[Hilary Durante] Ivan wasn't there to see Hilary half-stumble as she stood from her table at the Signature Room, and he wasn't there to see his young tribesmate all but jump to his feet to offer his assistance to the mated woman, so he wasn't there to see Christian escorting Hilary to the elevators. Perhaps to her car. Perhaps all the way home. But Ivan's no fool, and though his eyes were on Erika most of the time Hilary had her eyes on Christian, he wouldn't be the kind of Ragabash he is if he didn't guess better than anyone exactly what was going on over there.
She's smooth. She's destructive, ruinous. She likes men who are young and eager and whose bodies are deliciously firm. She has a sexual appetite that borders on the cataclysmic. And he knows it.
Christian has all the guile of a newborn colt.
Still: perhaps the young man resisted. Perhaps Ivan went to a strip club with Cordelia, perhaps he spread those long long legs of hers and made her giggle and made her cry out in Spanish or French or every language she knows. Perhaps he poured vodka over her and licked it from her nipples, perhaps he poured vodka over himself and pushed her face to his lap. In which case: what Hilary was doing to some poor sap who should've known better probably wasn't in the borders of his blitzed-out consciousness.
It doesn't matter. It's been two weeks since he fucked Mrs. Hilary Durante on board Krasota. One week since he even saw the goddamn woman. One week since he missed every mention made during the Silver Fang moot that her husband was returning the next day.
About a week since Espiridion Nieves-Durante returned to the United States, to Chicago, and to his mate and his only son, a messenger arrives at the penthouse. Not the lake house. The penthouse is the one that's been in the social pages, and the one Hilary suspects Ivan stays at most often. The messenger is no mid-nineties stereotype with rainbow socks and a dozen piercings and dreadlocks. He's actually a rather dapper-seeming young black man with a single -- large -- cubic zirconia in one earlobe, a shaven head, and no visible tattoos. His company has a reputation. They're remaking how bicycle messengers in Chicago operate, see. The whole image.
Gaia only knows when Ivan gets the message, though it arrives in the afternoon. Whether he's out. Whether he's asleep. Whether he's even there. Maybe it's given to him on a tray by one of his people, and maybe he doesn't see it for days. Whenever he does see it, he sees an off-white envelope with his name on it. Inside is an off-white card with a minimalistic lavender-silver floral design sprawling along the left edge, like someone dipped the card in graphic design and shook off the unnecessary bits. It doesn't fold. It's flat, and all it says is:
I have to get out of here. Tell me where and I'll be there.
- H.
[Ivan Press] Oh, Ivan noticed. He noticed the lovely Mrs. Durante standing up from the table she shared with himself and Erika Alexander. He noticed her moving, and truth be told he would have noticed even if she hadn't preceded it by drawing her toes down the back of his calf. He was aware of her over there making friends with the young Mr. del Piero, which was such a pleasant, sociable thing for her to do. The young Ahroun was obviously uncomfortable in his clothes, at that gathering, in the ever-so-elite company of his supposed peers. It was a kindly, appropriate thing for a mated matron-kin of the Silver Fangs to do, except -- well. Ivan knows better, doesn't he?
He knows what Hilary looks like naked, wet, her hair falling over her face, her slim body bent over the edge of a bed that's most definitely not her matrimonial bed, her cunt receiving a cock that most definitely does not belong to her husband and lord and master and whatever the fuck else one might call a Garou, an Adren, a Silver Fang mated to this woman. He knew at a glance, with a true libertine's unerring instinct for these things, that this woman was a shark under the benign smile. That she liked them young and eager and pretty and obedient.
It took Ivan a little longer to surmise that perhaps she only likes them young and obedient because they're be so much easier to handle. Easier to pick up, easier to let go of. Easier to shut down if they get a little out of hand. Easier to silence if their tongues get loose, and above all, easier bend to what she wants. Because they wouldn't know any better. There could be any number of man-boys out there who think grabbing a woman by the throat or by the hair was normal sexual behavior and not merely the sort of thing played out in edgier pornography. There could be any number of youths out there who think fucking a woman until she was crying out in some sort of ecstatic pain was normal sexual behavior.
Never mind. The point is: Christian did fit that bill oh so very well. And while the rest of the gathering might have noticed nothing, thought nothing of it all, Ivan never had a doubt what was going on over at the -- what did she call it? -- peaceful table. He never had a doubt where that ended up, sooner or later.
Maybe not that very night. But sooner or later.
This doesn't surprise it, and it doesn't bother him. Or perhaps it does, but if it does, he doesn't realize it. At any rate, it's been nearly a week since the gathering, and nearly two since the day on the Krasota which seemed to serve as a sort of break-up -- not that they were ever together. Ivan is hardly expecting a message from the Mrs. Espiridion Nieves-Durante, but one such message does, in fact arrive at the penthouse.
Hilary guessed right. This is where Ivan spends most of his time. This is where Ivan is spending some time right now, this afternoon-leaning-into-early-evening, practicing his tennis serve.
Out on the terrace.
Standing on the broad balustrade pedestal.
Smashing tennis balls out over the city.
Could be worse. Could be polo. Could be golf. Could be those tiny, hard little balls engineered to minimize wind resistance, which would drop thirty-some-odd stories and crack someone's head open. Still: it's a lawsuit waiting to happen, which might explain the presence of his lawyer in the living room, enjoying a rum and coke while he leafs through the latest stack of ... whatever. Paperwork.
Landing after his latest jumpserve arcs lakeward, Ivan spins the racket in his hand once, wipes sweat from his brow, and then reaches down from his semi-precarious perch. He accepts the envelope from the butler, tears it open and hands the envelope back. His eyes skim the note. He makes a faint noise: something between huh and hm and heh. Then he wads the note up and whack!s it over the city.
"Get me my phone, will you?" He palms a ball out of his pocket and sends it soaring.
A few moments later, Hilary gets an SMS:
My place.
Maybe it's a joke. Maybe it's a test. Maybe he's pissed off. Maybe he's just lazy.
[Hilary Durante] There is no answering text message from Mrs. Durante.
There is a visitor at his building an hour later, waiting to come up.
[Ivan Press] An hour later, Ivan is no longer serving tennis balls to the city of Chicago. He's showered and his racket is put away and his lawyer has been dismissed or at least packed off somewhere nonintrusive. It's just Ivan in the kitchen, freshly showered, his hair damp against his skull. He's leafing through a glossy-paged catalog of various epicurean delights, trying to decide what to have Evgeny make for dinner. The rest of his servants have been alerted of a potential visitor, and of a certain sensitivity and necessity for discretion tonight. They're out of sight and out of mind as all truly indispensable servants ought to be. They're not, actually: not always, not perfectly. But they're learning.
The intercom chimes. He ignores it, but only because he knows someone else will tend to it. Dmitri, most likely. Less than twenty seconds after the chime, he hears the dour creature speaking quietly into the intercom. Hilary's identity is politely requested; when given, the door unlatches. She's told to please wait.
Moments later, the elevator descends from the topmost floor. Dmitri looks the same as he did on the waterfront, only less sunlit. He bows his head to Hilary and says nothing at all as he slides the keycard that activates the penthouse floor, sending the elevator skyward.
When the doors slide open again, Ivan stands before them. He's barefoot and barechested, hands open at his sides; he looks relaxed. He looks feral. He cocks his head at her, a listening or puzzling pose. After Dmitri escorts her from the elevator car, bows to the master of the house, and disappears, the silence goes on another second and then Ivan quirks a smile.
"Unexpected," he notes. "I would've thought this was too risky for you."
[Hilary Durante] Dmitri is the first one to see Hilary today. Dark sunglasses, hair up and off her neck and on top of her head somewhere between messy and coiffed and it's ever so Audrey of her. She's not wearing any kind of LBD, though, but a long cream-colored skirt of irregular hemlines over a pair of weathered, polished cowboy boots in a dark cherry brown. Her shirt is nothing more than a black camisole, and she's carrying a simple woven bag over her shoulder that bumps against her hip when she walks.
She doesn't talk to Dmitri, and when the elevator gets to the penthouse she walks out without looking around herself, without appraising or observing his gallery or even him. She enters like she lives here, herself, and there isn't much time for a moment of silence because as soon as the butler is out of sight -- if not out of earshot -- she's talking over Ivan while he's mentioning expectations and risk.
"I need a drink."
[Ivan Press] Hilary has an almost unheard-of ability: the ability to rile Ivan up. He doesn't know what it is. She riled him up almost from the start. No, not the very start -- not on her flybridge and not at the club. But the start. From the moment he met her on the docks only to have her say,
no, that wouldn't do.
To the afternoon at the lake. To this. Breezing into his home like she owns it, demanding without any prior notice not only his company and his attention but his hospitality -- which, while he would have given it freely, is something he wants to withhold now out of sheer spite. He doesn't, of course. Dmitri gets called back. "The lady," Ivan says, with an ironic quirk of his mouth, "wants a drink."
Either she'll tell the butler what she wants, now, or she'll get what Dmitri considers a drink. Which is to say: vodka. Or actually, bourbon. But Dmitri knows a thing or two about appearances; he knows what a household staffed by Russians, owned by a son of Father Russian, belonging to Clan Crescent Moon would be expected to serve.
As the order is ferried to the kitchen, Ivan shows his guest in from the foyer. This is her first time here. One doubts Hilary is so guileless and gawkish to, well, gawk. They pass down the smooth length of the hallway, those frosted-glass panels sliding by; she gets a glimpse of the living room and its double-height ceiling, its vast open spaces and endless walls of glass. He leads her toward the somewhat more intimate den instead. All things are relative here. Everything is open, expansive, minimalism saved from sterility only by a careful choice of materials -- plenty of warm wood, bright hot lighting.
She still has her bag. Dmitri offered; she refused. Ivan doesn't ask again. He motions her toward the couch, though, which faces a fireplace and a truly vast plasma-screen.
Ivan remains standing. He leans against the wall, framed by the warm cherry-wood, the westering light of day soft across the gentle definition of his torso, the leaner planes of his face. "So," he inquires lightly, "what's the catastrophe? Did your little boy track mud on your favorite persian rug?"
Yuliya arrives: a tray bearing two drinks is set down. She leaves the bottles.
[Ivan Press] [ahem. a son of Father Russia.]
[Hilary Durante] When Dmitri returns, Hilary lifts her sunglasses and looks at him a moment, then says with a sort of flat blandness: "White Russian." Just to be a little shit, perhaps.
She keeps her bag. Maybe she isn't planning on staying long. Maybe she wants to be able to get into it at any second. Maybe she's like most women who aren't here for a party and would cling to her purse even if she were unconscious. Which, in point of fact, would make rousing her from unconsciousness rather easy: just try to take her purse from her grip.
Those sunglasses go into the bag. She's not wearing them to hide a bruise over her eye; maybe Dion doesn't beat her, or knows to heal her before he leaves her alone again. Hilary is led to the den, and she doesn't look around. It says something about the sort of places she's used to, that this -- one of the most luxurious if not the most luxurious places in Chicago -- doesn't even strike her as all that out of the ordinary.
When they get to the couch she tosses her bag onto the corner and sits down, leaning back, arms sprawling, and lets out a heavy sigh. She looks at him, leaning against the wall as he is, and for some reason a faint smirk almost-but-not-quite plays over her lips. She leans on the siderest of the couch, her arm stretched over the back, legs crossed at the knee, and waits until Yuliya's gone again before she answers.
"Did I say there was a catastrophe?"
[Ivan Press] If he hadn't sent that note sailing out over the city, he'd pull it out now. Show it to her like a smoking gun. As it is, he has only the quirk of his eyebrow.
"If it wasn't a catastrophe," he replies, "then why are you here?"
[Hilary Durante] "I've been stuck in the house for a week," she says, sounding more than looking like she's on the verge of rolling her eyes. She's wearing her wedding ring. She's wearing the ring he gave her on their first anniversary. She's wearing a stack of gold bangles on her right wrist. She's wearing large but not obnoxious gold hoops in her ears.
"But okay," she goes on, slowly, as though placating a child, "we can call that a catastrophe if it suits you, Ivan."
[Ivan Press]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Hilary Durante
[Ivan Press] [STARE FOR A LONGER TIME.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Hilary Durante] [She's exhausted. It's similar to the vibe he got from her when she was talking to him on the boat about staying with him for hours and hours and how that seemed to drain her just to think about, but not quite the same. She's on edge, and it's pretty clear it's been awhile since she's slept decently.]
to Ivan Press
[Ivan Press] For a moment, only silence. Only the Ragabash's sharp eyes on her. In truth, his stare is rather hard. Not altogether friendly.
Then he straightens. Whatever he sees, surmises, thinks -- he keeps it to himself. Sealed away under that smooth skin, smooth countenance. So fucking balanced. So graceful. He comes forward, bends smoothly to pick up his drink. He is, in fact, drinking vodka. Maybe he was feeling stereotypical himself.
"Why are you here?" he asks again. The stress is different this time.
[Hilary Durante] "I thought I stated it rather succinctly," she says, weathering his stare without seeming to acknowledge it. It rolls off of her. She absorbs it. It passes through her easily because there isn't all that much to see.
"I needed to get out of the house."
He gets his drink. She leans over and picks up hers, takes a long drink. She didn't miss the emphasis on his words. She drinks first, though, without toasting him or Russia or the Fangs or anything, and the ice cubs clink together as she downs roughly half of the White Russian in one go. Sets it down, and fills the glass back up with vodka.
"Dión's been back from Paris," she says as she pours, the ice shifting around again.
[Ivan Press] She'd have to be deaf to miss the emphasis on his words. She'd have to be an imbecile to miss its significance, and Ivan knows she's neither. His free hand curls into a fist. Briefly, he can see himself cracking his knuckles across her face. He doesn't even recognize the urge in himself. He doesn't recognize who he becomes when she shows up.
He downs the rest of his vodka fast, sets his glass down. "Oh, I see," and his tone is light and crisp. "And of all your various friends and acquaintances, I'm the one you'd prefer to drag down with you should Dión come looking for his darling mate, is that it?"
And then he pours another glass.
"Or maybe," he offers, "I'm just the best liar of the lot."
[Hilary Durante] "Neither," she says, and lifting her glass, takes another drink. Another long one.
[Ivan Press] A beat of silence meets that. He doesn't ask the obvious again:
Then why?
Instead, this. "You look tired." It's that courteous tone again; she heard it last when he was offering her a shower and clean towels aboard his yacht. "I have two excellent guest suites upstairs. You're welcome to have a nap, if you'd like."
[Hilary Durante] She's looking at him over the rim of her glass as she drinks. She's looking at him when she lowers it again, licking a bit of cream off her lips. "Come with me."
Hilary doesn't deny that she's tired. She doesn't get insulted that he says she looks it. She doesn't try to seduce him with the licking of her lips, or a lower tone of voice when she tells him to come with her. She doesn't look plaintive or come off as pleading. It's just... an offer, really, but without the blatant courtesy of his own tone of voice,
which he uses like a weapon.
[Ivan Press] Bare to the waist as he is, it's harder to disguise the indrawn breath, then. It's impossible to stop it. The best he can do is slow that inhale, level it out, make it something gentler than a gasp. His eyes flick down briefly. He picks his glass up.
"I don't think that would be wise," he says. For what it's worth, this is more genuine: softer.
[Hilary Durante] Her laugh is a snort of air through her nostrils, a mirthless huff. She holds her glass, watching him. "Do you think I'm going to try and fuck you?"
[Ivan Press] "If you're not," Ivan replies, "then I have even less interest in following you to bed, Hilary."
[Hilary Durante] [this should be amusing]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Hilary Durante] [SILVER FANGS DON'T FAIL.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 3 (Failure at target 7)
[Hilary Durante] [WELL FINE I GUESS THEY DO]
[Hilary Durante] When she looks at him now she can't read him. Her eyes have a sort of black deadness to them, which isn't a cold willingness to lie, cheat, murder, steal, or whatever else it is she's capable of, but simply... exhaustion. What he says should hurt her. What he says should frustrate her.
"Alright," is all she says, and finishes her drink. She sets it back down on the tray, and rises to her feet. The alcohol hasn't had time to make her sway yet, to do anything more than make her a little lightheaded. Which may be sleep deprivation.
Or some other kind of weariness.
Her bag hangs along her side. "I'm sure I can find my own way," she says. "Would you have one of your people make sure I don't sleep more than an hour?"
[Ivan Press] His only answer to that is a near-imperceptible nod. Then he holds out his hand -- not for her hand but for her glass, which he takes and replaces on the tray.
It would be more courteous for him to show her to her room. He doesn't, though. This place is utterly, obscenely huge -- nearly 8000 square feet of wood and glass and steel -- but the plan is simple and plain, squared-off. Two hallways, upper and lower. Everything else branches off from that. Two staircases, a spiral at the south end and a switchback at the north. She'll find them easily enough, and from there, the two guest suites with their doors ajar, their platform beds neatly made with fresh linens.
One might expect Ivan's bedrooms to be temples of sin, with the beds as the altars. Surprisingly, both guest bedrooms are pleasant, light-filled affairs, the walls bright to reflect the light, the floors and furnishings largely of light-colored woods. There's a switch that lowers a shade, barring out the evening light.
An hour is, in the end, not a very long time. After Hilary goes upstairs, Ivan mulls dinner over some more; settles on normandy seafood stew. It's a surprisingly hearty, homey meal for a creature so bathed in luxury and flash, but then one can't always dine on artful, minimalistic morsels. Evgeny gets to it, and it's when the first hints of parsley and thyme begin to rise into the air that the frosted glass door to the guest bedroom -- whichever one Hilary chose -- swings softly open.
Ivan is even quieter when he crosses the room. He stands a moment at the edge of the bed, as though in thought. Then the mattress dips as he moves onto it. She might wake now, or she might wake when he moves behind her, slipping his arm around her waist, his chest warm against her back. Or she might not wake at all.
[Ivan Press] [AHEM. "Surprising, both guest bedrooms are pleasant, light-filled affairs, the walls bright to reflect sunshine, the floors and furnishings largely of pale woods. There's a switch that lowers a shade, barring out the evening light."
Two lights is okay.]
[Hilary Durante] It's hard to say if Hilary takes much notice of the penthouse as she leaves the couch and heads upstairs to find a place to just... rest. As though she can't do that in her husband's estate on the North Shore. As though she can't go to their place downtown and do that. As though there aren't literally hundreds of perfectly adequate hotels where she could rest.
Maybe Ivan's right, and she was lying: she doesn't care if Dion tracks her down here and flies into a frenzy that would very likely end in the deaths of a handful of Russians and an overprivileged man-child of a Ragabash. Maybe she just trusts that he's a better liar than some of the other far-too-young men that she might have fucked on a regular basis while her husband was in Paris for whatever reason he was in Paris. Maybe that's why she sent a messenger here and, as soon as she had permission, got down here in a shot.
Not to seduce Ivan again with her ability to rile him, make him want to hurt her, only to turn around and be so fucking warm, so pliant, so wet for him when he pushes his cock into her.
Just to have a drink and take a nap, apparently.
She stands at the doorway to one of the guest suites and looks it over. Just for a moment. Flicks switches til she finds the one that operates the shades, and when the room is dark enough to block the oncoming sunset, she crosses the room to the bed. Hilary puts down her boots, takes off her boots, takes off her socks, and lets down her hair. It falls thick around her shoulders, and if she expected Ivan would come to sleep with her later she might bother to brush her teeth before she sits down, lays down, and puts her head on the pillow. She doesn't even bother to get under a blanket.
Downstairs, Ivan decides what he wants for dinner and his cook begins making it for him. He is the lauded hero of the nation, after all, the glory to his family line. And he goes back entirely then on what he said and comes upstairs to the room she chose. It was the first one she found.
She's asleep when he comes in, so she can't smirk at him as he's framed by the light and murmur that she thought he was lying when he siad he had no interest in following her to bed. She's deeply asleep, in fact. Hilary is underneath the dark sleep of the truly emptied. Her breathing is steady, slow, and audible only in heavy but quiet exhales through her nostrils. She's quite warm, however cool he tries to keep his apartment despite the sun beating on the glass. It's cooler in here, with the shades down, but the room absorbed plenty enough heat before she lowered them.
He is a scout of the Nation. His best attacks are the ones that come as a surprise, from behind, knives sweeping in between ribs to pierce hearts. His footfalls, as she knows from the time he blindfolded her, are nearly inaudible. She doesn't wake when he comes inside.
As he looks at her he sees a woman on her left side, her legs almost artful in the way they lie on the bedspread, the way her skirt covers them in gauzy, angelic layers. Her bare feet are uncovered, and her toenails are a pearlescent pink. But what might be most striking is how utterly simple she looks. How real. She's just a woman, and that means she sweats on hot summer days and her breath probably doesn't smell all that great after a post-White-Russian nap and she's older than him and she's sore and achey from sleep deprivation and
it isn't that looking at her inspires some great wave of tenderness so much as at least momentary recognition of the fact that she is, in fact, vulnerable right now, the way that all are vulnerable in their sleep because they have no choice but to be so.
Hilary doesn't wake when the mattress moves. Not entirely. She is starting to stir a little when Ivan gets behind her, her consciousness opening one drowsy eye towards the surface of reality before deciding no, it's too much energy to ascend, let us sink deeper. She breathes in a little deeper than before as his arm comes around her, as the heat of his body settles in at her back.
Her exhale is a sigh. She relaxes against him, and she sleeps.
[Ivan Press] On any given day Hilary Durante wears more diamonds on her body than some people see in a lifetime. She owns a sailing catamaran with more square footage than a small house. She drives a six-figure maserati, dines in michelin three-star restaurants, fucks in five-star hotels where she puts down a card for a whole night and stays two hours. For his part, Ivan lives in what might be the premier loft in the city. He owns a 'lakeside retreat' two or three times the size of the average american upper-middle class family home. He has a garage full of exotic supercars, and last weekend, after abruptly losing interest in one Fang kinswoman, he hopped on his daddy's private jet with another and flew her to new york city on 30 minutes' notice.
For the sole purpose of clubhopping. In Manhattan.
They are neither of them merely men and women. They are neither of them merely anything human. His sleek playboy's exterior hides a beast. Hilary: god knows what she really is, underneath it all.
And yet all the same: there she lies, vulnerable and real, sleeping. There he lays: moving close to her, wrapping his arm around her, using his body heat to warm her when the heat of the day slowly fades with the light.
Some part of Ivan wonders what he was really looking for when he asked her to stay the night aboard his yacht. If he wanted to wreck her shit all night. If he wanted to fuck her over and over and over until -- as he threatened, or promised -- she couldn't stand. Or if he wanted something far more treacherous: this. Their bodies curled together, their warmth shared, some connection implied, if not truly forged, in the simple act of sleeping together.
He puts it from his mind. He closes his eyes and puts his mouth gently to her shoulder, and
it seems like no time at all passes before Dmitri discreetly knocks on the door, a shadow through the frosted glass alerting them that the hour was up. Ivan stirs first, blinking sleep from his eyes. The vodka buzz has burned away already. He's thirsty, and there's only the last glow of twilight left outside, and it's a little cold in this room now.
He doesn't get up. He doesn't draw away. "Hilary," he says quietly, and then a little louder, "it's been an hour."
[Hilary Durante] One has to wonder how she got away with it. Surely the money isn't her own. She doesn't have the hands or face or attitude of someone who works for a living. But she'd put down a card for hotels, she'd do things with her husband's money she'd have to explain to someone, but... no concern, there. The only risk was being seen by people who might gossip. The only risk was fucking someone who might not have a trace of discretion in their bones.
Which Ivan has. Which Christian might not. She doesn't know yet. So far, so good. She doesn't know he was taken away, that he's died twice since he died in her. One has to wonder if she'd care.
She cares that Ivan is behind her when she wakes, and she knows that it's Ivan as soon as she wakes. Her eyes are opening as he's saying her name, as he's telling her that her precious hour in a soft bed where no one is hounding her, smelling her, asking her for love, asking her for attention, demanding her presence, drinking in her existence til she's just a thin cup drained dry of everything, everything, what little she has in her to begin with.
Hilary wakes, stirring under Ivan's encircling arm that implies but does not forge the sort of closeness and connection he sought when he told her to open her eyes so she'd know who was fucking her the way he was
and she sighs softly, closing her eyes again.
"I have to go," she breathes, with evident and obvious regret.
[Ivan Press] "I know," he says softly.
This entire loft belongs to him. Every scrap, every inch. Any wolf coming here would know it immediately: by scent, by instinct, in the very marrow of his bones. Hilary does not have that sort of primal instinct, though, and her weak human's nose is only good enough to discern the difference between a good wine and an excellent one. To her, this room smells clean and fresh and just a little bit sterile, a little bit devoid of all connection and ownership, like an expensive hotel room too classy to smell of cleaning solutions.
She doesn't know that there are clean, folded towels in the en-suite bathroom. She doesn't know there are wrapped toothbrushes in there, wrapped bars of soap, travel-sized tubes of new toothpaste. New bathrobes behind the door. New clothes in the closet in all sizes, all of it prepared for some anonymous, most likely female guest; none of it owned by anyone except, most distantly, by Ivan.
When his guests shower here, he doesn't expect them to use his toiletries, or even share a bottle of shampoo with the last visitor. At some subconscious level, he might not want them to. When they dress themselves out of that closet because last night's clothes smell like last night's fun, he doesn't expect them to give the outfits back later. He doesn't want them to do that. When they leave, his housekeeper and her maids know to change everything, immediately . Replace everything, replenish everything, refresh everything until there's no trace left of his visitor.
His disconnection doesn't run nearly so deep as hers, but Hilary is not the only one here who does not connect for long, or even at all. She's not the only one here that avoids these things.
So: this room seems unoccupied because it is. Devoid of personal traces, because it is. The bed may as well be new. The furnishings, the space. Hilary knows it's him behind her when she wakes, though, as soon as she wakes. And she says she has to go, and he says he knows, and then there's a silence, and then he kisses her neck gently. Ivan discovers he's growing aroused, though not because he wants to fuck, per se. It's a case of crossed nerves; an anatomical response not to thoughts of sex or pleasure but to an odd twisting ache that won't stop scintillating down the deep nerves of his body from his solar plexus to his groin.
So he ignores it. He doesn't try to press himself against her bottom; he doesn't try to convince her to stay. Stay. Roll over. Open your legs.
He asks her again after all, though:
"Why did you come to me?"
[Hilary Durante] They both know. That she has to leave, that he shouldn't be here, that she shouldn't have come, that they never should have done things like meet on boats and docks and in hotels so they could fuck. Then again, that may have been part of the point, the forbidden nature of it all. Hard to tell if that ever had anything to do with it at all, until it had them agreeing that she should go.
Hilary isn't here to fuck him. She essentially said that, though not in as many words. And Ivan isn't taking that as some coy resistance, some backwards invitation to turn her over and pull her hair and growl in her ear that he knows what she really wants, what she's really here for. He doesn't, and though his body is starting to want hers, or though he's starting to want her all over again, or something, she doesn't press the curve of her ass back against his lap any more than he presses himself against her ass, or strokes her breasts, or any of that.
Hilary's quiet for awhile after that question, but not because she's ignoring it. She's trying to think of how to answer it, when the answer comes so readily yet refuses to be put into words.
"I don't know," she finally says, at least semi-honestly. "I just wanted to see you." Quietly, that.
[Ivan Press] It's not even want, really. His body reacts this way because it doesn't know how to react to something like this. Like what he feels right now, which can only be described as a sort of ache: because she seems to exhausted, so utterly depleted. Because he's never seen her like this before, not even when he fucked her past pleasure, past pain, into a sort of sobbing chaos. Because of all the places she could be, all the places she could have gone to just
rest,
she came here. And that, for no reason he can easily explain, twists in him like a knife; hardens him the same way death would.
Or maybe it's more fucked up than that. Maybe this is the only way he knows how to respond to her now, or to any sign of weakness, vulnerability or pain she might show. Maybe he's irreparably altered, or broken: something about being with her has catalyzed something in himself, opened a pandora's box that can't be closed again.
Anyway:
that he doesn't rub up against her, doesn't try to fuck her, doesn't mean he doesn't touch her. His arm is still around her waist. It lifts after a while, his hand going to her arm. Her skin is bare beneath his palm. He traces from her wrist to her elbow to her shoulder, folds his fingers over the round of it.
Those fingers are long, elegant. A gentleman's hands. Nobility, his lineage: back a thousand years, ten thousand. Shot through now with mongrel's blood -- ambitious, voracious red blood blended into the blue; the sort of thing Fangs like Matthieu sneer at, but in truth, the only thing that gives any potency, any virility, literal or figurative, to his line now.
In another hundred, two hundred years, there's every chance that Ivan's bloodline won't even bother calling themselves silver fangs anymore. There's every chance they'll be glass walkers, severing all ties to their revered ancestry, making hard currency their new demigod, the laws of the city their new king. There's every chance they'll be shadow lords, powerful in the underworld, iron fists that rule the night; adulterated white wolves that plot and scheme to usurp the throne from the ones they once called their own.
But not yet. Not yet.
He kisses her neck, then. And his hand slides forward, wrapping his lean arm around her again. He settles behind her. They both know she has to go.
"What is it about Dión that exhausts you so?"
[Hilary Durante] An hour's nap, even in a fine bed, is not enough to undo whatever it is that she came here with. It isn't very long at all, really. She's very still and it's quite obvious that she would fall back asleep if Ivan weren't talking to her. If his hands didn't move. If she couldn't feel his cock stirring behind her, eversoslightly for now. If she let herself, if he let her, if he just stayed right where he is and held her the way he did when he first came in, she could close her eyes and sleep for hours.
"He just..."
She sounds younger than she is, there, starting to speak only to trail off, sighing as she exhales breath insteads of words. She sounds genuinely at a loss for a moment.
"Most of the time he could care less about me, or his children, or anything other than the war and business. He plans and strategizes and lives so entirely in his own mind. He doesn't even want to be near us, much less interact with us. Micaela's the only one he deals with then, because she can be such a cold little robot herself, and even then he barely processes her existence as anything more than one more cog in the machine of his life."
Hilary closes her eyes, though Ivan won't know it. Can't see it. She talks like that, eyes closed, curled up in the circle created by the bed, his arm, his body. "But sometimes it's like he wakes up one day and there's one thing he can't stop thinking about. It's all that matters. It's everything. He turns into this passionate, mad, almost manic creature that barely sleeps and obsesses over every single aspect of whatever it is this time. Whatever has his attention has it entirely, nonstop, for as long as the madness lasts.
"Since we met, that's usually me."
[Ivan Press] Let's be honest: Ivan wasn't really expecting an answer. Silence, perhaps. Or some snarky little offhand comment she seems to be so damn good at, some deflection light enough, and vicious enough, the deter any further inquiry. She does answer, though. And he's silent, listening, breathing quietly behind her.
He finds out that Micaela's cold like her father. He finds out that this mate of hers is cold, is as detached as she is though in a wholly different way -- and if he sees the irony in that he doesn't speak of it -- is a plotter and a planner and the sort of creature that, centuries or millennia ago when the Fangs weren't quite so mad, would have been considered Weaver-tainted. Flawed.
Which is an odd thing for a Galliard to be, in truth. Most of them are flawed the other way. Irrepressibly emotional. Prone to fits of tears and rage. Temper tantrums that won't calm down. Lovesickness unto madness. Sorrow deeper than any ocean, and so on, and so forth.
Then Ivan finds out: that sort of mad emotion is a part of Espiridion after all. Or rather, that it too is subsumed into his precision, his care, his obsession with detail: that when his madness comes upon him he can't. leave. his mate. be.
Without ever vocalizing the how or the why, without even being able to, Ivan intuits how this sort of attention, this sort of relentless, obsessive focus, would be intolerable to Hilary. He understands because compared to her, compared to her mate, his flaws are almost negligible. His madness is at such a low simmer as to almost not matter. Seems like a quirk; seems like part and parcel of the playboy image.
He's still young. Give him time.
"What excuse did you give him?" he asks. This, instead of the more mundane questions -- when will it pass? When will he leave? When can I fuck you again? "What does he think you're doing right now?"
[Hilary Durante] Of course there has to be something like that: an excuse, a story, a lie she gave Dion so he would let her out of his sight. He's been home for a week, though Ivan doesn't know that particular. If he did, it might illuminate her answer more than he might care to think about:
"He's asleep," she says, with a sort of leaden flatness to her voice, however quiet in tone it is. It says that she knows that leaving at all was risky, that going to Chicago was risky, that coming to Ivan was risky. Dion will come find her if he wakes and she isn't there, if no one knows where she went. He'll track her like prey if he has to.
She doesn't sound afraid, though. Of him. For herself. Or for Ivan. Of course she doesn't.
[Ivan Press] There's a brief stillness in Ivan. Which isn't to say he's been moving much, or at all, except to breath. Still -- it's there. A momentary cessation of everything, and then a resumption. He moves: unwrapping himself from her, sitting up. She might think he's about to kick her out of bed. Kick her out of his penthouse. Get her away, away, where he'll be safe from her mate's wrath should he come looking.
That's not it, though. Ivan puts his bare feet on the ground, his back to her now, narrow and long. Not the broad wedge Espiridion's is, judging from the way his son is built; not the compact, sturdy shape of Christian's. Everything about Ivan is finetuned for what he is -- a scout, a stalker, a creature shies from direct confrontation, that laughs off direct challenge, that dodges hits and sidesteps blows, hides behind larger Garou and rolls the fuck over if he has to --
until he can slip into the shadows and strike from the darkness.
Which makes this, ultimately, somewhat out of character for him, "Why don't you stay." He feels like he's asked her this before. He has. Not the same way, though, "I'll call your mate and explain that you were in the city shopping for an impromptu gift when you took ill. I knew you from the gathering last week and from around town; took you in. My maids will tend you and I'll see you safely home in the morning."
[Hilary Durante] No woundedness at his pulling away, now. Hilary stays where she is, perhaps too exhausted to roll over or move. She breathes deeply, while Ivan asks her why she doesn't stay. Perhaps this is the snarking little comment, just vicious enough to deflect and discourage:
"Maybe you don't understand what I mean when I say obsession," she says wearily. "He'll come get me. He'll be angry at your presumption that you can take better care of me than he and our staff can. He'll ask me why I left while he was sleeping. He'll ask me if I don't love him. He'll fuss over me ten times more than he is if he thinks I'm ill. He'll get a doctor. He'll call his pack's Theurge. He'll cancel dinner plans. He'll not let me leave the house for fear I might faint somewhere and bump my head. He'll want to know if I'm pregnant. He'll suspect I was here to fuck you if I'm not."
If.
[Ivan Press] He half-turns. "If?"
[Hilary Durante] "If," she repeats, like she knew it was coming. A pause, long enough that he can feel her stirring, though she still doesn't turn to face him. She's staring at a wall. Or whatever this side of the bed faces. It isn't like she's really scrutinizing it.
"I've been with him for two years," she says. "I can't very well go on much longer without giving him a child. He'll think I've been trying not to."
[Ivan Press] Now he turns altogether, one leg folding sideways on the mattress, the platform of the bed. "Hilary, look at me. Were you on contraceptives when we were having sex?"
[Hilary Durante] A noise, not quite a scoff or a snort. It sounds irritated, a mingling of both. She doesn't roll over. Simply from the faint motion of her head, he can likely tell she rolls her eyes. "Of course I was."
[Ivan Press] Of course she was. And now he's vaguely ashamed, and it's just as well that she doesn't turn after all. He lowers his head briefly, rubs the bridge of his nose. Lowers hand, raises head.
"I apologize," he says quietly. For once, it sounds like he means it. Then the bed shifts as he stands, and he circles around it, goes to the windows, flicks the switch to raise the shade. It's darkening outside, anyway. Close to dark. The long side of the penthouse faces east, away from the direct afternoon light; the guest bedrooms are both inset from the short sides, one of which is occupied by the master suite and the library; the other by the living room. Outside, all there is to see is the last glow of twilight over the lake, bruise-purple at the horizon. They're so high up they can see the curvature of the earth there.
Facing that view, in and of itself worth god knows how many millions, Ivan barely even sees it. There is such a thing as growing inured to beauty; to magnificence. He doesn't think as he leans his forearm against the glass, and his brow to his fist -- later on, one of the maids will wipe away the faint smudge his skin leaves, and he'll barely even realize such a thing needs to be done. That his existence is not at all pristine and perfect; that the appearance thereof is the result of someone else's hard work, someone else's sweat and blood.
"He might smell me on you anyway," he says quietly, then. "And my home, and my staff, this bed, everything. You could shower before you leave and try to wash it away, but then he might smell that."
There's a silence; he's thinking. Then he turns to face her.
"Let me call him for you," he says. A faint, humorless twitch of his mouth, "If he demands that I return you at once, at least you'll have a half-hour drive's worth of sleep."
[Hilary Durante] There's no comment on his apology, nor question as to why he gave it. She doesn't expect the immediate and steadfast trust of anyone she's met only a handful of times, whether they've fucked like they're the last people on earth or not. It behooved him to wonder, and to ask.
Given the look of her stepson it's not hard to imagine that Dion's coloring and breeding would overtake whatever similarity in appearance a child of hers would have to Hilary. Some pale, light-eyed child -- or some pale, brown-eyed child with a Russian brow and curlyish air -- would stink instantly of some other male in her bed. Or her body, at least.
Oh, and then there'd be hell to pay.
Hilary waits a few moments, while Ivan stands and walks to the window, opening the shades. As the dying light seeps blue and indigo into the room she pushes herself to a sitting position, running fingers through her hair and then rubbing bleary eyes. It wasn't enough sleep. Dion will think she's been asleep near to him all this time and not understand that she's still tired. He'll notice eventually, and most of what she said earlier will come to pass anyway. He'll want to call his Theurge, bring a doctor, find out if she's pregnant, find out if she's ill. He'll fuss, though that's a dim term for what someone like him will actually be doing.
"That was my plan," she says, regarding showering before she leaves. It's on her clothes, though. She can smell seafood stew downstairs but doesn't comment on it. There are still problems to deal with. Maybe she'll go home and get rid of the clothes she wore out and rouse Dion from sleep with her body and mouth, get him sweating all over her, saturating her in his scent til he can't tell, in his poor human form, what other smells might have been on her today.
When Ivan turns to face her, she's still partly in shadow. Her bare feet are on the floor, her skirt askew. She's leaning forward on her thighs, her long hair dark and hanging over one shoulder. She looks no less exhausted than she did when she first arrived. Maybe even moreso, having tasted unscrutinized sleep for the first time in a week.
She looks up at him when he's done. "Why do you want to do this so badly?"
[Ivan Press] Ivan begins to shrug, but it turns into a flex of the shoulders instead, back, opening the shoulder joints, the ribcage. He answers plainly.
"Because I want you."
[Hilary Durante] Watching him, and perhaps quite sincerely not understanding him: "You want to invite his scrutiny like that -- and you want me to bear three times that -- so you can be with me another half hour or hour?"
[Ivan Press] Ivan's eyes flick away briefly, not out of shame but something closer to irritation, and then back. With the twilight at his back those eyes are dark, the mutable color altogether lost.
"I suppose I want to help you," he says, and there's a touch of defiance in this -- as though daring her to say otherwise. "I want to give you some respite, if only for a half-hour or an hour. That is what you came here for, isn't it?"
[Hilary Durante] It isn't that no one's ever wanted to help Hilary before. In a way she inspires it. She's so pretty. She's so well-bred. There's something about her that compels attention, and captivates it. Ivan is hardly the first man -- first young man, first Fang, first male in general -- to find himself wanting her so badly it turns rapidly into a blinding, primal need. He is not the first man to feel like he's going a little mad if he's not fucking her, only to discover that being inside her makes madness seem gentle.
Ivan didn't question Dion -- who surely was defective in this way, obsessive, before he met Hilary -- turning all his attention and energy on this woman as soon as he came to know her. He didn't bat an eyelash at the idea that an Adren Galliard would go literally out of his mind over her occasionally, to the point that he can't let her sleep, he can't leave her alone, he can't think of anything but her. It's the insanity of Dion's purity in action, but it might say something that Ivan didn't think it even a little odd.
But aside from the men, whether human or Kin or Garou, people have wanted to help her before. They've gone out of their way for her. They've put themselves at risk for her. Maybe she's used to it. Maybe she feels entitled to it. But whatever she thinks when she hears Ivan say that, Hilary's dark eyes are inscrutable. She doesn't mock him for it, playing off that obvious defiance, like he rejects his own desire to ...what? Save her?
Or just be kind to her.
A long time passes, or what seems like a long time. And she stops arguing. She's too tired to argue. She's too tired to say that no, Dion will do this or that. He'll do this or that no matter what she does. He could be awake now, searching the house for her. He might freak out later at her because she left while he was asleep; he might do that anyway, if she decided to step out of the shower before he was done, or if she wanted to get up from the table without finishing her dinner completely, or if she sighed a certain way.
Hilary is exhausted. She nods a little, but even that seems to drain her. "Okay," she whispers, and lays back down, the pillow rustling as her head sinks onto it.
[Ivan Press] Surely that takes him by surprise too. All that shows on his face, though, is a brief sucking of his lower lip behind his upper. Then he nods.
"Okay."
He's gone for a little while, then. He returns with his cell phone, doubtlessly retrieved by some servant of other. It's a wonder that Ivan has any idea at all how to be kind; how to help someone else. Left to himself, he wouldn't know how to live. He wouldn't know how to cook, how to clean. He wouldn't even know where Yuliya keeps the spare towels, or how to operate the washer and dryer, or ... anything, really. In some ways, he's as much a guest of his own home as he is its master. It's entirely possible that learning to dress himself, learning what goes with what, and developing his own sense of style, was the greatest achievement of his life.
That, and turning into a monster of legend; the first and last in his thinning line for untold years.
Ivan sits on the edge of the bed to make the call. The smooth, polished wood of the platform, not the mattress. He gets the phone number from Hilary, and then she can hear him speaking quietly.
It's not a story about shopping after all. That would be too easy to verify. It's a story about tea with Mrs. Lowenfeld-Reed. Terribly short-notice invitation, but you know Margaret. Eccentric. Important. Must not anger her if one wishes to remain in society's good graces. Then there's the story about illness; no, nothing serious. Perhaps it was the heat -- well over ninety today, and humid -- or something she ate. Not to worry. Mrs. Durante will have the best of care here, and in the morning, as a duty to his elder, the Cliath will see her safely home.
Afterward, clicking the phone off, Ivan makes another phone call. He asks for Margaret. He asks for a favor.
When that phone call ends, he's quiet for a moment. Then he turns. The last of the twilight is fading now. The east is deep blue, close to black, and stars are rising out of the lake.
"Should I close the shade and let you sleep?" he asks quietly.
[Hilary Durante] It's no trouble at all for Hilary to stay quiet while Ivan speaks to Estrella, and she offers him no advice on dealing with the crisp, unaccented woman who manages their household. By the time Ivan sits down on the platform frame to call the Durante household, Hilary's asleep. Which means Yuliya or whoever-it-is has to go find that paper Katherine handed out with contact information on it in order to call the estate. The pale woman belonging to his elder has her eyes closed, her lips parted, her ribs expanding and contracting with steady, natural motions as she sleeps.
So she can't tell him that suggesting he bring her home by morning sounds more suspicious than asking who he should be expecting to come retrieve her. She can't tell him that as soon as her husband wakes and hears that message it puts Ivan on his radar more brightly than he would have been otherwise, that the mention of morning will drive the mad Galliard to distraction, that he should have made any other suggestion, said anything else. Hilary is too tired to even refuse to stay at all. She is too tired to stay awake and tell Ivan just how insane Dion is.
Ivan's never loved a woman. If he has, he's forgotten what it is to be unable to comprehend the possibility that not everyone sees the beloved as he does. That not everyone wants to take her away. If he's ever known that madness, he must have forgotten it. More likely: he doesn't know.
Later he'll have to explain to her the story about Mrs. Lowenfeld-Reed, if he has a chance. When he finishes talking to Margaret, however, he turns to ask Hilary if he should close the blinds so she can sleep, and he sees that there wasn't enough light in the room from the city to keep her awake. She's all but motionless on his guest bed, which is a sort of peace.
[Ivan Press] Earlier, she asked him, do you understand the meaning of obsession?, and if she hadn't been so tired, so worn, so thin from it all, it might have been one of her coolly vicious little slices. But the truth is: no, he doesn't understand the meaning of obsession. He does not, and cannot, understand that sort of singular, utter, focal devotion. He cannot imagine his entire universe revolving around a single point.
It does not occur to him, even for a moment, that the mention of morning will set off all sorts of alarm bells. He thought in terms of etiquette; of what a Cliath would be Expected To Do with a royal guest, a prized kin of an elder. He thought of how bad it would look to turn an ill guest out of the house, of rushing her home as though to dump the problem on someone else's lap, and never for an instant did he think:
if I were mad with love and obsession for this woman, the thought of another male being alone with her would make me want him dead. Such vocabulary is not a part of his experience.
She's asleep when he turns to ask her if she wants the shade down. So his question dies, half-spoken. Ivan closes the shade after all, barring the glow of the city from the room. He unclips her bra, if she's wearing one, and rolls down her stockings, if she's wearing any. There's an odd, unlustful gentleness to this, as though he really were tending to the infirm, the ill. She's never even bothered to get under the covers, so he folds the duvet over her, and then he leaves her be. Dinner's ready when he gets downstairs. He eats sitting on the kitchen counter, trading jokes with his burly chef, laughing, and neither of them ever mentions the woman upstairs or the hell-to-pay should Dion ever hear about them.
A few hours later -- more than one, less than enough -- Ivan raps on the guest room door and then enters. He sits on the edge of the bed. The clock reads twenty after eleven. He rubs his hands over his face, puts his brow in his palms, his elbows on his knees, and thinks for the first time since all this began,
what are you doing? what. the. fuck. are you doing?
And then he turns, saying her name quietly until she wakes. "It's twenty past eleven," he adds, when she does. "Should I take you home?"
[Hilary Durante] Hilary is effectively dead to the world for some time. She twitches slightly when Ivan goes about touching her back, finding only the band of elastic for the built-in bra of her camisole, when he shifts her skirt aside and finds her legs bare, the long socks she wore under her cowboy boots laying on the boots themselves by the bed. There is nothing for him to do but cover her up, and she settles under the blanket with a quiet sigh. Nothing more.
Downstairs his dinner and his servants are waiting, and then diverting. Upstairs his guest sleeps, in a way she apparently could not sleep in her husband's house, with her husband's body beside her.
She's slow to respond to her name when Ivan comes to wake her. She's slow to respond, period. Finally she stirs, a low vibratory shake from her very core that slows the closer it gets to the surface of her skin. Her eyes open and she breathes in, looking at the room, then at him. She's groggy. It wasn't enough. He didn't ask when it would pass, when Dion would go away again once his own madness could no longer tolerate his need for her. But it's possible Hilary won't be rested or well until the man is gone from the house.
She blinks a few times, and licks her lips, and exhales. It takes her a moment to answer: "I can drive myself," Hilary whispers, and starts to push herself to sitting. "If I could shower quickly, though, that would be helpful."
[Ivan Press] To that, he merely looks at her a moment. In the end he doesn't insist; only nods her toward the ensuite.
"Of course," he says, and doesn't offer to join her. "Help yourself."
For two people who spent the last three times they were together all but devouring each other, all but consuming each other in their frenzy and their lust, this has been a strange interlude. They couldn't have spoken more than ten minutes the entire night. The only time he's touched her only to touch her was when he lay behind her, holding her. Was when he palmed his hand up her arm and back again. He didn't even sleep with her the entire time; he didn't even sleep with her more than thirty minutes, at most.
And now she's leaving. And he's just letting her.
[Hilary Durante] When she came here he asked her why here. And she was honest enough: she wanted to see him. But there was nothing more to it than that, not that she said. Hilary didn't come here to 'make love' to him, and she didn't come because she missed him. Maybe she doesn't know why she came here of all places, as though sleeping in a near-stranger's apartment when she's never been there before would be more restful than one of those many hotels where she wouldn't even try to feel at home.
Not feeling at home didn't stop her from sleeping, nor stop her from sleeping very deeply.
But she did ask him to come with her when she went up to sleep. He refused, and ended up in bed with her anyway. But not fucking her. Not ravenously moving his mouth over her as he has before, like he wanted to eat her alive. Not even kissing her, more than a press of his mouth to the back of her neck and her shoulder.
Hilary does remember Ivan holding her. She woke eversobriefly when he came in then, when he laid behind her and put his arm around her. She didn't wake as he came in and put his forehead in his hands. She didn't wake while he spoke to her household manager.
Neither of them understand entirely what it means to be attached to someone. To feel honest pain at the idea of loss. The concept is too abstract, or too close to home, or some combination of both. Maybe it's natural to them, as inborn as Dion's obsessions. Maybe it's due to some horrific event in childhood, barely remembered, blacked out no matter what effect it's had on them. Hilary has to know she's different than other people, these people who hold a child and love the child, or who cry when their lover cries, or who can connect with others without seeking limit experiences with them. She has to realize she's... off.
She watches Ivan, and has no way of knowing who he is. She can't guess what he's thinking or feeling, because it would most likely be outside of her experience. Even if she could tell, she wouldn't understand.
But at the same time, she can feel the strangeness of this moment. She can feel some lack in herself, or in him, or in the circumstance. Something missing, something wrong, and though she can't name it, can't figure out how to fix it, she can sense... something. Hilary is troubled by it, and still tired, and just waking up.
The duvet moves off of her body as she rises onto her knees, falls to the side. Her skirt is only under her legs for a second before she's crawling onto him, her hands light on his shoulders. All that soft, gauzy fabric clings to his clothes, riding up on her thighs as they spread over his lap, and her breath is caught in her chest as she comes down onto him, watching his eyes.
As though she could, even for a second, see him.
[Ivan Press] What do you want, he wants to ask her. The question burns: he wants to spit it in her face, like firebreathing. What do you want from me.
He doesn't. She climbs onto his lap and his back straightens, and sometime between the then and the now, between when she fell asleep and when he woke her, he's put on a shirt. It's a t-shirt, and it's plain cotton, plainer than anything she's likely to have seen on him before, but even in its plainness it is so very fucking luxurious, the fabric thick and smooth, fitted to his body without constricting him. Beneath her hands, cotton; beneath cotton, his shoulders, surprisingly wide but unsurprisingly lean, not at all heaped with muscle. His hands go to her body. He pushes his palms over her body, from her stomach to her sides to her chest, his touch heavy and silent and needful and
grasping, closing over her breasts, wrapping around to all but crush her against him. This woman that does not belong to him. This stolen jewel, this briefly and transiently purloined prize. He bows his face to the crook of her neck and breathes her in. He does not know what it is to love, but he knows, very well, better than he ever has before, what it is to want so desperately. Even that is unfamiliar. Look at the way he chases other women: carelessly, playfully, ultimately not caring one bit if they succumb or not. They're all interchangeable to him. They're all the same, but this one is different.
[Hilary Durante] Easily, those long smooth arms of hers come around him. He can smell her so richly already and he knows it's nothing compared to how she saturates his senses when he fucks her. These hints of her scent, traces of summer sweat and light, luxurious perfurme are mere teases for what it is to be inside her, to feel her coming, to hear her screaming his name, to taste her tears or her blood when he kisses her mouth, her face. To come inside her and, for a few short seconds, feel her utterly open to him. Beyond vulnerable. Beyond close.
Hilary moves easily into that crushing grip of his, the way his hands cover her, grasp at her, hold her. She tilts her head back, hair spilling down her back, and breathes in the cool air of the guest room. Her body presses to his, to his stomach, to his chest, to his thighs, her skirt spread all over them. Hilary straightens her head, closing her eyes, finding the curve of his ear with the softness of her lips.
"We have time," she exhales, whispering it. And reaches down between them, finding the fasteners of his pants and undoing them, wrestling with them quickly. It is the most rapid, rough undressing they've ever had, and it isn't even strictly an undressing: she wants him, and quickly. She kisses his temple, and closes her lips over his earlobe, pushing her hand into his undone waistband so she can find his cock. Her breathing is already quickening, and her pulse.
[Hilary Durante] [perfurme = perfume]
[Ivan Press] He should put up more of a fight. He should put up a fight, period. It's quite possible she's not in her right mind; god knows how tired she is, right now. It's quite possible she's never in her right mind. It's quite possible she'll go home from this and Dion will find out because god, there is no way, no fucking way she'll scrub him from his skin entirely if he fucks her, if they fuck the way they always do. There is no fucking way she'll be able to hide what they've been up to if Dion pays even a scrap of attention in some form other than his senseless human one, and from what he knows of this mate of hers -- from what she's told him -- he'll pay more than a scrap of attention.
He knows all this. He knows if he fucks her now he could very well end up a dead man. He knows, and even if he didn't, he knows that she's no good for him. She's no good for him because she's not a homewrecker, she's a lifewrecker, and even though Ivan has no idea that Christian went from her bed into two bloody deaths and a bloodier captivity, to tears and guilt and pain, he can guess. He can guess because just look at what she does to him. She sucks him down like a black hole. Like a singularity. Singular.
They're all the same -- but this one is different.
And when her hand finds him under his pants his head falls back with a gasp. A second after that he's tearing his shirt off and there's barely enough light to skim off the smooth planes of his body; not enough to catch in her eyes, so dark even by day, to give him any hint of where she's looking.
He doesn't tear her clothes off then and there. He doesn't even get the rest of his clothes off. His shirt goes -- somewhere. He gets up, pulls her with him. "I want you in my bed," he says, so low it's nearly a growl. He might as well be saying: I want you, because that's what he means. To be mine, because that's what he really means.
His hand is on hers then. He's pulling her out the door and the hallway is bright outside, bright through the frosted glass; it's bright and silent as a museum after closing time, and he takes her down that ridiculous length. He can barely keep his hands off her. He can't keep his hands off her. Halfway down the hall he has her up against her wall, his hand up her skirt, his mouth on her neck. The sound he makes echoes up and down the hall, wakes him to where he is, and he pulls back. He picks her up -- not like a bride, not like a lover. Like a fucking sack of potatoes thrown over his shoulder, his mouth turned to her thigh, biting and sucking at the outside of her leg as he takes her down the rest of that hall and into his room.
No sterility here. No sense of guest, of other, of traceless. This room is his, all his, from the neatly-made-but-not-freshly-changed bedding to the half-a-glass of water on the nightstand to the two or three books piled beside it to the laptop strewn in the center of the floor. He trips over the power cord on his way to the bed, bites a curse into her thigh.
Then she's thumping down on her back. Two walls are glass here. The shades are open. The rest of this room is done in muted, dark colors, lending intimacy to an otherwise vast, exposed space. His hands are roving over her skirt, looking for a button, a zipper, anything, and he's muttering, "Goddammit, Hilary, help me get this off before I tear it in half."
[Hilary Durante] God only knows how many lives she's ruined. How many young men discovered some dark mirror of themselves in her and walked away with only the most shattered, shadowed perception of life from then on. How many had to re-learn how to touch a woman after being with this one. How many sank into remorse and guilt because of what they went through with her. The way she makes them want, so badly that it consumes them. So badly it burns away their good sense. So badly that they forget who they are and who they want to be as they tear her clothes off to get at her.
For some reason it doesn't seem like that's why she does it. Why she cheats. She has that at home: that blistering obsession, that rabid desire. She does not need to look outside of Dion if what she wants is to watch men crumble if they can't get their hands on her. It isn't about power and it isn't about feeling wanted. Of all the things Hilary does and does not understand, it seems that she is at least innocent of realizing just how mind-altering it is for some of these men to want her like they do.
Hilary wants to fuck. She doesn't particularly want to die, or want Ivan to die. But she wants to fuck him. That isn't why she came here, and she didn't think about this before she woke up and looked at him and got on his lap, but she wants it now. She needs it somehow, even if she can't explain why.
"I want you," she's whispering, while he's gasping at the touch of her hand on his cock, through his boxer briefs. Her mouth falls to his body as soon as his t-shirt is off, kissing his neck, his shoulder, his chest. There are soft moans vibrating through her lips as she strokes him through that ringspun, super-soft cotton.
Suddenly she's being lifted up and she gasps, thinking he might be pushing her away, might be about to say No! or I can't, her eyes snapping towards his face. But:
I want you in my bed.
And he's pulling her with him, out of the room and leaving her shoes and stockigns and pulling her to the master suite. There are no servants to be seen or heard but they're there, someplace. The strap of her camisole is falling when Ivan puts her against the wall between one room and the other, finding her hot under her long skirt, the fabric bunching where it drapes over his forearm and wrist. She's wet for him, slick at the edges of her panties, which are thin and almost silky to the touch.
Hilary moans when he kisses her neck, when he strokes her through her underwear, caresses her inner thigh. She moans like a woman much younger than she is, a little wild and unconcerned for what he might think, overcome by sensation as though it's somehow new to her. She leans on the wall because it's holding her up, and there's a flash of awareness -- Ivan can't miss it in himself -- that she would let him have her here. Right now. If he'd just take her.
So he takes her. Not lifting her up on his body to fuck her but literally picking her up and carrying her, and she would laugh except somehow there's nothing funny about this, about what the fuck they're doing. She doesn't cheat when Dion's in town. She doesn't risk it. She doesn't go into her stepson's room and curl around his warm body and murmur in his ear, she doesn't go to hotels with young Ahrouns and she doesn't let Ragabashes tie her up on yachts and she doesn't tell some human frat boy that if he's good and kisses her pussy she might let him fuck her, and she doesn't beg that nice young man from the gym to spank her, to fuck her a little harder, to make her a dirty girl.
She doesn't take risks of other people's lives, or her own. It isn't morality. It's survival.
Yet here she is, falling onto Ivan's bed and not caring that it's his bed, that it's his space, that these are his things and his scent all around her. She cares only that he's there, coming down onto the mattress with her, looking for a way to get her clothes off, muttering about tearing it off. Her hand comes to the back of his neck, bracelets and all. She pulls him forward, capturing his mouth with her own in a way that's almost dominant. But her hands are busy as soon as she has his lips and his tongue. She yanks down his pants, his boxer-briefs, pushing them away, and she lays back, pulling him over her, rucking her skirt up, her legs open to him.
"Pull them aside," she breathes, and is kissing him again. Nevermind that they're dressed, him in jeans and her in ...well, everything but socks. She kisses him harder, panting already, rubbing herself against his cock through her panties, under her skirt. "I want you inside me."
[Ivan Press] Of course she doesn't care. That this is his bed. That they could get in trouble, that they could literally get dead. She doesn't care about anything, it seems, except what she wants, these sudden wants that come upon her without warning, that she satisfies with no real thought to their cost on everyone around her.
She doesn't do this, though. She doesn't fuck around when her mate is in town. She doesn't risk it. Sometimes she's such a hollowed-out thing, a soulless creature, but she has a sense of self-preservation better-honed than most. She doesn't sneak off to her lovers, she doesn't put herself in that sort of danger, except here she is.
And here she is. In his room. In his bed. And he doesn't do this, either. It's not that he holds his bed sacrosanct, but that's exactly it: he doesn't make a point of moving a lover from one room to another because he wants her in his bed. He doesn't turn back around on what may as well have been a breakup, a final goodbye after three satisfying romps, and
need her again like this. Need her taste in his mouth, her skin under his hands and his tongue, gripped by his teeth. He's biting at her, making low rough sounds in his throat as his hands fight with hers, fight with his clothes, fight his pants down and his boxer-briefs down, and then he's climbing onto the bed over, kicking his clothes to the floor. She's still dressed. It reminds him of the first time. It's nothing like the first time. Pull them aside, she breathes, and she doesn't have to -- he's tearing a kiss into her to cut her off and his hands are pulling and pawing at all those goddamn wispy skirts of hers, are finding her slim legs and her slender thighs, are spreading her open and then spreading. her. open, are pushing fingers into her cunt as he pants into her mouth.
"Oh, god, you're so wet," he says, as though this were a surprise; as though he hasn't felt her like this before. Then her wet is on his cock because he's stroking himself, slicking himself up as he pulls her panties aside, holds them aside as he drives into her in one
firm
stroke.
He's atop her. Weighing her down, groaning against her neck. His fingers are faintly slick when he grabs her camisole and pushes it up, up, out of the way. His mouth is so hungry on her breasts, sucking, biting. He fucks her furiously from the very start, gasping and grunting against her body, eyes closed, rubbing his face against her breasts, against her heartbeat, like he's thought of nothing else since the moment she walked in the door. Like he's thought of nothing else since the moment she walked off his boat.
[Hilary Durante] The disconnect here is obvious. She'd freak out if she knew he'd told Estrella morning, she asked him if he understood the meaning of obsession. He told her he wanted to follow her to bed even less if she wasn't going to fuck him, but he came and he held her while she slept. This could get them killed but they do it anyway. He's a playboy and he doesn't care and he knows she doesn't care but he wants her in his bed and that's as animal as his need to be naked, stripping down to nothing while he takes her, like it doesn't matter that she's still covered by her clothes as long as he can fuck her.
And they both acknowledged that this was a bad fucking idea. That she shouldn't stay on his boat, even when Dion wasn't in the country, not because it would look bad but because it was too close to something she can't process nor reciprocate and that he can't cope with nor indulge. At least they have that much sense, even if in their own individual ways they are each a little bit soulless. That's why they pulled back into port and she went home after he chained her up and made a mess of her. They both knew. Know.
Don't care. Can't.
Hilary's moaning for him as he climbs over her, pushes down on her, their bodies grinding while he gets clothes off his skin and pushes her skirt up, pushes her legs apart, which makes her gasp with sudden, electric lust. It's that sound she makes, that way her breathing changes when he's rough with her, when he dominates her. Her back arches and her hips lift as he starts fingering her, muttering about how wet that hot little pussy is. And:
it is. She's trying to get pregnant, for god's sake. She's resigned to giving Dion a child. It's about time. She's in her thirties, she's been mated to him for two years, she knows what could happen to her if she doesn't, and Ivan knows this too, still he pushes into her as far as he can, hard and deep and surrounded by how tight she is, how slick, already fucking him, legs wrapping around his lower half.
A less expensive bed on a different sort of frame would be jostling already from the way they get down to fucking like it's the culmination of everything. She never planned on this when she sent that messenger to him. She never intended to fuck him again but now
now, just look at them. Spreading sex all over each other again, heedless to the dozen things that should be turning the blood in their veins to nothing more than ice water. Hilary groans to him, her hand on his back, fingernails digging into the flesh between his shoulderblades while he -- to put it crudely -- nails her to his mattress with his cock, every thrust as hard as the last, touching her and rubbing himself on her as though to mark every inch of her skin.
Because he wants her. Even though he can't, and even though it's in a way that would eventually be boring to him and incomprehensible for her, even though he has to give her back to her husband tonight. Apparently he'll be giving her back fucked into her own little oblivion, covered in his sweat, their scents inextricably mingled on her skin.
"Harder," she gasps, catching his face against her own, panting along his cheek, his jawline, seeking his lips with hers so she can moan into his mouth. "Baby, fuck me harder. You know how much I love that cock."
[Ivan Press] Harder. It's always harder with her, more, fuck her, spank her, smack her, make it hurt. It's always that, and that's just one of so many reasons why this is a very bad idea, and none of them seem to matter now. Not a single one. He's atop her and her nails are scoring his back and he's trying to remember why he shouldn't bite her tonight, why he promised never to mark her again, period. She's searching for his mouth, and they're not even putting their hands on one another's faces. They're nuzzling against each other like animals, rubbing cheeks together, rubbing their faces past each other until their mouths meet, gasping.
Those last words are lost. He catches them on his mouth. He groans into her mouth as he's fucking her, harder, his longfingered hands gripping at her bare torso, holding her beneath him as though if he let go she might simply evaporate. And then his hands are on her breasts. He squeezes at her, rubs at her flesh, tugs at her nipples wet from his mouth. Her shoulders, then; and for a moment it seems he might hold her down again and pound her like that -- but no. He takes her face in his hands. He holds her head so he can kiss her while he fucks her, can feel her breath shuddering every time he drives into her. He holds her right there while he's fucking her, pounding between her thighs in a way that's not right, not okay, not allowed; not with her mate in town; not ever.
Maybe that's part of the thrill. Maybe it was. Not anymore: now that's simply part of the madness, part of the reasons why not, and in truth Ivan doesn't know what the counterbalance to that is. He has no idea what weighs so heavily against that litany of reasons against; no idea what to call that one, single, all-consuming reason in favor. Because it's nothing so sweet as love, and nothing so simple as lust. Because it's something like need, something rather like
obsession, actually
that makes him fall into her like this. That makes his fingers push into her hair to pull her head back to put his mouth to her throat. That makes him close his hand over her back of her head and simply hold on, hold on, while his free hand twists into his sheets.
[Hilary Durante] [watch out for odds]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[Hilary Durante] [...fuck.]
[Hilary Durante] Lifewrecker. Ruiner. Wicked. Sweet, beautiful, greedy. Luxurious. Decadent. Dangerous.
Hilary's been called all these things and more. Worse. She's also been called extraordinarily lucky, and she knows that this last one is true. More than any of the others, it's true. She knows where she should be, by all rights. What should have happened to her a hundred times over by now. She knows how narrowly she's avoided utter disaster, and she knows almost how often, too.
Look at the rings on her fingers, the gold on her wrists, diamonds in her ears, all of it. She's dripping with the finery of being a kept woman, a treasured pet, a slave to her breeding. All of that moaning and wailing some kinswomen do about how awful it would be ...Hilary doesn't understand. She knows where she'd be if she weren't beautiful, if she weren't well-bred, if she weren't given to a Garou like Dion to be pampered and used for what her body can give the Nation.
It's a tradeoff. It's better than starving to death. It's better than a lot of things.
The intercom goes off. It's doubtful either of them notice, though, with Hilary moaning wildly in his ear and their gasps filling the air. This bed is too expensive to creak as he fucks her, driving himself into her, harder now, while she wraps him tighter in her legs and bucks up against him, her breath taking on that shaky little way of gasping that it does when he's giving it to her and she's liking it like that. Rough. Firm. Like he's teaching her a lesson every time he fucks his cock deeper into her, like he's taking something he wants from her and exulting in the fact that she enjoys it. Every second of it.
They're upstairs in the penthouse fucking each other's brains out,
and the intercom is going off,
because her husband has come for her.
[Ivan Press] [wits + percep: do we even notice? +2diff because ... um. yeah.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Ivan Press] This was never going to be a long, luxurious fuck. This was never even going to be the sort of game they played aboard the Krasota, that long slow utter decimation of everything she is, until all that remained was the raw, twisting, naked nerves at the core.
This was always going to be, quite simply, a fast, furious, mindless fuck. Born out of a need that transcends sanity and precaution. Born out of absolutely nothing, except he woke her and she was going to go home and he was going to let her and then she discovered she wanted him and he discovered he couldn't let her go.
So when that intercom goes off -- too fucking expensive to be a long rattle, nothing more than a distant chiming -- Ivan isn't so far from the edge. He's sweating over her, and biting her, and fucking her, and making her his, his, his, if only for a few moments. He's snarling and she's crying out and while the mattress doesn't creak, every pound of his body into her is a dull vibration through the floor itself. There's absolutely no mistaking what's going on in here even through the sturdy woodpaneled walls between this room and the hallway; the concrete between this floor and the floor below.
Those walls, that floor, is too thick for Ivan to hear the intercom. He doesn't hear Dmitri going to answer the intercom; doesn't hear the man ask for their visitor's name and tell their visitor to wait a moment, please, in that same blandly courteous tone Hilary got a few hours ago.
It's not too thick for Ivan to hear Dmitri knocking on the door. Dmitri would never fucking knock while he was with a woman. With this woman. Dmitri would never fucking knock, period: he'd rap, lightly and politely. Ivan freezes. He's drenched in sweat. He's drenched in her. His chest is heaving, his ribs straining to contain his lungs, his hammering heart. His eyes meet Hilary's for a second. Then he turns toward the door.
"Yeah?" he pants. The reply comes in Russian, and whatever it is makes Ivan let out a string of vicious syllables that could only be the foulest of curses. From that alone, Hilary can very well guess what Dmitri said. He needs to get up. He needs to pull out of her. He needs to push her in the shower -- hide her in the broom closet -- drop her over the edge of the building with a parachute strapped to her back. Something. He needs to think of something. He looks down at her and the light in his eyes is insane. He needs to move, now.
What he does instead is to push up on his hands, pull his knees under himself, and start fucking her again. Harder than before. Faster. Pounding the fuck out of her wet little cunt, teeth set, panting and grunting on every mad stroke while Dmitri stands outside the door waiting for instruction on what to tell Mr. Espiridion Nieves-Durante who was waiting thirty-five stories below in the lobby.
Or possibly: in the umbra, climbing the side of the building in his war-shape.
[Hilary Durante] There's no chance Hilary even hears the intercom. All sounds except for Ivan's breathing, his grunting, the hard wet sound of his cock burying itself in her pussy again and again... they're just filtered out. She doesn't hear the knocking, doesn't know that Dmitri doesn't knock. She just feels Ivan inside her, burning out the rest, and she's wailing from it, clinging to him and fucking him and whimpering
please don't stop don't stop ivan don't stop fucking me
ivan fill me up, ivan come in me, ivan, ivan,
iva--
Her voice cuts off when Ivan stops, when he freezes, sweating on her and her clothes and twisting his head around to look at the door. The mostly-clothed woman under him is still groaning quietly, circling her pussy on his cock, on the verge of asking him why he's stopped, why isn't he fucking her, baby, why aren't you making me come. She doesn't have the presence of mind to understand. To question what that Russian was, or why Ivan's swearing.
She just lets out an exultant moan when he starts fucking her again, pounding her the way she was begging him to just seconds ago, her body shifting up an inch on the bed, two inches. "Oh god," she's moaning, the way so many women have in this bed or in others around the penthouse, after some party, after some nightclub, getting railed by this playboy who would kick them out the second he came if any one of them had a boyfriend capable of ripping his head off.
There's no doubt that Mr. Espiridion Nieves-Durante is quite capable of ripping his head off. And Hilary is no girlfriend, no starved swan nor duckling. She's the man's mate.
Whining and whimpering as he gets back to hammering her, heedless that the butler is just outside the door. Hilary squirms up against him, moaning fuck me, fuck me, yeah, ivan, fuck...
She never tells him she's going to come. She never cries out that she's coming, but she cries out all the same, wordless and wild, her head tipped back and her brow furrowed with the intensity of it. To call this a quickie, even, is generous. The idea was to fuck, to do something incredibly stupid, then try to fix it before going back to her husband
who is going to want to know why she left in the first place.
All that's over, now. She lifts her hips as her orgasm hits her, taking her legs from around him to plant her feet on the mattress, riding up on him. She grabs his neck and pulls herself upright, finding his eyes, panting as she slams herself back down on his cock. Every bounce of her cunt onto him sends another shockwave of pleasure through her, makes her clench down on him again, til she's just grinding down, folding over his shoulder,
moaning his name.
[Ivan Press] There no hesitation now; no pause to think or consider or doubt. He gets right back to hammering her. Gets right back to fucking her, pounding her, going at her like an animal, with an animal's heedlessness and speed, with an animal's fury. She's moaning those filthy little words, writhing under him, and he's grabbing fistfuls of his sheets and bowing his head and fucking her like this might be the last thing he ever does,
which, all things considered, might not be that much of an exaggeration.
And she's coming. She's lighting off like a roman candle, going off like a bomb. She's coming up off his bed and she doesn't seem exhausted now, doesn't seem wan or pale or tired or even remotely human now: grabs him behind the neck in a way that makes him snarl like an animal, bare his teeth at her; grabs him and rides herself against him, pounds out her orgasm against him while he's still hammering into her, and
when it's over for her, she folds herself over him, and he bites into her shoulder, and bears her down, and pins her down, and comes in her.
Fucks her full of cum. Marks her indelibly with the scent of sweat, and sex, and him. And --
there's barely a second or two or respite. Then he's getting up, drawing out of her, hissing because he's still so sensitive, panting because he doesn't have his breath back, yet. He holds his hand out to her to pull her upright, and if she's not moving he simply hauls her to her feet. Puts his hands on her face, brings her eyes to his.
"Your mate is here," he says. So fucking calm: one wonders how many times this has happened before. One wonders, but the answer is never. Never a kin with a mate; never like this. "You need to get out of here. Go get your things. Go out through the emergency exit. It's behind the spiral staircase; Dmitri will show you. Take the stairs down. Jesus fucking Christ, I hope you parked where he can't see your car. I'll stall him for a while to give you a head start and try not to get killed. Then I'll tell him you left ten minutes ago." He pants a laugh -- not a shred of humor in it. "When you get home, take a fucking shower. Okay?"
[Ivan Press] To that, he merely looks at her a moment. In the end he doesn't insist; only nods her toward the ensuite.
"Of course," he says, and doesn't offer to join her. "Help yourself."
For two people who spent the last three times they were together all but devouring each other, all but consuming each other in their frenzy and their lust, this has been a strange interlude. They couldn't have spoken more than ten minutes the entire night. The only time he's touched her only to touch her was when he lay behind her, holding her. Was when he palmed his hand up her arm and back again. He didn't even sleep with her the entire time; he didn't even sleep with her more than thirty minutes, at most.
And now she's leaving. And he's just letting her.
[Hilary Durante] When she came here he asked her why here. And she was honest enough: she wanted to see him. But there was nothing more to it than that, not that she said. Hilary didn't come here to 'make love' to him, and she didn't come because she missed him. Maybe she doesn't know why she came here of all places, as though sleeping in a near-stranger's apartment when she's never been there before would be more restful than one of those many hotels where she wouldn't even try to feel at home.
Not feeling at home didn't stop her from sleeping, nor stop her from sleeping very deeply.
But she did ask him to come with her when she went up to sleep. He refused, and ended up in bed with her anyway. But not fucking her. Not ravenously moving his mouth over her as he has before, like he wanted to eat her alive. Not even kissing her, more than a press of his mouth to the back of her neck and her shoulder.
Hilary does remember Ivan holding her. She woke eversobriefly when he came in then, when he laid behind her and put his arm around her. She didn't wake as he came in and put his forehead in his hands. She didn't wake while he spoke to her household manager.
Neither of them understand entirely what it means to be attached to someone. To feel honest pain at the idea of loss. The concept is too abstract, or too close to home, or some combination of both. Maybe it's natural to them, as inborn as Dion's obsessions. Maybe it's due to some horrific event in childhood, barely remembered, blacked out no matter what effect it's had on them. Hilary has to know she's different than other people, these people who hold a child and love the child, or who cry when their lover cries, or who can connect with others without seeking limit experiences with them. She has to realize she's... off.
She watches Ivan, and has no way of knowing who he is. She can't guess what he's thinking or feeling, because it would most likely be outside of her experience. Even if she could tell, she wouldn't understand.
But at the same time, she can feel the strangeness of this moment. She can feel some lack in herself, or in him, or in the circumstance. Something missing, something wrong, and though she can't name it, can't figure out how to fix it, she can sense... something. Hilary is troubled by it, and still tired, and just waking up.
The duvet moves off of her body as she rises onto her knees, falls to the side. Her skirt is only under her legs for a second before she's crawling onto him, her hands light on his shoulders. All that soft, gauzy fabric clings to his clothes, riding up on her thighs as they spread over his lap, and her breath is caught in her chest as she comes down onto him, watching his eyes.
As though she could, even for a second, see him.
[Ivan Press] What do you want, he wants to ask her. The question burns: he wants to spit it in her face, like firebreathing. What do you want from me.
He doesn't. She climbs onto his lap and his back straightens, and sometime between the then and the now, between when she fell asleep and when he woke her, he's put on a shirt. It's a t-shirt, and it's plain cotton, plainer than anything she's likely to have seen on him before, but even in its plainness it is so very fucking luxurious, the fabric thick and smooth, fitted to his body without constricting him. Beneath her hands, cotton; beneath cotton, his shoulders, surprisingly wide but unsurprisingly lean, not at all heaped with muscle. His hands go to her body. He pushes his palms over her body, from her stomach to her sides to her chest, his touch heavy and silent and needful and
grasping, closing over her breasts, wrapping around to all but crush her against him. This woman that does not belong to him. This stolen jewel, this briefly and transiently purloined prize. He bows his face to the crook of her neck and breathes her in. He does not know what it is to love, but he knows, very well, better than he ever has before, what it is to want so desperately. Even that is unfamiliar. Look at the way he chases other women: carelessly, playfully, ultimately not caring one bit if they succumb or not. They're all interchangeable to him. They're all the same, but this one is different.
[Hilary Durante] Easily, those long smooth arms of hers come around him. He can smell her so richly already and he knows it's nothing compared to how she saturates his senses when he fucks her. These hints of her scent, traces of summer sweat and light, luxurious perfurme are mere teases for what it is to be inside her, to feel her coming, to hear her screaming his name, to taste her tears or her blood when he kisses her mouth, her face. To come inside her and, for a few short seconds, feel her utterly open to him. Beyond vulnerable. Beyond close.
Hilary moves easily into that crushing grip of his, the way his hands cover her, grasp at her, hold her. She tilts her head back, hair spilling down her back, and breathes in the cool air of the guest room. Her body presses to his, to his stomach, to his chest, to his thighs, her skirt spread all over them. Hilary straightens her head, closing her eyes, finding the curve of his ear with the softness of her lips.
"We have time," she exhales, whispering it. And reaches down between them, finding the fasteners of his pants and undoing them, wrestling with them quickly. It is the most rapid, rough undressing they've ever had, and it isn't even strictly an undressing: she wants him, and quickly. She kisses his temple, and closes her lips over his earlobe, pushing her hand into his undone waistband so she can find his cock. Her breathing is already quickening, and her pulse.
[Hilary Durante] [perfurme = perfume]
[Ivan Press] He should put up more of a fight. He should put up a fight, period. It's quite possible she's not in her right mind; god knows how tired she is, right now. It's quite possible she's never in her right mind. It's quite possible she'll go home from this and Dion will find out because god, there is no way, no fucking way she'll scrub him from his skin entirely if he fucks her, if they fuck the way they always do. There is no fucking way she'll be able to hide what they've been up to if Dion pays even a scrap of attention in some form other than his senseless human one, and from what he knows of this mate of hers -- from what she's told him -- he'll pay more than a scrap of attention.
He knows all this. He knows if he fucks her now he could very well end up a dead man. He knows, and even if he didn't, he knows that she's no good for him. She's no good for him because she's not a homewrecker, she's a lifewrecker, and even though Ivan has no idea that Christian went from her bed into two bloody deaths and a bloodier captivity, to tears and guilt and pain, he can guess. He can guess because just look at what she does to him. She sucks him down like a black hole. Like a singularity. Singular.
They're all the same -- but this one is different.
And when her hand finds him under his pants his head falls back with a gasp. A second after that he's tearing his shirt off and there's barely enough light to skim off the smooth planes of his body; not enough to catch in her eyes, so dark even by day, to give him any hint of where she's looking.
He doesn't tear her clothes off then and there. He doesn't even get the rest of his clothes off. His shirt goes -- somewhere. He gets up, pulls her with him. "I want you in my bed," he says, so low it's nearly a growl. He might as well be saying: I want you, because that's what he means. To be mine, because that's what he really means.
His hand is on hers then. He's pulling her out the door and the hallway is bright outside, bright through the frosted glass; it's bright and silent as a museum after closing time, and he takes her down that ridiculous length. He can barely keep his hands off her. He can't keep his hands off her. Halfway down the hall he has her up against her wall, his hand up her skirt, his mouth on her neck. The sound he makes echoes up and down the hall, wakes him to where he is, and he pulls back. He picks her up -- not like a bride, not like a lover. Like a fucking sack of potatoes thrown over his shoulder, his mouth turned to her thigh, biting and sucking at the outside of her leg as he takes her down the rest of that hall and into his room.
No sterility here. No sense of guest, of other, of traceless. This room is his, all his, from the neatly-made-but-not-freshly-changed bedding to the half-a-glass of water on the nightstand to the two or three books piled beside it to the laptop strewn in the center of the floor. He trips over the power cord on his way to the bed, bites a curse into her thigh.
Then she's thumping down on her back. Two walls are glass here. The shades are open. The rest of this room is done in muted, dark colors, lending intimacy to an otherwise vast, exposed space. His hands are roving over her skirt, looking for a button, a zipper, anything, and he's muttering, "Goddammit, Hilary, help me get this off before I tear it in half."
[Hilary Durante] God only knows how many lives she's ruined. How many young men discovered some dark mirror of themselves in her and walked away with only the most shattered, shadowed perception of life from then on. How many had to re-learn how to touch a woman after being with this one. How many sank into remorse and guilt because of what they went through with her. The way she makes them want, so badly that it consumes them. So badly it burns away their good sense. So badly that they forget who they are and who they want to be as they tear her clothes off to get at her.
For some reason it doesn't seem like that's why she does it. Why she cheats. She has that at home: that blistering obsession, that rabid desire. She does not need to look outside of Dion if what she wants is to watch men crumble if they can't get their hands on her. It isn't about power and it isn't about feeling wanted. Of all the things Hilary does and does not understand, it seems that she is at least innocent of realizing just how mind-altering it is for some of these men to want her like they do.
Hilary wants to fuck. She doesn't particularly want to die, or want Ivan to die. But she wants to fuck him. That isn't why she came here, and she didn't think about this before she woke up and looked at him and got on his lap, but she wants it now. She needs it somehow, even if she can't explain why.
"I want you," she's whispering, while he's gasping at the touch of her hand on his cock, through his boxer briefs. Her mouth falls to his body as soon as his t-shirt is off, kissing his neck, his shoulder, his chest. There are soft moans vibrating through her lips as she strokes him through that ringspun, super-soft cotton.
Suddenly she's being lifted up and she gasps, thinking he might be pushing her away, might be about to say No! or I can't, her eyes snapping towards his face. But:
I want you in my bed.
And he's pulling her with him, out of the room and leaving her shoes and stockigns and pulling her to the master suite. There are no servants to be seen or heard but they're there, someplace. The strap of her camisole is falling when Ivan puts her against the wall between one room and the other, finding her hot under her long skirt, the fabric bunching where it drapes over his forearm and wrist. She's wet for him, slick at the edges of her panties, which are thin and almost silky to the touch.
Hilary moans when he kisses her neck, when he strokes her through her underwear, caresses her inner thigh. She moans like a woman much younger than she is, a little wild and unconcerned for what he might think, overcome by sensation as though it's somehow new to her. She leans on the wall because it's holding her up, and there's a flash of awareness -- Ivan can't miss it in himself -- that she would let him have her here. Right now. If he'd just take her.
So he takes her. Not lifting her up on his body to fuck her but literally picking her up and carrying her, and she would laugh except somehow there's nothing funny about this, about what the fuck they're doing. She doesn't cheat when Dion's in town. She doesn't risk it. She doesn't go into her stepson's room and curl around his warm body and murmur in his ear, she doesn't go to hotels with young Ahrouns and she doesn't let Ragabashes tie her up on yachts and she doesn't tell some human frat boy that if he's good and kisses her pussy she might let him fuck her, and she doesn't beg that nice young man from the gym to spank her, to fuck her a little harder, to make her a dirty girl.
She doesn't take risks of other people's lives, or her own. It isn't morality. It's survival.
Yet here she is, falling onto Ivan's bed and not caring that it's his bed, that it's his space, that these are his things and his scent all around her. She cares only that he's there, coming down onto the mattress with her, looking for a way to get her clothes off, muttering about tearing it off. Her hand comes to the back of his neck, bracelets and all. She pulls him forward, capturing his mouth with her own in a way that's almost dominant. But her hands are busy as soon as she has his lips and his tongue. She yanks down his pants, his boxer-briefs, pushing them away, and she lays back, pulling him over her, rucking her skirt up, her legs open to him.
"Pull them aside," she breathes, and is kissing him again. Nevermind that they're dressed, him in jeans and her in ...well, everything but socks. She kisses him harder, panting already, rubbing herself against his cock through her panties, under her skirt. "I want you inside me."
[Ivan Press] Of course she doesn't care. That this is his bed. That they could get in trouble, that they could literally get dead. She doesn't care about anything, it seems, except what she wants, these sudden wants that come upon her without warning, that she satisfies with no real thought to their cost on everyone around her.
She doesn't do this, though. She doesn't fuck around when her mate is in town. She doesn't risk it. Sometimes she's such a hollowed-out thing, a soulless creature, but she has a sense of self-preservation better-honed than most. She doesn't sneak off to her lovers, she doesn't put herself in that sort of danger, except here she is.
And here she is. In his room. In his bed. And he doesn't do this, either. It's not that he holds his bed sacrosanct, but that's exactly it: he doesn't make a point of moving a lover from one room to another because he wants her in his bed. He doesn't turn back around on what may as well have been a breakup, a final goodbye after three satisfying romps, and
need her again like this. Need her taste in his mouth, her skin under his hands and his tongue, gripped by his teeth. He's biting at her, making low rough sounds in his throat as his hands fight with hers, fight with his clothes, fight his pants down and his boxer-briefs down, and then he's climbing onto the bed over, kicking his clothes to the floor. She's still dressed. It reminds him of the first time. It's nothing like the first time. Pull them aside, she breathes, and she doesn't have to -- he's tearing a kiss into her to cut her off and his hands are pulling and pawing at all those goddamn wispy skirts of hers, are finding her slim legs and her slender thighs, are spreading her open and then spreading. her. open, are pushing fingers into her cunt as he pants into her mouth.
"Oh, god, you're so wet," he says, as though this were a surprise; as though he hasn't felt her like this before. Then her wet is on his cock because he's stroking himself, slicking himself up as he pulls her panties aside, holds them aside as he drives into her in one
firm
stroke.
He's atop her. Weighing her down, groaning against her neck. His fingers are faintly slick when he grabs her camisole and pushes it up, up, out of the way. His mouth is so hungry on her breasts, sucking, biting. He fucks her furiously from the very start, gasping and grunting against her body, eyes closed, rubbing his face against her breasts, against her heartbeat, like he's thought of nothing else since the moment she walked in the door. Like he's thought of nothing else since the moment she walked off his boat.
[Hilary Durante] The disconnect here is obvious. She'd freak out if she knew he'd told Estrella morning, she asked him if he understood the meaning of obsession. He told her he wanted to follow her to bed even less if she wasn't going to fuck him, but he came and he held her while she slept. This could get them killed but they do it anyway. He's a playboy and he doesn't care and he knows she doesn't care but he wants her in his bed and that's as animal as his need to be naked, stripping down to nothing while he takes her, like it doesn't matter that she's still covered by her clothes as long as he can fuck her.
And they both acknowledged that this was a bad fucking idea. That she shouldn't stay on his boat, even when Dion wasn't in the country, not because it would look bad but because it was too close to something she can't process nor reciprocate and that he can't cope with nor indulge. At least they have that much sense, even if in their own individual ways they are each a little bit soulless. That's why they pulled back into port and she went home after he chained her up and made a mess of her. They both knew. Know.
Don't care. Can't.
Hilary's moaning for him as he climbs over her, pushes down on her, their bodies grinding while he gets clothes off his skin and pushes her skirt up, pushes her legs apart, which makes her gasp with sudden, electric lust. It's that sound she makes, that way her breathing changes when he's rough with her, when he dominates her. Her back arches and her hips lift as he starts fingering her, muttering about how wet that hot little pussy is. And:
it is. She's trying to get pregnant, for god's sake. She's resigned to giving Dion a child. It's about time. She's in her thirties, she's been mated to him for two years, she knows what could happen to her if she doesn't, and Ivan knows this too, still he pushes into her as far as he can, hard and deep and surrounded by how tight she is, how slick, already fucking him, legs wrapping around his lower half.
A less expensive bed on a different sort of frame would be jostling already from the way they get down to fucking like it's the culmination of everything. She never planned on this when she sent that messenger to him. She never intended to fuck him again but now
now, just look at them. Spreading sex all over each other again, heedless to the dozen things that should be turning the blood in their veins to nothing more than ice water. Hilary groans to him, her hand on his back, fingernails digging into the flesh between his shoulderblades while he -- to put it crudely -- nails her to his mattress with his cock, every thrust as hard as the last, touching her and rubbing himself on her as though to mark every inch of her skin.
Because he wants her. Even though he can't, and even though it's in a way that would eventually be boring to him and incomprehensible for her, even though he has to give her back to her husband tonight. Apparently he'll be giving her back fucked into her own little oblivion, covered in his sweat, their scents inextricably mingled on her skin.
"Harder," she gasps, catching his face against her own, panting along his cheek, his jawline, seeking his lips with hers so she can moan into his mouth. "Baby, fuck me harder. You know how much I love that cock."
[Ivan Press] Harder. It's always harder with her, more, fuck her, spank her, smack her, make it hurt. It's always that, and that's just one of so many reasons why this is a very bad idea, and none of them seem to matter now. Not a single one. He's atop her and her nails are scoring his back and he's trying to remember why he shouldn't bite her tonight, why he promised never to mark her again, period. She's searching for his mouth, and they're not even putting their hands on one another's faces. They're nuzzling against each other like animals, rubbing cheeks together, rubbing their faces past each other until their mouths meet, gasping.
Those last words are lost. He catches them on his mouth. He groans into her mouth as he's fucking her, harder, his longfingered hands gripping at her bare torso, holding her beneath him as though if he let go she might simply evaporate. And then his hands are on her breasts. He squeezes at her, rubs at her flesh, tugs at her nipples wet from his mouth. Her shoulders, then; and for a moment it seems he might hold her down again and pound her like that -- but no. He takes her face in his hands. He holds her head so he can kiss her while he fucks her, can feel her breath shuddering every time he drives into her. He holds her right there while he's fucking her, pounding between her thighs in a way that's not right, not okay, not allowed; not with her mate in town; not ever.
Maybe that's part of the thrill. Maybe it was. Not anymore: now that's simply part of the madness, part of the reasons why not, and in truth Ivan doesn't know what the counterbalance to that is. He has no idea what weighs so heavily against that litany of reasons against; no idea what to call that one, single, all-consuming reason in favor. Because it's nothing so sweet as love, and nothing so simple as lust. Because it's something like need, something rather like
obsession, actually
that makes him fall into her like this. That makes his fingers push into her hair to pull her head back to put his mouth to her throat. That makes him close his hand over her back of her head and simply hold on, hold on, while his free hand twists into his sheets.
[Hilary Durante] [watch out for odds]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[Hilary Durante] [...fuck.]
[Hilary Durante] Lifewrecker. Ruiner. Wicked. Sweet, beautiful, greedy. Luxurious. Decadent. Dangerous.
Hilary's been called all these things and more. Worse. She's also been called extraordinarily lucky, and she knows that this last one is true. More than any of the others, it's true. She knows where she should be, by all rights. What should have happened to her a hundred times over by now. She knows how narrowly she's avoided utter disaster, and she knows almost how often, too.
Look at the rings on her fingers, the gold on her wrists, diamonds in her ears, all of it. She's dripping with the finery of being a kept woman, a treasured pet, a slave to her breeding. All of that moaning and wailing some kinswomen do about how awful it would be ...Hilary doesn't understand. She knows where she'd be if she weren't beautiful, if she weren't well-bred, if she weren't given to a Garou like Dion to be pampered and used for what her body can give the Nation.
It's a tradeoff. It's better than starving to death. It's better than a lot of things.
The intercom goes off. It's doubtful either of them notice, though, with Hilary moaning wildly in his ear and their gasps filling the air. This bed is too expensive to creak as he fucks her, driving himself into her, harder now, while she wraps him tighter in her legs and bucks up against him, her breath taking on that shaky little way of gasping that it does when he's giving it to her and she's liking it like that. Rough. Firm. Like he's teaching her a lesson every time he fucks his cock deeper into her, like he's taking something he wants from her and exulting in the fact that she enjoys it. Every second of it.
They're upstairs in the penthouse fucking each other's brains out,
and the intercom is going off,
because her husband has come for her.
[Ivan Press] [wits + percep: do we even notice? +2diff because ... um. yeah.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Ivan Press] This was never going to be a long, luxurious fuck. This was never even going to be the sort of game they played aboard the Krasota, that long slow utter decimation of everything she is, until all that remained was the raw, twisting, naked nerves at the core.
This was always going to be, quite simply, a fast, furious, mindless fuck. Born out of a need that transcends sanity and precaution. Born out of absolutely nothing, except he woke her and she was going to go home and he was going to let her and then she discovered she wanted him and he discovered he couldn't let her go.
So when that intercom goes off -- too fucking expensive to be a long rattle, nothing more than a distant chiming -- Ivan isn't so far from the edge. He's sweating over her, and biting her, and fucking her, and making her his, his, his, if only for a few moments. He's snarling and she's crying out and while the mattress doesn't creak, every pound of his body into her is a dull vibration through the floor itself. There's absolutely no mistaking what's going on in here even through the sturdy woodpaneled walls between this room and the hallway; the concrete between this floor and the floor below.
Those walls, that floor, is too thick for Ivan to hear the intercom. He doesn't hear Dmitri going to answer the intercom; doesn't hear the man ask for their visitor's name and tell their visitor to wait a moment, please, in that same blandly courteous tone Hilary got a few hours ago.
It's not too thick for Ivan to hear Dmitri knocking on the door. Dmitri would never fucking knock while he was with a woman. With this woman. Dmitri would never fucking knock, period: he'd rap, lightly and politely. Ivan freezes. He's drenched in sweat. He's drenched in her. His chest is heaving, his ribs straining to contain his lungs, his hammering heart. His eyes meet Hilary's for a second. Then he turns toward the door.
"Yeah?" he pants. The reply comes in Russian, and whatever it is makes Ivan let out a string of vicious syllables that could only be the foulest of curses. From that alone, Hilary can very well guess what Dmitri said. He needs to get up. He needs to pull out of her. He needs to push her in the shower -- hide her in the broom closet -- drop her over the edge of the building with a parachute strapped to her back. Something. He needs to think of something. He looks down at her and the light in his eyes is insane. He needs to move, now.
What he does instead is to push up on his hands, pull his knees under himself, and start fucking her again. Harder than before. Faster. Pounding the fuck out of her wet little cunt, teeth set, panting and grunting on every mad stroke while Dmitri stands outside the door waiting for instruction on what to tell Mr. Espiridion Nieves-Durante who was waiting thirty-five stories below in the lobby.
Or possibly: in the umbra, climbing the side of the building in his war-shape.
[Hilary Durante] There's no chance Hilary even hears the intercom. All sounds except for Ivan's breathing, his grunting, the hard wet sound of his cock burying itself in her pussy again and again... they're just filtered out. She doesn't hear the knocking, doesn't know that Dmitri doesn't knock. She just feels Ivan inside her, burning out the rest, and she's wailing from it, clinging to him and fucking him and whimpering
please don't stop don't stop ivan don't stop fucking me
ivan fill me up, ivan come in me, ivan, ivan,
iva--
Her voice cuts off when Ivan stops, when he freezes, sweating on her and her clothes and twisting his head around to look at the door. The mostly-clothed woman under him is still groaning quietly, circling her pussy on his cock, on the verge of asking him why he's stopped, why isn't he fucking her, baby, why aren't you making me come. She doesn't have the presence of mind to understand. To question what that Russian was, or why Ivan's swearing.
She just lets out an exultant moan when he starts fucking her again, pounding her the way she was begging him to just seconds ago, her body shifting up an inch on the bed, two inches. "Oh god," she's moaning, the way so many women have in this bed or in others around the penthouse, after some party, after some nightclub, getting railed by this playboy who would kick them out the second he came if any one of them had a boyfriend capable of ripping his head off.
There's no doubt that Mr. Espiridion Nieves-Durante is quite capable of ripping his head off. And Hilary is no girlfriend, no starved swan nor duckling. She's the man's mate.
Whining and whimpering as he gets back to hammering her, heedless that the butler is just outside the door. Hilary squirms up against him, moaning fuck me, fuck me, yeah, ivan, fuck...
She never tells him she's going to come. She never cries out that she's coming, but she cries out all the same, wordless and wild, her head tipped back and her brow furrowed with the intensity of it. To call this a quickie, even, is generous. The idea was to fuck, to do something incredibly stupid, then try to fix it before going back to her husband
who is going to want to know why she left in the first place.
All that's over, now. She lifts her hips as her orgasm hits her, taking her legs from around him to plant her feet on the mattress, riding up on him. She grabs his neck and pulls herself upright, finding his eyes, panting as she slams herself back down on his cock. Every bounce of her cunt onto him sends another shockwave of pleasure through her, makes her clench down on him again, til she's just grinding down, folding over his shoulder,
moaning his name.
[Ivan Press] There no hesitation now; no pause to think or consider or doubt. He gets right back to hammering her. Gets right back to fucking her, pounding her, going at her like an animal, with an animal's heedlessness and speed, with an animal's fury. She's moaning those filthy little words, writhing under him, and he's grabbing fistfuls of his sheets and bowing his head and fucking her like this might be the last thing he ever does,
which, all things considered, might not be that much of an exaggeration.
And she's coming. She's lighting off like a roman candle, going off like a bomb. She's coming up off his bed and she doesn't seem exhausted now, doesn't seem wan or pale or tired or even remotely human now: grabs him behind the neck in a way that makes him snarl like an animal, bare his teeth at her; grabs him and rides herself against him, pounds out her orgasm against him while he's still hammering into her, and
when it's over for her, she folds herself over him, and he bites into her shoulder, and bears her down, and pins her down, and comes in her.
Fucks her full of cum. Marks her indelibly with the scent of sweat, and sex, and him. And --
there's barely a second or two or respite. Then he's getting up, drawing out of her, hissing because he's still so sensitive, panting because he doesn't have his breath back, yet. He holds his hand out to her to pull her upright, and if she's not moving he simply hauls her to her feet. Puts his hands on her face, brings her eyes to his.
"Your mate is here," he says. So fucking calm: one wonders how many times this has happened before. One wonders, but the answer is never. Never a kin with a mate; never like this. "You need to get out of here. Go get your things. Go out through the emergency exit. It's behind the spiral staircase; Dmitri will show you. Take the stairs down. Jesus fucking Christ, I hope you parked where he can't see your car. I'll stall him for a while to give you a head start and try not to get killed. Then I'll tell him you left ten minutes ago." He pants a laugh -- not a shred of humor in it. "When you get home, take a fucking shower. Okay?"
[Hilary Durante] It's too soon. It's so fast. Ivan pulls his cock from her and she moans, trembling. To be blunt, it makes a mess of them, of her. There's cum on her clothes now, soaking her underwear, traceries of it on her skirt and her inner thighs. She's sweaty and tremulous and her camisole is askew and her brain hasn't quite grasped what they just did, and she has no chance of understanding why, even though she initiated it. She grabs his back and his shoulders as he's withdrawing, and she's all but ready to reach down and slide him back into her, take him again, when he starts to get up from the bed, holding his hand out to her.
What he says shakes her. Ivan can see it in her eyes. It isn't fear. It isn't panic. It's... indescribable, whatever emotion he sees in her face. If it can rightly be called emotion at all, that is. Her hand grabs his so hard it's shocking. Adrenaline granting her new strength, perhaps. She gets up, looking dazed, and looks around as though to find her boots and stockings in here, but they're in the other room with her purse.
To her credit, Hilary doesn't fly into a panic. She doesn't start running. She is tugging her camisole down over her bared breasts and walking as soon as he says she needs to get out of here, leaving the room. The door swings open and she walks right past Dmitri like she doesn't see him, like it doesn't matter that his master is naked in the bedroom. As if the butler's never seen him naked and immediately post-coital.
How embarrassing for him, if he hasn't.
Everything Ivan says is like a hum. She hears the words, and she understands them, but she can't think. She's graceful as ever but there's something robotic about the way she goes about putting her feet in her boots without bothering with her stockings -- which are really just high enough to make her boots comfortable, socks, really, nothing salacious -- which get balled up and shoved in her bag. Her skirt fell into place easily enough as soon as she stood up from Ivan's bed, and she adjusts the strap of her camisole with a practiced motion, without having to think about it.
She's out in the hallway again, and she won't meet Ivan's eyes. It isn't shame. She doesn't know why.
Now would be a good time, if she loved him, to kiss him hard on the mouth before she leaves him. She does not. Hilary looks to Dmitri expectantly, and when the butler leads her to the emergency exit behind the stairs, she goes. And she doesn't say anything, as though if she speaks now it will taint the air with her voice the way it is tainted by her scent.
[Ivan Press]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Ivan Press] (SILVER FANGS DO NOT FAIL.)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Hilary Durante] [Most obvious is the sort of shocked lockdown she goes into. Strong emotion is overwhelming so she just shuts down. Hence the robotic sort of emptiness to her behavior: just keep moving forward.
Beneath that, for a second, there was something like a flicker of realization that this was Not Okay. It wasn't even quite guilt so much as something more primal and immediate: the understanding itself that there would be something to be guilty about, shutting down before she ever gets to remorse over it.
There was at least some fear/panic, but it's more fear of complications/losing comfort rather than being physically hurt or losing the love of others.]
to Ivan Press
[Ivan Press] Ivan has so little time to look at her. He takes it, though: takes that moment, that glance, that second, harder look.
Whatever he sees, it doesn't change what he does. She goes to get her things. They don't even say goodbye. Ivan speaks to Dmitri, all but barks at him -- not frantic, but clipped, short, rapid. Orders. Do this, do that, all while he's heading for the bathroom, the shower.
Escort Mrs. Durante to the south stairs, and then go downstairs and welcome Mr. Nieves-Durante up. Take your goddamn time. Send the maids in here, clean this place up, now, now, now. Have Yuliya pour scotch. Strongly flavored, smoky scotch, the heavier the better; pair it with smoked meats and cheeses, serve it in the dining room, and for god's sake, make a big fucking production of welcoming an Adren into our humble little fucking abode.
On that note, Ivan claps the shower door closed and turns on the water. Even in a place as luxurious as this, basic laws of thermodynamics apply. Water cools in the pipes; it takes some time to heat up. The first blast of the shower is so cold it makes him jump.
[Ivan Press] [durante-nieves!]
[Hilary Durante] Espiridion's first mate was of his own house. She was from Madrid. He knew her growing up, and they were promised to one another from early childhood. She gave him two children before she was killed. Those children are well-formed and well-bred. Their minds and bodies are strong. They are good children, despite their... quirks. But neither of them Changed. Neither of them, despite their impeccable blood, grew into adolescence with the power of their father. Their potential lies in singular areas. Whatever pursuits they follow, ultimately their intelligence and skills are merely window dressing for what they really are.
Now, Hilary. His new wife, his new mate. There's potential in her, as yet unruined because there is no way to tell until she gives birth if she'll give the Nation the cubs it needs so badly. Of course he's attached to her. Drawn to her. Obsessed with the way she looks as she sleeps, the smell of her hair when she's just bathed, the look of a gold bracelet on her wrist, the arch of her foot, the grace of her spine when she's letting her robe fall behind her
just before he's on her, needing her, needing somehow to possess her, to be a part of that beauty, and that potential.
Ivan goes to shower sex off of his body. Another male's mate. Her cum on his cock, on his balls, her sweat on his skin, the way her perfume rubbed off onto him. God, all of her. The sound of her moaning ringing in his ears as the water comes on to pelt his chest, his shoulders.
Hilary quicksteps down the stairs, knowing that Dion is on his way up, and it will be thirty minutes or so that she lives with the smell of Ivan on her body, on her clothes, the feel of him inside her. It will be some time before she can process even that much. But she'll drive back to the house and she has no servants who she trusts the way Ivan can trust Yuliya and Dmitri and all the rest. They are not on her side.
Heavy smells downstairs to try and cover what's all the way upstairs, behind a couple of closed doors. The traces of Hilary, vodka, kahlua, the whiff of her leaving.
Dion does not rush Dmitri on the way up. He is too polite. Respect the territory of another. He is dressed in linen slacks and a short-sleeved shirt of some lightweight, loose fabric. Casual. Summery. As though this could, even for a moment, offset his Rage, or the knowledge of what he is. He is a tall, sturdily built man, his hair combed and his bearing serious. Studious, almost. He speaks with a heavy accent, but does not speak much to Dmitri.
Only: My wife is upstairs?
The only reason he's here.
[Ivan Press] Let's count the minutes.
Zero is when Espiridion rings the intercom and is admitted into the lobby, told to please wait while Dmitri summons his master. Give it two, three, maybe four minutes before Hilary is on her way down, and Ivan is in the shower, and Dmitri is back on the line with Dion, informing him that he will be down shortly.
Five minutes is when the maids are whisking the soiled sheets off the bed and into laundry sacks, sealed. Five minutes is when Ivan is scrubbing Hilary's smell off his chest, off his groin, off his stomach, off his skin. Five minutes is when the elevator arrives on the ground floor. Dmitri keeps his eyes well below the Adren's, speaks quietly, moves deferentially. He apologizes for the wait; speaks slowly and clearly. Leads the Adren into the elevator and, when the doors sweep shut, welcomes him humbly to the den of his junior tribesman, Ivan Kirillevich Priselkov, called this-and-that, who earned his name at the battle of some-or-other, who was fostered by so-and-so at the Sept of the such-and-such; descendant of this king, that lord; claimant to this title, that crown; cliath and ragabash of the sun lodge, the clan of the crescent moon.
Six is when the elevator starts up again. Six minutes is when Ivan is scrubbing soap through his hair and over his skin, dashing it off his face, scattering it on the shower walls when a snap of his head. Seven is when Ivan is stepping out of the shower, the maids playing the part of valet and helping him into his clothes, toweling his hair dry, knotting his tie. Seven is when Espiridion asks, my wife is upstairs? and Dmitri shakes his head.
I regret to inform you, sir, that Mrs. Durante departed perhaps fifteen minutes ago. We would have escorted her once our driver arrived, but she was most eager to return to you at once. If you've come to retrieve your honorable mate, we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience. However, my master remains most eager to greet you.
Eight is when the elevator opens onto the foyer of the penthouse. Eight is when Ivan is trotting down the spiral staircase in the living room, freshly changed into a conservative british-cut suit; white shirt; blue tie. He lets Dion see him running a quick, nervous hand through his hair; patting down the pockets of his jacket before coming to meet the Adren.
"Rhya, it's an honor to welcome you into my home. Please, consider my territory your own. I only wish we could have met under better circumstances; though, of course, I'm always more than happy to be of assistance to your house and kin.
"Might I offer you refreshments?"
[manip/subt + PB! I am an eager, sycophantic, tactless little shit who thinks you can help boost my political standing. I jumped all over a chance to do you a favor. Now I'm pretending I'm not nervous as hell because eee, you're HERE, and I put on a BRAND NEW SUIT just to impress you!
spec: persuasive. totally blowing WP on this one. let's not botch and end up headless.]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Ivan Press] [I DID IT AGAIN. replace that second most-eager with 'my master would consider it his privilege to meet you.']
[Hilary Durante] There are so many things making him angry right now they don't bear counting. [i]He counts them anyway.[/i]
Dmitri is babbling away at him about humble welcome, Kirillevich this-and-that, clan etcetera. Dion is standing in the motionless elevator with his heavy hands clasped in front of him, heavy hands covered in scars from a long-past youth of hard labor before the Change came upon him. And he's counting. Not minutes, but problems, sorting them into clear boxes that need no labels.
One is that he has been home a week and has worn himself to the bone to stay awake in order to guard his mate and renew his relationship with his only son. He has not slept, he has hardly eaten, he has been on near-constant watch to ensure that they are safe and that they love him and know he loves them. So: he is quite tired, and quite hungry, and this is a problem.
He has felt twinges of resentment for the lack of appreciation he's been shown since returning, but he sets those twinges aside. They are kneejerk reactions, no more considered or well thought-out than Hilary or Tomas's attitudes. That is a problem, but not one that needs to be dealt with.
Another, far more important, is that when he finally gave himself leave to take rest he took his wife to bed and gave her the love he knows she craves before holding her close the way she knows [i]he[/i] craves. Then he woke, and he was alone. Not only alone: his wife was not in their bathroom. She was not in their house. She was not in the goddamn [i]town[/i]. Estrella was home. Good, loyal, crisp Estrella knew all, and
-- that is another thing to remember, she must be rewarded for knowing the comings and goings and whereabouts of her mistress so that she could stave off his frenzy. Upon returning home he must tell her to grant herself an extra allowance of a set amount so that she can choose her own gift --
she was able to tell him that Hilary had left hours earlier 'to go shopping'. She was able to tell him that some time ago she received a call from Mr. Press informing her that Hilary had been invited to tea with Mrs. Lowenfeld-Reed and could not refuse, but had taken ill from the heat. She was able to recite to him whatever story she'd been given of how on earth Ivan came to be involved at all, why Hilary was with him.
Which comes to the next problem. He woke to his wife's absence. He came around to the message that his wife was in the den of another male. A young, most likely hotheaded -- and Dion cautions himself as Dmitri rambles on not to make assumptions, not to jump to conclusions -- male of the tribe who no doubt can smell Hilary's breeding a mile away, who can probably smell her sensuality, who even if he could not would have to want her just because [i]look at her[/i]
and Dmitri is subjected to the shockwave of rage that seems like it fills the elevator, pressing at the walls, all but making the frame of it creak, as Dion does no more than clench a fist in front of him, his other hand wrapped around his wrist.
The butler finishes his spiel and Dion says the first words he's bothered with since entering the elevator. He wants to know if his wife is upstairs. And Dmitri says no.
Dmitri is lucky he belongs to Ivan. Dmitri is lucky that Espiridion cleaves to the Litany the way he has since the night he was told that he was a Judge by birth, even if the years wore on and his spirit told him he had been born just a few days past the part of the lunar cycle that should have been his. Dmitri is part of this territory. He smells like this other male, this Crescent Moon-clanned Ragabash. So Dion does not kill him.
Still: another surge of rage, of mindbending fury, as the elevator ascends. His wife is not here. He must meet and thank this little shit, this slavering little Russian troll who probably masturbated over his wife as she slept, he has to thank him for his [i]fucking[/i] hospitality, he is no longer counting problems
but counting minutes til he can turn around and leave again to go find Hilary. Chase her from one end of the city to the other, find her, ask her why she did this to him, why she chose [i]then[/i] to go shopping, didn't she want to be with him, didn't she care how it made him feel to wake and find her gone?
The elevator doors slide apart and the downstairs smells dimly of smoked cheeses and meats, an almost peaty scotch, new finery, multiple Fang kin, [i][b]that male[/i][/b]
and Hilary. Somewhere, proof that she was at least here, his wife. His mate. The one who will be mother for his children and who is beautiful enough, graceful enough, pure enough, even as much as Angela was. He can imagine her sleek body here, just as easily as he can imagine her flat belly swollen with pregnancy.
And the wall of rage that rushes into the room abates a bit, without warning or explanation. He turns his eyes over to Ivan coming down the stairs as though he could hear those soft footfalls of the sneaking Ragabash.
Espiridion's eyes are dark and intractable. He unfolds his hands and offers one to Ivan. The age of his bloodline is evident in everything about this Adren, just as the fact that Ivan is New Money is one of the most obvious things about him. "[i]Gracias,[/i]" he says, his voice a rather beautiful roll even in the single word. No wonder he became a Galliard. "Your man told me my wife left some time ago."
There's a pause there, as he watches Ivan stumbling over his eagerness to please. "You did not need to bathe to greet me," he says, seeming somewhat amused. And suspicious.
[Ivan Press] Dmitri's composure is admirable, but his face is white when he escapes that elevator.
The rest of the servants are well out of sight, though now and then they can be heard whispering about: a clink of glass from the dining room; a cupboard closing softly in the kitchen.
Ivan does not hesitate to take his elder's hand. He bows as he shakes it, as though he couldn't decide which is more appropriate or proper in this situation. "You just missed her," he confirms; there's a hesitation, a flicker of a wince, a rush of words, "Rhya, I must apologize for allowing your mate to depart unescorted. I should have seen her safely home myself."
Espiridion's comment on his appearance sets off a fresh round of fussing: longfingered hands butterflying over his collar, his tie, picking near-obsessively at the buttons and the lapel and the hem of his jacket.
"I apologize, Rhya," he says at once, cheeks coloring. He gives his sleeve one last tug. "How gauche I must seem. It's only -- I haven't been in the presence of an Adren of Falcon since Novgorod. I wanted to be presentable, sir, and -- "
As though aware that he's babbling now, Ivan cuts off; clears his throat. And it's something about the quick, nervous lick of his lips; the eyes daring a single glance up into Dion's dark gaze before dropping back to the cheekbones. The chin. The hands. The mouth.
This is an Adren he faces. An Adren of the Silver Fangs, no less. Such creatures could literally beat obedience into a man; could bend the will of a mob with a word; could call silver from their very soul and use it to shred their enemies. Small wonder the Cliath is nervous. Except --
it's not altogether fear, is it?
[Subterfuge! I am not only a sycophantic little shit, I am also a flaming queer. All those starved swans are beards. Your wife is of zero interest to me. I am however attracted to your hot spanish PB4 cro-magnon-ness. Also, I am obsessive-compulsive about being clean and presentable.
iphone sez:
6 8 2 3 1 3 7 0 7 6 7, reroll on 10 for: 10. reroll again for: 4.
7 suxx @ diff 6!]
[Hilary Durante] It isn't Dion who keeps up with the society pages. Estrella had to tell him who this Lowenfeld-Reed woman was. Once upon a time he knew mortals, humans, was connected somehow to the world outside the Nation. He relies on his Kinfolk for those bonds, now. The people he knows aren't [i]people[/i]. It's been a long time since he's personally kept an ear or eye out for up-and-comers. He was a Fostern when he renounced. He Changed late. He has spent more years as a Garou than some Garou ever live.
Espiridion Durante-Nieves has no earthly idea who this man is, or that he's known as a man about town, a woman on each arm and a couple more besides, a ridiculous yellow-on-black Bugatti. Parties. Models. He doesn't know Ivan's reputation has nothing to do with latent or buried homosexuality, and he doesn't know that Ivan isn't really OCD. For all he knows, that's this Cliath's own slice of madness.
He is the sort of man who would consider lusting for another man,
another [i]Garou[/i],
the sort of sickness that would come from their unbelievable, damning purity.
Once upon a time, he had the Gift of truthtelling. His packmates and septmates came to him to discern what was honest from what was deceptive. He has not used that gift in so long he doesn't know if he remembers it. Not that it matters. Ivan says nothing that isn't true: he just missed Hilary. Ivan should not have let her go alone. He wanted to be presentable. These are all truths, at their core. It's the mannerisms, it's the way he looks at Dion, that's the lie.
Espiridion tips his head to one side, watching young Mr. Press as it strikes him how [i]eager[/i] this man seems to impress him. There's a flex in his jaw, a sudden twinge in his cheek as he disguises his reaction -- as best he can, which is actually quite well -- to what seems like very real, crawling, oozing desire.
As clear as his eyes have been in the past, as clear as they usually are, they are clouded now. Hilary is not here. That keeps going through his mind. Everything else doesn't matter. Even if he looked more closely at what Ivan's saying to him, how Ivan's acting, there's little chance he'd see through it. The lies are so well told, the persona so rapidly but quickly crafted. He can't smell, in this form, the lingering scent of sex in the upstairs bedroom where Ivan came inside his wife.
It isn't rage that makes Dion's jaw clench. It's revulsion, however well disguised underneath a veneer of civility and politeness. It says something about his control and his well-ingrained etiquette that he does not physically step away from Ivan. Nor, really, pick him up and throw him through a glass wall. His voice is rich, and slurs just right on all the right syllables, but it is rather flat when he speaks again. Firm. Further proof of the fitness of his chosen auspice to his talents: as evident as Ivan's desire is regardless of his exact words, Dion's polite rejection comes across no matter what actually leaves his lips:
"I apologize," he says, even more meaningless, ultimately, than Ivan's own, "but I cannot stay. My time with my mate and son is very short, and I want to return to them."
A beat. "You... do not need to escort me out."
[Ivan Press] There's a reason -- beyond the simple etiquette of servants staying unseen -- that only blandfaced, expressionless Dmitri accompanies Ivan in greeting the Adren. Even the most brilliant lie can be rapidly unraveled by the reactions of onlookers. Dion's not a Philodox anymore, hasn't been for some time, but even if the gift is forgotten some instincts are not.
If Marya's eyebrows had flicked up in surprise. If Olga had had to surprise a blurt of shocked laughter. If Nastya had blushed, because fifteen, twenty minutes ago -- when Mrs. Durante was supposed to have left -- she saw them staggering down the hall, drunk on each other, their hands all over each other. If anyone was the slightest beat out of lockstep with Ivan and his mannerisms and his story, the game would be up.
It doesn't always take a good truthcatcher to trap a good liar.
And Ivan is, in the end, a good liar. A brilliant one. He understands that explicit verbal lies are only the beginning; the cracked and slippery surface. A novice's trick. A bad, unreliable way to lie.
Falsehoods like that don't get far. A new-minted Cliath could see through them with the right trick. Even amongst mortals, lies like that compound exponentially, weave sticky, fragile webs. Sooner or later, someone always slips and tears a hole in it. Someone always finds out.
It was risky for him to lie like that when he gave the story of the society matron, tea, illness. He doesn't know why he did it. He doesn't know why he did it [i]for her[/i].
These lies, though: these are the ones he favors and is almost flawlessly adept at. These lightning-quick pretenses, these personalities he crafts out of nothing, adjusts from instant to instant as he needs, sells without ever saying a word. These performances, so subtle and delicate that the he never really lies at all. In the end, all the assumptions, all the conclusions, all the falsehoods originate in the beholder's own mind:
brown-nosing, tactless, twitchy, weakblooded little [i]faggot[/i]. Of course he'd scramble to make himself useful to the Adren and his mate. Of course he'd leap into the shower at the first mention of the Adren himself making an appearance. Of course he'd never touch Hilary Durante while she was in his care; wouldn't have touched her if she was here all night; would never have dreamt of it even if she stood before him naked as venus on the half-shell.
Of course.
Too good to let the act drop the instant it's bought, Ivan lets his hands wander distractedly over his sleeves once, picking blindly and nervously at imaginary lint as the Galliard declines the invitation to stay. He doesn't overplay it. He doesn't put on an affectation of disappointment. He lets Dion see that he saw the rejection and understood it instantly. He starts to put his palm out to shake; curls his fingers into his palm halfway there and draws his hand back, as though uncertain now. Anxious of what he's inadvertently revealed and its impact.
"Of course," he says. "I understand." He nods for Dmitri to press the elevator call button. The doors slide open on the waiting car and he adds, "You are welcome in my home at any time, Rhya. Good night."
[Hilary Durante] Somewhere between Chicago and Wilmette the Maserati Dion gave Hilary for her birthday is zipping far too quickly along the road. She drives on adrenaline, and every time she almost gets in the way of another car she gets a new surge of adrenaline. She's thinking about burning these clothes. About whether Estrella is still awake or not. She probably is. God damn her. Tomas is at home, too. Tomas is so angry now that his father's home, he's so fucking angry all the time.
Hilary drives fast. She doesn't know how much of a head start she actually has. She knows Dion better than Ivan. It won't be a long one.
In Chicago, Ivan reins in his ever-so-obvious attraction to the older man because, after all, even an idiot can see that Espiridion isn't interested. The servants stay out of the way because the entire penthouse resounded with the noise of Hilary moaning their master's name repeatedly, coming with him, and they all know she's not fair game like the starved swans, like Cordelia or Erika or any of the others he invited up here or took out on the yacht.
They also remember the way things sounded belowdeck when they drifted down the stairs. The sound of flesh slapping flesh, the way she screamed, the clang of chain on wood and metal. Better not to think of what the hell their master is getting himself into. What might drag them down one day, too.
Espiridion, the portrait of grace and control, sees Ivan's uncertainty and generously offers his hand to shake. His eyes are almost lazy in their banked rage, most of the energy in him coming from his desire to get out of here and get to his wife. He clasps Ivan's hand politely, inclining his head for the barest fraction of a second. "Good night, Mr. Press," he says, withdrawing. He moves quickly without hurrying, a sort of smooth purpose in each step.
There's no way for Ivan to know, after the elevator doors close again, what becomes of Hilary as the night wears on. She sends him no text message later, and no messenger arrives the next morning. There's no [i]everything's fine[/i]. There's no panicked query as to what lie he told Dion, what story does she need to be up on. He doesn't hear from her.
The maids stripped the bed of its linens where he fucked her. Sweated with her. Came with her. He scrubbed her smell off his skin and out of his hair.
He can still smell her, if he closes his eyes.
[i]So keep them open.[/i]
