Ivan Press

[Ivan Press] It's Saturday, it's 3pm, and it's hot. The sun is out, blazing across the city and the lake, casting the water into a stunning depthless blueness like an ocean.

They never set a precise location. He doesn't have her phone number, though one imagines he could find out if he had to. He doesn't have to. He doesn't want to find out, at least in part because he doesn't want it known that Ivan Kirillevich Press is looking into what's almost assuredly another wolf's mate. Ivan is many things, but indiscreet and foolish is not one of them.

She did, however, mention at least the name of the docks she expected him to show up at. And it's not the one literally downstairs from his building, but farther up the shore; not far or perhaps even one and the same as the yacht club whose name is stamped into one of his jackets.

He's not wearing that jacket today. He's in a shortsleeved shirt, a linen so light that the sun casts a shadow of his body through it, and khaki slacks. Sunglasses, classical and lowkey, keep the glare out of his eyes. And he's not driving up but sailing up, or more precisely -- motoring up.

Krasota eases past rows of boats and yachts, docks at the northernmost pier. Dockhands help him moor the poweryacht, and he leaves them to it. It goes without saying that the tip is hefty.

Alone, then -- no helmsman, no entourage -- he walks up the length of the floating dock, then up the stairs to the boardwalk. There's a south of him, but he doesn't walk that way. He hoists himself up atop the boardwalk balustrade, swings his legs over and waits there, facing the lake, sun warm on his back.

[Hilary Durante] There's a lot he could find out about her with a phone call and a few questions. There's a lot he could find out about her just by looking up Cielo in the yacht registry. But it was moments before he realized that they share the same yacht club, that it's one of the oldest in the country, and that they are both rich enough to attract a great deal of attention just by being there. Nevermind the breeding, the rage, the things that make them stand out to humans. Even without the ancestral, spiritual radar of the Garou, everyone agrees there is just Something about Mrs. Durante and her stepson and most of the guests they bring along with them when they take Cielo out on the lake.

No, he can't exactly start asking questions. Not when the rumors already surround that family like dragonflies over a swamp hover, hover, hover in the humidity and the summer heat.

Hilary meant the docks. The docks. Not the clubhouse or any of the dockhouses or even a particular boat. And the docks is where she is, on the boardwalk that Ivan is heading for. She sees his yacht while it's still heading to moor, and he may even see her, too. He saw her out on the lake, for god's sake, he'd better damn well be able to tell it's her standing there even while he's cutting the engine.

Just as much jewelry on her today. None of it seems very special. Regardless of how unique each piece might be, she wears them as though she doesn't know the history, the cost, the days when they were given to her. Not a single of her husband's letters arrives without gifts for her and his son and instructions for what to do for the servants, and he writes with precision and regularity. So: another letter, another bangle, this one with a heart-cut diamond dangling from it. Another letter, another set of earrings, teardrop rubies dangling from radiant-cut diamonds. Another letter, a sky-blue silk scarf that she left at home.

So Hilary glitters where she stands, as she always seems to. There are opalescent baubles worked into the leather of her heels, running down the tops of her feet to her pale pink pedicure. Her hair is worn the way it was on the boat, loose and natural, in rich dark waves. It's hot out, but she hasn't been out here long, and she won't be.

As far as her garb goes, it's suited to her status, to her wealth, to what's appropriate for her age and her standing. It's a different hat, this bright white one, but still wide-brimmed and covering her nose and her shoulders. And a good thing, too, since her salmon-colored blouse is sleeveless and notched at the neckline. Her skirt is white and almost knee-length and notched at the backseam. It has pockets. Her purse is good for a day of walking around antique shopping, comfortable handles and plenty roomy.

She looks bored, as Ivan vaults the balustrade and his feet hit the planking.

"Mimosa, before we head back out? And your helmsman -- is he a trustworthy chaperone?"

[Ivan Press] Unless Ivan misinterpreted utterly, which he is not prone to doing, this is an assignation. This is a tryst. This is a rendezvous, and not even a romantic one.

Yet when they meet it may as well be distant friends gathering for a late lunch out on the lake. Distant friends via family, most likely, given their age difference; given that she dresses in a way that whispers taken, whispers married, whispers trophy wife and he -- well. Does not.

She offers a mimosa as his feet hit the planking. He shakes his head. "Thank you, but no. Champagne's not really my thing. As for Kolya, he's from a family where they cut loose tongues out." A beat, and then he smiles. "Besides, he's not on the boat. You'll have to put up with my sailing skills."

His feet are bare in their boating shoes. Up close, his khakis show horizontal wrinkles all up the lower legs. He's been rolling them up on the yacht, doubtlessly. He offers his hand, courteous.

"Shall we?"

[Hilary Durante] "Oh, that won't do."

Simple enough. And she doesn't take his hand. She just shakes her head, and starts to reach into her bag. "That's a shame, too. I was hoping to get inside your Krasota. Well."

A turn, and she's heading up the boardwalk, in the direction of the clubhouses. From the sound of that Well, it's easy enough to assume she means for him to follow. "Do you know how to get to the Hilton Orrington from here?"

[Ivan Press] He doesn't follow. He stays where he is, and his head cocks a degree to the right.

"Why won't it do?" His tone is light; mild. "I promise not to run her aground. Or are you concerned about wasting time?"

[Hilary Durante] "I'm concerned about being noted climbing onto a yacht alone with a single man who has been the talk of town for a little stunt he pulled at a nightclub earlier this week after showing up with a miniature flock of starved swans," she says mildly, still walking, albeit slowly. She is in heels, after all. "Or do you think it won't look odd, going out on the lake for a few hours without a single other soul on board?"

She's at the apex of the boardwalk. Turns, looking at him past her shoulder. No sunglasses right now. The hat shades her face. "It's a shorter drive if you take Ridge Road over Sheridan, but Sheridan has the better scenery. Are you coming?"

[Ivan Press] "I think it'd look just about as odd as -- "

and there Ivan cuts himself off. He makes a quiet sound: hm, thoughtful, his hand rising to rub at his jaw for a second. Anger, and the accompanying curl of rage, is a sensation felt so rarely he hardly recognizes it; hardly knows what to do with it.

His hand drops. He takes his wallet out, and for a moment she might think he was going to do something ridiculous and petty: pay her for her time, something of the sort. But no. He follows her to the bend of the boardwalk, extending what turns out to be a calling card. It's light green, plastic, rounded corners, and the only thing on it is a string of numbers with the ultra-prestigious 212 area code affixed.

"I don't have a car parked here," he says, "so I'll have to take a cab. Call me from the hotel and give me the room number. I'll meet you there."

[Hilary Durante] What Hilary thinks -- of that flicker of anger, if she even notices it, or of what it means when he pulls out his wallet -- is as inscrutable and inconsequential as anything else that apparently goes through her mind. What to wear today. What people will think. What the inside of his yacht looks like, and if the salon is decorated with more silvers and blues or more blacks and reds, or some other arrangement of colors entirely.

There is this, though: she smiles when he hands her his card. She touches it, tapping a fingertip on one rounded edge. Looks from it to him, and looks charmed. "I'll do that," she says, and wraps her fingers around the card, turning to continue walking away. Mustn't look like they really know one another, after all.

He doesn't get to see what she's driving before they leave. There's all this rigamorole of going inside and getting the valet to bring it around and meanwhile Ivan's calling his cab which is going to take Ridge Road while Hilary enjoys Sheridan and so, in the end he gets to the Orrington and there's no call on his phone, there's just the

gunmetal Maserati GranCabrio pulling up, because on a day like today you want to take the convertible. She gets out, no longer wearing her hat but now wearing her sunglasses. And Ivan may be outside, may be inside getting a room, but either way it's only been two minutes or so since he arrived, five at the most.

The valet here takes the flashy Italian car around the bend, and if Ivan is in fact waiting, she walks right past him like she's never met him before in her life, going to the clerk in the lobby.

[Ivan Press] The cab ride is short, though Ivan waited a few moments before calling the dispatcher. He gets there first. He waits outside because, well, that's what they agreed on, and as cars pull up he makes little bets with himself on which would contain Mrs. Hilary Durante to pass time.

Then the gunmetal Maserati shows up, and he doesn't have to bet. He's quite sure, and it turns out he's right, and his eyes follow her from the valet and it's quite clear after a few steps that she's going to walk right past, but he looks anyway because --

well. Who wouldn't?

She passes him. His head turns a ways, then forward again. He lights a cigarette while he waits, slim and black and russian, and perhaps three or five minutes later his carbon-fiber ingot of a phone vibrates in his shirt-pocket. He takes it out and puts it to his ear.

"Yes?"

[Hilary Durante] "So sorry about that, dove," she says to him, sounding like she's quite sorry. Of course. Just overwhelmed with regret. "I didn't mean to dawdle. Five twenty-eight, alright? I'll just leave your key card in the door. I hope you hurry, though."

[Ivan Press] Her apology makes him scoff quietly. The phone is of such exemplary quality that she hears it. Then, "Certainly," and he hangs up.

Ivan finishes his cigarette. He stubs it out in the ashtray by the door, bypasses the reception entirely, and takes the elevator to the fifth floor. A few moments after that, the electronic lock on 528 clicks and whirrs softly, and Ivan lets himself in.

[Hilary Durante] At least she wasn't lying. When he gets up to 528 the key card is stuck in the door and the little light doesn't know what to do with itself until Ivan comes along and takes it out, reinserts it, slides it back out again. The light turns an appreciative green and the handle turns silently in his grip to let him in. The lock clicks tight again when he lets the door fall closed behind him.

This room, like most of the others, is done up in dark woods and deep, rich colors. One red is a fantastic shade of red, and the bed is obviously a king. Just like the woman he's up here to see --

no, let's face it, the woman he's up here to fuck senseless, the woman he's here to get on that bed and play around with until he can't taste anything but her sweat on his tongue, until that fine bed is a rumpled mess, until his goddamn body aches from it

-- is obviously fit to be bedded by one. This is no young princess of the Fang lines, uneasy about being given away to some male she may not love who is out of his mind from the sheer purity of his own blood. Hilary, it's obvious, knows exactly what she's doing. Her husband -- her mate -- is in Paris. Her stepson is likely out enjoying his new driver's license, if he got it. And as far as Ivan knows, and well beyond what he likely cares about, there's no spies following her about to see who is plowing Mrs. Durante in Rm. 528 on this overheated, glaringly sunny day.

She's sitting in an armchair, legs crossed, one elbow on the arm. The window's behind her, and the shades are all open. She's toying with one of her rings, twisting it around and around on her finger with little slides of her thumb. It keeps catching the light to send flecks of illumination over her face.

"I should very much like to watch you undress," is the first thing she says to him, when the door is closed and he's stepped inside. "If you don't mind." Quieter, that. A little more demure.

[Ivan Press] Now then; it is obvious to all that Ivan has a notoriously long list of 'friends' in his history. He's almost never without female company of one sort or another. But in truth the women surrounding him tend to be young; they tend to be vacuous; they tend to have no asset other than their own astonishing beauty. They live in the lap of borrowed luxury without the faintest real clue of how to enjoy it. Own it. Make it theirs. He's used to women, girls, who are playthings in his hands. Pampered little pets.

Hilary is not. She's an anomaly in his history. Older; more complex. More inscrutable, or perhaps -- disturbingly enough -- simply more devoid of those underlying emotional cues and tripwires Ivan has become such a virtuoso of. There's something distant and cool about her desire. He's not quite used to it, and he's not quite used to feeling like this:

like a plaything, himself.

The shades are all open behind her. The day outside is brilliant. Ivan considers the view a moment; considers the distant lake. Considers, period. And then his eyes come back to her. He steps out of his shoes first, leaving them in the entryway.

His shirt is thin and light. Even on the docks she could see the insinuation of his body through it. When he undoes the buttons and pulls it from his shoulders, his torso is lean and hard and smooth, with enough muscle to sheathe the bone entirely. His shoulders are perhaps surprisingly broad, but the chest and abdomen lack the sharp, heavy definition of an Ahroun's body. Of a Galliard's. Of that heavybrowed youth's, who is her stepson. His skin is tanned from being out on the water; a faint redness over the shoulders and upper chest suggesting that he sailed here shirtless, put it on before he came in to shore.

Like this, it's easier to see how he breathes. Elegant young wolf, reckless and confident: but it's harder to lie when she can see the quickened, deepened rise and fall of every breath. He wears no belt, so it's just a matter of sliding button from eye, lowering the zipper. Even his underwear is designer: black seamless boxer-briefs with a band of brilliant orange around the waist, around each leg; a thin, shameless line of orange piping running down the center front, following the line of his cock.

Another step or two forward leaves the slacks on the floor, his phone, wallet, keys, cigarettes and lighter thumping lightly. One more after that, the boxer briefs. He's that much closer now, naked, silent, watching her.

[Hilary Durante] There are so many things she should be that she is not.

As a stepmother, she should be attentive without interfering, friendly while still an authority in the household, able to live civilly and respectfully with the children of another woman while demanding respect and civility from them as well.

As a woman -- of this world, at least, the one she's always known -- she is supposed to be emotional. She is supposed to be a great many things based on her gender, such as nurturing, peaceful, protective, and so on.

As a married woman, she should be faithful. Loving. She should take quite seriously her responsibility to fulfill her vows of caring for all aspects of the well-being and growth of her husband. She should belong to him, and to him alone, til one of them should die.

As the mate of a Garou, she should be anywhere but here, watching a Cliath Ragabash of her mate's tribe slide piece after piece of clothing off of his body, toying with one of the rings he gave her. The one he gave her, in fact, on their first anniversary. It's a simpler item, though no less expensive than her wedding ring: just a circle of diamonds. Rather small ones, when compared to some others she owns. She should not be playing with this human-crafted trinket handed to her in a velvet box from a pair of large but elegant hands when her eyes are locked on a more slender, more dextrous set of hands teasing buttons out of their holes.

All in all, considering she's breaking so many rules, Hilary seems rather at ease with the universe at the moment. She is not a great many things she ought to be, but one of the benefits of Ivan is that he seems content with the fact that she is warm, and sensual, and ...whatever else he feels she is, whatever else his mind interprets her to be.

She never moves, but for the twisting of that ring, idle and slow. Her legs stay crossed. She is leaning back, leaning on the arm, and watching the sun crawl all over his flesh as it's revealed. They're brown. He could see them out by the water twenty minutes ago, looking at him from the shade of her hat. Big, warm brown eyes. Friendly and sweet eyes.

Those eyes follow his shirt off his shoulders, and those eyes trace his abdominal muscles as they shift, as his chest expands to breathe. Those eyes watch him drop his slacks and step out of them like he stepped out of his shoes. She looks over his legs, observes his thighs and the shapes of his calves, watches the way his whole body moves together when he comes a little closer.

Hilary never looks at his face, or his eyes, to smile or encourage, while he's stripping for her. For her pleasure. And because she didn't get to see inside his boat like she wanted to. And because she asked. So politely.

There's not a hitch when he takes off his underwear, no quick blink or widening of her eyes or flick away before she gets up the nerve to look at his cock. Her head does tip slightly as he loses the boxer briefs, but her eyes are on his cock. And she makes a little noise, a hmm or an mmm, and it's maddeningly hard to tell which it is. Her thumb stops playing with her ring, and she slowly lifts her eyes to Ivan's again.

"Come here," she murmurs, sitting up a bit, uncrossing her legs.

[Ivan Press] When her eyes return to his face, that ubiquitous cocksure grin of his is gone. He's as intense and unsmiling as he was in the club, on the stairs, midway between dance floor and lounge.

Come here, she says.

And he does, his steps slow but easy, hands loose at his sides. The muscles in his thighs flex and release on every step. His feet are bony and long-toed, a little dirty from walking around the deck barefoot on the way over. His hair is a dappled darkish blond, his eyebrows and eyelashes nearly black, but his body hair -- what little there is of it, a dusting over forearms and legs; a line of it down from his navel to the base of his cock -- is a light gold, catching the afternoon light.

He's half-hard already. From her eyes, or her voice, or perhaps just the fact that he's been waiting since Wednesday.

He stops when he's right in front of her, his feet on either side of hers, his legs all but brushing hers. Quicker still now, his breathing, and heavier.

[Hilary Durante] This time he can tell it's an mm, though softer than before, a whispered version of the noise.

And he knows even when she leans forward and murmurs, "Une telle joli garçon..." that she wants him, because her breath washes warm right over his skin while the sound of her voice washes all the way up through him. The tone is appreciative. So is her mouth, those silken and glossed lips pressing against the silken and heated head of his cock. It's a very different sort of kiss than the one she reciprocated in the club, and this time she leans into him, and this time

she puts her hands on him. Her bangles clink and clatter quietly against one another as her hands lift, falling past her wrists. Everything about her feels warm: the daylight and her skin have heated every trace of metal on her, so gold and platinum and white gold all feel like they've been lying in the sunshine with her. Which they have. Her palms are light on his hips, though, her thumbs tracing his pelvic girdle for a moment while she lays that soft, hot, lingering kiss against his cock.

Just that, though. It lingers but it doesn't grow. She leans back a little and looks up at him, her eyes slightly glazed, and it seems for a moment she's testing him, maybe even teasing him, except that she only looks at him for that moment. Her hand slides around him from his hip to the base of his cock, and she starts to slowly, almost gently, stroke him, watching him as her hand moves

and as her bangles shift on her wrist and forearm.

"You aren't human?" she whispers, though it doesn't sound much like a question. Sort of like a confirmation.

[Ivan Press] It's French that slips out of her mouth, and he can tell even when he doesn't speak a word of it. Some line of amusement traces its way through his mind. He starts to laugh, thinks to say something like

if you people don't stop speaking french, i'm going to converse in nothing but russian,

but then her mouth is on him, as soft and silken and warm as he remembers, and his stomach sucks in on an involuntary inhale. Ivan shifts: experienced, sexually confident Ivan, shuddering like a virgin; planting his feet wider apart as though he might fall if he doesn't.

His brow is furrowed, his lips parted when she looks up. When she starts to stroke him his mouth opens wider in a silent expression, a groan that doesn't quite voice itself, and then

she asks him if he's human, as though she already knew the answer.

His eyes flash to hers. That alone should answer her. The quickness of it, the flare behind them. She's put him off balance somehow; upset every expectation. He doesn't know where he stands and this leaves him unpredictable, himself: volatile, even with his almost-negligible rage.

His tone is husky, barely more than a whisper. "Does it matter?"

[Hilary Durante] Slowly. Lightly. Her hand is warm and soft but dry, and she hasn't got him sweating yet, hasn't licked him wet. So: slowly, lightly, she strokes his cock while he stands before her. She hasn't taken a thing off but her sunglasses, which sit on the writing desk across the way with her keys.

His response, throttled and hushed with want, makes her smile faintly with slow, almost aching amusement. She doesn't stop. She keeps touching him like this, touching him as though the fact that it's making him plant his feet and breathe like that isn't the point, like getting him gasping and thrusting into her hand isn't the point, like she's just touching him because... well.

She wants to feel his cock in her hand, searing to the touch. She wants to feel him go from half-hard to all but throbbing from need. She just likes the feel of it in her hand. She just wants to grow dazed and a little high from the sensation of his dick encirled by her palm, and just like kissing him in the club last night, it feels like she could do this for hours.

"Well," Hilary whispers the words moving as slowly as her hand, "if you aren't human, and you aren't like me, then I don't need to ask if you happened to bring any condoms with you, now do I?"

Her hand tightens a little, squeezes him gently. Then light again, but faster. Just a little faster. "And I can let you give me all that hot, sticky cum of yours if you want to."

She leans forward then, even as the words are leaving her mouth, and kisses his cock a second time, more langorous this time, like the second kiss in the nightclub was wetter and more hungry than the first. "And if you're good," she says, a little lower -- a little harder -- than before.

[Ivan Press] Ivan's eyes are on her face. It's unlike him to seek connection like that. He's well aware of what this is, and what it's not. He's not the sort who needs kisses, promises, the illusion of emotional attachment in order to get what he wants from these encounters.

But ultimately his affairs are a little like his easy generosity; his cheerful hospitality. He gives and he gets, and while he never churns up those deeper, darker emotions near the bottom, some amount of happiness is exchanged, is given and taken, between both parties -- all parties -- involved. It's a two-way street, he said to damaged Fang kin +1 a few days ago. For Ivan, that's the truth of it.

There's nothing of the sort from Hilary. There's no connection. Even when she strokes him like that, there's a sense that she does it for herself. For her own inscrutable purposes. He could look deeper; the truth is he doesn't want to.

He does look at her though. He does keep his eyes on her, and when she keeps going he's panting quietly; he's thrusting in counterpoint to the motion of her hand, the lean muscles at his lower back and flank flexing against her. It's possible he's only vaguely aware of it himself; only vaguely aware that he's moving like that, moving against her like that, rocking against her soft palm. He's hard in her hand now, his cock long and lean as he is, and when she grips him she can feel his pulse there, quick.

She whispers to him,

and his eyes close. He could ask her if she's on contraceptive pills, but that would be a stupid question. He could ask why the mate of a Silver Fang is on contraceptive pills, but that would be breaking some unspoken law; some boundary set by the very fact that they're meeting here, miles out of town, miles away from anyone who might recognize them, and even so, even here, she was careful not to be seen with him.

Ivan doesn't ask anything at all. Her hand tightens. She says

hot sticky cum

and he groans under his breath, and before he's caught his breath again her mouth touches his cock and he jerks in her hand; his hips thrust against her half-involuntarily.

His eyes snap open a second later. There was a flare of anger earlier, unusual for him, under the sun and at the docks. Something like wariness and rebellion when she asked him -- told him to undress. The same thing when she said come here, and the same thing, that same flare of instinctive resistance, when she says

what she says.

Ivan laughs under his breath. There's a hardness about that sound, the corner of his mouth flicking up. A glint of canine tooth there; a hint, just a hint, of bared teeth.

He asks her softly, "How much longer do you think I'm going to roll over for you?"

[Hilary Durante] If nothing else -- even if she's using him, even if she's enjoying him with little thought given to what he's getting out of this -- maybe Ivan can tell she is, in fact, enjoying him. That she does, in fact, want him. She wouldn't be here if she didn't, though this is no long held-back lust finally finding expression in this room. They've only met twice before, and barely know each other's names. They knew each other's styles before each other's names: her 102-foot catamaran, his grand entrance to the nightclub.

Ivan's been waiting since Wednesday. And so has she. Because there's no telling what she would have done if he'd taken her hand and led her out of the club to the bathroom or to his car and yanked down his pants and pulled down hers and turned her over so they didn't even have to get everything completely off before fucking in there, hard and fast and fervent til her nails clawed at the upholstery and til he bit back growls rising in his throat.

She might have jerked her hand away, or slapped him if he invited her to the ladies' room. She might have told him to take her somewhere. She might have --

god, there's no way for him to know.

Because right now she could look up at him like this and actually give him some kind of answer to that, tell him how long she really thinks he's going to 'roll over' or put up with this, how long she thinks he can stand to be her plaything before it pisses him off or turns him off or both. She is looking at him. Seated on the armchair, fully dressed, fully jeweled, holding his eyes while he pants, and while he thrusts like that into her hand, she's staring up at him.

Those warm eyes of hers are glinting with arousal. With fascination.

And she doesn't answer him. She says, instead: "Was that a subtle invitation to ride you?"

He might not answer her, either. In any case, she's kissing his cock one last time, a slightly louder, more wanting mmm! as her lips press to his flesh, as her tongue comes out of her mouth and gives him one long, slow lick up that curving V, lapping whatever precum has beaded on his slit, but never, not once, closing her lips around him. She's letting go of him, and rising to her feet, careful to hold herself back so that his cock doesn't brush up against her lovely skirt, her pretty blouse.

In heels, again. They're eye to eye, again. She doesn't kiss him. She's tasting him in her mouth, licking her lips, and saying quietly:

"There's a button at the back of my blouse," she tells him. "And a zipper on the side of my skirt. Though I'll understand if you'd rather watch me take them off, it will take a bit longer that way."

[Ivan Press] He does answer her --

"That was a question, Mrs. Durante."

-- and there's something volatile and hard about that, too. Because while he's most definitely not turned off, Ivan is on the edge, on the very verge of being pissed off. His jaw squares as his teeth clench as she kisses his cock again, one last time, and he makes a low, muffled sound against the backs of his teeth when that kiss becomes a lick and that lick becomes such a slow, luxurious sweep up the most sensitive inch of his entire body.

Then she's letting go. And getting up. And his eyes are opening, and with the window at her back and the light in his face his irises are visibly green, threaded with amber and gold and hazel. His eyes watch her tongue lick her lips. There's a moment when he's very close to saying

I want to watch

but that would be something too perilously close to spite for his tastes. Another beat, and then he reaches for her, his hands at her waist turning her efficiently around. He undoes the one button at the back of her blouse. Their room faces the lake. They can see treetops; the roofs of neighboring buildings. They can see the water beyond it, invitingly blue. He's found the zipper too, and he lowers it, and while he's pulling her skirt down her hips and letting it drop; while he's drawing her blouse from her shoulders the way a butler takes a coat

he's thinking he has no idea who this is. He has no idea who she is beneath that soft cool voice, those soft warm eyes. And that's a rarity; something a little unsettling. He knows who the other women are, that he's currently pursuing with varying degrees of avidity. He doesn't know their details and their life histories and anything about them at all, but he knows who they are; sized them up in minutes; has them categorized and sorted. Damaged Goods. Ingenue. Spoiled Brat. Golddigger.

He lets the blouse fall, next. He touches her back, the dip of her spine. He turns her around again to face him, or perhaps she turns herself, and he looks at her and without wholly meaning to himself, asks:

"Why are you here?"

[Hilary Durante] One thing she's noticed about him is how he calls her Mrs. Durante, and Mrs. Durante only, as though to remind her -- more than himself -- of what she really is: another man's wife. Older than he is, and taken, and supposed to be an adult, perhaps. He doesn't call her Hilary, and it would be odd if he did. She doesn't even call him Ivan, really. Dove, she called him. Handsome boy, in another language. God only knows what nicknames he'd let her get away with.

He doesn't get an answer to his question. Possibly because of the look she gives him when he utters that hard-edged comment. Put out. Not pouting, not pursing her lips in a sad little expression, but like he just tipped over a glass on her table and was slow to pick it up, was grumpy and spiteful about letting the fluid inside spread across the tablecloth, saturate it, stain it, drip off the edge and onto her lap, onto the carpet.

But she licks his cock like that anyway, and she rises to her feet and invites him to help her out of her clothes anyway, and for all his near-seething aggravation, for his flares of anger that started on the boardwalk and have been growing steadily every time they flash, Ivan puts his hands on her and turns her around. The button is like a pearl, and he takes it from its loop and pulls the shirt up over her head, drops it down to the ground. It's a tight fit, even with the single button undone, and slides over her skin with a silken whisper.

He can see the muscles in her back flex as she lifts up her arms to help him, sees her pale skin and the band of her pale lavender, nearly-white satin bra with its trimmings of black lace. Her hair rises and falls again, swinging across her shoulderblades in heavy curls

The skirt fits her well, too. Ivan has to tug to get it off, while she watches the town through the window. Her underwear matches her bra, because of course it does, lines of lace crossing the cheeks of her ass, which is no more voluptous than her breasts but just as small and perky as they are. And now he's behind her, at her back, and she doesn't seem unnerved, even with his anger, even with his rage. With her back to him she could be anyone. Any dark-haired, thin, well-bred woman about to fuck him, that is. And this is when he realizes

he has no idea who she is.

Ivan touches her, and she turns her head to look at him over her shoulder. Rubies dangle from her earlobes, and bracelets hang on her wrists. She hasn't taken off her shoes. Another woman would have taken off her wedding ring as soon as she got up here, put it somewhere safe, where she wouldn't see it while kissing and stroking the cock of some man not-her-husband. Not her mate.

There's a look in her eyes there hasn't been. It's closer to the charmed look she had when he gave her his card, that flicker of sincerity and warmth that isn't just in the tone of her voice or the brightness of her smile. Something softer. Proof that she's a real person, maybe. Or very, very good at pretending to be one.

Ivan turns her around, and she steps closer to him, her arms looping around his neck, draping lightly over his shoulders, even as he's asking that unexpected, unintended thing he does.

"That's a silly question," she whispers, as the satin of her panties meets the tip of his cock, as her nearness pushes him up, rubbing against her belly slightly. But this question she answers, even as she's tipping her head to the side and kissing the side of his neck as though there's nothing to be afraid of, putting her mouth on the throat of a werewolf, and one who can smell the lingering traces of some subtle and expensive perfume that's mingled with her own scent to create something entirely new, and just as unique:

"Because you make me wet, Ivan." And another kiss, slower, trailing up to his jawline, to his earlobe, which she nips at, then flicks with her tongue as though to soothe it. "Because I want you." Quieter, barely breathed, her hand sliding between them to his cock again, to hold it against her, to pleasure him again, to perhaps try and get across to him that she wants to fuck him. "Because," and this is no more vulgar than anything else she's said since coming up here, and she has said some very, very filthy things, "I want you to put this big, nasty cock inside me and fuck me til I'm screaming, alright?"

[Ivan Press] Some part of Ivan wants to assure this woman that this is not how he is. He is not jagged and shorttempered. He doesn't get angry at minor inconveniences; changes to a presumed plan. He doesn't get riled at perceived acts of dominance. He's a goddamn Ragabash, for fuck's sake. Plans mean nothing to him, and his natural position is at the bottom of every totem pole. Some part of him wants to explain all this, and explain that the laughing, quicktongued creature on the lake and in the club is who he really is,

as if it even mattered what she thinks of him, or thinks he is.

She does answer this question. The answer isn't really what he's looking for, though, but that's his own fault; the question was badly phrased. He's not sure what he was asking, either.

Then she's against him and her arms are around his neck, and he bends to the curve of her shoulder and neck to inhale, sharply, the smell of her. The smell of her skin and her perfume and, beneath that, the scent of her blood and breeding and history, rich, intoxicating. The scent that he should not, by all rights and laws of all the many societies he belongs or pretends to belong to, know like this at all. Intimately.

It's not that Ivan has never fucked a married woman before. Or a woman in a relationship with someone not-him. This is different, though. She is not his. She belongs to someone else, a tribesman. On a basic, instinctive level he knows he's trespassing; he's stealing from his own

and he holds on to what he's stolen, his hands coming up against her back to press her against him. Long fingers, so dexterous. There's strength in him after all, in those supple muscles, lithe bones. The ends of her hair swing against his knuckles. His fingers curl in on themselves, pull at her back, as she slides hers around his cock. Her mouth drifts over his neck, his jaw. His opens to press tongue and tooth against her shoulder, wanting, wanting, and then she says

put this
inside me
and fuck me

and his hands reach down and scoop her up by her cute little ass; he pulls her up against his long lean body and this time, this time when he kisses her it is, in fact, ferocious and passionate. He mauls her face. His eyes are furiously shut and he eats at her mouth and even like this his balance is flawless, imperturbable, as he swings her around and moves them blindly in the direction where he remembers the bed to be, stopping only when his knees hit the side of the mattress.

Her back hits the mattress a moment later, and he's right there with her, over her. He moves her up the bed and climbs half onto it, one knee on the mattress as he bends over her with his hands on her body, his mouth on her breasts, his hands tugging her bra out of the way and his mouth on her nipples. "Oh, god," he mutters.

[Hilary Durante] The trouble with trying to explain to Hilary -- and this is, perhaps, one of many reasons why he doesn't try -- that this is not how he is is that she might ask why. She might ask why he's like this today, then. Worse, she might ask him why he's trying to explain himself. It's unlikely, and the more he sees of her the more unlikely he has to know it would be, but there's a chance. There's a chance she'd ask, and he might simply not have an answer.

Beyond that, she's touching his body and pressing her own up against him. She's stroking his cock and kissing his neck and he shouldn't be inhaling her scent. He shouldn't be feeling that silky lingerie contrasted against her smooth skin, the scratchier lace, flicking against his flesh when she moves to lick his throat. She's fearless, though, and except for that ring on her finger and the goddamn wrongness of it all there's no sense in Hilary that she's worried about that husband of hers, no sense that she's worried, even, about Ivan losing his temper and harming her.

She sucks a fold of his flesh into her mouth and scrapes her teeth over it. Once. Twice. Licks him again, kisses him there, stays on him while he's folding his arms around her as though to make sure she doesn't try to run away, now. Puts his mouth on her shoulder and moves against her belly til she's telling him,

what she tells him,

and there's something undeniably rough about it. Not malicious or angry or even impatient but hard-edged, grinding against his arousal. There's definitely demand in those words, in her tone, twined neatly and perfectly with something like pleading, but she's not asking him to make tender, sweet love to her on that big, soft bed. The words she uses are fuck me. And something about the way she says them tells him she means it.

Her legs fold around him when he picks her up, grabbing her ass. It shifts her up on him, no longer sucking on his throat but riding up on his torso, breasts brushing his face with satin and lace before he has her on him, before he's tilting his head up to kiss her like that, ravenous and vicious. She doesn't gasp in surprise, doesn't moan aloud in pleasure, but rubs herself on the ridges of his abdomen while their mouths are open to each other, wet on each other.

A moment later the room spins, and she's toppled down to the bed, which springs back under her. She's laughing slightly, hair spread out over the bedspread and arms loose and lifted as Ivan follows, jumping on her, pawing at her lingerie to get it out of the fucking way. And her nipples are small and pink and, to be honest, just as pert as the rest of her body.

Hilary laughs. She tilts her head back, eyes closed, and makes a lower sound than the ones before: mmm, again, but heavier, weighted with enjoyment as his mouth closes on her, as his lips flutter on her skin with that nigh-unto-overcome muttering.

"Take these off for me, Ivan," she all but purrs, and her legs are sliding up either side of him too, the straps of her heels brushing his flanks. The heels themselves scrape lightly over his ass, over his thighs, gently. "The lingerie, too." Her words are curling in his ears with amusement, with arousal, with a sort of unfurling pleasure. "Show me what a civilized gentleman you are."

[Ivan Press] There are any number of reasons why he doesn't try to explain how he really is to her. What she might ask is only part of it, and perhaps a small part at that. The greater portion of it is, quite simply:

he shouldn't have to explain himself to her. He shouldn't want to.

So there's no explanation. It's lost a moment later anyway in a storm of skin and flesh and warmth and -- down on the bed they are, and he's over her hungry as a beast, his mouth on her tits and his eyes closed and his lean agile body twisting over hers to get his hands on her tits, get his mouth on her nipples; get his cock sliding hot and hard against her thigh, her lingerie, something.

And

he's nearly overcome here, so soon, and meanwhile she's still got every last wit firmly in hand. She's wrapping her legs around him and letting her heels graze his lower body, telling him to take them off for her. His eyes flash up to hers. The sound he makes is very close to a snarl, and he catches her nipple between his teeth,

but gently, lightly still. A moment later his eyes close and he sucks her breast into his mouth again, sucks at her for an endless span of seconds before he shifts, presses his brow to the center of her chest, catches his breath, catches himself.

"Get up."

When he first murmurs this, his lips are pressed to the shallow indent between the crests of her ribcage; a few inches down from her solar plexus. It's so muffled, and his body weighs so utterly on hers, that it's unclear what he really means.

A moment later he lifts his head and pushes himself up, back. He's kneeling on the mattress now, sitting back on his heels.

"Get up," he repeats again, and urges her up, helps her up on her feet on the soft, vast bed. Like a civilized gentleman.

[Hilary Durante] There's some noise she makes when Ivan snarls like that, when he puts his teeth on her nipple, and it's hard to describe. An intake of air that rattles all the way down her throat like a soft growl, vibrating her tongue, purring as it moves into her chest. A gasp, maybe, a purr, but something edged and ragged and wanting while he's so very gentle, while he's soothing himself enough to suckle on her instead, til he calms down enough to do this. To show her what a gentleman he is, perhaps.

Get up.

No resistance to that order, no balking. But she's smirking slightly as she obeys him, unfolding her legs and moving, with shocking and almost boneless control of that body of hers, from lying on her back to kneeling in front of him. Only after he gets out of the way, of course, sits back on his heels with his cock hard and yearning, with his hands reaching out to give her help that turns out to be utterly unnecessary.

On her knees like this, nearly naked, it's vividly clear how long and lean her body is, how slender her limbs, how flat that belly that should goddamnwell be producing brats for the nation, for that mate of hers, whoever he is, but

they're not thinking about that right now.

She kneels in front of him a moment, then that coy smile grows a bit and she plants one heeled foot on the bed, then the other, rising up with her hands light on his shoulders, then on his scalp, his hands holding her steady by hips or thighs. Hilary strokes his hair with her fingernails, his eyes level with her inner thighs, just below her cunt and the narrow swath of pale lavender fabric covering it.

Holding onto him for balance, yet not losing her own, she lifts her left foot and places it on his right shoulder, the miniscule buckle of her shoe right beside his jaw.

[Ivan Press] Ivan doesn't exactly sit idle and gentlemanly while Hilary rises to her feet. His hands are at her waist when she kneels facing him. They hold each other apart for a few seconds. He doesn't need to help her up, not even in her heels and on that soft bed, but his hands stay on her anyway until hers come to him.

Then he's letting her balance herself on him. His hands are dropping to his thighs; moving in to fold over his balls, wrap around his cock. He strokes himself slowly, lazily, and when she starts to stand

he leans suddenly into her like a striking snake, like something sinuous and predatory, and his mouth is open and it's hard to say if there's more tooth or tongue to this, if he's dragging his flat human teeth over her skin or licking her or --

-- but his mouth is all over her, regardless. He sucks at the underside of her breast, bites at the lean expanse of her belly, licks at the edge of her lace panties. All of that fast, quick, in a single sliding twist of his head and shoulders, back and forth, viperlike, cobralike, while she's rising to her feet. Then he's sitting back again, stroking himself a little harder, a little faster. Her balance is as perfect as he thought it might be. She lifts her foot and put it on his shoulder and his eyes don't leave hers as he twists his head sideways, so fast that it's sure to be a bite,

but no. He kisses her ankle. And then, delicately, with a natural, effortless precision that speaks more strongly of his half-beast nature than any amount of rage or pure breeding; with the natural, effortless precision of someone who knows what it's like not to have opposeable thumbs, not to use one's hands at all -- he uses his teeth to tug that tiny buckle loose.

It's not a show of eroticism. It's not some misguided attempt to seduce with what his mouth can do. He uses his mouth because, very simply, his hands are occupied. And he doesn't want to stop stroking his own cock long enough to take her heels off for her.

With that buckle loose, with that strap worked free, her foot can slide out. He grips thin leather between his teeth; flings the shoe over his shoulder with a snap of his head. Leans forward in the same motion, the same return-arc, runs his tongue in a swift unerring course up the inside of her thigh straight to her clit,

which he sucks at for a single melting moment, mercilessly intense, before sitting back again.

A quick deep rise and fall of his chest; a breath drawn and released. "Now the other one," he murmurs.

[Hilary Durante] [Dex + Athletics]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hilary Durante] They are, as a tribe, considered somewhat idle. Their many cars, their pleasure cruises around the lake, the amount of time and money they waste at nightclubs or restaurants. The servants they have to do for them what they simply find too dull to do themselves. They are gentlemen and gentlewomen, lords and ladies, and it isn't hard to imagine either their ilk engaging in the stuff of Hellfire Clubs, or having sex for procreation only, with pajamas rumpled up out of the way and the lights off with their eyes facing opposite directions.

Neither Ivan nor Hilary are particularly idle at the moment, though. They are not summoning Satan and they are sure as hell not hiding their lust for each other. The afternoon sun glares through the windows and illuminates their flesh, his suntouched and hers all but porcelain, glints off her jewelry and off of his hair and turns him gold, her incandescent. While he jerks himself off, and while she gives a laughing little gasp at the way he tears his mouth all over her as she's standing up.

"Oh, you hungry thing," she breathes, when his teeth touch her, and make her thigh shiver slightly under his mouth.

"Yes," comes whispering from between her teeth when he uses his to get her shoe off of her, tosses it away like an animal shaking it, ruining it. her now-bare foot stays on his shoulder.

But that near-perfect balance of hers falters slightly when he tongues his way up her thigh and licks her clit through her panties, sucks on her. That gets a noise out of her, a single hard cry of shock and pleasure at once, which makes her grab at his hair with one hand and his shoulder with the other, leaning forward.

Still she doesn't fall, doesn't topple back to the bed. Her hands are vicious on him though, and for a second her cunt just grinds back on his mouth, before he stops and she

wrenches his head where she holds it, snarling, even as he's telling her the other one, even as there's a darkness gleaming in the depths of those sweet, friendly brown eyes of hers. She's breathing a little harder as her hand eases in his hair, as her fingers stop pulling, as she lowers her bare foot to the mattress and starts to lift her right one up to his left shoulder.

"Bad," she whispers, letting her heel dig into his pectoral muscle ever so slightly. Like a dare.

[Ivan Press] There's barely enough length of hair there to grasp. Hilary's fingernails score over his scalp; her fingers twist close to the roots. She wrenches his head back and his eyes strike onto hers. His teeth are bared now. For a second there, a dangerous, unstable instant, the look in his eyes is glazed and animal, totally devoid of human intelligence. And -- yes.

There's a darkness there.

Her hand eases. His tongue flicks across the edge of his teeth; a lick of his chops, an animal gesture of threat. Bad, she calls him, and her heel digs in.

Ivan uses his hands this time. He grabs her shoe and tears at the clasp, the strap, rips it off her foot if he has to. He doesn't toss this one over his shoulder. He throws it, viciously, overhanded. It smashes into the wall behind the bed hard enough to startle the people next door. Tumbles to the ground, and before it hits he's grabbed her behind the knees and tugged, slammed her back down on her back.

And a second later, on her stomach. His hands were hard on her that time, flipping her over and then slamming down on either side of her shoulders. He comes down over her, lean chest to her lean back, the both of them lean and toned and surprisingly athletic. He puts his weight on her. Weighs her down against the mattress; grinds himself against the cleft of her ass, slow and heavy.

"Now what," he murmurs in her ear -- velvet and dark, "would make you think a wolf who would fuck another wolf's mate is anything but?"

[Hilary Durante] A moment ago she was trying not to fall.

After a dark moment of meeting each other's eyes, her shoe is richocheting off the wall to hit the floor and before it gets to the carpet Ivan has her on her back. And she falls hard, since one of her feet was on his shoulder when he threw her down, the bed bouncing harder than it did when he first dropped her onto it. It knocks the air out of her lungs, and she doesn't have time to reclaim it before he's flipping her on her belly, so when he comes down over her she's gasping.

Her right ankle is reddened from where he tore her shoe off, and he'd gripped her any harder there would be bruises on her fair skin where he threw her on her stomach.

A moment she lies there, panting, stock still under his body, barely able to move from his weight coming down on her. When Ivan starts to rub against her body, his cock tugging and shifting the satin that even at best only half-covers her ass, Hilary gives a shudder, and this close he can see her eyes flicker closed for a moment.

She's enjoying this.

But then a moment later her eyes are open and she's bucking her hips back against him, roughly, not to arouse him further but as though trying to get him off, her teeth set against one another. She's not strong, but she pushes herself up on her elbows. The pretense is there, the way she pushes and the way she writhes and the fact that she mutters, snaps, calls him "You dirty brute --"

yet still her ass is sliding against his cock, every twist of her hips engineered to stroke him over, and over, and over again, tilting her hips as though to receive him before wriggling away again, escaping again.

[Ivan Press] Hilary can't see his face like this, so of course she can't see the expressions that war over it. She can't see the lust there, or the turmoil there, or the darkness and anger that lies beyond whatever line she keeps driving him right up against. Pushes him against the way he pushes her into the bed. Threatens to tip him right over with every slide of her ass, every grind of her flesh over his.

"Fuck," he swears, a low obscenity in her ear, and then she's twisting away from him again, and that curse turns into a hard laugh, and he's grabbing her by the wrists and pulling them up over her head, toppling her back down on her face and her chest.

"Is that what you want me to be?" he asks. "Is that what you came here for?"

His hand pins hers. His body pins hers, and his free hand is sliding under her belly and between her legs as his knees are pushing those legs apart; he pulls her panties out of the way and his fingers are sliding between her lips, are sliding over the mouth of her cunt and

he doesn't push them into her. He doesn't want to, yet. He wants his cock to be the first part of him inside her, and he wants her with a sudden black madness that unsettles him even as he's muttering,

"Get up."

again. And he's letting her go, letting her up, sitting back once again while his hands on her hips pull her up to her feet.

"Get up. And bend over. Put your hands on the headboard."

[Hilary Durante] Earlier -- and it seems like longer though it was only minutes -- he slid his hand over her bared back and he asked her why she was here, why she came here. Why she was in this hotel room, why she was meeting him at the yacht club dressed so fucking demurely while wearing this underneath it, wearing that sunhat and the jewels her husband gave her so that she could meet this man who she's old enough to have babysat and take him to some hotel room and stroke his cock. And run her tongue over it. And fuck him.

Why. Why, why, what does she want, why would she do this, who the fuck is she and why --

but it doesn't matter. And she almost gets away, so he pins her down. Hilary fights him, oh of course she fights him, flexing her hands into fists as the bangles on her arms bump against his fingers and his knuckles and dig into her skins. She wrenches and she struggles and she turns her face into the bedspread for a moment, her shoulders shuddering. There's a thin line of sweat down the dip of her spine.

She makes a strangled noise, almost a snarl, when he starts to work his hand under her body. Her hips buck again while he's muttering in her ear about what she wants, what she's here for, what he is, and when he finds her

he finds a wash of wetness over his fingers, her arousal so heady and so overpowering it's a wonder she has any of her senses left at all. Ivan touches her, and Hilary cries out, only to bite her lower lip and hold something else back, hold everything back, even as she's opening her legs and all but fucking his hand,

just like that.

He might hear something, as he lets her go. Some noise, some utterance, some sound that's almost disappointed, or protesting, truncated sharply as he moves back off of her body.

Hilary is still a moment, gasping, then her back arches as she pushes herself up on her elbows, looking at him over her shoulder with dark eyes, parted lips. He pulls on her hips and she pulls away, watching him. "No."

[Ivan Press] When she looks over her shoulder he looks so much the same as he did moments ago, the first time he told her to get up. He's sitting on his heels with his knees apart, his cock in his hands; he's sitting there with the afternoon light bright on his smooth body, his youthful, pretty face; sparking golden iridescence off the sweat starting to break on his skin, sparking golden gleam off his hair. Such a pretty boy, she said earlier, commanding him to undress; before she'd taken him quite so far, before she started breaking him like a stallion in reverse, from civilized to

this.

He looks nothing like he did a moment ago. His eyes are dark, the pupils so wide, and he's panting with his lips apart and his teeth showing in flickers and flashes on every breath. He's licking his lips and then he's licking her taste off his fingers, sucking her wetness off his fingertips while his eyes pin her. Hold hers. Burn.

"No?" he repeats, softly, like he no longer understands the word. Or any word. Language at all. He sucks her slick off his palm, last; an audible pop as the suction breaks.

"Bend over," he says. "Put your hands on the headboard.

"So I can eat your fucking cunt."

[Hilary Durante] It's a wonder she's sane. And she seems so, so sane, though perhaps that itself is madness, that she could be so wet, that she could want so badly, and still

getting up on her knees now, looking over her shoulder so she can watch him lick her slick off his fingers, stroke his cock, stare at her like he's losing his mind. She should know better. Dangerous thing, to push something like him so far. Surely she knows she's pushing him. She has to know what she's doing to him. Her eyes are glassy from desire when she moves up onto her knees, reaching behind her back to finally unclasp her disheveled bra and remove it, tossing it off the bed with a vaguely irritated little sigh.

Her bangles clink together with every motion.

She looks down at her panties and quite calmly re-adjusts them over herself, the satin dark where his mouth and her cunt have made it wet, and licks just the side of one finger. "So rude," she chides him, glancing over her shoulder at him again, shaking her head a little. Rising up on her knees, she tucks her thumbs into her underwear and starts to draw them down off her hips, over her ass, with deliberate and lazy slowness.

[Ivan Press] It's not even really a sound he makes. It's just -- a change in the way he's sitting, his spine turning a little more liquid; his hand a little rougher on his cock. It's just how his eyelids droop a notch, and his lips part, and his breath exhales slow and dragging.

She draws her panties off. He reaches out and smooths his palm over her lower back; rubs at the soft fine skin on the curve of her ass. Draws his hand down lower, then, gently pulling her pussy lips open to look at her,

hot and drenchingly wet,

the inner folds of her pussy glistening in the light from the window. "Oh, that's beautiful," he breathes. His thumb traces her slit; his eyes catch hers over her shoulder. She's so wet. The ball of his thumb is too in seconds, stroking over and over the mouth of her cunt, frictionless. "Such a sweet, beautiful, greedy little cunt."

His fingers splay over her ass. His thumb slides downward further; nudges her flesh apart to find her clit. He touches her the way she touched him moments ago -- a lifetime ago -- his thumb rolling over and over her clit, his touch heavy and patient and

his eyes on hers, locked.

[Hilary Durante] He's using horrible language. Filthy, really. Not up to the standards of their society at all. Katherine Bellamonte would faint if she could hear the things he's saying to her. If she knew the things he was doing to her, this bride and belonging of so-and-so of such-and-such, whoever he is, over in Paris. Or she would frenzy.

Hilary, however, is gasping as he comes over to her and pushes just enough on her lower back to make it easier for himself to look at her pussy. Her panties are still on, not even to her knees yet, but she leaves them right where they are, stretched between one thigh and the other, while Ivan starts touching her ass and exploring between her legs, muttering about what he sees.

She looks at him, her breasts lifting and falling with her breathing, her spine twisted so she can watch. "You're disgusting," she mutters under her breath, while he tells her that she's sweet, beautiful, greedy, while he rubs his thumb over her smooth, smooth flesh.

Some women, with their husbands in Paris, wouldn't feel it necessary to keep themselves quite so perfectly smooth, but it's already quite clear that Hilary is not like many wives. Good wives. Good mates.

Her breathing is elevated -- of course. Her sweat glistens on her, a diamond sheen that he can brush away with his hand or his tongue. "Kiss me," she whispers, shuddering slightly every time his thumb rolls over her clit.

[Ivan Press] You're disgusting, she mutters.

"You like it," he counters. It's immediate: as quick and light as their repartee on the boats; at the club. Quick and light over a deep, bottomless sinkhole of lust. Just look at his eyes. Just look at how his eyes drop from hers for a second, two, while his thumb eases off her clit and

drags up her cunt again. Look at how he licks his lips.

Then: his eyes flicking back to hers. It's hard to say what she wants him to kiss. He thinks he knows, though; but he doesn't put his mouth on her cunt after all. He moves forward, knees whispering over the bedspread. He comes over her with his hand turning on her ass, turning so his fingers are gliding over her cunt now, caressing her soft and gentle now where moments ago he was throwing her on the bed, flipping her like a fish.

He bends over her. The mattress dents beneath his fist, planting just outside hers. His eyes are open when he kisses her,

and this is soft, too, gentle and slow and patient while his hand shifts, grips at her hips, pulls her back against the rigid length of his cock, which he grinds against the cleft of her ass with hard, deliberate rocks of his hips.

[Hilary Durante] You like it, he mutters right back, and she exhales a sigh, a huff of laughter, a scoff, an agreement -- whatever it is.

Somehow they've slowed down. From the vicious way he came at her when she told him what she wanted, throwing her on the bed to suck on her breasts to... this. Kneeling behind her, stroking her, their faces close together now past her shoulder, his chest touching her scapula every time he breathes. Kiss me, she says, and Ivan looks at her, not quite hesitating but thinking, considering, or simply feeling his way through this as the bottom drops out from underneath them and time turns liquid.

So: he pushes against her, bearing her down onto her elbows, folding himself across her back to follow her. No resistance from her this time, not yet, no fighting against his weight. Hilary all but purrs again, her back arching, rubbing herself onto his hand while her panties remain stretched and clinging to her thighs just inches above her knees.

Something is muttered in French, words that might incense him, words that -- since he doesn't know their meaning -- might arouse him by their mere sound. The very language makes her lips purse, demands it, turns throaty with lust then muffled on his tongue when his lips close on hers. Hilary murmurs right into his mouth before the words trail off entirely, twisting to suck on his tongue lightly.

Yes, soft. For a moment or two, while he fucks her

without fucking her, making her gasp with every stroke, making her kiss him harder. So hungry. So sweet, beautiful, greedy. And murmured, while she's pausing to take a breath:

"Ivan..."

[Ivan Press] Somehow they've slowed down. Somehow they've struggled silently in the undercurrent, back and forth, and found something like a middle point. An equilibrium, dynamic and unstable as it is. Somehow

the words she's saying, that he doesn't understand, makes him laugh low and quiet and wanting. Makes him kiss them right off her mouth, suck them off her tongue, and they're kissing softly over her shoulder now like she isn't married and mated, like he didn't meet her not even a week ago, like this isn't

wrong in nearly every possible way.

Except, of course, in how it feels. Isn't that the cliche? Trite and oversaid or not, there's a truth in it. The way it feels makes Ivan pant; makes him gasp even as she does; makes his head fall forward as she pauses for a breath, and for his name, which leaves her lips dragging warm over his smooth-shaven cheek.

"Say it again," he whispers; and what he meant was what she said in that language he doesn't understand, but he doesn't get that far. Those three words leave his mouth and suddenly he's saying something altogether different, turning his head to press a harder kiss to her mouth, telling her to,

"Say my name again."

while he's pulling her legs farther apart, stretching her panties between her thighs; while he's reaching to guide his cock to the opening of her cunt, gasping at the feel of her.

[Hilary Durante] There's no way to know if Hilary is going to obey him when he wants her to. Or defy him, tell him no the way she did, wriggle away and fight while making it achingly, obviously clear that she wants him to keep grinding his cock on her, rubbing himself on her ass, teasing her cunt the way he was. The only way to know for sure that her struggling was pretense is how she smirked, how she laughed, how she panted and gasped and tried to angle her pelvis to get him against her even while she wrenched to try and get her wrists free.

But now: slowing down. And she seems more distant now, while he's kissing words out of her mouth and telling her to say it again -- no, not the French. Telling her to say his name again, call out to him again

which she does not do. She can't spread her legs as wide as he might want her to because she's still half-confined in her lingerie, which for all he knows was also bought for her by that mate of hers. That other wolf whose prize he's stealing, whose flavor he's tasting. Ivan is sipping from a cup that doesn't belong to him, and it drenches his throat, intoxicates his mind, poisons his bloodstream.

Hilary laughs, low and curling, even as he's kissing her. "Ah!" she gasps, when his cock strokes he clit, but that's all

that's all she says for him, rubbing back against him, squirming for it.

[Ivan Press] And Ivan feels that. He can feel her receding, becoming less present even as he's reaching out to make that connection he never needed before. The more invested he is, the less she is. Less invested. Less impacted. Less tangible. Less.

He feels that, and this isn't even the first sign he's had or the first glimmering of a realization in his mind that Mrs. Durante, who seems so, so sane, steady and cool as a placid mountain lake, is in fact quite possibly unhinged in some deep, unalterable way. That this woman is quite possibly fucked up and not good for him. But then that's the truth for all of them. All their mad, beautiful tribe; all of them out of their minds with their own immaculate blood.

He thinks to himself,

Is that what you want me to be?
Is that what you came here for?

without quite knowing or understanding what that is in first place. Here. Now. Ever. There's a pause; a moment when he's still and warm over her. Then Ivan sits back again. His skin is damp with sweat now. His cock is wet from her. He's silent for a moment, wordless, considering; his own questions refracting back in his mind. Will you? How far?

Then Ivan reaches forward. Long, deft fingers hook through her panties. He strips them down, efficient and swift, yanks them past her knees and down her legs. Tosses them on the ground and pushes himself backward, slides off the bed, stands at the edge.

"Come here," he says, low; flat because he's holding something back, some instability of his own. His hands on her hips again; he pulls her backward, drags her swiftly to the edge of the bed and bends her over the corner.

"Come here," and it's breathed now, his hand smoothing over her back, up the dip of her spine, "and let me fuck you."

[Ivan Press] [oFINE]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Hilary Durante] There's something wrong with them.

With all of them, really. Things they will never quite overcome, things they can only for brief lucid periods even realize are not okay. There are things in life forever barred to the children of Falcon because of what they have done to themselves and what their ancestors did to them across centuries upon centuries. Perhaps the madnesses that plague them are tests of their strength and their fitness for leadership. Perhaps they are curses brought down by Luna and Gaia herself, even blurring through the bloodlines into the Kinfolk themselves, to tell them all your time is done. let it go.

This woman didn't even try to figure out what Katherine meant by Warder. She only barely introduced herself, and she invited them to share drinks but she didn't seem to care a moment that she was in the presence of Garou. She doesn't seem to care that Ivan is one, except that it means he can't be carrying some disease to pass onto her, which is good, because she certainly can't be carrying condoms around or seen in an area where people know her buying them, and if Ivan didn't bring some then she'd be sucking his cock now or -- far more likely -- watching television

(porn)

after sending him out to go buy some, for god's sake.

There is something wrong with this woman. And not just fucking her, not just taking her when she doesn't belong to him. There's got to be something wrong with a woman who can do this, who doesn't care, who gets closer to him when he's stripped down to the rawest, most base impulses that fire off in his mind, when he's rough and when he's hard on her and when he's snarling in her ear and making his demands and then just taking what he wants when she gives those coy refusals. There has to be something terribly, deeply wrong with her.

He thinks what he thinks of it. He asks himself what he asks her, if this is what she wants him to be. If this is how he has to be, for her to --

-- what? Connect?

He doesn't need that.

Or feel something. Enjoy it.

But she's enjoying this, even this, his body sliding over hers and his cock touching her. She's enjoying it enough that she makes some little disappointed noise again when he rocks back. She turns to look at him, and he looks at her body for a moment, sweating, thinking. Hilary grins when he grabs her underwear and tears them down. Her knees go out from under her and that artfully landscaped cunt of hers hits the bedspread as he drops the last of her lingerie, finally, leaving her naked

except for all those jewels in her ears and on her fingers and wrists, markings of her status, reminders of where she comes from just as potent to his eyes as her scent is to his spirit.

She shivers when he grabs her, drags her backwards, and she gasps when he keeps her bent over like that. Her toes just barely touch the carpet. Now that she can, Hilary spreads her legs, her cunt tilted towards him, ready for him, so fucking wet for him. If she's aware of the turmoil inside him, the darkness barely held back by the wall she keeps grinding him against, she doesn't show it. Neither do her words, gasped out into the air of this cool, clean hotel room:

"I want you inside me," panting, needful. "I want you to fill up that tight pussy with your cum, Ivan. Fuck me," writhing now, clutching at the bedspread, "don't make me wait any longer."

[Ivan Press] And yet he does make her wait.

It's not intentional. It's not one more play at dominance, when all night -- only it's not night; it's afternoon; they're literally doing this in broad daylight, shamelessly -- there's been a thread of that tugged back and forth, if only in his own, half-animal mind. Some part of him wonders if that was deliberate on her part. Goad him until he's past the smooth exterior, the surface charm and the cultured, exalted status, the money and the carelessness and the polish. If it was,

it fucking worked.

But still: a pause here. A hesitation. Will he? How far? He looks down at her body, that lovely unmarked back, that fine hair that falls through his hands like sand down an hourglass. The ass; the cunt. The legs, up on her toes because he took off her heels and threw them in opposite directions.

This isn't the first time he's had to consider. This isn't the first time he's thought of backing off. Backing down. Finding his pants and pulling them back on and saying,

I'm sorry, but this is a mistake.
or
I'm sorry, but I've bitten off more than I can chew.
or
I'm sorry, but I can't do this.

Not the first time, no. But perhaps the one that matters most. A point of no return, here, now, after all. And Ivan stands indecisive for a second, his hands on Hilary's hip and on her back, his cock hard and his broad shoulders rounded, his feet apart, his back curved slightly because he wants to lean over her and just

fuck her.

His hands close. One grips her pelvic arch. The other closes into a fist in the middle of her back, then slides up to grab her by the shoulder. He fits himself against her, his head bowed to watch, and

he shoves his cock into her, all at once; his face pulling into a rictus of pleasure so intense it's nearly a grimace of pain. He pants a breath out. A drop of sweat rolls down his forehead, hangs off his nose for an instant -- drips off on the next heavy thrust, splashes onto her back. Both his hands on her shoulders now, bracing himself, pressing her down. He's mounted her like an animal, and now he fucks her like one: fast and hard from the start, pounding her, ruthless.

[Hilary Durante] Ivan. Laurence. Konstantine. Kirillevich. Press.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong...

Mrs. Durante does not know Ivan's full name, but she knows that 'Press' is not a Russian name, just like 'Durante' is so very obviously not the name of a woman whose breeding is miles away from Spanish. She knows that whatever his name, he's a spoiled little playboy with his boat and his jet ski and his conquests. She knew him from a mile away, even before she knew he was Garou, and she doesn't give a god damn what his rank or auspice is, what house or lodge or court he's from, what his other name is,

if she even knows that Garou have 'other' names.

She knows his type. She knows his kind. And she knows he should consider himself lucky. Another notch on his belt or his bedpost, another nail in his coffin, and what a trophy that is on his mental shelf: not just the lovely older woman but the lovely older rich woman with a husband, and not just the lovely older rich woman with a husband but the one with a mate who has to be an older, stronger wolf than he is. What she doesn't know, can't compute, can't see, is

what she's really doing to him. Or if she does see, she doesn't care.

None of that changes why she's here, because that at least was honest: she wants to fuck him. He makes her wet -- so wet -- and he makes her gasp and pant from the tender avarice between her legs. If he'd asked her, resisting, why she wanted him to Come here after he'd stripped off his clothes for her, she would have told him then that she was positively aching for that cock of his,

and that would have been honest, too. Not with her stepson watching and not at the club, Hilary's allowed her eyes to drag all over Ivan's long, lean body and all over his long, lean cock. She's tasted his precum and licked it off her lips, rubbed herself against him over and over to try and tempt him to give it to her. Her lust is something overwhelming and livid, and though it's true she could walk out of here and find some other young thing to take up to a hotel room and ride to a peak, for some reason she's here. And it's him.


Why are you here?


This is a mistake. He's bitten off more than he can chew. He can't do

this:

Hilary moans when he grabs her, pushes her to the bed, pins her there and thrusts hard and sudden into her, sweating from his own desire and the heat they've built up in this room. She squirms, bucking, and she's moaning so fucking loudly they've got to be able to hear her next door and know exactly what's going on in here, though they don't know and don't care who. Then again, it's midafternoon. Most likely nobody's next door at all. Maybe a cleaning lady, at worst.

He's not heard this kind of sound from her. No laughing, smirking hmm, no considering, pleasured mmm, no purr, no snarl, no gasp, just a long, loud moan straight from the middle of her body and up through her while he drives himself into her. And she wasn't lying, she was honest about that, too: her pussy is tight around him, closing around his cock as he's stretching it out.

Ivan fucks her now like this isn't the first moment he's been inside her, and there's nothing gentle or tender or slow about it, nothing considerate in the way he uses that cunt of hers, except in the fact that

she's moaning still, widening her legs to let him fuck her deeper, to take it, while those pretty manicured hands of hers clutch at the blankets and while she cries out wordlessly, madly, for what he's doing to her.

[Ivan Press] No; Press is not a Russian name. Nor is Ivan the way he pronounces it, the accent on the first, long vowel. Nor is growing up on Manhattan's upper east side, going to private schools and preparatory schools, going to college, for fuck's sake, at some preppy east coast Ivy League school, if only for a semester or two during which you partied too hard to learn anything, and where you fucked so many girls that none of your school chums ever figured out that the late-twenties woman who sometimes came and went from your private expensive off-campus flat was not a family friend, not an older sister or a cousin,

but your betrothed. Your mate.

And then came the Change. Then came the trip back to the Fatherland, where his last name wasn't Press after all but Priselkov, which is not a name that makes it big in American business at the turn of the 20th century; is not a name that could blend into New York society where names like Adams and Madison and Terry and Matherton predominate. Where his name to all those around him was not even Ivan Lavrentiy Konstantin Kirillevich Priselkov, but very simply:

Ivan Kirillevich,

after his father. Of Clan Crescent Moon, an ancient lineage whose silver blood is so utterly shot through with ruin and taint in his house that there are no other Garou, none, for more branches in his family tree than most can remember.


That is who he is. That is what his blood says he is, though Hilary cannot read it the way another wolf can.

This is also who he is: the cad dripping wet in a tuxedo at a bus stop, talking up another wolf's mate. The playboy playing the goddamn field right now, chatting up three or four Fang kinswomen and god knows how many starved swans and similar parties. The man-boy with his yachts and his cars and his jet skis and his motorcycles; his penthouses and his mansions; his lake view and his daddy's private jet. The wastrel who spends all his free time chasing pleasure until someone drags him off to a war he quite honestly doesn't give a fuck about.

That is who he is, and this Hilary can read; did read with a single glance.


But this: this beast mounting another's mate, pounding and grunting at her with his teeth gritted and bared, a vein throbbing in his brow -- this is not who he is. At least; this is not who he thinks he is. Ivan doesn't know what she's done to him, and Ivan doesn't know how she's done it or if he can handle it; if it is not too much, but he does know

that she doesn't care. She wants it like this.


And. No. There's nothing considerate or tender or playful about this. No finesse, no intelligence.

Raw animal lust, brutal and plain and dumb. He's using her cunt, which in some deranged way must be considered fair, because she's using -- all of him. His body, and something perilously close to his spirit. Turned him right around. Set every expectation on its ear, left him unbalanced and uncertain and angry, dark, brutal; left him this raw core of lust

hammering away at her with his head bowed and his hands on her shoulders. Slamming away at her cunt while he holds her down, her hands grasping at the sheets; with sweat running down his back and slicking down his chest. Fucking her with his body held apart from hers, his cock flashing into her cunt

over and over and over

while she cries out like the cool-faced, warm-eyed woman on the flybridge, in the club, doesn't even exist. While she screams, just like she said she would. There's that, at least. Mrs. Durante has been starkly, brutally honest. Even her lies were never meant to be believed.

[Hilary Durante] It is not that she is a particularly perceptive woman -- certainly not an empathetic one -- or that she understand people. Cares about people. Wants to know what they're thinking and so looks at them in ways that will tell her more about them. Hilary is not that sort of person. If he were to ask her, she would tell him

well,

things he likely does not want to hear. She's quite a good liar when she wants to be, and she knows the rules of social behavior because she's spent a few decades figuring them out and practicing them is like second nature to her now. But second nature. That which should be natural, which sould be instinctive, is something she practices. Human connection. Understanding people. Caring. Sometimes she may very well wonder if she's actually feeling something, or if she's just convinced herself she is, or if it even --

and then she takes some of the pills from the amber-orange bottle with the white cap and her name on the printed label because they're painkillers and that's what they're there for, to kill those threatening waves of pain. Or at very least, take her up, away from the shoreline where those waves are crashing down, where she can just watch, and not care if everything they touch is being eroded.


She could tell him so very many things he does not want to hear, just as she is doing so many things to him right now he does not necessarily want. It's possible that after this afternoon Ivan will spook at the sight of her, will find reasons not to be left alone with her, will avoid the fuck out of her, no matter that they're both members of the Sheridan Shore Yacht Club, no matter that they live in the same city and that Wilmette and Winnetka are neighbors and that everyone at their level of society knows everyone and pretends to know everything. No matter that they're both Silver Fangs, and that by that fact alone there are going to be times when they'll be in one another's company.

It's possible Ivan is going to hate her by the time the sun sets. It's possible he hates her now, even now as he's panting on those hard thrusts of his cock into that tight, sinfully wet cunt of hers, feeling her slick cover him, make a goddamn mess out of him while she moans and yes, screams from the pleasure he's giving her, what he's doing to her even as he keeps her literally pinned to the bed. It's entirely possible that he despises himself while he pounds away at her pussy, making her whimper when he thrusts faster, just slams himself again and again into her.

No French, now. She's not from France. She's not from anywhere, she can't even be real, she's just moaning yes and more, please and then just screaming when he gives her more, when he makes her take it, when he digs his hands into her shoulders and grunts, breathes like snarls and growls are waiting to come out of him, like that's all she really wanted.

This is rough and hungry and unkind. And it's evident enough that it's too much, it's pushing her to some hard, crashing limit

and she's not begging him to stop, or even slow down. She's biting back cries of a certain tenor and now she's finally fucking him back, clenching around his cock, biting the mattress and the bedspread and her own fist, while he rides her, and fucks her, and uses her.

Still:

"Harder," she groans for him, writhing back against his cock now, as much as she can when he's so heavy against her, so brutal with her. "Fuck me harder, Ivan, I've been so bad!"

[Ivan Press] He's already going at her so hard. He's already pinning her down, pinning her between his hips and the edge of the bed, hammering her with so little thought for her comfort and pleasure that if it weren't for the things she's still saying now and then, the ragged encouragement shuddering out of her between cries, moans, screams, he's think he was hurting her. He's already fucking her so brutally, and

she asks for more.


And for an instant, it's in him to give it to her. He can see it with such vividness he almost feels it. He can see reaching out to grab that long fine hair of hers, dark in his fist. He can see pushing her face against the mattress while he fucks her. He can see wrenching her head back the way she wrenched his back minutes ago, hours ago, a millennium ago. He can see twisting her hair around his wrist and pulling her back like that, arching her right off the bed and backbending her spine, stretching her out like a bow while he pounds her; while his hand mauls her fine white body; grasps at her stomach and her cunt and her perky little tits

while he fucks her until it hurts.

He can see it. It's in him. He can imagine himself doing it, and enjoying it; liking it while he fucks her like a rag doll, like a toy built to be fucked and cummed in and broken and discarded. That's what's past the wall, beyond the line. That's what waits on the other side: his own pleasure, vicious and brutal and utterly, utterly selfish,

which is to say: what waits on the other side is only himself.


"No."

That's his answer, panted raggedly and flatly out. His hands shove against her shoulders. He's not pushing her down after all, though; he's pushing himself up. And back. He draws himself out of her, and it would be a lie to say he's not so hard he aches; that he's not so close to the edge that his cock throbs with every triphammer of his heart, that it doesn't jerk and flex like a blind, living thing with its own hungers and needs and desires.

He takes himself in hand and he can't even speak for a moment. He's breathing too hard. He's too close to the edge. He's too close to some other edge altogether, darker, vaster, far more perilous. He swipes sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist, and there's so much of it, so much sweat pouring off him, that his hairline feels as wet as if he'd come out of a bath. Come up from swimming.

In a flash he wonders how many of those boys have seen her like this. How many of them have fucked her, and if it was just like this. Brutal, grunting, hammering away at her singly or in a fucking gang, and --

he has to turn away from her, his hand passing back the other way, palm wiping over his mouth as though to wipe some taste from his lips; as though to wipe bile away.

He might leave now. Run away. Pick up his clothes and step into his pants, keep the rest of it simply under his arm as he gets away from here, gets as far away as possible, avoid her from now on, spook at the sight of her.

He doesn't. He turns back, and it's only been a second; all of it, from the negation to the withdrawal to this:

grabbing the edge of the bedspread between his fingers, flicking it over her body. Covering her.


A heartbeat later, heavily, Ivan sits on the edge of the bed beside her. He's panting, wet with sweat and wet with her slick; a mess. Iron hard. No longer even remotely in the mood. He doesn't even look at her, but for reasons he can't explain to himself he sits beside her

and tries to find some balance in himself.

[Hilary Durante] The most bewildering thing, for her, is not that he says No, not that he stops entirely and pulls out of her, not that he tears away from her like this, but that he grabs the blanket and covers her up. That makes her blink, where his refusal only made her moan longingly and his withdrawal made her give a shriek of yearning, of protest, of no. But when Ivan grabs the bedspread and flicks it across her sweating, slick, soft body, she blinks her eyes a few times, surprised.

But Hilary never stays surprised for long. She's quick on the uptake, this one. She adapts quickly, lets go fast, moves on easily. Still: she's a little confused, and starting to push herself up on her arms even as he's coming to sit down, the blanket falling past her shoulders, sliding along her back, drifting away from her. All the while, her eyes are on him, watching him as he pants beside her, doesn't look at her.

Her head tips to the side, and that thick, beautiful hair swings down a bit in the air.

She watches him for a long while.


Then, whispered softly: "Why did you stop?"

[Ivan Press] And he's just sitting there.

He's not hunkered over. He's not leaning back on his hands. He's just sitting there, spine a little curved, body not so much relaxed as simply limp, as though out of exhaustion. Every muscle. Every joint. Everything except for his goddamn dick, which is still so hard he can feel his pulse in it the way he can hear it pounding in his ears.

She watches him. He stares dully at the opposite wall, closing his mouth when he can stand to pant through his nostrils alone; the sound of that hissing and swift, broken when he swallows once.

Her voice is a whisper. His eyes flick sideways to her, just for a second. Turn away again. In the end he can't answer; can't put it all in words, or perhaps genuinely doesn't even know why himself.

He shakes his head. That's all there is in response.

And then, slowly, Ivan leans down, lithe body bending double, putting his elbows on his knees and his brow in his hands; the tip of his cock leaving a tracery of wetness on his own abdomen.

[Hilary Durante] There's no doubt that Hilary is an intelligent woman. Charming. Fascinating in a way, the sort of woman that groups of young men can't help but stare at, follow around, do their best to flirt with because every instinct and hormone in them is louder than their own good sense. The sort of woman with lots of friends to go to the club with, who everybody feels comfortable around. Men like Ivan want to fuck her. And hell, stick around afterwards to hang out with, even.

She's not an insightful woman, though. Quickwitted, a sharp and dancing conversationalist, but not gifted with the ability to see into hearts and motivations. She knew who Ivan was when he leaned on his boat's railing to shout at her, and who he was when he entered the club the other night, but

perhaps she was wrong.

She's still bent over the edge of the bed, but he's not just taking a moment to get a handle on himself before he fucks her again. He's just staring, as though in shellshock, as though he's on a battlefield and has simply seen too much. Some women might take that pretty personally. Hilary just watches him, and then turns on her side, propped up on her straightened arm, and then

shows herself to not be a new hand at this. She is not stupid, nor virginal, nor inexperienced, and even this, she thinks she has seen before. Slowly, though, because she was, perhaps, wrong about him.

Her hand touches his back, her palm warm and flat. He can feel her bracelets, too, touching his flesh. She waits to see if he shrugs her off. And if he does not, she hesitates a moment, then speaks. Her voice is easy to listen to, like this. There's always a lightness to it, a relaxation, more than a cold distance. Maybe that's why even when she gets some poor kid's name wrong, he doesn't mind.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you," she says, perhaps ridiculously. Perhaps necessarily. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to, to please me." Please her. Pleasure her.

Get her off.

[Ivan Press] There's a faint startle when her hand touches his back -- an all-over jerk, slight but present, as though someone had run electricity through him. Ivan doesn't pull away, though. He turns instead. He looks at her, actually meets her eyes and looks at her, for the first time since --

well. Since he dragged her to the edge of the bed and pinned her there.

She says she wasn't trying to hurt him. His laugh is humorless; doesn't even put a smile on his mouth. She goes on and even that's gone. He looks at her for a long time, saying nothing; just looking. Then, "I wanted to. I wanted to hurt you."

Quiet, that.

"And it wasn't for you. It was for myself."

Another silence. His hands clasp together; he closes his eyes and presses the center of his brow to the backs of his thumbs. A few moments go by; he looks at her again. He says this like it isn't a contradiction. Like it isn't a paradox:

"I don't want to hurt you."

[Hilary Durante] The kind of woman that would jerk her hand back upon hearing that he wanted to hurt her is probably not the kind of woman who would beg him to fuck her like that in the first place. Simultaneously, a woman like Hilary -- who wants him to pin her down, hold her wrists, fuck her so hard the sweat pours off of him -- understands instantly, perfectly, that he wanted to hurt her, and that he doesn't want to hurt her, and that this is not, in fact, a paradox. If it is, then she's doomed, because she wants so many things she doesn't want.

Her hand stays on him, and she rubs his back as he's pressing his brow to his thumbs. Slow circles. Hypnotically slow, not quite the sort you'd give a scared child but perhaps a sick friend after a night with too many mojitos.

She's met this man twice. Once to flirt over the railings of yachts, once to flirt with even more of an edge to it and to set up this little tryst of theirs. She barely spoke to him before coming here and getting a room to fuck him in. Hilary's lucky to know his name, and she's known people for years that still don't mean very much to her.

Whatever is happening inside of him, she does not seem overly inclined to explore it, and has no obligation whatsoever in helping him deal with. He's a big boy.

But she rubs his back, in a way that is sort of friendly. Sort of soothing. "So don't," she says, as though -- at least for her, perhaps -- it's really just that easy. "There's no rule saying a little rough sex has to get people hurt. You know how inconvenient it would be to walk out of here with bruises?"

[Ivan Press] There's a flare of utter bafflement in his eyes that burns quickly into a sort of clarity, which she'd read and understand if she were capable of reading people like that. But she's not. And that's the whole reason he looks at her like that: with confusion, and then with something a little like comprehension. Which is not the same thing as understanding, at all.

He does not understand her. He has no idea who she is.

He straightens his back, though. He lowers his hands to his thighs. He turns his head and looks at her and he says, levelly, "If I'd let myself go you wouldn't have walked out with a few bruises, Hilary."

That may be the first time he's used her name.

"You'd have been carried out on a stretcher. Or in a body bag."

Another second or two; a burn and a glitter in his eye. Passing. His eyes drop from hers. He looks away. He lays back, staring at the ceiling now -- brow furrowed, eyes clear and distant.

"I want you," he says quietly, "very badly. But I think you should go back to your teenage boys. Or whoever it is that can give you what you want."

[Hilary Durante] That should scare her. And it is the first time he's used her name -- her first name, of course, he's called her Mrs. Durante over and over -- but it doesn't seem to lend any of the necessary weight to the words for her. Stretcher. Body bag. That if he loses himself in whatever darker version of lust she seems to inspire in him, he could break her bones, or kill her. Fly into a red haze and destroy her in the process of trying to alleviate his lust, make peace with some beast inside him.

Hilary doesn't look scared of him. She hasn't, for a moment. She didn't look scared of Katherine, for god's sake. If anything, the corner of her mouth tugs a little. A tiny wrinkle in her brow, as if she's sad. But she at least has the sense not to smile as he's staring at her, and she doesn't roll her eyes when he looks away. Nor does he sense that she was going to.

Ivan lays back, and she watches him. Her lower half is still partially covered by the bedspread, but it's a paltry effort and not one she struggled to maintain. Hilary lets her eyes travel down his body, all smooth and lovely and well-formed, built for a war he doesn't care about, honed by the purity of what he is, shaped by the occasional battle with the Wyrm or what-have-you. She looks at his cock, still hard and glistening with her wetness, and she sighs softly at the sight of him,

all laid out like that.

Hilary brings her leg forward, unfolding the blanket he tossed over her, and her leg crosses his body til her knee touches the mattress on the other side. She swings herself up and over him, on her hands and knees above him. Her hair drapes down but isn't quite long enough to brush over his face or chest. "Are you always this tortured?" she asks, her tone both amused and gentle.

She leans forward, and plants a kiss on his chest. Her hair pools on his skin for a moment, and her lips press on him for a moment, and then she's pushing herself back up, doing him the kindness and having the flat-out dignity not to rub herself against him. "I just wanna fuck you, Ivan. I'm not a fetishist. I thought you were enjoying yourself," she says quietly, with a little shake of her head. Her voice slows down, hazy at the edges. "But if you don't really like it so rough, you can always lick my pussy clean. After all, you made it so wet and messy, being so..."

she trails for a moment, flicking her eyes across his features, over his body, sighing like that again, "...putain si chaud. Alors putain de beau."

[Ivan Press] That blanket slides loose, and Ivan draws a quick sip of air. Then she's sliding over him, and it could be argued that if he really wanted her to go back to whoever it is she usually gets her kicks from,

he'd just get up and get out of the way. He could do that. He'd be fast enough, dexterous enough. Lean enough and quick enough.

He doesn't, though. He stays where he is, sprawled on the bed with his knees bent over the edge, and when she's astride him his cock moves against his stomach as though it were reawakening.

Ivan looks up at her. There are tracks of sweat down his cheeks. He must have shaved this morning, but even now, close to 4pm, his jaw is still smooth. His eyes are still green, green with their core of amber and hazel, and when she asks him if he's always this tortured he exhales a hint of a laugh and shakes his head.

"Never."

That's the truth, too.

Then she's leaning forward. He's drawing a breath and his eyes go past her again; to the ceiling. Then they close. She kisses his chest. His pectoral flexes under her mouth and he's bringing a hand up to thread fingers through her hair, thinking of how he thought of twisting his fingers into the strands and pulling; letting that image run out of his head like water from between his fingers.

Once again he's looking at her when she rises. His hand slips from her hair, hovers for a moment, then falls to his chest. Once again his lips move; a wry and ironic twist that goes with a faint scoffing laugh. "I was enjoying myself," he says quietly. "I liked fucking you like that. Rough. It's not that I thought you wanted me to hurt you, and that put me off. It's that I wanted to hurt you. I mean: really hurt you. And it frightened me.

"I'm not ... like that."


Another moment or two. His eyes are falling to her body now, tracing her neck; her small breasts; the stretch of her abdomen dropping away to that perfectly landscaped pussy. He leans up to her and he lays soft kisses on her collarbones; then on her breasts.

When he draws back, he nods her up the bed.

"Why don't you get on your hands and knees this time," he says softly.

[Hilary Durante] She'd watched him when he took off his clothes for her. She'd toyed with her ring and stared at his body and eaten him alive from across the room, where the shades are open but the lights are off and the room is either dim shadow or searing sunshine, nothing in between. She saw how his cock looked when he uncovered it, half-hard already though the most she'd touched him was a graze of their fingers when she took his card on the boardwalk.

Hilary, as it's been said, is no fool. She gets on top of Ivan and doesn't for a moment think he's going to toss her off of him, or get up and get away from her --

though, still, there is the chance that he will never want to see her again, that he will remember anytime he does see her what he came so close to becoming because of her

-- or tell her no, this was a mistake, I'm sorry, I can't do this. She isn't close enough to him to feel his cock when it stirs, but she notices. She's close enough to see his eyes, glinting and ever caught between playful and savage. She smiles when he confesses that no, never, he's not like this, not tortured or tormented or angstridden, but it isn't a smile of triumph.

She isn't power-mad. It isn't conquering others that pleases her, that drives her. It's hard to say what actually does.

"Mmm," she murmurs soft against his chest, when he touches her hair and moves his fingers through that thick, dark cool weight of silk. His fingers drift out of her hair, though, instead of pulling. He doesn't grab her hair by the fistful and push her down to his cock, tell her to suck it if she wants it so badly. He lets his hand slide out and away instead, laying it on his chest afterward.

Perhaps she should be surprised that a Garou could be frightened. She doesn't look it. The confession doesn't cause a hitch or a blink. Just the way she continues to look at him, understanding. Not in the sense that she empathizes, is urged to nurture or comfort, but simply in the sense that she grasps what he's saying, relates to it. Understands.

When Ivan starts touching her, with his gaze but not his hands, Hilary starts to reach for that hand on his chest, to draw it up to follow the way his eyes are traveling. No need. He starts kissing her, leaning his head up and kissing her chest the way she was kissing his: slow. Warm. Soft. She tosses her head, moving her hair off her shoulder so it doesn't get in the way of his mouth, watching him. What he says makes her eyebrow quirk a little.

"Are you sure you can handle it?" she asks, and with that little flick of her eyebrow, and if he had not just told her that he wanted to hurt her, it might just be coyness.

Still: she doesn't quite wait for an answer. Hilary does crawl up the bed -- over him. She plays at obedience, just enough to carry a daring undercurrent of defiance, dipping her hips to brush her cunt lightly over his face before continuing on. And this time, she doesn't tell him no. She doesn't refuse. She gets on her hands and knees up on the bed, and puts her hands on the headboard.

Looks back at him. "Should I hold on?"

[Ivan Press] She asks if he can handle it. He just looks at her, and it's not playful, nor savage, but quite simply:

haughty. A fucking Fang, after all.

She's not waiting, though. She's crawling up over him and he's exhaling as her legs brush his sides, as her knees gaze his chest. When she's atop him she brushes her cunt over his face

and that's as far as she gets. Ivan suddenly lunges up, grabs her by the hips and drags her down, down, plants her cunt right on his mouth and eats at her under the lean slope of her belly for a mad, vicious moment or two before he surges up.

And grabs her: around the waist, around the thighs. Flips her over, slams her down on her back. Shoves her legs up and pushes his face into her pussy. The sound he makes, thrumming against her hot wet flesh, is something akin to deep, dark relief.

[Hilary Durante] A philosopher once claimed that three o'clock was always too early or too late for anything you wanted to do. He never specified if he mean three in the morning or three in the afternoon, but either way it seems perfectly true.

Thank god they don't really want to do this, and would never admit outside of this room to wanting to do this, or having done it. In public, or around the Garou, Ivan may flirt, and Hilary will have to be seen indulging it coyly to a point only to gently but firmly remind him of the boundaries. She is, after all, a mated and married woman. As long as the flirtation is harmless and innocent, they will keep the Silver Fang elder's hand off their throats.

Three o'clock is a black hole of the day, especially the summer days this hot, this drenched in sunshine right on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. It's the perfect time for this sort of thing, an escape while everyone else is busy or unconcerned. They can leave here and go to their dinners and behave in polite society as though it never happened.

Conversely, right now, it is the only thing that exists when Ivan grabs Hilary's hips and pulls her pussy down to his face, licking up all that wetness that, by her own admission, he fucking caused. By existing, for all he knows. She was wet before he got her on the bed. She was wet while she watched him undressing, while she licked his cock, while she stroked him with those soft, elegant hands of hers. And by god, the way he fucked her. The way he took her over the corner of the bed and gave it to her --

she doesn't moan like she did then, when Ivan starts lapping at her pussy, suckling on the tender, slippery flesh he finds there. She squirms though, gasping, wriggling like she's trying to get away when he knows, he fucking knows she wants this, the way she keeps stroking her clit right on his tongue, right on his lips, the little noises she's making in between pants for breath.

Any words she might say, on the tip of her tongue, get cast right out when he turns her on her back again. They are positively abusing this mattress with the way he's throwing her body around on it. It's been jostled off its moorings a little, even, and no matter; Hilary is grinning lazily and brightly at him, lifting her legs for him even as he's pushing them up, spreading them open, spreading her out to eat her.

The sound from his throat vibrates up through her, and the smile falters as she shudders, rolling her hips in circles against his face. Her hand is in his hair again, stroking over his scalp, but she doesn't scratch or pull this time. She just holds onto him, working her pussy on his face like that, the smile fading from her face as pleasure overtakes simpler enjoyment, melting her from his mouth

up her body

down her limbs

through her mind.

[Ivan Press] She doesn't look like the sort of woman who'd do this.

She doesn't look like the sort of woman who'd cheat remorselessly on her husband and mate. She doesn't look like the sort of woman who'd lay herself out in broad daylight and let a man who might as well be a stranger eat her out. She doesn't look like the sort of woman who'd fuck in broad daylight at all, truth be told. She dresses her age and she dresses well; modestly, one might even say. With class. With taste. With elegance. She dresses, quite frankly, like a fucking WASP, and there are jokes flying around about how they fuck.

For procreation. Facing opposite directions. In nightgowns. In the dark.

This is not the dark. She's not wearing a stitch, and neither is he. They're not face to face, but that's because his face is in her fucking cunt. He's watching her, his brow furrowed with the angle of his glance, his eyes burningly direct. He stares right at her while her fingers slip into his short short hair and his tongue

slips into her cunt.

He makes another sound at that, eyes flicking shut for a moment. It's like he actually gets something out of this; like he actually needs something that he can only get from licking her up just like this. And there's some truth in that. It's the way she tastes. It's the way she smells, and feels; all that concentrated purity in her veins right there, laid out for him, known in the most intimate way possible.

Truth be told he's rather rough, even now. His tongue is merciless, sliding between her lips, flicking stiff over her clit. He isn't afraid to bite at her with his lips; graze her with his teeth. When he can't stand it anymore he turns his head to the side and sinks his teeth into lean strap of muscle in her inner thigh, bites down on that so ferociously he leaves a fading mark on her skin.

And there's such energy in him, unstable and crackling -- as though all the intensity that never quite came to fruition, never quite exploded into orgasm the first time he fucked her because he almost lost his fucking mind has subverted and seethed and burned in on itself. When he comes back to her cunt it's only for another few seconds, only a few hard, sucking seconds where he holds her hips down and more or less mauls her clit

before he's pushing himself up on his hands, muscles flexing across sleek chest, broad shoulders.

"I think I'm going to fuck you now," he tells her, tone so flat it has to be jest; jest so intense it has to be a promise. "I think I liked you best on your stomach, hands pinned down."

[Hilary Durante] Well, when Hilary's naked and wet and rubbing her pussy on Ivan's face, she looks very much like the kind of woman who would do this, and keep every drop of jewelry on while she did it. She looks pleasured, and her cunt wets anew against his mouth as he goes at her,

a little bit rough, and a little bit selfish,

which is how she likes it. She groans softly and writhes on the bed in front of him, her hair loose and billowing against her shoulders and across the pillows. Her fingertips massage his scalp as he eats her out, her body jerking when he flicks her clit like that with his semi-stiff tongue, when he rubs it hard between her lips to lick at her slit. He could make her come like this. He could get her tightening up and grinding on his face if he wanted it like that, and truth be told, she'd probably beg him to fuck her afterward anyway.

He doesn't get another moan from her, though, til he bites her like that, marks her in a place where no one else will see except the next person she takes to bed,

and that's only if she's taking someone else to bed this very night. Which is possible. And he knows that, too.

Because Hilary fucks shamelessly. She cheats on her husband and mate like that doesn't mean anything at all to her, like her mate himself doesn't mean anything at all to her. She lays back and lets this young man devour her pussy and when he gets up and looks down at her sweaty, bare, pale, smooth body under his own to tell her he wants to flip her over and fuck her like before, holding her wrists down,

her brow pulls in an expression almost pained by longing, and she puts her hands on his chest, sliding them to his shoulders and his arms, her groan a strangled purr in her throat as she touches him. That sound is eager. That sound is excited. She's panting softly when she takes her hands away from him again, slowly. And she's watching him, eyes locked on his, as she starts to turn herself over, as though she's not quite sure exactly what he's going to do to her now.

She doesn't tell him she liked it like that, too. But he can smell her. He can see, as she rolls onto her stomach and spreads her legs, the way her cunt quivers, quite literally, in anticipation.

[Ivan Press] She's not the only one here wracked by want, crucified by desire. It's in his face too. The intensity; the lust; the longing for her to turn over the way she was when he had her arms stretched over her head, her shoulders shuddering with desire, or strain, or plain and simple overstimulation. Overcome.

He pulls himself up on the bed, up on his knees, as she starts to turn. And she does it so slowly, like this too is a sort of striptease. Like even with her body complete bare there are still veils to be dropped, one by one by one, and

when she's rolling onto her side he all but pounces down on her, kneeling over her on all fours, his mouth to her body. He licks and sucks at her indiscriminately -- a curving line that starts at the side of her breast and curves down her waist; up the sweep of her back and ending at the opposite shoulderblade.

"You're so beautiful," he whispers. "You make me so fucking hard."

The bedcovers are rumpled already. From her clutching hands. From their bodies dropping on it over and over. From his fingers flicking the blankets over her to cover her -- out of shame or out of some absent stab at tenderness; she'll never know. She's not that kind of woman. She doesn't look, couldn't see if she tried; doesn't care, anyway.

Doesn't care what this might do to her mate if he found out. Doesn't care what her mate might do to her lovers -- and it's plural; Ivan knows, from instinct, that it's plural -- if he found out. Doesn't even care, perhaps, what he would do to her.

She's here now. That's what matters. Existing in this refulgent moment, literally quivering with lust, her cunt so wet that when he reaches up and musses the bed more, when he rips a pillow out from under the spread and pushes it under her hips to raise them up for him, he can see it. He can smell her, heady and tangy. His fingers trace between her lips and come away so wet, so fucking wet.

He strokes it onto himself. Slathers himself in her wetness. Goes back twice, drawing from the source; takes her slick and uses it like lube. When he's slick and wet as she is, he reaches up, holds his hand out just over her head.

"Give me your hand," he says softly. And presses his cock between her legs, nudging up against the opening of her cunt

all over again.

[Hilary Durante] It goes without saying that he's not the first young man she's fucked outside of her marriage. He intuited so quickly that she likes younger men, that she likes their beautiful firm bodies and their eagerness to please her and their starstruck eyes when she puts her mouth on their cocks. But he's not exactly a teenager, is he? He's older than twenty-one, no matter how childish or immature he could be accused of acting with his luxuries and his selfishness and playing all the time, at everything.

Still: oh, she likes this. She likes that he's so very much younger than she is, so very strong and so very hungry and so very playfully ready to leap into bed with her and lavish attention on that hot, wet cunt of hers. And she knows it is. She knows how badly he wants to fuck her, knew before he sprawled backwards on the mattress and told her he so.

She likes that, too. That he wants it as bad as he does.

Hilary arches her back for him, lifting her hips while he puts the pillow under her. She shows off. She laughs softly at the words he says as he's running his mouth all over her, and it's unnecessary to tell him you make me so wet because there he is, stroking her pussy and taking that slick on his hands to rub it on his cock,

his hard, twitching cock,

before he fucks her again. The last thing she's wondering about are his motivations for covering her up, which was so odd of him to do. The last thing she's wondering about is Espiridion over in Paris. She's nowhere but here. She's thinking of no one but him. And herself. And this: the stroke of his cock's head all silken and slippery from her body, nudging up against her just like before.

She can't even think. She can't understand a word he says, and her hands flex on the pillows as she arches harder, trying to open herself up to take him, trying to get him inside her again, whimpering softly instead of

fucking

obeying him.

[Ivan Press] Obedience isn't a strong suit for either of them. Then again, they're Silver Fangs. Born to be obeyed. Look at the way she commanded him so softly when he first walked into the room. Take your clothes off. Let me watch. Come here. Take this off. Look at the way he resisted, the flashes of instinct and rebellion in his eyes, simply because he is Fang, and born of kings and madmen, and

a wolf. That's the difference between him and her other young men, beyond the age, beyond the personal wealth, beyond everything else. Under his skin, he is exactly as she named him:

not human at all.


She doesn't obey. Perhaps she simply can't. She's writhing under him, trying to take her inside, and he holds himself back; holds himself just outside her cunt, pulling back his hips when she moves his way. And he grabs her hands, since she won't fucking move them herself. He grabs her wrists in his hand and he stretches her arms up, stretches her out beneath him, and

this isn't his usual style either but god he likes it,

and he's coming down over her, his weight on his elbows and knees like a beast; pinning her hands to the bed and running his free hand up and down that sleek back; around and under that sleek stomach; levering her hips up a little more and nudging her knees wider apart with his so he can penetrate her again.

It's no gentler than the first time, when all is said and done. It's just as fast, just as thorough. He slams into her, hard enough that his hips press against her ass, press her into the bed. He groans in her ear, loud and unrestrained. He bites her back, and he pants in her ear:

"Tell me you want this cock. Tell me you want me to fuck you senseless."

[Hilary Durante] This is what she wants. For him to grab her by the arms and push them up over her head, lock her wrists together and hold them down against the pillows. For him to tease her like he does, holding back from her what she wants since she won't do what he says, for him to find himself enjoying this thing that is, when one gets right down to it,

a little bit fucked up.

There's no sense to it, no explanation for what it gets her off. It does. She groans when he won't fuck her. She gasps when he grabs her arms like that. She whimpers and rubs her ass back against him in wordless, bucking pleading of her body. She's not thinking, which perhaps is the point, and she's crying out when he shoves that cock she called so big, and nasty, and dirty, and hard

right back into her. She instantly counterthrusts, fights him, even as she's moaning aloud for him, even as that tight little pussy of hers is clenching down on him.

And she's gasping, "Oh, god... yes, Ivan. Fuck me. Make me scream with that hard cock of yours," but it's hardly even the words coming out of her mouth that matter, the way she's fucking back against him already, like they've been going at it for hours when it's not even been one yet, when the time he's spent buried in her pussy could be measured in moments rather than minutes. But she struggles against his gripping hands and fucks his cock, at least

as much as he'll let her.

[Ivan Press] And his hand is all over her. His hand cups between her legs, grasps its way up her belly. Squeezes her tits, one and then the other, and finally follows her arms up right back to her hands, right back to her wrists.

Now it's both his hands locked over hers, holding her down, and like this his body is stretched over hers. His chest presses against her back. He pins her quite literally, and even so she's writhing under him; struggling to fuck him

right back.

He's going at her so hard again in seconds. His hips are bucking against hers hard enough to slap flesh together; hard enough to jolt her breath in her lungs. For a moment he lets go her hands with his right -- long enough to turn her face toward him, long enough to hold her by the chin as he's biting kisses onto her mouth. Then he's pushing down on her wrists and pushing himself up; raising himself over her with his hand pinning her wrists and his other hand pinning her shoulders, and he has the leverage now, and the angle and the freedom of motion,

to start pounding her. To start using her cunt all over again as if that pause, that break, that uncertainty, that precipice never was.

He doesn't even have the excuse of surprise this time. He doesn't have the excuse of not being prepared for what gets her off; he can't pin this one on her. This time it's him. She was willing to fuck sedately. She was willing to lie back and let him eat her to orgasm, or maybe to suck his cock, or -- but no. He's the one that turned her over. He's the one that pinned her sleek body beneath his all over again and mounted her and started fucking her like this, like the last hundred thousand years of evolution never happened; like the civilizations their ancestors have ruled over for all of recorded history have already crumbled into ruin, and they've degenerated back, back, back into the beasts they are.

A little bit fucked up is a mild way of putting it. All that progress, all that breeding, and they're back to this. Raw, brutish mating. A fuck like a battle, like a struggle for or an expression of dominance. His hands are gripping her hard enough to leave white marks. He's snarling and grunting over her, sweating over her, plowing her cunt and using her body, selfishly, disconnectedly, obsessively, until sweat runs down his lean body in rivulets, and the truth is he's so close to some dark edge again, and the truth is

he likes it like this.

[Hilary Durante] There are quite literally hundreds if not thousands of women in this city who would let Ivan do this to them. Young ones. Older ones. Women his age. Kinfolk, mortals, waitresses, college students, clubkids, dropouts, that girl at the video store, the one who looks so fucking demure in her button-down shirt behind the cash register at Barnes and Noble. In this, Hilary is not unique. In the quality of her breeding, she is not at the apex in Chicago. There are others -- and he's met them -- who are even more pure. More deranged. She's wealthy and lovely and really, the only thing that sets her apart from these other Silver Fang kinswomen he's met and is pursuing with varying levels of interest

is that she can never, will never, ever be his. There's no possibility that she'll get foisted on him, just as there's no chance he could strive for her. By the time he reaches Fostern, if he ever does, Dion will be Athro or dead and she sure as hell won't be given to some playboy from Crescent Moon who doesn't know how to behave.

That sets her apart. That she's older than him, and quite a bit so. That she is, in her way, even more fucked-up and insane and simply...corrupt than he is. Than any of the rest of them are. And that's nothing to brag about.

He could get this elsewhere. He could fuck someone else like this, and perhaps after this afternoon he'll start looking for it. Start seeing what boundaries he can push with the women he screws, see if they'll let him --

god.


And now Hilary is moaning again, the bed springing underneath them. His full weight is on her, crushing, and she's still trying to fuck him back all the same, begging him. She shrieks a little as he grabs her face and makes her kiss him, her teeth grabbing his lower lip as he mauls her face. She kisses him savagely, but she's also whimpering when he pulls away,

moaning his name into the pillows when he pushes her down and pounds her like that, just

Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, Ivan over and over again, like his name has replaced yes, like his name has replaced god.

Disconnected. In a way, that's how it feels, even though this woman is screaming his name while he fucks her. There's no sense of why, or how, or if it even fucking matters, if it means anything, other than that she's delirious with pleasure. Oh, she was willing to fuck him sweetly, lie on her back and wrap her legs around him and run her hands all over his body, but that doesn't mean they would have been connected. Selfless. Giving. There's the sense that she would have done it just to get him to fuck her already, that sex is still sex and a good fuck is still a good fuck even if it's not

like this. And like this is how she really wants it. So like this is what makes her moan like that, while he's growling and leaving stark white handprints on her flesh that turn pink when he lets go, holding her wrists together and holding her down while he, himself, gets pushed harder and harder to his breaking point.


Hilary is, as it turns out, multi-orgasmic. She comes sooner than he ever would have imagined, bucking wildly and screaming into her arm, into the pillows, into his mouth if he kisses her again, her whole body writhing and smelling of sweat and, frankly,

purity,

and her cum, drenching his cock while her cunt squeezes him that much deeper. But she doesn't stop. She doesn't even slow down. She doesn't even seem sane, doesn't try to come down, just keeps fucking him, and mindlessly begs him to keep fucking her, those words exactly, wracked,

keep fucking me, keep fucking me

like she'll die if he stops. Like she'll die if she doesn't come again, if she doesn't feel him come inside her.

[Ivan Press] It's also wholly possible he won't look for this anywhere else. Not unless, or until, she stops fucking him. Until she's tired of him, or bored with him, no longer interested by his frank and shameless pursuit; no longer turned on by his smooth cat-sleek body. It's wholly possible that this will become one more way she's just

different

from the quite literal hundreds and thousands of women in this city who would fuck him this way or any other way because he's rich, because he's generous, because he knows how to make someone feel young and carefree and important; because his own life is so fucking privileged, so fucking good, that there are those in this world that would give up just about anything to bask even in reflected glory.

They're out there. And he could have them if he wants. Quite literally, in every sense: have them. Take them. Claim them. Own them.

But not this woman.


And that is part of it. That she cannot ever be his. That, and her fucking confidence, which is perhaps in the end a sort of disconnection. That, and her fucking style, that hundred-foot catamaran, those silver screen hats. That, and her breeding which is not the purest of pures; and her beauty which is not the loveliest of lovelies, but nevertheless combines with everything else; twines with

what she's doing to him now and what she's letting him do to her

to become utterly intoxicating.


He may as well be drugged. He may as well be so hopped up on illegal substances that he's out of his mind; out of body experience. She comes under him in moments, in seconds, while he's still heavy atop her and

yes, he kisses her then. He bites a kiss to her and she screams into his mouth and he keeps fucking her, keeps fucking her, keeps hammering her tender quivering cunt while she twists her wrists in his grasp and says his name the way orthodox jews say the name of god,

which is to say, blasphemously, a taboo that must not be spoken by her lips, not like that,

and when she begs him to keep fucking her, keep fucking her, that's when he rises up over her and holds her down and pounds himself into her so hard that the vein is throbbing down the center of his forehead again; that his knuckles are white where he grips her shoulder.


It's a sort of madness. Their entire tribe is a madness, is a thing of rot and ruin at the core. Their time was up long ago. These are the last dying gasps, and like nazi germany on the eve of defeat, it's just one debauched party after another. Caviar and thousand-dollar champagne and designer pills, baby, and don't worry if the world is burning down.

Sex on a hot summer afternoon in a swanky anonymous hotel outside town, baby, and don't worry if your mind's going up in flames. Just keep fucking her, because -- look at her:

this is what she wants.


In the end it's a fuck rather like Hobbes' view of the human condition: nasty, brutish, short. This sort of pace isn't sustainable. A handful of minutes, no more, and the sounds Ivan is making through clenched teeth are reaching that sort of strained, shattered tenor that a woman like Mrs. fucking Durante would recognize

not because she's ever bedded this particular man before, but because she's bedded so many others. There's nothing held back in the last few strokes. The last three, four, five throws of his hips are utterly merciless, slamming home with every ounce of strength he can muster; pounding into her so hard the nightstands rattle; the mattress groans. When he comes his teeth are bared. His eyes flash. His face is dark with lust, grimacing with pleasure too intense to bear, and he drives himself

so deep

as he fills her cunt up, snarling. There's a wracked, tense stillness, his hands still so hard on her. Then he fucks her again, another battery of hard, vicious strokes pounding his cum into her, a half a dozen or so before he simply can't bear it anymore and collapses over her, utterly spent.

[Hilary Durante] Ivan's not a bad man. Except, of course, in the sense that he's not a man at all, so he can't be very good at being one. But that isn't what the phrasing means: he's not bad. He's corrupt and he's irresponsible and so on and so forth but he's not cruel, deep down in his core. It's entirely possible that Hilary realizes this, because he was frightened by his own urges to hurt her, and hurt her quite badly indeed.

Truth be told, Hilary's not a bad woman. She's not a bad person. She's not cruel, she didn't grow up killing small animals and she isn't graduating in adulthood into killing human beings. She doesn't take pleasure in hurting people and there was some sincerity and genuine warmth in the way she reached out to him when he couldn't bear to keep fucking her, when he pulled away because he was so scared of himself. Of what he'd almost become, while inside her.

They aren't bad, heartless people. But they aren't healthy. They aren't quite good, either. They aren't normal, and they can never be normal. No wonder everyone believed the rumors of Austere Howl's degradation and corruption; when reality and madness are hard to tell apart, sometimes you end up doing

bad, bad things.


Hilary comes on his cock, and she comes again while Ivan's mind is melting, and she comes when he does, when he's driving himself into her with those snarls and those hard grips of his hands on her soft little body. She comes until she's shaking all over, quivering from the intensity of orgasm after orgasm, sweating so profusely it makes her hair stick to her back and almost seals their skins together when he falls on her. She's yelped and cried out at how rough he's been at the end, slamming himself deep into her to fill her cunt

that beautiful, sweet, greedy little cunt

with the hot, sticky cum she asked for so politely before driving him out of his goddamn mind.

Hilary is breathing in raggedly after Ivan goes rigid, freezes, but then he's thrusting into her again, as though to make sure she takes all of it, everything he's given her, and she lets out a wavering cry that fades, and falters, and falls away to nothing as he falls on top of her, still gripping her arms, still pinning her down to the bed.


When he comes back to reality he will see the tears on her face, drying on her cheeks but glistening there like sweat glistens on her brow. Her eyes are open and her head is turned to see him. Her shoulders move with every breath she takes, gasping. The look on her face is... overcome. As soon as she finds any glint of coherence in his eyes, Hilary closes her own, and curls herself onto the hollow between his body and the bed, exhaling long and slow and weary. She settles down so quickly, becomes so... calm. So limb-meltingly soft that not even her wrists seem to fill his hand anymore. She just rests, at some kind of odd peace.

[Ivan Press] For a long time Ivan is in no position, physically or mentally or otherwise, to look at Hilary. To look at anyone. He's sprawled atop her, his brow pressed to the bedspread, his eyes shut. Every ounce of energy he has goes toward just breathing. Just existing.

Eventually, he remembers how to move. The rudiments of intelligence, or at least simple motor control, spark again. He shifts off her heavily, sluggishly, as though he were half-dead. Or newborn. Or simply

undone. Unmoored. His world shattered to pieces and put back together wrong, all wrong.

He opens his eyes then, and there are tears on her face. Later on this might wrench him. Everything about this encounter might wrench him, but right now he's too blasted, too exhausted, too far gone to do anything about it except reach out with his hand -- the one that hand held her shoulder to the bed -- and stroke the tracks asunder with his thumb.

Her eyes are closed by then. And she curls against his body, but what she's really doing is curling into herself. Now she's calm, so utterly unperturbed and imperturbable that part of Ivan wonders if it's finally happened, if he's finally gone stark raving mad as every last one of their tribe does soon or later; if he's imagined everything that happened here.

He lets go her wrists. He rubs his palm over them once, twice; it's hard to say is the gesture is meant to soothe or savor. The latter is a darkness, too. It makes his brow furrow, and then he reaches down, his hand gentle at her waist now, holding her there as he draws himself out of her.

They're a mess. He leaves a tracery of his cum on her thigh as he withdraws. Her slick is on his face, on his hands, on his groin. On his cock. They're so utterly stained with one another that he wonders for a moment if they'll ever wash one another's scent from their bodies. If years from now another wolf wouldn't take one sniff and know everything they've done here today.

She's achieved some sort of strange peace. He's very, very far from peace indeed, and he turns slowly on his back beside her and lays his arm over her back, his hand over her hip, as though to replace his weight on her body.

[Hilary Durante] Only --

she's not curling into herself. And he rolls aside, his arm over her body as though to replace his own weight, and Hilary turns, too. Not wriggling over to cuddle up to him, but moving onto her back as well. His withdrawl just makes her shudder, once, a small thing compared to the way she trembled during that last explosive orgasm. She's limp, half her body rolling to his chest and side, her eyes closed and her breathing as steady as if she's going to fall asleep.

Only --

she's not falling asleep. It's the middle of the afternoon on this warm, sunny weekend, and after this there's still things to be done during the day before the sun sets, and then after that, even more. Dinners to be had, and not with each other. She's not exhausted, just... drained, somehow, relaxed in a way he hasn't seen yet, and it's more than just the lazy afterglow of a good fuck. It really is a bone-deep peace he can't imagine feeling right now, himself.

Hilary turns her head against the arch between shoulder and pectoral muscle, breathing in his scent, which is maleness and sweat and sex and terror and lust and and violence. She rests the back of her hand against his chest, and her fingers uncurl and stroke against his jawline slightly.

"That was lovely," she whispers, with no pretense at all, no pretty words to cover up the void of meaning. The softness of the words bears their truth. "Thank you."

Those, too.

[Ivan Press] Ivan isn't entirely sure what to do with himself right now. It's not that he doesn't cuddle after the act, or that he's used to kicking his partner out of bed or leaving himself. It's not any of that. It's that he can't imagine her sort of peace right now.

He doesn't know what to do with himself, right now.

She turns with him, though. Turns on her back, turns into him and breathes him in. Her hand against his chest reminds him of a leaf, falling. Landing. Her fingers against his jaw are so soft. Everything about her is so soft, and --

his jaw flexes once under her fingers. Then he takes her hand. Catches it and stills it. Presses it briefly to his mouth, but firmly; even fervently. Lets go.

No answer to that. He can think of nothing to say.

[Hilary Durante] There is nothing to say. Nothing she needs to hear, it seems, no emptiness after her words that asks for a response. Simply: the truth, as she feels it, straight from that heart that must be so very different from most people's. It isn't even That was so great, baby, you're the best before she gets up and starts looking for her clothes. Not that she could just get dressed and leave like this.

She's bruised. In places her clothes cover. Her bracelets are thin enough that they're warped out of shape now from his gripping hands. They dug into her flesh and left deep impressions there, scraped against delicate bones. That and she's filled with his cum, has it on her thighs and is as sweaty as if she'd just done hot yoga.

But Hilary stays like this awhile, her fingertips still touching his jawline and brushing over his lips even after he let her go. She prolongs the inevitable as long as she can.


Eventually, though, neither of them can. It's something like four-thirty in the afternoon. Perhaps she has places to be. A friend to meet for shopping. Hilary has drifted back into her own mind, and found it much the way she left it, which is a chilling and heavy reality to sink back into. Slowly, she separates from Ivan, and it's been five, ten, fifteen minutes or even longer since that kiss to her hand.

She sits up carefully, and he can see bruising where he held her by the shoulders. She rotates her shoulders back a few times, sitting up on the bed beside him and then stretching, lifting her arms up over her head, fingers laced together. She sighs deeply, moving to the edge of the bed after her arms fall to put her feet on the carpet.

The way she moves, a little carefully at first and a little slowly regardless and -- when she stands -- a little bit shaky on her feet, tells him they fucked hard enough for her to be sore now, for her legs to be weak. But Hilary takes her time, and she doesn't walk around coltish and unsteady. She waits for her balance and she waits for her body to know what to do. It always does.

She looks over at him, smiling with what could very well be fondness. "I'm going to shower," she says. "Would you like to join me, or should I be sure to save some hot water for you?"

[Ivan Press] There's nothing between them; no conversation at all in those ten, fifteen minutes they lie together. Ivan is simply quiet, sorting through his troubled thoughts, sifting through them all until he can find his own peace. Or at least: find a place where he can be safe from them, and ignore them, for the time being.

So when Hilary stirs, he's quiet again. Quiet and still and smooth-browed. She sits up and his eyes move toward her. There's no surprise in him at all, and not a trace of hurt. He knew coming in that they were unlikely to stay here long than the hour or two necessary for them to --

well. Fuck each other senseless, just the way they did.

So little has passed between them. So little true conversation; not only today but the past two times they met as well. So little insight. They know almost nothing about each other, though they both assumed at times -- perhaps still does assume, on her part -- that they know what kind of person the other is. They connected in the deepest, most intimate way possible

and there was little true intimacy there at all. There was nothing between them. What they had instead was a sort of mutual madness that has left her bruised; that has warped her jewelry and left imprints in her flesh.

A faint frown marks his brow again when he sees that. He reaches out to her silently from where he lies. If she lets him, his hand folds warm and elegant over her wrists, over the marks; briefly. If she does not, he doesn't press.

When she stands, Ivan sits up. He scuffs a hand through his hair. He'll ache faintly too tomorrow, simply from the strenuous work of it all -- that is, if he doesn't shapeshift between now and then.

And he looks at her when she speaks. There's a pause; then his eyes move to the imprint of his hand on her shoulder.

The truth is, he has healing talens. The truth is, he wants to use them. Offer them to her. The truth is, he doesn't because somehow that seems even worse. To fuck her like that; to hurt her and bruise her; to cover his tracks and be utterly uncertain, in the end, whether he did it for her or for himself.

What he says instead, quietly, "Are you going to have to explain those?"

[Hilary Durante] He doesn't know her.

She doesn't know him.

They may never. Not truly. But it's possible no one knows anyone. That intimacy is a joke anyway, that even those moments of connection so deep it feels like the end of the world or the beginning of your life the way it was meant to me are just lies, in the end. That even if it means something, even if it's honest,

it won't make any bit of fucking difference in the end. That it can't really change a person. That love doesn't change lives, that intimacy doesn't let you know someone, that knowing someone doesn't even really matter. Because:

we are all alone.


Maybe that's who Hilary really is. Hardened. Cynical. Alone. So detached from the human experience that everything that just happened in this room and on this bed has no more meaning to her than choosing what to have for dinner tonight. Fish or vegetarian. Hmm. She's in the mood for scallops.

Ivan touches her wrists and she lets him. Ivan sits up as she's standing up, sore from fucking her though, truth be told, nowhere near as sore as she must be from being fucked like that. He hurt her. She liked it. She must be

(so fucked up)

incapable of feeling anything real, if she liked that if. It it made her feel -- well. This. Lovely, she said. Thankful. Fond of him, as he lies there looking at her bruises, which she glances at and considers for a moment, then laughs lightly at.

"Oh, they'll be fine in a couple of hours," she says blithely. "A nice hot shower, a massage -- my girl's name is Karynn," it's pronounced kuh-RINN, "she's fabulous." Hilary smiles at him. "Besides. Dión and Micaela are in Paris. Tomás has been staying at our place in the city lately." A twinkle to her eye. "I think he has a girlfriend he's keeping secret from us."

She taps her perfect finger, one of those that was not so long ago wrapped around his cock or buried in his hair, against her lips, which have lost all the pale gloss they were wearing when he met her on the boardwalk. Her hand falls away again. "Worry not, mon petit faucon."

He didn't answer her question. But it doesn't seem to bother her. He'll join her or he won't. He'll take a shower after her or he'll be gone when she gets out. He'll leave while he has a chance or he'll stick around and say goodbye, and -- it appears -- each possibility is just as acceptable to her as the next. She drifts into the bathroom, humming to herself, the door left open behind her.

[Hilary Durante] [meant to BE. gah.]

[Ivan Press] She's so light now. So blithe about it all; breezy and warm and charming and superficial as though they were old but distant friends meeting at a yacht club. Meeting at the golf course. Discussing the family, the kids, and oh my god I can't believe Micaela's off the college already.

Ivan's still where he is. There's still sweat on his body. There's still a flush in his cheeks. He looks at her and there's still a frown on his brow too, faint but quizzical, as though he couldn't figure her out. He can't figure out if this is some sort of defense mechanism or if she thinks this is how he wants her to be now or if this is simply how she is.

She tells him not to worry. Calls him mon petit faucon, and even knowing next to nothing of french as he does he can figure that one out. It makes his lips tug faintly; resettle. It doesn't really touch the frown.

She leaves him like that: sitting up in bed looking after her, brow furrowed. She goes into the bathroom humming and he stays where he is a little longer, scrubbing his hands over his face. He looks at the rumpled bed. He looks at their clothes on the floor. He looks out the window at the bright afternoon and the sunshine for a very long time.


And then he joins her in the shower after all. She can hear his footsteps, which is deliberate, because as little as Ivan cares about the war the truth is he's a talented Ragabash, light on his feet and sharp of eye, and if he wanted to she'd never hear him coming.

She can hear him, though. She can hear his footsteps, and she can hear him taking a washcloth from the shelf before brushing open the shower curtain. He steps in after her and the shower seems more crowded now. His arm reaches past her body and he wets the washcloth, then soaps it. Works it into a lather.

If she lets him, he washes her back. He helps her wash, the towel warm and faintly rough on her skin; his fine, uncalloused gentleman's hands -- werewolf's hands, ever renewed and remade -- much softer. Eventually he's not washing her at all but caressing her, rubbing her back, kneading the muscles twisted sore by the positions he put her in, fucked her in.

If she wants to, he lets her return the favor. If not -- it doesn't seem to matter.


Eventually they're both clean. The last traces of their encounter disappear down the drain, except for the bruises he left her. Everything else -- their sweat, their cum, their scent, their presence -- washed clean. Stripped away. His human nose can detect nothing but shampoo and soap. His human eyes, nothing but herself and himself, separate.

The shower turns off. The last of the water runs down the drain. In the dripping silence and the indirect light filtered through a curtain he looks at her.

"I want to see you again," he says.

[Ivan Press] [wtf. off TO college.]

[Hilary Durante] If she told the truth -- and she probably would -- Hilary's thoughts are at least partly occupied by what to do about her hair. She's gotten so sweaty, but she's not sure if should bother getting it wet in the shower or not. If she does, she'll have to dry it, and then it won't be styled quite like it was, since she hasn't any of her products. If she were to tell the truth, ramble on without any reason whatsoever, that might be what she talked about: deciding out loud that oh, since they have a hairdryer in the bathroom for guest use she'll go ahead and wash her hair, dry it here, re-apply her makeup, then just wear her hat home

where she will take another shower, with her own soap and her own shampoo, and send the outfit she wore today to the drycleaner with the rest of the week's things. Nightclub attire, her robe from taking the catamaran out.

She speaks of her 'family' -- Dion, Micaela, Tomas -- without investment in their names, though her pronunciation of them is smooth and familiar. She talks about these light things as though talking about her husband and stepchildren to the man she just fucked madly and desperately in this hotel room is not utterly fucking bizarre behavior. And she hums as she goes to the shower, but soon enough he can't hear it, because the water is rushing out of the tap, then out of the showerhead, and he's alone with his thoughts for a little while longer as he sits on the bed.

In the shower, Hilary lets her mind wander. She washes her hair and she puts conditioner in it. She doesn't use all of the products, though, little bottles that they are, in case Ivan decides he wants to shower here, as well. She closes her eyes and washes her face, going over the afternoon in her mind, letting herself drift through her most recent memories like replaying a familiar video, like looking through photos of the vacation you just went on.


And a little while later, he joins her after all. Wordlessly but not silent, Ivan comes into the shower and there she is, wet all over rather than in spots where sweat gathers, rather than just between her legs. She smiles at him, welcoming. Pleased, and openly so, that he decided to come.

They don't start stroking each other again in the shower. This isn't that kind of passion. They aren't kissing each other after mere moments, but Hilary is letting Ivan wash her, making small noises of relaxation as he does -- well, let's be honest, he's not as good as Karynn, but his hands are strong and smooth and this isn't so much massaging as caressing -- what he does to soothe what he did to her body. She enjoys this, too, though not in the same way.

She makes no move to take the cloth from him and wash his back, rub his muscles. The thought doesn't appear to even cross her mind.


When they're done, She turns off the water and starts to gently, gently wring out her hair. You don't look like her by being anything but rough with your body. She seems so comfortable with him, like this isn't the third time they've met, like he didn't literally have to pull away from her because what was happening to him was too intense, like this is... easy for her. Like she's happy.

So when he looks at her and says he wants to see her again, it isn't surprise or waffling or awkwardness that touches her expression. Just that pleasant, pleased smile. Her hands work at her hair, and then she skims some extra water off her shoulders and her arms and her breasts and belly. Her bangles are on the bathroom counter on a spread-out washcloth but who is still wearing her rings and her earrings.

Smiling, then: "That would be nice," she says, as the dripping slows, slows, slows past their ankles. "Perhaps next time you can take me on a little cruise." A slight arch to her brow. "With your helmsman, of course. We wouldn't want anyone at any of the clubs to get the wrong idea. You know how these people love to talk about anything that might be anything."

Hilary nods at the curtain. "Hand me a towel, will you, dove?"

[Ivan Press] When Ivan stood behind Hilary, who stood behind the wide-open glass of the hotel room window, he thought to himself even as he was undressing her that he didn't know who she was.

Then the bottom dropped out from under him, and the world spun, and walls broke and floors crumbled and he discovered in himself, in his carefree careless playboy's heart, a core of darkness so deep and absolute that it shook him to the marrow.

Even now he's still recovering from it. And in the aftermath of what they did, which was so intense, and so intensely on some razorsharp edge that he doesn't even have a name for it --

in that aftermath, he was blasted, wrecked, ruined, rebuilt. Barely able to function. But even then, even there, he recognized that right there, right then, just for a moment:

he could see who she was. He could see some glimmer of iron truth in her that was otherwise lost.

No, not lost. Buried. Concealed beneath this blithe, smiling exterior, the creature that stands here smiling pleasedly at him, that talks about her fucking mate and husband, her step-children, her fucking clubs. Their mutually shared clubs, which mean almost nothing to him except as something he Should Do. Just as the war is something he Should Fight. Just as the Litany, and all its laws of territory and claim and respect, is something he Should Obey.

And yet here he is: standing naked in a shower with a woman who was not his, who he fucked in ways he did not know he was capable of fucking. It wasn't that it was rough. He's played rough before, but that's the key of it: play. This wasn't play. This was deadly serious, deadly dark for him at least, and

somehow, it broke through to her for a moment. It lit her up and made her visible, and then the flare faded and it was over and

now he doesn't know her at all anymore.


He moves. It's only a few seconds before he does: a few seconds of looking at her, her pleased, happy smile, her blithe, light conversation. And then, without a word of reply, he flicks the curtain back and steps out. His limbs are long and straight; feet strong. Hands strong. There's a lot of grace in him, natural, carved into the very bone. He snags a towel off the bar and turns to hand it to her, and all the while he's trying not to grab her by the shoulders and demand to know

who the fuck she really is. And what the fuck was wrong with her. And why the fuck, out of all the beautiful well-bred women in this world, so many of them disturbed or deranged or quite simply fucking insane, the who and the how and the why of this one should matter at all.

What he says instead:

"Next Saturday at two, then?"

[Hilary Durante] It should bother her. The way he just gets out of the shower like that, the way that he suddenly pulled out of her like he did, flipped the blanket over her like he couldn't bear to see her like that anymore. It should make her feel bad that he doesn't smile back at her, that he doesn't seem happy when she is happy, that something is wrong. It should bother her.

Mostly, it startles her. Not deeply, because she isn't really frightened of him, but a little bit at least, because it's sudden. Hilary just takes the towel he hands her though, and squeezes a bit more water out of her hair, smiling at him. There's something in her eyes, and it may simply be pleasure. In looking at him. In talking about seeing him again In afterglowing from fucking so hard she came

and came

and came.

Or perhaps: simply in her own existence, which is lovely and full of ease and luxury. Her life is quite nice, you see. The homes, the cars, the yacht, the clothes, the jewels, the champagne, the big blue sky and the deep deep sea and everything in between that is all so easy for her to enjoy. Perhaps she's one of those women with no hidden depths. No thoughts beyond the immediate. One of those people who never asks herself why

or looks in the mirror and asks who the fuck are you? what the fuck is wrong with you?

"I'll see you at the docks, then," she says. Then, because they surely were seen talking on the boardwalk at Sheridan today, she adds with a small smile: "The ones down in the city this time."

She's standing in the shower. When she steps out she's smaller than he is, no longer wearing heels that make her see him eye-to-eye. But tall enough, even now, to tilt her face up and kiss him on the jaw. His mouth, if he gives it to her. A small thing, this kiss, like the ones on his chest when she crawled over him. Not slow and sweet and searching like the one on the nightclub staircase, nor mauling and ferocious like when he picked her up and threw her on the bed to fuck her

before he knew what fucking her would really be like.

She pulls back, and dries herself off, and goes about the business of getting herself ready to go. It takes her longer than it does him. She has makeup in her purse to put on. She has to dry her hair and curl the ends around a round brush. She has jewelry to put back on and clothes to put back on and at most he'll get to see her as she looks at her lingerie, the panties still wet from how badly she wanted him. Or maybe he's gone by the time she considers the underwear and decides to put it back on anyway, since she'll be showering when she gets home regardless.

Maybe Hilary is alone by the time she sits on the armchair and buckles her shoes again. She doesn't have to explain to anyone why she's checking out so soon: this hotel lets you do it online. She does it from her phone as she's walking down the hall, heading down in the elevator to get her Maserati from the valet.

God only knows what she's thinking about as she takes her key and drives away, the wind breezing her hair off her shoulders as she heads back to the club to have an early dinner with a girlfriend.

God might not want to.