behind her back and he cinches her hands together, her wrists, her forearms, winds the scarf around and around and around until she can scarcely move her arms. He tucks the ends. Then a moment of quiet, a moment where he straightens to look over his handiwork. A moment where he smooths his palms over her back, making a low wordless murmur of appreciation at her fineness, her smoothness, those subtly shifting shoulderblades and that elegant spine. His hands wrap over her shoulders. There's a moment when his fingers encircle her neck,

it's a twisted thing to do,

it's subversive and threatening and he is thinking to himself that he really should give her that collar after all. He should wrap it around that lovely throat and maybe he could put a leash on it, maybe he could grip her by it while he fucks her from behind, savagely, until all these walls of glass resound with her cries.

He pulls her up off the bed instead. An arm wrapped in front of her shoulders, lifting her and straightening her. He finds her breasts with his other hand. The diamonds roll across his knuckles. He lifts both breasts, squeezes, kneads, flicks the nipples mercilessly with his thumbs. Grinds himself against the cleft of her ass, pressing her between himself and the bed, breathing harshly now, biting at her shoulder.

While Ivan is choosing toys, Hilary is adjusting herself on the bed. She is lifting her breasts, panting softly, finding a way to rest that doesn't pull or tug too much. She finds herself on all fours, stroking her nipples against a crest of rumpled bedding, back and forth, swinging, rocking gently. That is how he finds her when he turns, scarf in hand. Maybe he pulls on her leg, drops her back to the mattress. Maybe he pushes her facedown by the back of the neck, holds her there. Maybe he simply steps against her, hard, presses himself between her thighs and feels her go soft, go limp -- feels her submit bodily, entirely, before one way or another, she lays down again.

To be tied. Not over-head but behind-the-back, tied in soft soft wool that feels almost like silk. He doesn't just tie her, though; he binds her, firmly; he makes her helpless, when she is already such a helpless thing. She didn't even have the sense to run when a fight broke out on the streets while she was pregnant, did she? And wasn't he just terribly cross with her?

She remembers that, but does not think of it now. She thinks of very little. Which is often what she wants: the pills or the sex or the something to drive everything else from her mind, to leave her emptied out and softened by the emptiness. To leave her blank, and quiet, if only for a little while.

Like now, as she feels herself being looked at, admired or scrutinized -- as though the difference matters to her, right now. She shivers at his though, though, expecting -- wanting -- a slap, a spank, something brutal, almost always something harder than Ivan is comfortable giving her right away, except when she doesn't. She lifts her ass encouragingly, but his hands are going upward. His touch is smoothing over her shoulderblades. He is gripping her neck and she opens her mouth, moaning, and he can then almost smell her, stronger than her taste, strong as her purity.

Why would he ever be surprised that to be so twisted, so subversive, so threatening, would make her wordlessly beg like that?

The slut is trying to rub her thighs together, get some pressure on that hot little clit, panting like the bitch in heat she is. Isn't she, isn't she. He pulls her up, pressed to her ass, grinds on her, toys with her, and she thinks instantly of that Halloween, that party, the way he put her on display and told that first young man to come lick her tits, make her wet. No one else is with them now, though. Just Ivan making her skin burn, making her start crying from sheer want, and she is crying, but that doesn't matter, those thin quiet tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She winds her ass against him eagerly, helplessly as he bites her. As he claims her,

which even this morning, is still something she needs. Is always something she needs.

She is his darling, his own personal slut, his beautiful girl. He still loves her. He still wants her. He still owns her.

He does love her. He does want her. He sometimes does both of these things with terrifying intensity. To the point where sometimes it consumes every thought in his mind, roaring and ferocious. To the point where he cannot imagine not loving her, or not wanting her,

(even though sometimes, he can spend days or weeks apart from her. Even though sometimes, those days and weeks fly by filled with other scintillating distractions, other idle pleasures, and he doesn't think of her once,)

but he does not own her. He doesn't. Sometimes she submits to him so willingly and so eagerly that they both almost believe he does, but he doesn't. That's the simple truth of it, and sometimes it pains him because he thinks that Espiridion owned her, and Grey or someone like him will own her, and in between and before and after the tribe owns her.

They don't own her either, though. The truth is, Hilary owns herself. She doesn't often remember it, and even when she does she scarcely seems conscious of it,

but she owns herself. Because if she didn't, she would have never gone to see Anton again. She would have never tried, in her strange and broken way, to make him a small part of her life and herself a small part of his. She would have never pushed Grey away so viciously, so completely.

She would have never advanced on Ivan like that, moments ago. Put her hand in his pants. Kissed his mouth like it was hers to kiss, as much as she is his to fuck.

--

He loves that about her too. Those flickers of agency, of self-determination. Those flashes of savagery and queenliness. The reminders that she, too, is a daughter of kings and wolves. The reminders that she is like this for him,

whimpering, mindless, eager, helpless,

because she wants to be. Because it makes her -- dare we use the word? -- happy.

--

She is shoved down on the bed again. He's so deliberately careless with her right now. She's shoved down; it's a temporary arrangement. He puts her there like she is a thing, an object, a toy that he has to set aside while he attends to something else. To the business of pushing the waist of his pants down, specifically; just far enough to get his cock out. He slaps her: forehand and backhand across the ass, vicious and fast, and then he spreads her lips and gives her one sliding-rough grind, gets her wetness all over his cock,

slams it into her,

yanks her up off the bed by a fistful of that wrapped-tight scarf. Holds her like that, bent and bound; a dangerous position, really, and one that could dislocate a shoulder or pull a tendon if he's not careful with her. But then: everything about this is dangerous. Those clamps. His roughness. Her absolute trust, with not even the faintest semblance of a safety net beyond the lines he sets himself.

Fucks her like that, quite hard, quite rough, biting his lip, breathing harsh. The diamonds swing, bounce, roll. They scatter light all over the room.

Ivan can't do this to her like this. He just shouldn't, it's dangerous and rude and there's no sane reason why she would enjoy it. No sane reason. But her trust in him is even more terrifying than the way he yanks her up, holding her by the scarf bound to her arms, slamming into her like that, railing her like he is. She lets him do these things. She believes in him, has faith in him to be more human than her, when he's the real monster in the room.

God, the sounds she's making. Some of them almost sound like pain; some like wailing. She is groaning, crying out at jagged spiking points, almost touching words before he thrusts again, roughly, sending those words away from her. This is brutal. This shouldn't be turning her on. This makes her (dare we say it) so happy.

She has never been quite like this with anyone else. Ivan is far from her first, and he is not even her first dom, but it wasn't quite like this with her first husband. His was a joyfully cruel brutality; he loved the shock in her eyes, loved the edge of panic in her voice, was profoundly aroused when he would abandon her and hear her screaming for him, terrified. He liked the way she clung to him after, whimpering, letting him do anything he wanted to her so long as he did not leave her like that again. It did not make Hilary less happy, did not make her really hate him more than she hates anyone, but she did not love him. He did not give her baths afterward, washing her gently. A maid would sometimes clean her, if she was somewhat catatonic, but it is not the same.

Ivan, though.

Ivan's pleasure is not in shocking the young innocent thing at his mercy, for she is neither young nor innocent, even when she is at his mercy. When Hilary panics, when she screams like that, it turns his blood cold. He built a house entirely around the idea of never permitting her to feel that, to scream like that, to be so frightened and so alone and so bereft. He likes the way she reaches for him, a bit awkward but animal, savage, hungry, wanton as she can be, as demanding and impatient as any child. He likes the way she fights sometimes, because when she submits, it makes it all the sweeter. He makes Hilary happy even though sometimes she hates him, and even though sometimes she hates him, she also loves him, loves him.

She knows that after this, like last night after Oliver, he will wash her clean and make her soft again, make her gentle again. It is as though every time he is rough with her he is simply sanding away her own ragged edges, then polishing her to smoothness, at least

until

she cracks again. Shatters.

--

Her breasts swing with the chain of diamonds. They brush the bed, bounce on her chest. She's surprisingly unresistant, given the position he's put her in. She trusts. She adores. She opens her legs a little wider, spreading them apart, opening up for him, arching for him, deeper, harder, as though far from hurting her, he is being invited to hurt her just a little more.

In his nostrils he can smell just how heady her lust is. How rich.

At least there is this much: as savage as this coupling is, as rough and reckless and dangerous as it is, it doesn't last long.

That's not always the case. Sometimes he strings her up or ties her down, looks at her, admires her, makes her do all manner of filthy, dirty things. Sometimes he teases her, touches her, makes her beg. Sometimes he caresses her and sometimes he makes her suck him off and sometimes they move from one platform to another, from one place to another, sometimes he wants to take her upstairs and fuck her against the mirrors, sometimes he wants her to get herself off while he watches

(though, let's be honest: he never just watches for long)

and sometimes, sometimes, they go for hours. They go until she is limp and exhausted and weak and he has to bring her water before she dehydrates. He has to feed her before she collapses. He has to hold her, clean her, tuck her safely into bed before she --

forgets, maybe. Forgets who she is, and who he is, and that she is loved. So very, deeply, madly loved.

--

We digress. The point: it doesn't last long. It never does, when he fucks her quite like this. So viciously, so fiercely, with such hair-raising abandon. It doesn't last long because he is intent on his own pleasure, because he knows his pleasure will bring hers. It doesn't last long because on some level he doesn't want it to go on too long; he doesn't want to fuck her raw, he never

ever

wants to really hurt her. And -- it doesn't last long because in the end he is, despite all his genetics and all his ancestry and all the beauty and power he has been blessed with, merely mortal. There is only so much he can take before it all crunches down into a singularity, a perfect point of pleasure,

detonating in his mind like a thermonuclear reaction.

--

She hits the bed again. His hands are on her shoulders. He pushes her down. He holds her down. He comes suddenly, with so little warning; an abrupt commotion in every nerve, every muscle. His teeth are clenched and what sounds he makes are low, rough, wild, inhuman. He drives her against the bed, pins her there between the edge of the mattress and his body, fucks her so hard the sound of their bodies colliding snaps sharply off the walls.

Then he's done. Then he pulls out of her, just as sudden and abrupt; his sides heave and his skin sheens. He takes a step back, wipes his mouth across the back of his hand. Slaps her ass. Drags his thumb down her wet, well-fucked slit; feels that filthy moisture there, wipes it thoughtlessly on the sheets.

Grabs her around the waist, then, and flips her on her back. Reaches out and -- with no great care, with a few careless flicks of his fingertips -- loosens those minuscule screws

not too much, and not too little,

but just enough for him to tug that chain of diamonds off her tits. Drapes it across her throat instead, and down the axis of her body; an artful, lazy design. It looks good there. She looks good in diamonds and nothing else. She looks right. He comes down over her, leans and looms over her, his shoulders taut and his hands braced. He puts his mouth on those abused, sensitive nipples of hers,

holds her down if he needs to,

licks and sucks her so slowly, so indulgently, so thoroughly.

He had her last night. Made her get on top of him, made her vulnerable, made her -- in her mind, at least -- prove to him that she loves him and only him, that she is his, that she will be obedient and good. She had to do this by pressing against the boundaries of where she is comfortable (if Hilary can ever be said to be 'comfortable'), but it was worth it. She was good, and she made him come, he had that lost look in his eyes for a moment, that brutal and transcendent look, and it made her feel safe again. Then, in the middle of the night, he rolled her over and pinned her down and nailed her without a word, came in her without more than a few tight groans, some jagged breathing. So she knew: she had forgiven him, and he had forgiven her, and she was his darling.

He had her last night, had her in the middle of the night, but all the same, he fucks her now as though he hasn't touched her in weeks. It's as though he's been waiting for this for far longer, it's as though he's never had the chance to tie her up or sink his teeth into her, stain her body with his lust. That's how Ivan takes her now, knowing the truth, knowing the reality of it: his pleasure brings hers. Sometimes she gets there first, sometimes she comes over and over while he tortures her, but then there are times like this.

When he pinches her nipples. When he grabs her throat. When he pulls her hair, slaps her ass, throws her face-down on the bed, ties her up, yanks her around, slams himself into her almost hatefully, and instead of screaming, instead of begging him to stop, Hilary just... dissolves. Her world becomes bent to pleasing him, to being good for him, to making him come, because when he does come, her own orgasm hits her as though it was really the quarry she was hunting all along.

That's how it is now, this... afternoon, if we're honest. Ivan lets her go, pushes her down, pressing hands into her shoulderblades, and comes in her, fills her again, and almost quietly, almost imperceptibly, Hilary starts to come, too. It goes in slow waves, hot and wet and moving all through her. She squirms a little, even as Ivan is growling, snarling, slamming himself into her a few more times, hard throws of his hips. She is panting quietly, eyes closing in holy rapture, her body pulling at him, holding him, aching for more of him. She isn't even done when he is.

And that makes her cry out a little, whimpering, a soft sob. She's quivering when he steps back to look at her.

What a mess he's made of her. What a beautiful little wreck.

The way he smacks her seems almost like an afterthought, even though the following, smearing touch isn't. She thinks he's going to fuck her with his thumb; she opens then, spreads her legs like a mute whore, arches her back to lift, but there is no such blessing this time.

Ivan flips her; diamonds toss and scatter light, gleam and sparkle against her sweaty skin. Hilary opens her eyes, which give no light back to the world, only taking, always taking, as hungry and as insatiable as any void that both births and destroys the world.

She whimpers when he undoes the screws, pleading wordlessly for him not to. But her nipples are bright red, are lovely and swollen and he chooses to give them a tug to get the clamps off. She bucks a little, at that. It's pretty.

Hilary soothes a bit as he lays it over her neck. Just as she did, in a way, when he put his hand on her throat. She relaxes. She trusts. Some of the limpid, pained, needful look in her eyes abates, turns to adoration. He thinks she looks good in diamonds and nothing else. She feels as though all her blood is pooled at her clit and her nipples, feels tied to her body, feels uncomfortable on her bound arms, feels her hands throbbing and the scarf binding and cool air on her toes and unbearable heat under the surface of her skin. She is in her body and she does not despise all these things, because he looks at her thinking she looks so pretty, because he looks at her thoughtfully and lazily and she is aching, dying, silently begging him to love her, to show her he loves her.

Ivan does. He always does. He leans over her, holds her down when she shifts, and starts to suckle her. Hilary almost screams, tightening her entire body up, squirming, tossing her head to the side like an animal, trying to scoot up the bed to escape more attention on that hypersensitive point. He does not let her. She makes more of those raw, overstimulated sounds, rubbing her thighs together for some kind of relief, some hope for her interrupted orgasm that still has her in its grip.

There is mercy in Ivan after all. Not a lot, and perhaps not anything readily recognizable by any but Hilary as such, but -- there is mercy in him.

See. See how he responds to her now. See how he holds her down and holds her in place and tortures her with that slow luxurious suckling. See how, when she writhes and tightens and all but screams, when she rubs her thighs together, when she squirms like she hasn't had enough, can't get enough,

he pushes his hand between her legs. He slides his fingers into her and grinds the heel of his hand against her clit and that,

that is how he fucks her a second time, with his mouth on those hyperstimulated nipples, with his fingers in that hyperstimulated cunt. That is how he fucks her, until her back arches, until she tries to pull away and can't, until he's growling at her breast like a beast savaging his prey.

That is the twisted mercy he gives her. He gives her what she wants, even when it is very close to what she can't bear.

Oh, thank god.

She thinks it, but doesn't say it. She thinks it but not in those words. It is just a rush of relief, of gratitude, flowing through her like wine. She opens her legs for him. He isn't slapping her thighs to keep them apart, pinching her nipples to punish her. He grinds his hand against her, fingers her, fucks her all over again while he makes her scream with his mouth. Oh. Oh, thank god.

Only it's him. Not god or Gaia but him. Always him.

It's terribly uncomfortable, unsafe, to be lying on her arms like that, grinding, arching, squirming. She whimpers. She starts to cry, fucking herself against his hand. Tears are running out of the corners of her eyes, she looks like she's in pain, she looks like she can't take it, but she isn't begging him to stop. She's sobbing, and then,

inevitably, it seems,

she's coming. Fully and finally, unwinding, reaching and surpassing that earlier orgasm that he stole from her when he stole himself from her.

--

Hilary sighs when it's over. An odd sound, after all the crying, the sobbing, the screaming, the heady moans. She sighs from relief, and then she is rolling on her side, Ivan's mouth on her nipple or hand between her legs notwithstanding. The former falls away unless he wrenches her back; the latter is held tigh between her thighs to keep him where he is. She rolls to her right side, tucked in on herself, the diamonds falling among the rumpled sheets.

She wonders idly if Miranda has gotten them all moved out of the apartment yet. If John has spoken with Edmund; if Edmund has tried to reach Ivan. She wonders briefly if anyone suspects that she is with Ivan, that he's spirited her away someplace,

when he did nothing of the sort. He didn't even know she was here until a servant alerted him that the lights were on.

Hilary wonders, and then she doesn't care, and she closes her eyes, unsure of what to do with the lucidity she feels right now. The sanity. It is so rare that she feels anything of the kind. She almost wants to savor it, hold onto it, hide it and keep it secret, just for herself.

Hilary sighs.

It's an odd sound after the crying, the sobbing, the screaming, the moaning. It's a lovely sound. And by then Ivan has gentled, if ever he is truly gentle. No; he is truly gentle sometimes. With her. Only with her. He is gentle now, and he has stopped doing what he did to her breasts. He is nuzzling her softly now, kissing her nipples, kissing her heartbeat, laying his cheek briefly against her breastbone.

Until she turns on her side. Until he draws his fingers slowly, carefully out of her and wipes his filthy hand on the bedspread. He doesn't care. Someone will take care of it. Someone else always takes care of it. He drags himself up the bed a little, face to face with her now, side by side with her. Her eyes are closed. His remain open, soft, adoring,

and yet watchful, too. He is never more protective of her than when they play like this. When he -- irresponsible, shiftless he -- becomes so terribly, solely responsible for her safety and what remains of her sanity.

"Here," he whispers, and he reaches behind her to begin to undo that scarf. Here the tucked end. Here the coils around and around and around. Here the sheath around her wrists, her hands; pulled off, all of it, and cast softly to the floor. When her arms are bare he rubs them gently with his palms, soothingly.

Every thing she does is odd. Sighing from relief when she's in pain. Sobbing when she's in ecstasty. Not knowing the difference between agony and pleasure to begin with.

Her breasts are pink, ending in hot red points that must -- they must -- hurt her. Her cunt is much the same, hot and overstimulated and a deep pink. She is pale otherwise, always showing a mark when he touches her roughly or in one place for too long. Her arms will be red when he unbinds them. Her ass brightens when he smacks her. It is always so.

At first, Hilary will not let him free. She hugs his hand tightly, but he works it out anyway. Wipes it on the bed instead of her, because this would offend him even if it might very well just arouse her all over again. She turned away from him when he first finished with her (when she finished with him?) but maybe he moves, maybe he slides over her to look at her, maybe he stays where he is as he unties her. Hilary is catching her breath. Hilary does not have to worry about what becomes of her, or the world. Hilary does not even have to open her eyes, or stay conscious.

Her arms are red. They show where the scarf held her, so he rubs them. She doesn't move from her bound position at first, though; it takes a while before she moves at all, stirring, drawing her arms forward again, one under herself, one over, to her front. She feels surprisingly alert, awake, after all that sleeping, after playing. If he moves behind her to hold her then, she doesn't resist him, or push him away. If he leaves her on the bed she does not panic. If he strokes her hair she drowses again, but in a few moments, she speaks.

"Tell me you love me," she whispers to him, though not plaintively. Not bereft, at all. Like someone who knows, but just wants to hear it.

Of course he holds her, when he is finished untying her. Of course his lean arm slips around her slim waist. Her slim body. Even after Anton, even after all of it: she is so slender and fine that one might never guess. It is something they have in common. Ivan, too, is so lean, so lithe, that one would never guess

that under his skin is a monster.

He smiles to himself when she speaks to him. He moves a little closer, his lips touching the back of her shoulder, and then his chest aligning to her spine. His arm wraps around her and secures her there.

"I love you," he whispers. It does not sound recited, or rehearsed, or false. She knows it. He wants to say it. He rubs his lips against her shoulder, after. Nuzzles her, kisses her. Touches her for the very sake of touching her, and her pale skin, and her black hair, her black eyes. God, but he does love her. It strains the moorings of his heart, which was surely never designed to feel such a thing, nor so absolutely.

"I love you," he repeats, and

sooner or later he'll have to talk to Grey or his sons. Sooner or later Hilary will move out of her downtown apartment. Sooner or later there will be blowback, there will be fallout; there always is after something like this, no matter how well the game was played. Always. But not yet. It is the calm before the storm. Right here, this: it is a calm before the storm, or the eye at the center of it. Ivan feels so still right now. His mind so clear. His heart, strained to aching with love, relaxes on itself again, steady and quiet.

A third time he says it, closing his eyes this time, resting his brow against the back of her neck.

"I love you."

Ivan comes close, and whatever dim chill there is in their -- her -- little lakehouse is abated by his raging, wanton heat. Her skin is warm, sweaty, oversensitive. She shivers, though, and tucks herself against him. He holds her to him all the same, even though the heat is nearly unbearable. He cradles her, cuddles her, nuzzles her, kisses her. She sighs again, that same sound, as though she just came, as though she is coming down.

Which she still is. She hasn't eaten; she hasn't had anything to drink. She needs to pee and is only vaguely aware of this, but she is aware of it. She sighs, though, as he tells her again anda gain that he loves her, he loves her, he loves her.

Miranda has movers at EnV already. They are leaving, they have left, she hasn't even considered where her servants will stay, where they will live, while she lives here. They'll have to be close. She decides that Ivan will figure it out, or Max and Miranda, because neither Ivan nor Hilary are aware or concerned with the fact that Max and Miranda pretty much fucking hate each other. They are there to figure out those details, and make it work, according to the needs of their betters.

Their betters, who do not know how to work, or how to be sane, or how to have a child together, or how to live. How to love,

and yet they do. It must be like breathing or sleeping or eating or craving water; some things, the body and soul simply know how to do, though not always very well.

--

Her hand covers his, somewhere over the mattress. She feels so worn out, so wrung out, so tired. She feels so alert, so alive, so in herself right now. She looks at his fingernails, up close, at their ridgeless smoothness, marveling.

"What will we do if he comes looking for me?" she says quietly.

She won't be at her apartment, but: he is a great and powerful Theurge. The least of his sons could track her down within an hour. By breeding alone she could be hunted. And they already have one place to start: her guardian, the Cliath that Grey already knows 'has a little crush' on Hilary.

Hilary, who says 'we', when they both know she means Ivan.

What will they do.

It's a question that flicks Ivan's eyes open. Sharpens them, makes them alert and clear and feral. She trusts him so utterly. Sometimes he thinks she must think him perfect. Perfect and clever and strong and of course, of course Ivan will know what to do. Of course he will have a plan in mind. Of course; and so she will ask him:

what will we do?

--

The truth is Ivan has no idea. The truth is Ivan has no earthly idea what he would do if an Athro Theurge came looking for Hilary. If, despite what happened last night, despite the bridges she put to torch, the madness in Grey's mind overwhelmed all else and he came here, he came to find her, he sniffed her out and hunted her down and Ivan was all that stood between her and the monstrously powerful Theurge that wanted her.

He has no idea.

He says none of this, though. He opens his eyes and maybe he should panic, maybe he should be angry, maybe he should shout at her for putting it all on him. He doesn't. He thinks for a while, a long while, and all through it his thumb traces a small path across her skin. There under the arch of her ribcage. There at the uppermost stretch of her abdomen. Over and over, a touch that may as well say what he's said to her so many times already:

he loves her. he loves her. he loves her.

--

"We can't let him come looking for you," Ivan says at last. "If it happens I'll think of something. But he won't come if I can help it. If we can help it.

"Perhaps I'll apologize to him," he adds after a moment, thoughtful, quiet. "Publically. For your unacceptable behavior or your cruelty or your madness or ... some such thing. I can be vague enough that anyone who hears of it will fill in their own sordid tale. And then even if he should forget everything you told him last night or decide to overlook it all, he'll have his own pride and his own good name on the line. If the whole world thinks you've done him some grave insult, he'll look quite the fool if he continues to pursue you.

"Maybe we can start there."

Of course it's all on him. He owns her. Even if he knows he doesn't, even if he refuses to own her because he is so delighted and intrigued when she owns herself, Hilary does not see it that way. Ivan is the one who knows how to navigate the world without destroying everything in his path. He, far more than Hilary, should be trusted with big decisions. After all, yes: he is perfect and clever and strong and he knows what she needs and what she wants and he protects her and forgives her and soothes her when she is at her worst. He is her darling vladelets. He will figure it out.

And just like that, momentarily angry at her for even asking him a question like that -- or perhaps just thinking that a sane person would be angry -- he proves her right. He says nothing, and touches her instead, holds her, strokes her, makes her feel safe, makes her feel adored, and then he comes up with it.

He'll cut Grey off at the pass. Set him up so that any attempt on Hilary would shame him and the entire legacy that he has worked his entire life to build. It's a brilliant move. It's the sort of thing that will earn Ivan greater and greater names... well, in a fashion. No one in their tribe could know, or assert, that he would do such a thing. But he is a talented Ragabash. Hilary, hearing it in the dark recesses of her own mind, just smiles.

"You're so smart," she says dreamily, adoringly, the sort of thing she never says to him, the sort of tone she never uses. She can be so cold, even when she's like this. And it's a childish thing to say, a fangirlish thing to sigh upon his bed. "He ignores things he doesn't like, denies them," and here she is filling in from things John told her as well, "but he has an idea of how things are supposed to be. And of who I am. If everyone thinks I am a mad little harpy, it will cut notches into his dreaming of me as virginal, lovely, perfect."

Hilary snuggles back against him with her sore muscles, hugs her red-marked arms to her breasts, still hot pink from the clamps. "You're so smart, vladelets."

So smart, she calls him. Twice. Dreamily. Adoringly. Girlishly, even childishly; which are disturbing things to be when she's thirty-six, thirty-seven years old, when she has a one-year-old son, when they've just fucked the way they've fucked, played games the way they've played.

He laughs. It's under his breath, but it doesn't have even the slightest trace of self-deprecation or modesty to it. His teeth graze her shoulder, his lips her ear. "I really am, aren't I," he murmurs. "I'm a clever son of a bitch, and you love me for it."

He strokes her stomach; he cups her breast. He thinks of those diamonds hanging from her tits. Where did they go? No matter. They'll turn up. He'll find them or she will or even if they don't, Yuliya will when she comes to clean the place up. She's the only one that comes here, besides Ivan and Hilary themselves. She's the only one allowed, and even then, only barely, and only because otherwise he'd have to clean up after himself. Unthinkable.

After a little while:

"Would you like to visit Anton again sometime? We could plan a little trip. Labor Day or Christmas or something of the sort."

That doesn't require an answer. When he says aren't I he isn't asking her; when he says she loves him for being a clever son of a bitch, he isn't looking for validation of its truth. But Hilary answers anyway, as he's stroking her breast, thinking of the diamonds he got her in Russia, such a short time ago.

"No," she murmurs softly, thoughtfully. "I don't love you for anything," she thinks aloud. "I just love you."

Her hand moves, slides across the covers, comes to touch his. She holds him around her, cradled and warm in the drenching May sunlight coming through the windows. She thinks she would like to go out on the dock that extends from the house today. She thinks she would like to watch Ivan swim, while she sits in shade: hat and sunglasses, a long silk robe over her body, her slim black swimsuit. The thought of him swimming, submerging but surviving, fills her with a strange sort of satisfaction, bone deep and silent dark.

"Yes," she says, solid in that moment, in that thought, reminded vaguely of the pond beside Anton's country house, where he has lived since he was just a few days old, where he will live for the majority of his childhood. A home he will have, a retreat, until the day the war takes him. Hilary thinks of it thus; she has seen death of old age and would not wish it on anyone. Death by violence is better.

"Labor Day," Hilary murmurs, to follow. "He'll be a bit bigger then. I can go alone if you're disinclined. But you will come visit with me at Christmas, because you're his father."

Those are her terms.

If Ivan thinks of it -- and he does not now, though he might later if they go lounge on the dock; if he swims and she watches -- he'll realize he's almost never seen Hilary in the water herself. Actually: never. From the day he met her to this one, and with all those days in between: not once.

Not when his yacht pulled alongside her catamaran and all her boys were splashing in the water but she was pale and perfect and shrouded and shadowed. Not when she came to see him in his penthouse with its glorious terrace pool. Not when he tracked her down in Mexico and she was pregnant with his child, loose-haired, mad and gorgeous and at her most visceral. Not at that madhouse of a Halloween party; not when they rowed across the little lake Anton's house overlooks. Not on any of the days they've laid about their private deck over this lake, outside their glass house.

Never. Not once. Always, he swims if anyone swims at all. She stays dry and safe. And yet when she is at her most terrified, her most primitive, her most base,

it is the deep benthic blue of a watery death that comforts her.

Ivan never tries to understand this. He will never be able to.

--

Labor Day, she decides. And she can go alone. But he will accompany her when they visit -- again, she means -- at Christmas. Ivan's mouth moves a little; a wry sort of humor. He nuzzles her back, the subtle path of her spine.

"Who will translate for you if you go alone?" It is a gentle sort of tease.

No one, to be fair, has ever specifically asked Hilary to swim. She was watching her stepson and his friends on the yacht, and if she wanted to swim then she would not have, for they would have crossed boundaries, they would have been roughhousing and playful, and she had to remain above them. No one was swimming when she came to see him, during the summer or at his Halloween party. Certainly not when she was pregnant and he accosted her beside the pool, grabbing her into the shadows because his hunger for her was consuming him, nevermind the thing in her belly. Not in Russia, for the water was cold and he was taking her rowing, not swimming.

He's never asked. She's never expressed an interest. But she watches so keenly when he swims, stares at him unblinking and predatory, as his golden skin sluices through the dark, natural water. She would rather drown than be swallowed, even though she knows the two might seem similar. She is a bit like those people who are afraid of heights not because they fear falling, but because they long so powerfully, so primitively, to throw themselves from the edge.

--

Hilary tells him what he will do. He asks about translations, if she is alone, and she just scoffs at him.

"Darya, of course." She quiets. "That's part of why I hired her," she whispers. "The Russian."

There is a part of Ivan that does not want her to go alone. Not because he does not want her growing closer to the boy than he will ever be. Never that. Ivan, for the most part, does not really care about the boy. Sometimes when he is in Anton's presence, when he is in the land of his ancestors, he feels it. A primitive, primordial pull: a reminder that once upon a time he was not so mad. His spirit was as pure as his blood. An echo of that distant, distant past, when he felt his wildness in his blood; when he would have spilt every last drop of that blood -- and much, much more of his enemies' -- in defense of his mate, his cubs, his territory.

Sometimes. Very rarely. For the most part, he hardly even thinks of the boy. But then one can hardly blame him. Sometimes he hardly even thinks of Hilary,

and there is nothing and no one in all the world that he loves more than her.

--

The point, though: a part of Ivan does not want her to go alone. Not because then she'd grow closer to his son than he would, but because he loves her more than anything else in the world and some feral part of him doesn't want her to be half a world away. So far away, so alone, so out of his reach. What if she couldn't speak the language? What if she gets lost? What if night falls, and it's dark, and she can't find the light?

Another part of Ivan wants her to go alone. It's the part of him that recognizes that she is -- slowly, very slowly, agonizingly slowly -- putting some pieces of her shattered self back together. It's the part that sees how sometimes she makes demands of him now. Has thoughts and opinions and preferences of her own, drive of her own, will of her own. Not that she didn't have these things before, but --

it is different now. He cannot put his finger on how. He can only feel it, intuit it.

So: Ivan is quiet a little longer. And then his hand stirs beneath hers. Moves: covers hers instead. Both their hands are held against her body. His arm is close and snug around her still. Then he stirs, kisses her behind her ear.

"You should go at the end of summer," he whispers. "Take Darya with you, and I'll have Dmitri accompany you as well. Novgorod is lovely in August and September; mild and warm. Never really hot. You could take Anton to the city. Have lunch on a patio. Take a boat ride down the river.

"And in the winter," he adds, exhaling the words, almost sighing them, "we'll go together."

It may say something about Hilary that she can live at all, half a world away from the creature she has decided is her soul. What a weight for Anton to bear, to be the phylactery for his mother's humanity, the vessel for anything approaching goodness in her. He is too young to feel it, to know it, but still: she can live half a world away from him for months, for even a year; it was half a year before she even looked upon him and wondered at his smallness, his steadiness, his contentment.

In a way, it made her feel a bit of that, herself.

Hilary strokes his hand, between his fingers, over his knuckles. He has such fine, long-fingered hands; he passed this grace along to their son. She wonders idly if Anton will be a musician, the way that Ivan is a backstabber, a thief, adept at tying knots and undoing them.

"Dmitri," she repeats thoughtlessly, but doesn't disagree. Dmitri is useful, helpful; Ivan can do without him, and Dmitri can do anything. "Why did you send him," she doesn't mean Dmitri, she means their son, "to Novgorod, specifically?"

Ivan seems mildly surprised; a touch amused. He stirs behind her, raising himself up on an elbow, his temple against his fist.

"You don't know? It's where I was sent upon my First Change," he says. "My family traces its most distant roots to the Silver Fangs of Novgorod, so theoretically I was fostered by my distant kin there. Of course, we're mostly regarded as the bastard children of new American money now. We ourselves have long since forgotten the names of those mighty half-mythical ancestors who rode with the likes of Rurik the Rus' and Alexander Nevsky. Our venerable cousins in Novgorod can hardly be expected to remember.

"Still; I suppose you could say my people," a cynical strain of humor cuts through that phrase, "came from Novgorod. And it seemed fitting to hide my son in the land of his forefathers. Have I never told you any of this? How forgetful of me."

She rolls somewhat toward him, half on her back, turning her head to look up at him for the first time since -- well. Gaia knows when. When was the last time she looked upon him. Her adoration is easy to read right now, open and welcoming despite her darkness.

"Why would I know that?" she retorts, with disdain. And yet she is nestled to him still, buttocks against his groin, comfortable to feel his cock there, sticky with their sex, wet, humid. What he tells her, she's never heard, never researched. She hardly looked up his family tree and his credentials before letting him fuck her when she wasn't on birth control, letting him sire a son of hers. She had no idea that they were seen as bastards, New Money. She does know the term; she's old money. Her family line was always wealthy, has fallen into obscurity the likes of which it will never recover from, not even if Anton has twenty children of his own; they will belong to the solidification of Ivan's own line.

She blinks slowly, with boredom, as he mentions names she doesn't know: Rurik, Nevsky. They mean nothing to her.

"You would forget your head if it weren't attached," she says, idly but not mildly, closing her eyes, throat bared to him. "He will be very strong," she says, quiet, like a prophet might whisper the words of the gods. "No one will remember that your family is a bunch of bastards." Her eyes open.

How can he resist that bared throat. That implicit welcome, that unspoken submission. He bends to her, kissing her at the dip of her throat, closing his teeth ever so gently over her neck. She is so soft, so fine. He can never get over that exquisite, lightless beauty of hers.

And then -- a moment later she calls his family a bunch of bastards. He laughs aloud, sudden and surprised-again. He refrains, at least, from pointing out that while no one will remember Anton's father's family was a bunch of bastard, they may very well remember that Anton himself is very much a bastard as well. Still; perhaps Hilary has the right of it. Perhaps Anton, driven by that mottled heritage, driven by a selfish, uncaring father and a mother that swings wildly between smothering and untouchable, will develop an ambition neither of his parents have. Will grow up strong, and beautiful, and so charming on the surface and so ruthless just below

that no one will dare remember he is a bastard born to bastards.

Anton's mother opens her eyes. Anton's father leans over her and kisses her, open-eyed himself, a long slow tango of mouth and tongue and lip. "I never forget you," he whispers, and it is the truth. Scarcely thinking of is not the same thing as forgetting outright. "I must be very attached to you indeed."

It isn't what she's thinking when she rolls, baring her throat, but all the same, she isn't startled, feels like she should have expected it when he leans over, licks her, bites her. Hilary almost thinks he's going to climb over her, pin her down, fuck her again, firm and quick and hungry, but she is -- oddly -- glad he doesn't. She is so sore now, so tender, and she is hungry and human.

He laughs; predictably, she does not join him. She watches him, alien as she is, and perhaps it's the vulnerability and strangeness in her eyes that keeps him from pointing out that their son is a bastard. Who knows if she'll be offended? She said your family. No bastards in her own, none acknowledged; she is sometimes not quite sure what to think of Anton growing up knowing what he is, and thinking his mother a whore, a mistress, one his father never honored by wedding even though he never married anyone else.

Hilary expects that since Grey's offered daughter is out of the picture, Ivan will never marry. He had better not. She'll claw the girl's face off her body, peel it from her skull, leave her eyes bulging and horrified, and she'll make the worthless bitch eat her own flesh, she will, she'll fucking murder her, she'll tear her chest open and crush her heart in her fist.

He had better not, he had better not.

She looks dreamy, looks soft, looks lightless and beautiful and the reason we are afraid of the dark is because we do not know what lurks in it, as Ivan does not know what lurks in Hilary's darkness.

--

He says the most ridiculous things. About love and attachment. She scoffs, it it's soft. She tosses her head to the side, away from him, but she is curling into him a bit more, pulling him around her.

"One would think you'd feed me, then," she chastises.

Of course words of love and attachment would make her scoff. Of course she'd toss her head aside; of course she'd be disdainful. This, at least, does not surprise Ivan. In some strange sense, it endears him. There she is: his krasivaya devushka, that dark, vicious center of his life.

She curls into him, though. She insists on his embrace a little more, and he gives it to her as willingly as anything else. It's not often that she accepts tenderness from him, or seeks it. More often than not, like those history lessons, like any talk of things she knows little of and cares less for, such things seem only to bore her. Leave her cold and distant and disinterested.

Food, she demands. He nuzzles the tendon of her neck, exposed by the way she's turned away from him, then lifts his head and turns it and looks in the direction of the well-appointed kitchen. "Evgeny made breakfast hours ago," he says. "Unless you're starving right this moment, I'll have him make lunch instead. We should cook something tonight. I'll help."

"Hours ago?" she repeats, sounding repulsed. Which she is. It must be filth by now. "Tell him to bring lunch," she snips. "Something simple that won't tax his limited reserves."

Hilary stretches a bit, while he's nuzzling and adoring her, mentioning that they should cook tonight. She thinks this over. It has been a while since she cooked. She made Anton his little cake; that's not quite the same. It requires far less creativity. Baking is so mechanical. She doesn't answer, which means it might be okay: she isn't denying it. Perhaps she'll think, in the meantime, of what she wants to make.

"I'd like to watch you swim, too," she says quietly. "If it's not too cold." There's a soft pause. "I like watching you swim," she is saying, staring at the windows, at the lake beyond them.

Well; now he does think of it. That often he swims; that always she watches. He thinks of it, and she is stretching, and his arm is riding the arch and fall of her body, and then his hand is stroking up her side to cup her breast again. He is fascinated by her body; its responses. He strokes her nipple and watches it tighten.

"You could swim with me," he says quietly. "I won't let you drown."

Her nipple is still sensitive. It's not that she ignores it when Ivan strokes her breasts, weighing them in his hands; it's that she is so, so tender. She makes a soft sound, a half-whimper, and arches a bit, trying to hide herself from his attentions, pushing her face into the pillow. He is telling her he'd swim with her, he won't let her drown, but he's hurting her and pleasuring her at once and she would do anything for him like this, yet

the thought of being in the water, right now, like this, sends her mind into a spiral, dark and cool and terrifying and seductive all at once. She wants to cry. She rolls away from his hand, hides herself from him, escaping his hand. She can't think like that.

So he stops. Almost at once he stops; as soon as she turns away, as soon as she withdraws. This is different, somehow, from the way she squirms away from him and fights him and tells him no, no, no when they are playing. He cannot for the life of him say how or why, or how even he knows. He does know, though. He does recognize the shift, the change, and so:

he stops. He wraps his arm loosely around her, waits for her to calm.

Like a startled animal, she is. She whines and pulls away and he stops, he soothes, he comforts, and it takes her few moments to relax again, to gentle, to trust him. She always trusts him, in the end. This time is quicker than many. This time she whimpers, holding him around her as before, shivering a bit before whatever took hold of her lets her go once more.

She pants, exhaling slowly, softly, closing her eyes, settling moment after moment.

"No," she whispers, though he's stopped. "Beloved, I am so..."

Hilary doesn't have words for things like this. Tender. Sore. Raw. Vulnerable. All she has is the way her hand grasps his wrist, made of grace, and the words, whispered: "You mustn't."

Ivan's brow furrows. Such a rare sight, that. Silver Fangs, Ragabashes, golden-eyed beasts with shadowy hearts: one must be almost devoid of remorse and sympathy to be such a thing. And he is. He is almost, but not wholly, devoid of softer emotions as those.

She grasps his wrist. You mustn't, she whispers, which makes him think of Christmas and the furs. Makes him think of the morning after, the red diamond, the question he asked her then.

"I won't," he promises. He mustn't, and so he won't. "Shhh. I won't, my love." And he lays his head down again. He holds her, gentle now.

She breathes.

Settles.

For a while, all he does is hold her, tender and refraining from touching her, caressing, teasing, arousing her in ways her body simply cannot bear right now. And she drowses, forgetting their conversation, all of it, remembering it in pieces. What was he saying?

It takes her effort to care, and more effort to recall. For a long while, silent on that bed, she is considering it. "Sometimes I want to drown," she says softly, with a touch of emphasis on the third word, the longing, the yearning. "Please don't hate me."

As though he would. As though he could. He knows she's a mad thing, a broken thing, quite horrible, but he does not leave her. Even if he ignores her at times. She forgives him; forgave him, last night, after screaming at him in her studio above.

Hilary turns to him then, rolling over completely, tucking herself against his chest. "I would prefer to watch you," she tells him, aching, hoping she does not disappoint, frightened that he might ask her to swim anyway, because she will, and she will be so scared in the water, dark and cool and silken and pulling, drenching, dark, gravelike, forgetful,

all the things she hopes for.

There is a small silence when she says that. He knows she is a mad thing. He knows she is broken and quite horrible and that sometimes the worst things flit through the otherwise dark and empty spaces of her mind. He knows that what love she has in her is broken and crippled and strange, that her soul seems to exist entirely apart from her, in Anton or tied to Anton or just otherwise not really accessible to her.

He knows all these things, and yet still when she says it like that: sometimes I want to drown, he grows quiet. He is a little disturbed. He holds her a little tighter, especially as she rolls to face him, hides against his chest, begs him not to hate her. She asks that of him so often, and it hurts his heart because every single time he thinks never, never, never, how could i,

except he knows that maybe he could. He is a mad, broken, horrible thing himself, and he's hardly even close to the height of his own insanity right now. Who knows what he is capable of. What he will be capable of.

"I don't want you to drown," he says very quietly. "I don't want you to ever leave me. I don't think I could bear losing you."

And then he closes his eyes, and he kisses her hair, and he pulls her very close to his chest. "You can watch me," he says.

The worst things that go through Hilary's mind, like the ways she might kill Ivan's future wife, never pass her lips. She knows better. But he wants her to swim, or at least that's how she sees it, how it filters through to her, when he offers to let her swim with him. She hears it as a desire on his part, an invitation, and she does not like to turn down his invitations. Hilary has to tell him something, some explanation for the no, she thinks. She cannot imagine lying to him right now, or dismissing him entirely.

So she tells him that she is afraid of drowning simply because sometimes she wants to. So she begs him not to hate her for being... twisted, like that. Broken.

Soulless, as though she were already dead anyway.

All he tells her, after the silence, is that he doesn't want her to drown. Or leave him. He couldn't bear it, he says, and she believes him; it is not in her to think he could lie to her right now, just as she cannot, could not, lie to him.

Hilary smiles, soothed, even though a part of her is laughing at her, cackling, telling her he didn't say he doesn't hate you, did he, did he, listen to that silence, you insane fucking bitch. She shivers a little, pressing closer to him, as though he could hold her tight enough to save her.

"First, will you wash me?" she asks him, pleading, pressing down to dampen the awful ringing in her own ears.

[why do none of my chars have more than 4 empathy dice? EMPAFEE: CAN HE TELL WHY SHE'S ALL SHIVERY.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 10) ( fail )

[she knows she's crazy and senses/suspects that she freaked him out = vulnerable]

Ivan doesn't really answer her in words. Not her request, and not that insecurity that simmers just beneath her skin. He moves instead: he wraps her close to his body, lifts her, slides on his knees to the edge of the bed and steps off.

They ignore the breakfast on the kitchen island, still covered, the cold dishes on melting ice, the warm ones cooling now that their little burners have finally run out of fuel. All that effort, all those fine ingredients, and neither of them will take a single bite of it. It's hours old, after all. It must be filth by now.

He takes her into the bathroom instead. He sets her down at the edge of the tub, as he often does, and he leans over to turn the faucet-handles. Water, clean and hot and pure, blasts into the tub. Begins to fill it. While they wait Ivan picks up his phone and calls the house and talks to Evgeny and

poor Evgeny is set to the impossible task of creating something that will please Hilary.

--

Just as he always does, he washes Hilary. He is gentle and tender. By and large he uses his hands; sometimes a very soft washcloth. He lathers soap into suds and he washes every inch of her, from that dark dark hair to the very tips of her toes, taking his time, taking the care to rub the knots from her shoulders, the soreness from her arms.

He is very gentle when he washes her breasts. He is very careful when he washes between her legs; careful not to hurt her. Careful, too, not to arouse her

when she's already so raw.

--

For a long time afterward they soak in the tub. The soapy water goes down the drain; fresh, clear water floods them. Evgeny brings lunch. He knocks politely at the front door and he is ignored. He leaves lunch there on a wheeled cart, much as he left breakfast, and perhaps this time it will even be consumed.

Eventually, before the water goes entirely lukewarm, Ivan rises out of it. He steps out of the tub and he holds his hand out to Hilary, and when she steps out after him he wraps her in thick, fluffy towels. He smiles at her as he dries her, endeared by her plastered wet hair, the way she seems to expect this.

Water drains as they step out, and Ivan opens the door just long enough to bring lunch in. It's simple, just like Hilary wanted: stuffed salmon fillet and a mango-shrimp salad. There's a bottle of white wine chilling on ice. There's fresh fruit for a light dessert, sliced and cored and peeled and plucked. Ivan wears swim trunks to lunch, and lunch is taken out on that broad, flat, unshaded and unrailed deck over the water.

Later on he will swim. He will cut effortlessly through the water, wet skin flashing in the sun. He will float on his back, eyes closed. He will hang out by the edge of the deck, arms folded on the weatherproofed wood. But for now,

for now he stays close to her, lounging on those sleek loungers, his dangling fingers nearly grazing hers.