[Hilary] At least she calls first. It's Dion who showed up without warning, without even searching ahead to see if his tribesman was at home before he was at the door, smoothing his way into the lobby in the first place with breeding, charisma, and gifts. And terror. That, too. Hilary, however, had certain aspects of good manners taught to her so early, and taught so well, that she mistakes them for natural human behavior and discards them at her peril.
If she doesn't call first, send a messenger first, maybe everyone will realize there's something wrong with her. And she can't have that. Even with Ivan, who already says awful, mean things about how incapable she is of being human. Of feeling things in general, much less feeling this for other people. Like him. And she knows sometimes, he says those things to protect himself. To set up wards against her, against himself, against the future. She cannot fault him entirely for that.
Back to the point: she calls first, a simple phone call to see if he'd like to join her for an early dinner. Everest, 5:30? Chef Joho prepares the pre-theatre dinner personally.
After that it's a small matter to change her reservation from one person to two. It's an equally small matter to arrange for the ticket to the theater she had to be sold for her by one of the staff. Her. Do this. And then it's out of her mind, it's gone, it never was.
She's already at the restaurant, situated at the top of the Chicago Stock Exchange, when Ivan arrives. Her dress is demure, cream-colored, a slight slit at the neckline. Her jewelry is sedate, elegant, and mostly made of platinum. People she knows, people who know her husband and his family by reputation and wealth alone, eat here. People who know Ivan's family for the same reasons eat here. It isn't all flash and glitz; it's not Ivan's sort of place at all.
It's old money, all the way.
[Ivan] This isn't his sort of place. But then, very little about this is his sort of thing. Certainly, Ivan's had affairs with older, married women, but they're the exception to the rule. Older, married, wellbred, wellkept women who are decidedly bad for him: that's a category so rare and fine that it really comes down to,
well. Her.
Ivan would not be Ivan, however, if he didn't dress appropriately for such a gathering. His suit is british-cut tonight, sleek and dark and understated with just a touch of edge in the long lapels, the charcoal-grey shirt beneath. His tie is muted, geometric patterns scattered in black and dark red, dark gold, dark, dark. His cufflinks look like muted, deliberately unpolished silver, but surely they're not. Strolling in behind the greeter, hands in his pockets, Ivan looks lean, laconic, the very picture of the idle princeling as he pulls out the chair opposite Hilary.
"Mrs. Durante," he greets her. His hair is the brightest thing about him today, though that will darken as the city veers winterward. He unbuttons his coat as he sits, thoughtless and graceful, accepting a menu from the greeter. His attention remains on the woman across the table, though. "Pleasant surprise, hearing from you so soon."
Relatively speaking.
[Hilary] It's still close enough to summer that it will be awhile before the sun sets. There's enough light to see the city by. It's rush hour, despite the fact that most of the people in the financial district are still working. The restaurant isn't full at this time of day; the pre-theater dining is a somewhat more intimate affair than one of Joho's seven-course dinners.
Even dressing as he does, a little more conservative, there's too much new, too much fashionable, about Ivan's style to go unnoticed. Most of the diners here look on Hilary as an almost scandalously young woman. They glance at Ivan like a child. An unruly, spoiled child who is likely to ruin their dinner by being too loud, too energetic, too fast-moving. Their eyes follow him to Hilary's table.
The people here know enough about society -- personally, such matters a part of their upbringing rather than burdensome knowledge best left in the hands of servants -- that they know who Hilary is. Not Mrs. Durante. They know her family's name, they know a little of that troubled background. She's a person of interest and gossip to them. And here she is, her husband out of the country (again, always), meeting an embarrassingly younger man for dinner.
He had better be her cousin. Nephew. Something like that.
As for Hilary, the hairs on the back of her neck lift as Ivan walks into the room. The rising tension of the restaurant cues her to look slowly away from the window, her spine straightening somewhat. She finds him as he crosses over to her, quietly thanks the hostess, who tells them tonight's selection, who informs them that the first of three courses will be served at six. Ivan has the wine list to look over, the available spirits. Hilary already has a glass of white wine, the glass half filled. Maybe she only got half a glass. Maybe she's already had some.
She leans forward, elbows on the table, hands loosely linked together under her chin. 'So soon', he says, as though two weeks is an eyeblink. "Thank you for coming," she says, all polish. "I was thinking about attending a show tonight, but had Estrella find a buyer for my ticket. I've developed a tendency towards heartburn in the evenings that makes sitting through anything entertaining a bit less enjoyable."
Her hand goes to her glass, a few light bracelets sparkling when the light hits them, and she takes a sip of wine. "I did want to ask you something, though."
[Ivan] It's not entirely out of the question that the young man -- the youth, almost -- sitting across from Hilary is related to her. There's something about them, some resemblance no one can quite put a finger on. Maybe it's something about the shape of their faces, or their noses, or ... something, some je ne sais quoi, that marks them as similar. As the same. As different from everyone else here, as above, as more.
Even the humans sense it. Most, however, likely ignore it. Attribute that intuited different to something so simple and unremarkable as their youngness. The darkness of her hair, the smoothness of his face. She's a young woman here. He's a baby, a rude child, and god knows when he'll do something terrible and embarrassing and gauche.
As she goes on about dinner, shows, those little frailties one expects a woman of wealth and means and culture and rareness to have, Ivan's eyes flick down the wine list. "How unfortunate for you," he murmurs, neither meaning it nor attempting to sound as though he means it. "I do sympathize."
By the time she mentions her inquiry, they're returned to her; he's decided, and sets the small portfolio aside. Now there's more interest, his keen dark eyes flicking over her face like a laser: eye to mouth to nose to eye.
"Oh? And what would you like to know?"
[Hilary] "Katherine Bellamonte," she says, as she sets her wineglass down and adopts her previous posture, "summoned me the morning after our last meeting." As though they 'meet' and discuss 'business'. As though the last time they saw each other it was even intentional. As though the last time he saw her he didn't leave bruises over her ass where he struck her with his belt.
As though the night she spoke to Miss Bellamonte she wasn't still sore, still having difficulty sitting down and simultaneously hiding the ache while enjoying it.
Note this, too: she doesn't say 'summoned' with bitterness or sneer. That is what it was, and the right is given freely. Katherine is a Fostern Garou, Elder in Chicago, ostensibly her guardian whenever Hilary deigns to come down from the north shore and mingle with the rabble in the city. She summoned her, which implies that Hilary was, of course, obliged to attend.
"Apparently right after Christian's little tantrum in the alleyway he ran to her to tell her exactly what I told him not to. According to her, he remembers -- but doesn't remember -- anything that happened. He certainly seemed to remember that it was all my fault, that he 'couldn't resist', and that everything he did to me I asked for, even though he 'doesn't really remember'." Hilary wants to roll her eyes. She restrains herself at first, then does so, too disgusted to hold back. "She assured me he'll be punished for breaking your laws, and insisted my husband be told. She seemed to think my disdain for her falling all over herself to believe that poor, innocent Christian was misled by the wicked witch of the north shore indicated that I would not be telling Dión as she demanded. Which led to her giggling about tearing my spine out and hanging it on her wall."
Hilary shrugs one partially bare shoulder and waves her hand, diamonds sparkling across her fingers. "Christian's conveniently selective amnesia and Miss Bellamonte's mother henning aside, Dión finally got back in touch with me yesterday so I could tell him about the baby. Now, since he's aware that I'm in a delicate state and the Chicago Elder is young, disrespectful, the toy poodle of a Lord, and dangerously unstable, we would both like to ask if you would be interested in becoming my de jure guardian for those times when I am in Chicago."
[Ivan] It's almost not worth discussing the expressions that flit across Ivan's face as Hilary informs him of the goings-on since their last 'meeting'. The flickering tension, stillness, smirks, and snorts: all of that seems to mean very little when she gets to the end.
He was not expecting that question. That proposal. He certainly didn't expect it to come from both of us, this amorphous we that comprised herself and her oft-absent mate. Give him this much: he doesn't bolt from the room. He doesn't even go white. He does go still again, though, his eyes sharp as they fix on her, flickering only to blink.
"I am, of course," he answers at length, the irony in this statement so subdued it's almost inaudible, "my elder's dutiful servant. And if he feels this is best for his mate, then I'm glad to oblige.
"But given the circumstances, I suspect if I were to challenge Katherine directly, she'd immediately assume the worst. She's apparently already convinced you've seduced one of her tribesmen into sin. It wouldn't take much for her to decide you've done the same to me. Then she'll start asking questions, and she's a Philodox. Unless the spirits utterly abandon her, every question is as good as answered no matter what I say to her. She'll know the truth for what it is.
"So if this is what your husband wants, then you're going to have to find a way to convince him to inform Katherine Bellamonte. I can't be the one asking for this."
[Hilary] The smirk that flits across Hilary's lips as Ivan assures her that he's his elder's dutiful servant is dry at best. The humor in it never quite reaches her eyes. This, from the man who underneath the noses of Gilded Honor-rhya and Truth's Meridian-rhya both has been fucking her senseless every chance he gets, is almost too much.
So she takes a sip of her wine instead of laughing aloud. Ivan goes on to say what he does. Hilary is taking small sips. She can only have so much alcohol per day, and that's really the utmost limit if she has any at all. She takes it slowly. She savors the small, sparkling mouthfuls and the mellow inebriation they bring to her mind, slowing everything else down.
What he says about Katherine is true enough that Hilary nods as though to indicate yes, obviously she would assume the worst. Yes, obviously suspicion seems to be as good as sentence for her. But when Ivan finishes, Hilary doesn't say that she'll tell Dion and see what can be done. Nor does she admit whether or not she did as Katherine commanded and confess her night with Christian to him in tearful apology, simpering please, please don't kill him, it was my mistake as much as his. She doesn't tell Ivan if she and Dion had a weeping reconciliation while miles apart. She doesn't tell Ivan anything but that one pertinent fact, and then:
"And have I done the same to you, Ivan?" she murmurs. "Seduced you into sin? You paragon of virtue, you. You innocent boy."
[Ivan] Ivan scoffs aloud at that. "You're not seriously asking me that, are you?"
-- they're interrupted. A waiter arrives. Ivan missed the opening of this particular dinner; he has no idea which three courses are being prepared for them tonight as Everest's pre-theatre menu. He can surmise based on Hilary's choice of wine that it'll be something light; seafood, perhaps. His follows suit: a dry riesling ordered with barely a glance at their server, and the wine list handed back similarly. His water glass is refilled. His wineglass stays where it is. His brandy snifter, in the absence of brandy, is lifted away.
After the waiter is good and gone, Ivan continues, "I always preferred the version where I seduced the good and loving wife into sin. But I suppose the truth is something of a mutual tumble into ... well. Whatever unwholesome space we currently occupy."
Ivan idles, lounging in his chair, forefinger and thumb playing thoughtlessly with the stem of his wineglass. His eyes flick to the narrow slit in Hilary's collar. Back up.
"Now, about your husband's proposition: will you talk to him about it? Or should we leave you in Ms. Bellamonte's capable hands?"
[Hilary] He scoffs. A slow grin, the cat that ate the canary, spreads across her face. Her fingers dangle pale and jeweled from where they rest under her fragile jawline. That's all. They're interrupted, and she doesn't caress him under the table as she did in between we have to stop and poor, innocent Christian. What an ironic name, at that.
She's sitting up a little straighter when the waiter leaves, having declined another drink, having accepted a refill of her water. And surprisingly enough, Ivan tells the truth as best as he knows it. It isn't quite that she seduced him. It isn't quite that he seduced her. He was after her from the moment he saw her, but as soon as she went to the stairway at that nightclub and kissed him like tasting wine for an upcoming party, seeing if it was fit to serve, he knew she'd been considering him, too.
The only dishonesty Ivan allows himself is this: that they tumbled. That they didn't know they were getting into something wrong, unwholesome, bad for them both. Neither of them had any idea how bad. But their eyes were open from the start, at least.
"Talking to Dión right now is like sending smoke signals. The time between trying to contact him and hearing from him again is days, sometimes weeks," she says, shrugging once. "I've had almost no interaction with Miss Bellamonte and I've been instructed not to accept her summons should she send for me again. If she banishes me from Chicago for impertinence, so be it. In any case, it isn't something to be concerned with immediately. I can let him know your reaction the next time I send a message to him, and go from there."
Hilary leans back. "I did mention that I had Estrella sell my theater seat, yes? I have no further plans this evening."
[Ivan] "Please do," Ivan replies. "Smoke signal or not."
Then: a slow smile of his own, edges of his mouth curling as though flame-scorched. He glances at the beautifully set table; their empty plates.
"You did mention that," he remarks, "but I assumed dinner would come first."
[Hilary] [this gets funnier every time i do it]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Hilary] Her head tips slightly to one side at that droll please do, watching him for a moment. As she said, there's no rush. The look doesn't last very long and the insight it gives isn't very deep. She says nothing else on the subject, having moved on by that point into what comes after dinner, what comes instead of theater, why she called Ivan and not any number of acquaintances who wouldn't be so scandalous to be seen with.
If she were fifteen years younger she might make some comment ending in the words hurr hurr, but Hilary simply smiles, and sips her wine, and in due time their first course arrives. Vintage carnaroli risotto, petit gris snails. Hilary makes no pretense of having a particular relationship with the chef, sends no messages back to him. She simply thanks their waiter and when Ivan's wineglass runs near to dry she's summoning someone over to give him more.
Every time it happens, in fact. One could say she's trying to get him drunk, seduce him into sin, drag him down into some vulnerable spot where she can use that tight, hard young body of his until he's ashamed of himself in the morning for being so easily led.
The salmon is slow-roasted, the corn compote is perfectly moist without being sludgy. The dessert is a tray of miniaturized samples of the various chocolate dishes the restaurant serves, each with an accompanying sample of appropriate liqueurs. Even with only three courses it's a good meal, finishing sweetly. Hilary keeps the conversation light. What she's been up to the past couple of weeks, which isn't very much. What Ivan's been doing. Whether or not Dion gave her permission to go to Ibiza, which he did, as long as it's soon and she's careful and her doctor clears her for travel and she gets in touch immediately upon landing with this doctor there, his assistant will get them in contact. She drinks her wine with dinner and nothing but water after that. She excuses herself for about five minutes in between the main course and dessert. When she comes back her cheeks are slightly flushed still, but it wasn't hard to see that the tension in her was physical rather than emotional.
Maybe she threw up. Maybe she just didn't want him to see her grimacing in the throes of heartburn. In any case: it's unseen, as all unsightly things should be.
Nobody comes over to say hello to them, though there's many people here who might be tempted to do so. They'll ask her at the club while golfing, maybe. They'll ask her in the locker room after tennis practice. Was that Mr. Press with you the other night at Everest? How on earth do you two know each other? Oh, the yachting club, of course. Is he family? Oh, a distant cousin? How nice of you to take him out --
-- though Mr. Press flashes his wealth far more than any member of the Durante household. He hardly needs the charity of an older woman, but Hilary picks up the check without pause, signs the slip when it arrives.
[Ivan] There's no apparent rush in Ivan. Their courses arrive at a leisurely pace, and he eats at a leisurely pace. Perhaps it's a side-benefit of his slight rage. His internal metabolism isn't jacked so high. He's not constantly burning, constantly spending, constantly starving.
When she excuses herself, his eyebrow goes up. He rises with her, smoothly, standing until she's departed the table. Again, when she comes back. He even goes so far as to push her chair in: good, obedient, sweet boy that he is.
Dinner concludes with a small parade of desserts. Ivan has more wealth than some small countries, but he doesn't protest beyond a token oh, you mustn't when Hilary picks up the check. Then he's standing with her again, tossing his napkin over his plate. He offers his arm. If she takes it, he keeps a respectful, respectable distance all the way out
and into the elevator car, where he presses the button for the first floor and lets the doors slip shut.
"Do you do that on purpose?" he wonders. At least, that's what it sounds like: Ivan wondering aloud. He's relaxed, his back against the elevator wall, his long body slung in a long arc, hands spread along the elevator railing. "Act the cool-distant-aunt. The friend-of-the-mother." His eyes flick her way. "The cougar."
[Hilary] They exit together, their strides almost matched because he walks so lazily and she walks so calmly, her back straight. Their steps are soft on the carpet, then hers tap on the marble in the lobby while his continue to fall almost silently. But as they leave she's talking about perhaps getting the driver to take her to a beach for a walk on the shore, idly considering it.
Til they get to the elevator car and the doors slide smoothly, silently closed. The air in here is cool, purified, scentless, formless. They could be in any fine building in any city in the country. The music would be the same. The brass, the mirrors, the thick carpet, the buttons, the numbers lighting up. It's nameless and void, drawing them downward.
Hilary stands beside one wall, her hands folded in front of her, fingers clasped around her little satin clutch, watching the numbers. Ivan is behind her, slightly to the side, slouching against the back. She doesn't look at him. "I suppose I do most things on purpose," she says. Turns to look at him now, over her shoulder. "I'm not some low-born celebutante, Ivan. Nor am I a 'cougar'. I don't fuck you because it makes me feel young again," she adds, turning her head back around.
[Ivan] -- only not. Before she's quite turned forward again, he comes up off the wall. His hands fold around her shoulders, the outsides of her arms; he pulls her back against him and catches her mouth over her shoulder and
kisses her, tastes the last lingering hints of their dessert on her tongue; kisses her so long and deep that by the end of it his arms have wrapped around her. His hands cover her breasts, squeeze and rub her through her dress. A creature like Ivan must have plenty of practicing timing his kisses; must know instinctively and reflexively how long a 40-story elevator ride takes, and when to stop mauling his female companion who should not be here with him, like this. Even so, it's a near thing. He lets her go barely a handful of seconds before the door opens. His head is down; his hands go into the pockets of his slacks, his coat so well-cut to his body that there's no strain, no undue stress anywhere in the seams or the fabric as it shifts to accommodate. He composes himself in those few seconds and is calm again, cool and urbane and just a little too edgy, entirely too edgy, to fit with the perfectly coiffed old money crowd upstairs.
Coming alongside her, he offers his arm again: just the crook of his elbow, really.
"I know that," he says, light. "I meant more -- the play at taking control, at dominance, when it's so very obvious you prefer the opposite role in private."
[Hilary] The sound Hilary makes when Ivan comes to her like that, kissing her like that, is not so much a moan as a sigh that almost becomes one. "Mmm," she murmurs, tasting and appreciative, as his hands come around her and hold her breasts. She almost stumbled, the way he pulled her, but she's too graceful for that. She's too smooth, leaning back into him, letting him hold her weight, which is more trust than even their little affair should warrant
except that its existence warrants quite a lot. Asking him to hit her and spank her and tie her up warrants more trust than even many Garou would dare to give to someone like him.
Hilary rests against the front of his body, presses herself against him by sheer necessity as much as anything else. Her hands only leave her clutch for a moment, one rising to stroke over his cheek, his lean jawbone, as that lingering kiss is coming to a close. She can feel it. She can sense that much, at least. Her eyes are dark when they open, dark and gleaming and impenetrable.
They're getting close to that point they always get to: he asks her questions and she tries to answer. She tries to answer honestly. He gets frustrated because she's evasive. She's left confused, and defensive, trying to figure out what he really wants to know. Why her answers don't satisfy him. Why he's determined to see more to what she says than there is. Why he doesn't see that she just doesn't understand all his questions to begin with, or why they're necessary to him.
People try to get to know each other, he says viciously, as though she's not a person. You wouldn't know anything about that, his eyes add, and she wants to claw them out of his face.
She lays her hand on his elbow as the doors open, and lets him walk her out. Hilary doesn't say anything for awhile, walking through the lobby. Then: "Is this because I paid for dinner?" she asks, grasping at straws.
[Ivan] At least this time Ivan seems a little more aware of Hilary's mood. How she begins to feel harried, tugged at, scraped thin; backed into a corner by his questions, by the looming inevitability of his frustration, his assumptions, the things he says. He glances sideways at her, and then he shakes his sleek head.
"Only triggered by it. You're just different like this. When we first meet every time. And it's not entirely that you want to keep up some facade, fend off questions. You ... push back. You challenge me. You don't always let me have what I want. You make me take it."
Across the lobby now. Out the doors, into the cool autumn night. They arrived in different cars, but Ivan simply passes over the slip for his. While the valet fetches it, he thinks a moment, then adds:
"I like it. And I like it when you give in."
[Hilary] She's said a few times now, cornered and upset, that sometimes she just doesn't know, and he never gives her room to just not know. Then assumes, and harries her, and bears her down to the ground so he can tear at her with his teeth. Shake her in his jaws, leave her limp and empty as a rag doll who has lost her stuffing.
Hilary certainly isn't about to tell him how appealing that emptiness sounds sometimes, on a visceral, literal level. Or how what he does to her is so exhausting, so draining, that afterward she feels some measure of that, and it's good. It's calming. It gives her a little bit of peace.
In any case: Ivan is starting to understand that as close as he drew her as he kissed her mouth, as warm as she was against him, she started to tense up as he began questioning her. Why does she do that. Is it on purpose. It's like that. But you're really like this. Why do you do it? What's behind all that.
As they leave the Stock Exchange he's noting that she pushes back, challenging him, and Hilary looks at him, thoughtful. He says she doesn't immediately, instantly let him have what he wants. She doesn't even make him earn it. She makes him take it. And then, what she already knows:
I like it.
Hilary doesn't ask the valet to fetch her car. Maybe she had her driver bring her here and he's elsewhere now, waiting for a phonecall. Maybe she took a cab. Maybe he's taking her into his car like he did on Labor Day, not telling her where they're going, putting her at his mercy.
She could tell him: I like that. But Ivan knows.
Hilary is silent again for awhile, either evasive or introspective. It's so difficult to tell. The look in her eyes is distant and blank, the expression on her face faraway until his car is pulled around, and until the door is opened for her. She slides in, quiet still, and remains that way until Ivan is in the driver's seat next to her. She breathes in, exhales quietly.
"If you like it, don't question it so much. It makes things... unpleasant."
[Ivan] In his choice of vehicles, Ivan is no more able to hide his intrinsic affinity for the newest, the sleekest, the flashiest, the best, than he is in his clothing choice. No sedate Rolls-Royce for him. No Maybach or Bentley. When the doors slide shut, the rumble of the Lamborghini's engines press on their eardrums. Ivan glances at Hilary as he buckles himself in. An exhale of a laugh follows, quiet but with a hardness to it.
"I wasn't questioning it. I wasn't prying at you, Hilary, for god's sake. I was only mildly curious. But if you prefer that I just keep my mouth shut unless I'm discussing the yacht club's autumn social or your hot, slippery cunt,"
it's one of the few times, maybe the only time ever so far, that the word sounds like a curse coming out of his mouth. Sounds like the horrible, filthy, vicious degradation it can be -- and maybe that's why he doesn't go on. He shuts his mouth. Takes a deep breath.
"I apologize," he says, low.
[Hilary] The center console, a low wall between them, creates an invisible one in the air above it. He's stirring the engine while she's buckling herself in with this young man whose very presence near her is fodder for the gossipmongers, this young man who her mate thinks would be a more acceptable guardian for her when he's away than Katherine Bellamonte. It's hard to say if it's more Hilary's skills at manipulating him or just his madness leading to that conclusion, but it's laughable.
Katherine Bellamonte is a paragon of their tribe. She's honest to a fault. She has stabs of surprising compassion, even if sometimes it's misguided. She's known for greater honor than most of the Garou in the sept. She's taken silver for the sake of duty, responsibility. She's older than a woman her age should be.
And Ivan is taking another wolf's (pregnant) mate ...somewhere. Most likely to fuck her. Again. And again. And again.
He's angry. And she turns her head, looking out the window, her hands in her lap as his voice starts to hit a pitch of that anger. It slides off of her this time, when she's like this. 'This' is somewhere between the cool, distant friend-of-the-mother, best-friend's-aunt, whatever it is he called the thoughtless persona of the clubs and restaurants and tribal moots
and the woman she is, at least partly real, laying against his body as she catches her breath, her eyes closing because she feels safe. She feels warm. She feels good, her own anger far, far away for a short, short while.
And he apologizes.
"For what?" she murmurs, not thinking about how quiet her voice is.
[Ivan] For what?
It's a good question. He doesn't rightly know. There's a long silence. The coupe slides into traffic; swings around a corner. On rails, as they say. G-force pushes them both rightward, then back.
"Being angry," he decides, finally. "And pushing you."
[Hilary] For what it's worth, and it probably isn't worth that much in the long run, Hilary holds herself well in a car like this, feeling the force of it all. She doesn't cross her legs but keeps them tucked together, which makes it a little easier not to be tossed side to side so uncomfortably. She doesn't complain that so soon after eating, riding as Ivan's passenger makes her nauseous. Hilary is pale enough as it is that the drain of color, momentary to begin with, isn't terribly noticable.
Streetlights, city lights, flicker across her skin, gleaming and glancing off of it. It turns her colors.
"I wasn't pushing you back," she says quietly after a moment, still watching the city rather than Ivan Press. "You just ask questions I don't know the answer to. And it's exhausting, trying to think of answers to satisfy your curiosity."
[Ivan] Moments go by as Ivan considers this. Mulls it over. Eventually, "I suppose it's strange to me that someone could act a certain way without knowing why. Which is ironic, because most the time when we're together I have no idea why I act the way I do."
Perhaps that's a surprising admission. Perhaps nothing surprises her. Either way, it's out there now: words in the air, in the memory, indelible as though they were carved into stone.
Some time later he adds, "I thought we'd go to my house again. Would that be all right?"
[Hilary] Her head turns as they drive on. She looks at his profile now, closing her eyes and opening them once. It's a slow, lazy blink, like a cat observing a canary, like a child waking. She breathes almost silently. If his admission is striking to her, something to pause on and analyze, well --
this is Hilary. Analysis seems to be her mortal enemy. She doesn't delve too deeply into even her own thoughts, much less how Ivan thinks, how he must feel, about telling her I don't know why I do this. I don't know what you do to me.
"If you like," she murmurs. "I can't stay all night again, though. But now it's alright if my driver picks me up there. If any of the staff start to whisper I can always tell them now what their master has asked of you."
A beat.
"So it's okay, if they know I'm with you. As long as they aren't given reason to suspect you're having me."
[Ivan] "Having you," Ivan echoes, his amusement dark.
They're such creatures of paradox. The male golden, charming, quick; the female fair, untouched by the sun, lovely; and both of them, just beneath that bright, bright surface: such deep, dark reaches. The difference is, he never even knew he had such hidden darknesses until he met her. He never knew
he liked it so much not to be given, not to earn, but to take.
So maybe what she says isn't so laughable after all. Not so much a euphemism as a truth. He doesn't fuck her, or have sex with her, or -- god forbid -- make love to her. He takes her. He has her. He treats her like he owns her, uses her like she's an object. Like she's his to play with or abuse or break. And then she goes back to her world, her life, where he'll never really own her. And something about that, something about the breaking down and rebuilding, will be a sort of catharsis for her.
It doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it makes no sense to her, either. Perhaps that's why she don't like it when he asks questions that she can't answer.
"If you can't stay the night," he adds, "I'm taking you to the penthouse. It's closer."
[Hilary] Such a demure way of putting it, that phrase. Having her. Not seducing her. Not fucking her. He laughs at it at first, the sound fading even as he drives. Because that's what it is. And that's what she said once: that she was his, only his, completely his
when they're together like that. When he has her. It might not remain in his memory strongly now, angry as he was as the tried to tell him that. It might mean nothing, because he thought she would say anything right then if it would get him to put her down on the ground or against the wall and fuck her again. Maybe it swims to the surface of his thoughts, deep and dark as they are, when he's lying in some bed or another and she's curled in the crook of his arm, bruised and bitten and sweating, panting. Maybe when she holds onto him then, and he can stroke her hair and kiss her softly as much as he likes without her pulling away, he remembers.
Yours. Only yours.
Hilary smiles mildly, and somehow it's a little sad. "Do you want me to sleep with you a little while, after?"
[Ivan] Ivan's response to that is immediate and flippant. "You mistake me for a sentimental creature," he scoffs. "Leave whenever you like."
He flashes a glance over his shoulder. It's questionable how much visibility there is in a car like this: so lowslung, with a frame built for lightness and maneuverability and, one hopes, survivability in the inevitable high-speed crash; windows put in for style and aerodynamics first, functionality last. His blind spots must be the size of mack trucks. Nevertheless, he crosses the freeway from innermost to outermost lane, grabbing the exit toward the mouth of Chicago River at the last possible second.
He's right: the penthouse is a lot closer. They have twenty, thirty minutes more. A little more than that, if she summons her driver all the way from the north shore. All that effort for a handful of moments.
[Hilary] "Of course," she says, and as he's looking to his blind spots she's looking out the window again.
They go to his penthouse, then. Because it's closer. Because she can't stay all night with him. Because this way, he has twenty, thirty more minutes with her. To have her.
Of course.
The way Ivan drives, they're at the penthouse in minutes. Getting out of the car, going towards the elevator, swiping a card, her holding her little clutch and wearing her heels and looking a trifle dizzy. This time, she holds onto the rail inside the elevator car as they go up. She's been so sweetly submissive tonight. Nevermind that she called him, said here, boy and knew he would come, didn't doubt for a second. Nevermind that she's the older, married woman who paid for dinner and would be perfectly happy to buy him all kinds of toys if he couldn't buy them for himself.
Tonight, though, it's been: whatever you like. of course. I wasn't pushing back. yes, Ivan.
"I like your house," she says out of nowhere, as they ascend. "Sort of."
[Ivan] This time she's the one holding onto the rail. He's upright, hands laced loosely at the small of his back, watching the numbers move.
He turns when she speaks. They're halfway up the tower of glass and concrete that he lives in. He looks at her a moment; he has nothing to say to that. He remembers her saying last time -- after he'd thrown her face-down onto a hotel bed and hit her with his hands, his belt, bitten at her and pulled her hair and fucked her so hard he couldn't be certain whether she crawled to him because she wanted to or because she couldn't walk steadily --
he remembers her saying, that was the best time. Not the time at the hotel, but the time at his house, when she stayed all night
perhaps because he bound her to the bed.
Ivan turns. He takes her face in his hands and he kisses her because there's nothing to say; nothing he can think of to say. He kisses her with his hands on her face, his mouth opening to hers: slow, drenching, losing himself for the moment. When the elevator arrives he's still kissing her. This time he doesn't have to draw away. Through the door is his own domain, and no one there reports to anyone but him.
[Hilary] What he doesn't know is that his house also scares her. That it's too familiar, too reminiscent of the dark passageways of her childhood, the rooms that seemed so big and empty simply because the ceilings were high and untouched by whatever light she had.
Hilary had a Glo Worm when she was six. On those nights when she would get up out of bed she would squeeze it til the toy's face lit up, carry it with her, and then hug it all the tighter when the light faded and she was alone in the middle of whatever room she'd managed to get to. Or the hallway, which was worse. Always worse.
She hates his house. She hates how dark it was that night, how far away from everything it seemed. She hates knowing she would have been thoroughly unhappy to be there if he hadn't been with her. She resigns herself to the knowledge of how she felt because he was.
Ivan turns, moving, and Hilary looks towards him automatically, following the motion and wishing she hadn't. She doesn't let go of the rail and hold onto him. She lets him kiss her, kisses him back slowly, her eyes closing with it. The elevator doesn't suddenly close its doors and go back down again. It's returned to base; it waits for them to exit, and Hilary doesn't pull away to suggest to Ivan that they do so.
She unfolds one hand from her clutch and puts it on his forearm.
[Ivan] As far as their kisses go, this one is slower, more sedate than most. It's a little like that first one, the very first one in the stairwell of that club -- what was its name? -- where she made a show of storming out and he made a show of being abashed and then they met in the darkness, lost in a sea of basslines and bodies, and she was holding onto the stairway railing and he was leaning down to her
just like this.
There's a sense she's letting him kiss her, though. There's a sense she doesn't need this. This is not what she comes to him for: this gentle, deep sort of pleasure. No, Hilary's tastes are more rarefied. She wants it rough. She wants it vicious, hard, brutal. She likes it when she goes home with bruises; she likes it when something about what he does to do or what happens between them makes her sob.
Her hand comes to his forearm. He wraps his behind her neck. He pulls her away from the elevator wall, then, swinging her around: it's like a tango, a tangle, wheeling around in a tight circle, his eyes still closed. He kisses her harder now. His shoulder bumps the edge of the elevator door as he exits. Her back hits the foyer wall.
Wood paneling there, glowing in the focal light, beside an inset alcove painted a rich dark purple that was very nearly black. Last time she was here it wasn't that color, but then last time she was here the alcove wasn't home to a single slender vase, cloudy-white and veined like marble, translucent like jade, from which springs a handful of long, dark, slender branches each crowned with dozens of tiny flowers. The branches camouflage into the background; the flowers seem to levitate, fragile pink: cherry blossoms. In September. Imported from the southern hemisphere, New Zealand or Australia or Argentina -- all that cost and effort for an ephemeral beauty that won't last past the week's end.
The elevator doors shut; machinery hums. Ivan's people have made themselves scarce. When he pauses for breath his brow is to hers, his hands stroking her neck, her shoulders. Then he draws her forward again and reaches for her zipper.
[Hilary] Earlier today she thought to herself, she could use a stiff drink. She could use a stiff drink or she could use Ivan doing what he always does to her: holding her down, pushing her legs apart, fucking her, groaning and gasping and swearing at her that she's a fucking whore, his hands so tight on her that they leave marks, his cock thrusting so hard into her that it almost hurts. She could use something bad for her, something severe. She could use any number of pills but she has to be careful now what she takes and how much and when because god forbid anything happen to the child Dion is convinced is his own.
This is her life. It's broken. She's broken. And she's been so lucky, so many times, that she doesn't think anything is going to crash down around her ears and ruin it all for her anytime soon, either. So there won't ever be a break. There won't ever be a point when she can look someone in the eye and admit just how snapped in half she is, and how she wishes she could just go the way of a human woman and get therapy, get 'help', get institutionalized, get medicated, have an excuse to not pass on her genetic code or her faulty nurturing skills. She wishes she could be kept separate from all the pretty people who have their pretty ways of doing things.
She wishes sometimes she could just give up. Give in. Be done. Not have to be like this anymore. Sometimes she wishes she could be better.
And then she wants a stiff drink, or a man -- this man in particular, somehow -- to pin her to the bed or the floor or wherever he likes and use her. She wants him to hurt her a little.
Hilary's mouth is open to Ivan's. She breathes in sharply as he's turning her around, pushing her out of the elevator, putting her against the wall. Her back arches, her body lifting against his. Her eyes are closed, the beauty of that vase and that alcove and those blossoms lost on her until the next time she passes through her. Then again, it could be said the beauty is lost on her, period. What does a woman like her know about beauty, form, the way it can touch the soul?
What does a woman like her know about crafting good food, about eating barefoot with her hair down on the balcony, about anything good or pleasant in life?
Her hands are on his arms, his coatsleeves, her eyes closed as their mouths part again. Her breath is shortened, her chest rising and falling with it. She starts to undo his suit coat as he touches her. She steps forward to him and starts to unfasten his belt as he draws down her zipper. "Tell me you want me to stay," she breathes, her lips moving against his with the words though they aren't kissing now, though they can't seem to pull completely away from each other.
The sides of her dress part along with the teeth of her zipper. It's little enough effort for her to shrug her arms out, let it slip down her body, fall to the floor. Her hands go to his face, away from his unbuttoned jacket, his undone belt. She caresses his jaw, his cheeks, kissing his mouth again. "Tell me you want me to sleep with you."
[Ivan] Their eyes are closed as they kiss. Over and over their mouths seal, drag, pull, open again. Like a slow-motion war, or as though in imitation or intimation of a slow devouring, they kiss each other in his foyer with the lights on and the penthouse still and silent beyond it. Her zipper seems loud. The clink of his belt-buckle. Their breathing seems loud, needful, sussurant; when she speaks he hears her clearly
and his mouth stops at her neck. His eyes open. A second later he pulls back from her, brow furrowed.
Her hands are on his face. His smooth cheeks, angular jaw. If she kisses him again, he doesn't respond this time -- stays still, eyes closing briefly of their own accord, mouth passive. Tell me, she says, whispers it again, and his hands come up to her face. He holds her back this time, finding her eyes with his if he can.
"Why?"
It's a whisper, but fast; almost harsh. He knows she hates it when he asks why. He can't help it. Not this time. He seems uncertain, on edge, even tense.
[Hilary] Why did she plant the heel of her shoe against his chest while he undressed her the very first time, why did she make a show of being offended by his flirtations, why does she lead him around, cajole him, tease him, all but openly mock him, taunting his anger, risking his wrath, begging him to lash out and hurt her,
or never see her again,
when he knows full well that once the doors close to whichever bedroom they occupy she's pliant and submissive, pleading with him to do things like spank her, hit her, pull her hair, cover her mouth, fuck her like a whore? Why does she feign even the slightest interest in dominance when the one time he offered it to her she balked, almost panicked at the idea of tying him down and having her way with him?
And why does she ask him to tell her this, right now, while he's getting her dress off and finding pretty peach-colored underthings beneath it? Her little lacy panties have a tiny pink bow in front, just like her bra, both bright-seeming against her pale skin. She nearly always ends up naked before he does. It turns out to have been a rare thing, that time she sat back and told him to undress for her. Told him what to do, thinking him like every other younger man so caught between cockiness and nervousness he might need his hand held. Ivan doesn't need his hand held. Ivan's needs are darker than that, and don't make him nervous as much as sick to his stomach. Sometimes.
The fact that he doesn't respond when she kisses him has Hilary drawing back before she even quite makes it more than a brush of her lips over his. She's pulling away, frowning, resentful, shaking his hands off her face, jerking away from them.
"Because I hate it," she snaps, her own voice falling obediently to a whisper as well, though the words rush hissingly between her teeth, "when you act like you don't need this."
[Ivan] Like that, so quickly, they've snapped from passion to resentment. She all but tears away from him. He's not at all reluctant to let her go. Space opens up between them. His coat is unbuttoned. His tie is loosened. His belt is undone. She's already down to her underwear, her skin nearly aglow in the brilliant light that picks out the resonance and depth of the wood surrounding them; the sheen of the floors.
"And I hate it when you remind me that I do," he replies. She's snapping. He's quiet and fierce. Another moment he stares at her. Then he bends, swoops her dress off the floor, slings it over his shoulder.
"Let's go upstairs," he says.
[Hilary] "At least I don't lie about it to protect my ego," she shoots back, while he's staring at her, before he bends to grab her dress. She's still in her heels, the garment crumpled around her ankles still. She hasn't even stepped out of it yet. She's in necklace still, a thick platinum chain with the sheen of a few pearls here and there. She's in bracelets and rings and earrings shaped like roses, pearl drops dangling from the worked metal petals. They swing as she moves her head, when she jerked it away from his touch.
Ivan bends and she steps back, out of her dress and away. Perhaps he still goes for it, slings it over his shoulder like a gym towel. Perhaps not. Hilary steps away not to make it more convenient for him but to get away from him, though there's nowhere to go. There's a wall at her back. A Ragabash before her.
[Ivan] Ivan's head tilts, feral, as Hilary shies away from him. He stares at her for a moment. Then there's a slight motion, something like a shrug, easy and graceful on his long, lean frame. He had been turning away. He turns back now, facing her squarely.
"What do you want me to do? Say?" There's a kind of cold courtesy in his tone. She's heard it before. It means he's angry; it means he's on the verge of lashing out coldly, viciously. "Do you want me to act like one of your dewy-eyed teenagers? Sigh and swoon over you? Beg you to stay the night, sleep a while with me? Tell you I need you and I need this, I need you to stay?
"Maybe after that I can wring my hands and tear my hair and moan about how what we're doing is wrong. Or maybe I can fantasize about how one day I'm going to grow up and rescue you from your big, bad husband. Would you prefer that, perhaps?"
[Hilary] Shies away. Teases away, in a lithe dancing motion that isn't quite as unexpected as her cooking skill but comes as naturally to her as that. But he's angry, and she's not quite teasing. She watches him, dark eyes impenetrable in that sharklike, glassy way they have. It would be wary, if she knew how to be afraid.
"I want you to say that you want me to stay and sleep with you," she answers quietly. "Just like I said."
[Ivan] A flash of anger over his finely cut features. "Why?" he demands again. "What the hell do you get out of hearing it? You already know it."
[Hilary] "When I cook I know it's going to taste good," Hilary says mildly enough, taking another step away, to the side, as though to circle him. She steps out of her heels, setting her bare feet soundlessly on the floor one after the other. "That doesn't mean I don't want to eat it. Savor it."
[Ivan] This time it's not a flash but anger pure and dark in his face. Very quietly: "You want to savor that I'm halfway obsessed with you?"
[Hilary] Hilary takes a step to the side again, no longer near the wall facing his elevator but standing in that little hallway, that gallery. She has a better view of the vase like this but she's looking at Ivan instead, her breath quickened from adrenaline. "No," she tells him, and from any other woman that tone of voice would sound gentle. "I just like to hear it. It's like when you touch me."
[Ivan] Most women wouldn't be moving farther into Ivan's home at this point. He's not exactly an imposing figure, so lean, so pretty, but Hilary knows what he is. She knows under that golden-tan skin is white fur, sharp teeth. Most women would be picking their clothes off the ground.
She's stepping out of her heels. She's moving deeper into the proverbial wolf's den, and he can see her breathing, the movement of her torso. Quickened. As though frightened -- or excited.
He's silent for a moment, glowering under that surprisingly heavy brow. When he speaks again, it's no louder than before.
"I want you to stay," he says. Just like she asked. So fucking obedient: like one of her boys, her sweet boys with the fumbling eager hands.
And then: "I want you to get on your knees and suck my cock."
[Hilary] It's dangerous to be with Ivan when he's like this. To not just be near him but be in his home, down to her pretty peach-colored underwear and -- strangely enough -- her pearls, her platinum, her diamonds. It's dangerous to stay near him and let him have her when he's angry, when he's ready to grab her by the hair and tempted to just yank back, put her on the ground, fuck her right there as hard as he can.
Except that the thought of him doing that to her makes her heart beat faster. Makes her feel warm. Makes her wet.
She told him the last time they had sex that it was better when it was at his house. It wasn't that she didn't like what he did to her in the hotel. It wasn't that she was frightened by how violent he got. It wasn't that she didn't feel pleasured, that she didn't get off. It wasn't as good as some of their other encounters because Ivan was so starkly horrified, even as he was doing those things to her. He was repulsed even as he fucked her, and revulsion is something entirely different from mad, anger-driven lust.
Hilary takes a step closer to him, breathing in. Then stops, and -- leaving her clothes where they fell, leaving her shoes and her clutch -- walks towards his living room.
[Ivan] He's on her in a second. Strength never was Ivan's forte, but speed and silence are another story altogether. It's wholly likely she doesn't hear him coming at all; doesn't sense him until his hands are on her shoulders.
Against the wall he pushes her. It's rough, and ungentle, and sudden, and then his mouth is on her. The back of her neck, like he might seize there and bite the life out of her. The back of her shoulders, her shoulderblades; down her back to the dip of her spine, the dimples in her back where her loins tuck into her tailbone. He's on his knees now, which is ironic: isn't this what he asked her to do?
It's his hands on her hips, though. He's biting at the waistband of her panties, tugging at them as though he might simply chew them off her body any moment. He pulls her backward until her back is arched, her feet planted on either side of his thighs, her cunt presented behind that pretty peach lingerie. He pushes his mouth against her with a muffled, hungry sound, eating at her through her panties, mauling her cunt so ferociously that she might be thankful for that scrap of fabric. It dulls the sensation a little; makes this onslaught bearable.
Only for a moment or two does it go on, though. Then Ivan's sitting back on his heels with a gasp, wiping his mouth against his shoulder. The flat of his hand connects with her ass. He rubs her skin, leans forward again for a quick, tasting flick of his tongue along her cunt. Smacks her again, and gets up.
Watches her to see where she'll go now.
[Hilary] Ivan's assault is a sort of madness. He grabs her and mauls her like that as though he has to do it, right now, just like this. He does it like he has to scratch an itch before he finds enough satisfaction to stop... at least until the next flare of desire stirs up in him, claws at him.
And he doesn't have to force her to arch her back. He listens to her moan as her hips tilt, legs spread. He feels her rubbing herself on his mouth, on his face, holding onto the wall and moaning as though they really are as alone as they seem to be.
Ivan said once he hadn't figured out how to lie to himself yet. But they pretend so well all the same. They pretend they're alone. They pretend it doesn't matter that this is wrong. They pretend sometimes that Hilary's resistance isn't just a ploy to get him to bear down on her, push her, take her. They pretend like they don't both want tonight to end with their bodies in bed together, exhausted from sex, her will to bury herself under an avalanche of cold witticisms and demure mannerisms temporarily broken.
A gasp, when he spanks her. She looks over her shoulder and down at him, following him with her eyes as he rises to his feet. Her palms are against the wall, her body still in the position he put it in when he leapt on her. "You sure you want to stop?" she murmurs, panting silently.
[Ivan] This can't even really be called stopping, in truth. He's tugging his tie loose in a few swift motions while he looks at her, claws his eyes down her body, her svelte back and her smooth skin, that flat belly hiding all signs, all portents of the child, embryo, parasite already growing in her.
He tears the tie over his head and lets it drop. Then he's unbuttoning his shirt, getting that off too. She wants to know if he's sure. His eyes flick back to hers.
"Dmitri is here," he says. "And Evgeny, and Yuliya, and at least one of the maids. Now, we all know I have no shame and even less compunction about fucking you here in the hall, but I thought you might feel differently."
He leaves his shirt on the ground. Then his pants too, stepping out of them: is naked save for his boxer briefs now, all long, strong limbs, smooth skin, symmetric and proportioned torso.
"So I suppose the question is, are you sure you don't want to stop?"
[Hilary] "Why would you ever imagine," she breathes, watching him get himself naked, or close to it, "that I care about them?"
Dmitri, after all, knocked on the door the first time Ivan fucked Hilary here, knocked while Ivan was deep inside her, his cock throbbing as he held himself still for a moment, sweating over her, feeling her squirm and listening to her mewl and moan underneath him. And at least one of the maids was there on the yacht when Ivan chained her up and fucked her til she was a shaking wreck, at least one of the maids probably heard her screaming down in their master's cabin.
"You have the loveliest body," Hilary purrs, her eyes lingering on his boxer briefs. "And the most beautiful hard cock."
[Ivan] Ivan has only a low laugh for that, dry and short. "My mistake," he says,
and his hands are on her body again, stroking up and down her sides. It's almost thoughtful. His eyes are low, watching her breathe, watching her move, even as she's watching him. Looking at his cock, to be precise -- the shape of it visible, hardened, beneath the snugly elastic fit of his boxer-briefs.
They're white trimmed in a deep, rich purple tonight. How very like a Fang: royal fucking underwear. But likely Hilary doesn't care what color they are, or how much care he does or doesn't put into his own upkeep. She fucked Christian, after all, and the boy looks like he dresses out of Goodwill. She likely only cares about how he feels
when he steps in behind her and pushes himself against the cleft of her ass, holding onto her hips to pull her against him. "Glad I pass inspection," he answers, offhandedly, even as he's tugging her panties off her hips and down her thighs; grinding against her bare ass now, her bare cunt, getting the front of his boxerbriefs damp with her wetness. She can feel the back of his hand against her bottom, his knuckles brushing her cunt as he takes himself out. Then it's his cock against her, hot and hard and silky smooth, held in his hand as he slaps himself against her, rubs himself against her, nudges the head of his cock between her lips and bends to kiss,
or bite,
her shoulder. "Work yourself onto that, baby," he murmurs. "Work that tight little pussy onto that cock for me."
His underwear is still mostly on. His feet are planted apart; he's standing behind her braced and solid, longfingered hand on her hip. Behind him, through those panes of frosted glass, glimpses and glances of his living room, his den, his kitchen -- the terrace beyond it, and then the city and the sky. Lights are on all down the gallery, spotlights inset into the ceiling. There's no privacy here; no shame. His penthouse is so quiet and still that the noises they make, the things they say to each other, probably echo from one end to the other.
They don't seem to care. They've as much as said it: they don't care. They're Silver Fangs, after all. The belief that servants are subhuman is all but bred into them.
[Hilary] Just a moment ago he was so angry she thought he might hit her. Or worse, he might tell her to get her fucking dress on and get out. Get out of his apartment, leave him alone, I don't want to fuck you right now. Humiliate her again, which he can't seem to do by pushing his prick into her mouth and telling her what a dirty little whore she is, sucking on it like that. Just a moment ago, she was circling his rage, stroking it, and he was nowhere near even the dry huff of a laugh he gives now.
Hilary's eyes close as he comes near again, her head tipping back and a sigh leaving her lips. She rubs her ass softly on his underwear when he steps closer, breathes in sharply as he holds her, tilts her again, grinds their bodies together. "Oh, god," she whispers, circling herself on him. He strokes her, but does not spank her. It makes her shudder.
The lace tries to cling to her, stretching away from her skin as he tugs her panties off and down. Ivan doesn't even bother with her bra. He doesn't need her naked, he doesn't need himself to be naked, to fuck her the way he wants to. The way she likes it. The pearls of her earrings swing from her lobes, the heavy chain around her neck draping downward.
"That's it," she mutters, hearing cotton push across his skin. Her breathing gets faster, her eyes closed to anticipate his cock, her legs opening a little wider. "That's i-- oh. There are you are."
The words tumble out of her in murmurs, low and meaningless, a constant whisper of her voice reacting to what he uses his cock to do to her. She trembles when he slaps it against her, flicking her clit with it. She disobeys, though. She strokes herself against him, rubs herself on his cock like she's going to tease herself into an orgasm with it, use it. One of her hands leaves the wall, reaching down to tug her bra from her breast, cupping it in her own hand. More weight goes onto her other arm, bending her over further, pressing her back against him.
[Ivan] It arouses him when she does that. When she draws her bra down and touches herself like she's compelled to, like she needs it. She bends over for him, presses back against him. He leans down to her now, bends over her, mirrors her: his hand on the wall, the wood paneling cool and smooth beneath his palm.
There's artwork in this hall now. Abstract works, simplistic and striking. He has her between a Muller and a Frankenthaler, both works with swooping, arcing lines, unexpected outgrowths of color; one more muted in tone and style, the other bold, vivid, faintly menacing. It's doubtful either of them notice right now. Doubtful either of them see anything, feel anything, care about anything more than
what's making them breathe harder. What's making them groan when they press together. She's rubbing herself on him like an animal in heat, mindless, instinct driven. He's leaning down over her and his hand is finding its way to her breast, nudging hers aside to grasp at her flesh, to cup her in his hand as he sets his teeth in her shoulder. Grazes his mouth down her back. Kisses and sucks at the skin over her spine, as though he knows no other way to express just how much he wants her. His hand by chance finds her necklace. He wraps his fingers around the chain briefly, then lets go. Down his hand goes, passing down her abdomen, between her legs.
There you are, she said when he finally put his cock against her. There you are, he thinks to himself, mindless, but the words don't make it to his mouth. He growls against her skin instead. He bites her shoulder again, straightening, holding her between his hand and his body, holds her there while he grinds himself against her, moves against her,
moves into her. Another groan now, louder, rougher. His hand finds hers on the wall. His fingers slide between hers; he holds her hand to the wall, or perhaps simply holds onto her hand, as he pushes himself into her.
[Hilary] Nobody is looking at the art. It's for Ivan's penthouse to feel more complete, more like it was meant to be. The place is itself a show piece, a gallery in and of itself. The walls exist only to accentuate the view. The furniture and lightning are all geared towards receiving what isn't there to begin with: the art that he's hung on the walls, the pretty people he invites over so they can entertain him, fuck him, give him a chance to show off what he has and what he is.
See, look. I have everything. I can have anything I want. I can do whatever I like.
Hilary's stroking herself, tugging at her bra faster now, all but ripping it off though the straps dangle off her shoulders and the cups are rumpled below her breasts. She takes one nipple between thumb and forefinger, rolling it, pinching it while she and Ivan ignore the artwork, their surroundings, the fact that his servants are somewhere in this place. She gasps, while Ivan reaches down and holds her pussy, holds her right there for him, for his cock.
She thought for awhile about breezing into his apartment and sitting on the couch and asking for his cock in her mouth. Her heart leapt a little when he told her to get on her knees, but she didn't.
She thought about getting him to take her up against the wall, right next to that lovely alcove. She wanted to break that fucking vase, spill water and blossoms everywhere, shatter it on the floor, destroy something while riding him.
She thought about going to the living room and bending over his lap and sucking his cock while his fingers worked inside her pussy, stroked her off, spanked her ass where it curved up in the air, pushed his fingers in her hair, fucked himself up into her mouth.
Yet this is where they are. He has her bent over again, and he always seems to find his way here: folding Hilary over in front of him, facing away from him. Maybe it makes it easier for him to fuck her the way he does. Maybe it makes it more impersonal. Maybe it's easier to just feel her orgasm, without having to look in her eyes while she comes undone. Maybe this is just how he's wired, what he always wants, and what she's always willing to give him.
Bend over. Take it.
Hilary moans, louder now, her hand unresponsive to his as though she doesn't realize his hand is covering her own. She presses back onto his cock, works herself onto him like he told her to before. At first it's just a grind, a warm circling of her pussy around him, in rhythm with her gasps. But then she starts to fuck him in earnest, starts bouncing herself back on his cock, starts taking what she's wanted all along, why she called him, what she's been thinking about every time her mind has drifted towards him since the first time he
without his hand held, without having to be coaxed along,
bent her over and took her.
[Ivan] Ultimately, Ivan lives a life that has almost nothing in common with the real world outside these glass walls. There's almost nothing common about his life, period. His daily residence could be a modern art museum, and the appliances, furniture, and decorations placed ever-so-artfully around the place the galleries within. His 'lakeside retreat' is what the average american would consider a mansion. His garage contains a few million dollars' worth of horsepower. He seems to spend his days coasting from party to party, event to event, starving swan to starving swan, with brief interludes taken out for The War.
He joined a pack a few weeks ago. They're the most common thing about him: a bone gnawer and a black fury who may as well be a gnawer. Since the night they forged the bond, it's questionable whether Ivan's even seen them at all. Sometimes he feels them across the pack link. He knows they're alive. He knows they're out there fighting, risking their necks, and sometimes he feels a vague stirring of duty --
and then he rolls over and gets back to what he's doing.
All of which is to say: this is the rawest thing about his life. The most vivid, the crudest, the most unexpected and, despite all the other things he does -- the most shocking.
Raw and ferocious, the way he grasps her hip and starts slamming her from behind. Raw and unapologetic, the way he bites at her neck and her shoulder, curses at her, mutters about her tight fucking cunt as he's railing her. There's no slow ramp-up. He's inside her; he fills her up; she moans and she pressed back on him and he starts fucking her.
He almost always fucks her from behind. Almost always standing -- at the edge of a bed or against a wall. Maybe this way it's easier for him to treat her so roughly. Maybe this way it feels less personal; it's less wrenching when she has to go. Or maybe this way it feels more primal. More raw. More unadulterated and unrefined, sex stripped of all the glamour and romance and mystery: just the fuck. Just the slap of their bodies together. Just the wetness sliding out of her, pounded out of her with every thrust of his cock.
Just the way he reaches up and grabs her by the hair; turns her head to the side; kisses her while he's fucking her, hard in both cases: groaning into her mouth as he slams into her.
[Ivan] Ivan's head tilts, feral, as Hilary shies away from him. He stares at her for a moment. Then there's a slight motion, something like a shrug, easy and graceful on his long, lean frame. He had been turning away. He turns back now, facing her squarely.
"What do you want me to do? Say?" There's a kind of cold courtesy in his tone. She's heard it before. It means he's angry; it means he's on the verge of lashing out coldly, viciously. "Do you want me to act like one of your dewy-eyed teenagers? Sigh and swoon over you? Beg you to stay the night, sleep a while with me? Tell you I need you and I need this, I need you to stay?
"Maybe after that I can wring my hands and tear my hair and moan about how what we're doing is wrong. Or maybe I can fantasize about how one day I'm going to grow up and rescue you from your big, bad husband. Would you prefer that, perhaps?"
[Hilary] Shies away. Teases away, in a lithe dancing motion that isn't quite as unexpected as her cooking skill but comes as naturally to her as that. But he's angry, and she's not quite teasing. She watches him, dark eyes impenetrable in that sharklike, glassy way they have. It would be wary, if she knew how to be afraid.
"I want you to say that you want me to stay and sleep with you," she answers quietly. "Just like I said."
[Ivan] A flash of anger over his finely cut features. "Why?" he demands again. "What the hell do you get out of hearing it? You already know it."
[Hilary] "When I cook I know it's going to taste good," Hilary says mildly enough, taking another step away, to the side, as though to circle him. She steps out of her heels, setting her bare feet soundlessly on the floor one after the other. "That doesn't mean I don't want to eat it. Savor it."
[Ivan] This time it's not a flash but anger pure and dark in his face. Very quietly: "You want to savor that I'm halfway obsessed with you?"
[Hilary] Hilary takes a step to the side again, no longer near the wall facing his elevator but standing in that little hallway, that gallery. She has a better view of the vase like this but she's looking at Ivan instead, her breath quickened from adrenaline. "No," she tells him, and from any other woman that tone of voice would sound gentle. "I just like to hear it. It's like when you touch me."
[Ivan] Most women wouldn't be moving farther into Ivan's home at this point. He's not exactly an imposing figure, so lean, so pretty, but Hilary knows what he is. She knows under that golden-tan skin is white fur, sharp teeth. Most women would be picking their clothes off the ground.
She's stepping out of her heels. She's moving deeper into the proverbial wolf's den, and he can see her breathing, the movement of her torso. Quickened. As though frightened -- or excited.
He's silent for a moment, glowering under that surprisingly heavy brow. When he speaks again, it's no louder than before.
"I want you to stay," he says. Just like she asked. So fucking obedient: like one of her boys, her sweet boys with the fumbling eager hands.
And then: "I want you to get on your knees and suck my cock."
[Hilary] It's dangerous to be with Ivan when he's like this. To not just be near him but be in his home, down to her pretty peach-colored underwear and -- strangely enough -- her pearls, her platinum, her diamonds. It's dangerous to stay near him and let him have her when he's angry, when he's ready to grab her by the hair and tempted to just yank back, put her on the ground, fuck her right there as hard as he can.
Except that the thought of him doing that to her makes her heart beat faster. Makes her feel warm. Makes her wet.
She told him the last time they had sex that it was better when it was at his house. It wasn't that she didn't like what he did to her in the hotel. It wasn't that she was frightened by how violent he got. It wasn't that she didn't feel pleasured, that she didn't get off. It wasn't as good as some of their other encounters because Ivan was so starkly horrified, even as he was doing those things to her. He was repulsed even as he fucked her, and revulsion is something entirely different from mad, anger-driven lust.
Hilary takes a step closer to him, breathing in. Then stops, and -- leaving her clothes where they fell, leaving her shoes and her clutch -- walks towards his living room.
[Ivan] He's on her in a second. Strength never was Ivan's forte, but speed and silence are another story altogether. It's wholly likely she doesn't hear him coming at all; doesn't sense him until his hands are on her shoulders.
Against the wall he pushes her. It's rough, and ungentle, and sudden, and then his mouth is on her. The back of her neck, like he might seize there and bite the life out of her. The back of her shoulders, her shoulderblades; down her back to the dip of her spine, the dimples in her back where her loins tuck into her tailbone. He's on his knees now, which is ironic: isn't this what he asked her to do?
It's his hands on her hips, though. He's biting at the waistband of her panties, tugging at them as though he might simply chew them off her body any moment. He pulls her backward until her back is arched, her feet planted on either side of his thighs, her cunt presented behind that pretty peach lingerie. He pushes his mouth against her with a muffled, hungry sound, eating at her through her panties, mauling her cunt so ferociously that she might be thankful for that scrap of fabric. It dulls the sensation a little; makes this onslaught bearable.
Only for a moment or two does it go on, though. Then Ivan's sitting back on his heels with a gasp, wiping his mouth against his shoulder. The flat of his hand connects with her ass. He rubs her skin, leans forward again for a quick, tasting flick of his tongue along her cunt. Smacks her again, and gets up.
Watches her to see where she'll go now.
[Hilary] Ivan's assault is a sort of madness. He grabs her and mauls her like that as though he has to do it, right now, just like this. He does it like he has to scratch an itch before he finds enough satisfaction to stop... at least until the next flare of desire stirs up in him, claws at him.
And he doesn't have to force her to arch her back. He listens to her moan as her hips tilt, legs spread. He feels her rubbing herself on his mouth, on his face, holding onto the wall and moaning as though they really are as alone as they seem to be.
Ivan said once he hadn't figured out how to lie to himself yet. But they pretend so well all the same. They pretend they're alone. They pretend it doesn't matter that this is wrong. They pretend sometimes that Hilary's resistance isn't just a ploy to get him to bear down on her, push her, take her. They pretend like they don't both want tonight to end with their bodies in bed together, exhausted from sex, her will to bury herself under an avalanche of cold witticisms and demure mannerisms temporarily broken.
A gasp, when he spanks her. She looks over her shoulder and down at him, following him with her eyes as he rises to his feet. Her palms are against the wall, her body still in the position he put it in when he leapt on her. "You sure you want to stop?" she murmurs, panting silently.
[Ivan] This can't even really be called stopping, in truth. He's tugging his tie loose in a few swift motions while he looks at her, claws his eyes down her body, her svelte back and her smooth skin, that flat belly hiding all signs, all portents of the child, embryo, parasite already growing in her.
He tears the tie over his head and lets it drop. Then he's unbuttoning his shirt, getting that off too. She wants to know if he's sure. His eyes flick back to hers.
"Dmitri is here," he says. "And Evgeny, and Yuliya, and at least one of the maids. Now, we all know I have no shame and even less compunction about fucking you here in the hall, but I thought you might feel differently."
He leaves his shirt on the ground. Then his pants too, stepping out of them: is naked save for his boxer briefs now, all long, strong limbs, smooth skin, symmetric and proportioned torso.
"So I suppose the question is, are you sure you don't want to stop?"
[Hilary] "Why would you ever imagine," she breathes, watching him get himself naked, or close to it, "that I care about them?"
Dmitri, after all, knocked on the door the first time Ivan fucked Hilary here, knocked while Ivan was deep inside her, his cock throbbing as he held himself still for a moment, sweating over her, feeling her squirm and listening to her mewl and moan underneath him. And at least one of the maids was there on the yacht when Ivan chained her up and fucked her til she was a shaking wreck, at least one of the maids probably heard her screaming down in their master's cabin.
"You have the loveliest body," Hilary purrs, her eyes lingering on his boxer briefs. "And the most beautiful hard cock."
[Ivan] Ivan has only a low laugh for that, dry and short. "My mistake," he says,
and his hands are on her body again, stroking up and down her sides. It's almost thoughtful. His eyes are low, watching her breathe, watching her move, even as she's watching him. Looking at his cock, to be precise -- the shape of it visible, hardened, beneath the snugly elastic fit of his boxer-briefs.
They're white trimmed in a deep, rich purple tonight. How very like a Fang: royal fucking underwear. But likely Hilary doesn't care what color they are, or how much care he does or doesn't put into his own upkeep. She fucked Christian, after all, and the boy looks like he dresses out of Goodwill. She likely only cares about how he feels
when he steps in behind her and pushes himself against the cleft of her ass, holding onto her hips to pull her against him. "Glad I pass inspection," he answers, offhandedly, even as he's tugging her panties off her hips and down her thighs; grinding against her bare ass now, her bare cunt, getting the front of his boxerbriefs damp with her wetness. She can feel the back of his hand against her bottom, his knuckles brushing her cunt as he takes himself out. Then it's his cock against her, hot and hard and silky smooth, held in his hand as he slaps himself against her, rubs himself against her, nudges the head of his cock between her lips and bends to kiss,
or bite,
her shoulder. "Work yourself onto that, baby," he murmurs. "Work that tight little pussy onto that cock for me."
His underwear is still mostly on. His feet are planted apart; he's standing behind her braced and solid, longfingered hand on her hip. Behind him, through those panes of frosted glass, glimpses and glances of his living room, his den, his kitchen -- the terrace beyond it, and then the city and the sky. Lights are on all down the gallery, spotlights inset into the ceiling. There's no privacy here; no shame. His penthouse is so quiet and still that the noises they make, the things they say to each other, probably echo from one end to the other.
They don't seem to care. They've as much as said it: they don't care. They're Silver Fangs, after all. The belief that servants are subhuman is all but bred into them.
[Hilary] Just a moment ago he was so angry she thought he might hit her. Or worse, he might tell her to get her fucking dress on and get out. Get out of his apartment, leave him alone, I don't want to fuck you right now. Humiliate her again, which he can't seem to do by pushing his prick into her mouth and telling her what a dirty little whore she is, sucking on it like that. Just a moment ago, she was circling his rage, stroking it, and he was nowhere near even the dry huff of a laugh he gives now.
Hilary's eyes close as he comes near again, her head tipping back and a sigh leaving her lips. She rubs her ass softly on his underwear when he steps closer, breathes in sharply as he holds her, tilts her again, grinds their bodies together. "Oh, god," she whispers, circling herself on him. He strokes her, but does not spank her. It makes her shudder.
The lace tries to cling to her, stretching away from her skin as he tugs her panties off and down. Ivan doesn't even bother with her bra. He doesn't need her naked, he doesn't need himself to be naked, to fuck her the way he wants to. The way she likes it. The pearls of her earrings swing from her lobes, the heavy chain around her neck draping downward.
"That's it," she mutters, hearing cotton push across his skin. Her breathing gets faster, her eyes closed to anticipate his cock, her legs opening a little wider. "That's i-- oh. There are you are."
The words tumble out of her in murmurs, low and meaningless, a constant whisper of her voice reacting to what he uses his cock to do to her. She trembles when he slaps it against her, flicking her clit with it. She disobeys, though. She strokes herself against him, rubs herself on his cock like she's going to tease herself into an orgasm with it, use it. One of her hands leaves the wall, reaching down to tug her bra from her breast, cupping it in her own hand. More weight goes onto her other arm, bending her over further, pressing her back against him.
[Ivan] It arouses him when she does that. When she draws her bra down and touches herself like she's compelled to, like she needs it. She bends over for him, presses back against him. He leans down to her now, bends over her, mirrors her: his hand on the wall, the wood paneling cool and smooth beneath his palm.
There's artwork in this hall now. Abstract works, simplistic and striking. He has her between a Muller and a Frankenthaler, both works with swooping, arcing lines, unexpected outgrowths of color; one more muted in tone and style, the other bold, vivid, faintly menacing. It's doubtful either of them notice right now. Doubtful either of them see anything, feel anything, care about anything more than
what's making them breathe harder. What's making them groan when they press together. She's rubbing herself on him like an animal in heat, mindless, instinct driven. He's leaning down over her and his hand is finding its way to her breast, nudging hers aside to grasp at her flesh, to cup her in his hand as he sets his teeth in her shoulder. Grazes his mouth down her back. Kisses and sucks at the skin over her spine, as though he knows no other way to express just how much he wants her. His hand by chance finds her necklace. He wraps his fingers around the chain briefly, then lets go. Down his hand goes, passing down her abdomen, between her legs.
There you are, she said when he finally put his cock against her. There you are, he thinks to himself, mindless, but the words don't make it to his mouth. He growls against her skin instead. He bites her shoulder again, straightening, holding her between his hand and his body, holds her there while he grinds himself against her, moves against her,
moves into her. Another groan now, louder, rougher. His hand finds hers on the wall. His fingers slide between hers; he holds her hand to the wall, or perhaps simply holds onto her hand, as he pushes himself into her.
[Hilary] Nobody is looking at the art. It's for Ivan's penthouse to feel more complete, more like it was meant to be. The place is itself a show piece, a gallery in and of itself. The walls exist only to accentuate the view. The furniture and lightning are all geared towards receiving what isn't there to begin with: the art that he's hung on the walls, the pretty people he invites over so they can entertain him, fuck him, give him a chance to show off what he has and what he is.
See, look. I have everything. I can have anything I want. I can do whatever I like.
Hilary's stroking herself, tugging at her bra faster now, all but ripping it off though the straps dangle off her shoulders and the cups are rumpled below her breasts. She takes one nipple between thumb and forefinger, rolling it, pinching it while she and Ivan ignore the artwork, their surroundings, the fact that his servants are somewhere in this place. She gasps, while Ivan reaches down and holds her pussy, holds her right there for him, for his cock.
She thought for awhile about breezing into his apartment and sitting on the couch and asking for his cock in her mouth. Her heart leapt a little when he told her to get on her knees, but she didn't.
She thought about getting him to take her up against the wall, right next to that lovely alcove. She wanted to break that fucking vase, spill water and blossoms everywhere, shatter it on the floor, destroy something while riding him.
She thought about going to the living room and bending over his lap and sucking his cock while his fingers worked inside her pussy, stroked her off, spanked her ass where it curved up in the air, pushed his fingers in her hair, fucked himself up into her mouth.
Yet this is where they are. He has her bent over again, and he always seems to find his way here: folding Hilary over in front of him, facing away from him. Maybe it makes it easier for him to fuck her the way he does. Maybe it makes it more impersonal. Maybe it's easier to just feel her orgasm, without having to look in her eyes while she comes undone. Maybe this is just how he's wired, what he always wants, and what she's always willing to give him.
Bend over. Take it.
Hilary moans, louder now, her hand unresponsive to his as though she doesn't realize his hand is covering her own. She presses back onto his cock, works herself onto him like he told her to before. At first it's just a grind, a warm circling of her pussy around him, in rhythm with her gasps. But then she starts to fuck him in earnest, starts bouncing herself back on his cock, starts taking what she's wanted all along, why she called him, what she's been thinking about every time her mind has drifted towards him since the first time he
without his hand held, without having to be coaxed along,
bent her over and took her.
[Ivan] Ultimately, Ivan lives a life that has almost nothing in common with the real world outside these glass walls. There's almost nothing common about his life, period. His daily residence could be a modern art museum, and the appliances, furniture, and decorations placed ever-so-artfully around the place the galleries within. His 'lakeside retreat' is what the average american would consider a mansion. His garage contains a few million dollars' worth of horsepower. He seems to spend his days coasting from party to party, event to event, starving swan to starving swan, with brief interludes taken out for The War.
He joined a pack a few weeks ago. They're the most common thing about him: a bone gnawer and a black fury who may as well be a gnawer. Since the night they forged the bond, it's questionable whether Ivan's even seen them at all. Sometimes he feels them across the pack link. He knows they're alive. He knows they're out there fighting, risking their necks, and sometimes he feels a vague stirring of duty --
and then he rolls over and gets back to what he's doing.
All of which is to say: this is the rawest thing about his life. The most vivid, the crudest, the most unexpected and, despite all the other things he does -- the most shocking.
Raw and ferocious, the way he grasps her hip and starts slamming her from behind. Raw and unapologetic, the way he bites at her neck and her shoulder, curses at her, mutters about her tight fucking cunt as he's railing her. There's no slow ramp-up. He's inside her; he fills her up; she moans and she pressed back on him and he starts fucking her.
He almost always fucks her from behind. Almost always standing -- at the edge of a bed or against a wall. Maybe this way it's easier for him to treat her so roughly. Maybe this way it feels less personal; it's less wrenching when she has to go. Or maybe this way it feels more primal. More raw. More unadulterated and unrefined, sex stripped of all the glamour and romance and mystery: just the fuck. Just the slap of their bodies together. Just the wetness sliding out of her, pounded out of her with every thrust of his cock.
Just the way he reaches up and grabs her by the hair; turns her head to the side; kisses her while he's fucking her, hard in both cases: groaning into her mouth as he slams into her.
[Hilary] On some level it's hard to be removed from the person you're fucking when you know that you're destroying them. Breaking them down, or breaking something down, so they can be a warm and vulnerable human being in your arms for a few minutes. A couple of hours, maybe, if they can manage it. On some level, no matter how hard Ivan fucks Hilary or how he stands while he does it, bends her over, refuses to look into her eyes, he knows that every time he smacks his hand across her ass or slaps her breast or bites down into her shoulder that he is close, closer, more personal than he should be able to bear being.
Closer, and more unbearable, because she's going to go. She isn't going to stay here all night and sleep with him in his lowlying bed. She said she can't. He'd have to tie her down again. Hilary's not the best, but she's a good liar. Surely she could come up with something. After all, didn't he wash her cum off his cock and her sweat off his chest just seconds before meeting her husband in this very spot? They can do whatever they like. They can get away with anything.
There isn't much on this smooth, polished wall for Hilary to hold onto. She could slip, but she doesn't. Her forearm and palm clings to the flat surface, her other hand playing with her tit while the lovely young man she can't seem to stop fucking slams into her again and again, growling into her ear like she's a common whore, like she's some slut he picked up at a less-than-above-board nightclub.
He can feel her getting close, already. Clenching on his flesh, bearing down on his cock, her torso tightening up with pleasure in answer to every one of those forceful thrusts of his. He feels the way she shudders, sharp and hard and jerking back in counterthrust, when he grabs her hair so he can kiss her. Her eyes are open, falling closed only when he groans. Her back is a severe arch, her lips red when the kiss ends and she pants: "Joue avec moi, Ivan. Play with me. Play with my pussy. Make me come for you."
[Ivan] When that kiss ends his hand loosens in her hair. His mouth parts from hers, his breath warm and swift over her lips. He doesn't pull back. They're still so close, his forehead to hers, or to her temple; his eyes closed and his face rubbing, nuzzling hers in some odd simulacrum of tenderness
while he fucks her so very hard, slams into her again and again with her back arched so far and her legs apart and her hands braced on the wall. Like she's a common whore. Like they're not even human; like they're animals, and nothing so devoted and bonded as a wolf; like she's a female presenting herself for the mounting by this male or god knows how many others, as long as they're young and pretty and hard-bodied and biddable.
Or, in Ivan's case: willing. Willing to push her this far. Willing to break her down, to do things that shock and disgust him later; willing to make her sob with mingled relief and pain -- pain of a bone-deep, emotional sort that was somehow more wracking than even the vicious bruises and welts he's left on her.
Her words mutter against his mouth. He catches them, kisses her again savagely at the end of it. Then his hand slips out of her hair entirely, pushes down her back -- feels those lean muscles clenching and shuddering there, brushes through the sheen of sweat on her skin. And around, and down, until his hand is between her legs: fondling her there, playing with her, fucking her mercilessly with his fingers while he straightens behind her. Holding her by the hip with his free hand, Ivan is well and truly fucking her now: pounding into her from behind, rubbing her clit, head down, face tense, watching himself pumping into her until her slick slips down her thighs.
[Hilary] The tenderness -- if it could be called such -- doesn't last long. Hilary doesn't understand it yet. She lets her face rest against his while he nuzzles her, moves with his movements, gasps against his cheek because he's still pounding her. She may as well be in heat with the way she's groaning but he knows that can't be the case.
For one thing, the woman he's fucking is already pregnant. For another, he knows she can also be so coy, so cool, as she's getting ready to fuck some hot young thing in some anonymous bed or whatever flat surface is nearest. She can play at being dominant when he knows she's anything but, when he knows what she really wants is this:
to not be in control. To give it up, and not have to pretend that violence and savagery hold a severe and unhealthy appeal to her. To let go, and not have to try so fucking hard moment to moment just to feel ...something. Something good. Something warm.
The last thing Hilary wants is control. To be in charge. No wonder she's so divorced from the child that is still just a concept, so distant from the thought of it.
And she's losing control now. She was close before, and when he kisses her again she moans, pushes back against him again, begs for it without words this time. She's so slender. She feels like he could break her in half if he's not careful, and he's not even one of the strongest of his kind. But the muscles under her skin are, in fact, quite strong. She's tougher than she looks. She can take a beating -- he knows that from firsthand experience. She can hold her balance even on a shaking bed while he's licking her skin and touching her cunt through her panties. She's graceful and athletic, even when she's given up her ladylike poise.
"Ivan!" is all she gets out, in between the meaningless gasps, the pants for air, the groans and whimpers he pounds out of her while he rubs her clit with his fingertips, strokes her lips, feels himself opening her up every time his cock rides into her. It never seems to take much to send Hilary over the edge. Like now. And from his vantage point, pulling back so he can watch himself fucking her, Ivan sees the way her ass squirms back on him, the way she shivers as her pussy grinds on his cock, riding out a tight, hot little orgasm that leaves her bouncing herself on him even as she starts to come back down.
[Ivan] Surreally fast, Hilary hits some crest, tumbles over, comes. Ivan watches her. His eyes are hungry for the sight of it, those little shivers, the way her fingers pull at the wall: that loss of control that she craves. That loss of control that is, in the end, so very fucking rare.
She's grinding back on him again even as she comes down. She's still making those little noises, still gasping, still incoherent. He leans into her. He keeps his hands on her, hip and cunt, and god, she's so fucking wet her wetness is all over his fingers, is slippery on his fingertips and slipping between his fingers; he closes his eyes and rubs his face against the back of her neck, bites at her soft skin, makes a sound so like a growl that
it is, in fact, a growl.
Then he's straightening again. She's grinding back, and he doesn't give it to her. He steps back, grabbing himself by the base of the cock, drawing himself out of that tight, greedy little cunt of hers. His palm smacks against her ass. It's almost an afterthought. "Turn around," he says, and he's out of breath but those words are firm, confident. "Turn around. Come here -- "
and he lifts her by the waist, graceful-as-a-dancer-she; lifts her and shifts her and sets her down on the edge of one of those alcoves designed for paintings, for sculpture, for art. Not for this.
When he pushes her knees apart and steps between them again, he kisses her so hard he pushes her back against the Frankenthaler behind her. Swirls of colors, diffuse and organic, to either side of her: the hot spotlighting intended for the painting carving dark shadows under her breasts; highlighting the line of her nose. His hands curve over the outsides of her thighs, high up, close to her hips. He's wet and hard when he grinds against her, just once or twice, and then he's pushing his cock down against her cunt and driving into her again, shoving himself back inside her in that same single forceful thrust he always, always seems to take her with.
Then he's groaning against her shoulder again. He's holding her by the waist, fucking her against the wall: pounding her just as hard and fast as he was a moment ago when he was driving her toward that first, sharp orgasm.
[Hilary] Of course she's pliant, she's unresistant, she's eager and willing when he turns her around, puts her against the wall, starts fucking her again. Of course she wants it like this, wants him again. That scrap of peach-colored lace hugs her ribs, or was -- it's slipping down now, on the verge of dropping to encircle her waist. Her hair is long and loose, chocolate-brown, glossy where it ripples over her shoulders and shines in the light that's meant to illuminate art.
It makes the two of them severe, lit searingly here, black shadow there. It makes her eyes even darker, even less human, except for those moments when she closes them. Hilary's legs hug his waist, thighs holding him and shins crossing behind his back. If she reached back she might tear her fingernails through the canvas, scratch the paint, destroy something beautiful and valuable.
She holds onto Ivan instead. Her arms are loose around his neck first, then clutch at his shoulders as he shoves his cock back into her. For all that her eyes are black as a shark's and glassy as a doll's, she meets his. She's watching him as he fucks her, gasping at his beauty or his lust or simply because she's getting closer to that amorphous boundary between who she is and who she wishes she could be, even if she can't tell which is which.
Then Ivan bends to her shoulder, and Hilary lays her hand on the back of his head as though to hold him there, as though she's comforting him, her breath rushing past his ear on every slam of his cock into her. "That's it, baby," she gasps. Her arm wraps around his shoulders, her back arching so she can get his cock against her clit just a little more, rub herself on him a little more. "That's it. Come inside me. Fuck me."
[Ivan] The greatest tragedy of Falcon's tribe is not that those born to rule are also born to madness. It's not that those born to such perfection and beauty are also born to such irrevocable flaw. It's that their madness is not absolute. The Garou have their seven years between First Change and final madness; seven years in which to go as far as they can, burn as bright as they can. Seven years during which they're still sane enough to realize they're mad. Sane enough to not want to be mad.
The kin aren't bound to that same clock, that same curse, that same pact. Some of them make it through a lifetime almost sane. Some of them are shrieking mad, beginning to end. And some of them, like their cousins, are just sane enough to realize
something's wrong with me. i'm not like everyone else.
Most women would not tolerate the things he does to her. Most women would not invite him to do these things to her over and over again. Most women would never crave it, want it --
need it.
There they are, though. She's holding on to him like this is actually some act of love. Like they're giving one another something; sharing something. She calls him baby. He groans, beyond words. She could reach back and destroy something beautiful, but she holds onto him instead. Her fingers clutch at him when he slams her up against that wall, balanced on the edge of that ledge, and rails her. She tells him to fuck her, fuck her, come inside her, and all the while she may as well be telling him:
more. harder. use me.
Which is what he does. Which is how he fucks her, his face turned against her neck and shoulder; his hands gripping hard at her thighs. Impossible to say if he's holding her thighs apart or pulling her against his thrusts or both -- either way it's rough, it's careless, it's his hands grasping at her fair skin, fine flesh; it's him having her the way he always does, as though his own pleasure were the only thing that mattered here.
"Fuck," he gasps when he comes, a harsh noise halfway between a pant and a shout. "Fuck, oh god, fuck," while he's thrusting between her thighs, driving into her so hard the canvas behind her back bends, distends. His arms come around her. A moment later he's lifting her onto his lean body, turning his face up to eat at her mouth, tear at her throat. His cock is still jumping inside her, pulsing as he moves her on him, fucks her like that: bounces her on his cock until his knees threaten to give way from sheer overwhelming sensation.
And he does go down. It's a sort of controlled collapse. He takes her down to the floor with him, the cold stone floor: lays himself flat and lowers her to kneel over him, straddling him. There's no pause. He doesn't give himself time to recover. He smacks her ass again, lightly but sharply.
"Keep going," he mutters. "Don't stop. Fuck me."
[Hilary] This is not the way it always is between them. The night Dion came here, the way Hilary spread her legs over his lap and kissed him, drenchingly, hungrily, and the sex it led to in his bed upstairs, the way he couldn't wait to have her, the way she came for him and trembled under him even when he didn't strike her, didn't bite her, just fucked her as hard and as needfully as ever. And the night in his den, his true retreat, when he woke her just before dawn and buried himself in her, made her come even after he'd stopped moving, just by begging her to stop tormenting him with those aching rolls of her hips, those long, slow clenches of her pussy.
Sometimes it's not quite slow, not quite gentle, but it's... different. They're not swearing at each other, clawing at each other. Or maybe just: sometimes he's not angry at her. Sometimes he's rough with her and yet not violent. Sometimes he's fucked her past that invisible boundary and he can have her again afterwards and she's there from the very start of it, she's with him, she's
his.
Even if she's not, really.
What they can't say they've ever really shared are some moments of happiness or simple pleasure together. She cooked and she snapped at him the whole way through. There wasn't laughter and lightness in that, or in the angry meal on his balcony that followed. She purrs her laughs when they come at all, and they're often mocking, darkened somehow. He doesn't like who he is when he's with her. But this isn't about happiness, or about wanting each other.
Hilary needs this, and Ivan needs this, and they can only seem to get it from each other. And one of the great things about their individual insanities is that they don't see that these facts alone warrant further inspection, maybe even further trust. Maybe even exploration. But it's also their vicious practicalities that remind them: no. No. Never.
So they claw and bite at each other instead, and don't even try for happiness. Those seconds, moments, minutes, hours when Hilary can curl up beside him and just be with him are hard enough to come by. Those moments when he can put aside the devastation of knowing it won't last are hard enough to hold onto. Why try for laughter?
Why try for anything but this. Fuck me. More. Harder. Use me.
Hilary holds onto him through his orgasm, gasping little encouragements, moaning that he's her boy, that's my good boy, yes, fuck me, give it to me, come in that hot little pussy, fill me up, baby --
which truncate sharply off when he pulls her off the wall, tilting her weight onto his body. She bears down more on his cock, letting out a hard, loud moan as he sinks deeper into her. And she's fucking him then, all over again, grabbing his body and pounding herself onto him even as he's laying back to tell her to do exactly that.
God, what his servants must think. They have to be able to hear her. She's got her hands on his chest and she's riding him now, her back arched and her head tipped, mouth open to let out hungry little cries of another nearing orgasm. "Fuck, yes. That's it." She lowers her head, finding his eyes, watching him while her hands slide over his body, while she fucks him faster now, fucks him as fast and hard as he was taking her from the beginning. "That's that good fucking cock, baby. That's what I need. Are you gonna come again for me? Are you gonna fill that tight pussy up again?"
[Ivan] What his servants must think, to hear the sound their master makes when Hilary holds onto him and comes down over him and starts riding him like that. It's exactly what he told her to do. It doesn't change that it's too soon, too much, he's so fucking sensitive, he's losing his mind.
His hands grip her thighs. He slams his head back against the floor. It's fucking stone down there, fucking marble; if he weren't Garou
(and if she weren't who she is)
she might worry that he'll crack his head open. Or maybe she wouldn't worry about that no matter who she was. Maybe all there is right now is that second lightning climax scorching up her nerves, and the way he arches and bucks and jolts beneath her, spasms running down his legs, down the axis of his torso.
What his servants must think, to hear the words cool-eyed, cynical Hilary is capable of saying. What they must think, to hear the way he answers her -- with smacks of his hand off her ass, with open-throated noises, shouts, bellows of something so far past pleasure it's simply overcome; with a jumbled collection of near-senseless words, yes[i] and [i]fuck and oh god and stop and don'tfuckingstop, don't --
before he's suddenly flipping her under him, slamming her down on that cool hard smooth floor instead. This second bout is so much faster, so much briefer, so much farther gone: no more than a minute or two before he's grasping at her back, biting her shoulder, spilling one mindless groan after another past her ear as he slams a second orgasm out into her.
Afterward he can barely move. He's shaking, completely undone. Every time his cock jerks inside her Ivan moans like he can't take it anymore.
[Hilary] The thing is, even a Garou feels a sharp snap of pain through his skull when it's slammed against stone. Ivan's not using any Gifts to protect himself. He's wearing perhaps the weakest, softest form he has at his disposal. It's possible there's blood on the floor right now.
The thing is, because of what he is, because of what he's called on to do, it just doesn't matter in the long run. Or even right this very moment. Especially not right this very moment, when Hilary's bouncing on his cock and gasping for it, caressing his chest, saying the things she's saying that are combining with the things she's doing
to drive him out of his mind.
Hilary lets out yelps when he spanks her, raps his hand across her ass again and again while they fuck each other there on his floor. Her bra dangles around her waist, the straps flapping against her thighs with every slap of their bodies together. And poor Ivan, poor Ivan is spasming, jerking, begging her to stop, no, don't stop, don't fucking stop. And Hilary, wicked wicked Hilary, laughs in between her gasps, in between her writhing moans. Laughs, because there's no way she's going to stop.
That laugh gets slammed out of her when Ivan throws her on her back and goes right back to fucking her. She lets out a cry that could be pain, could be sheer surprise, but it dissolves into pleasure. Her legs and arms wrap around him, ankles locking and fingernails digging into his back. Hilary groans as Ivan fucks himself into her, snarling at her, and when he bites her shoulder
she's biting his, too, clawing at his skin while he makes her come
while he comes in her
while they shudder apart, the clenching and jerking of his cock and her cunt melting together, melding them together, shattering whatever it is they have left.
Which isn't very much.
Afterward he can barely move. Afterward she's panting, gasping against his shoulder, rolling her hips and making him moan like he can't take it anymore, whimpering every time his cock twitches in her pussy. "Fuck," she breathes. "Fuck... oh fuck, Ivan."
[Ivan] There's something vicious and unrelenting about the way Hilary fucks. Of course she was never going to stop. Of course she bites him right back, claws him as she comes, leaves long red welts on his golden back.
Of course she keeps rolling her hips even after, drawing every last bit of pleasure she can out of this encounter. Of course.
And for his part, Ivan's eyes are closed. There's sweat on his brow, sweat on his back. There might be blood on the floor. There might be blood on his back, for that matter. The shivering of his body is beginning to relent, but his breathing is still ragged. He loosens his teeth only to shift a few inches and bite her again, firmly this time, holding her in his jaws as though everything human had escaped his mind.
It's moments before he stirs. Moments before he shifts, nuzzles her, lifts his head. He bites gently at her chin; bites gently at her lips before he ever kisses her. They're sprawled in the middle of his goddamn entry hall, a painting knocked askew a few feet away. There's the spot where the canvas is stretched, where he pushed her hard against it. There's the place where he caught up to her as she walked out of the foyer, shoved her against the wall and started fucking her.
Here's the place where they fell, spent for the moment. Here's the place where he sets his head down again, lays himself down on her, brow to her breastbone.
[Hilary] She's shaken apart. He's bent her over, thrown her against the wall, slammed her onto a cold stone floor, and her bones are rattled from it all, her joints trembling from the fucking he's given her. Hilary's quivering all around him, under him, whimpering softly even as they're coming to a stop, whimpering because even she is finally unable to bear the stroke of his cock, her cunt together. So she stops, she slows, she relents, because she can't stand it anymore, either.
And she holds him. Which doesn't ever happen. She holds onto him, and curls into his chest, and he holds her while she cries, while she shakes apart. Hilary doesn't have a nurturing bone in her body. Hilary doesn't know how it's done, doesn't know why people bother, doesn't need it or understand other people's need for it on a fundamental level except for a few brief seconds here and there where she needs it and seeks it out with the blind hunger of a newborn looking for its mother's milk.
Oh, the irony, to even think of it like that right now. With her.
All the same, she's holding him as he rests his head on her, not because she wants to comfort him or cling to him but because she doesn't know what else to do with her arms and she doesn't want him to move, get up, leave her. Her slick is all over his cock, his upper thighs, and his cum is filling her, and all she knows right now on a primitive, instinctive level is that this is good. This feels good. She wants this, and wants it again and again and again. She can't live without it.
Right now Ivan can do anything. Nuzzle her, stroke her hair back, whisper in her ear that he loves her and he'll never leave her, make her a thousand promises and she'll believe every single one if that's what makes him happy. Right now this man over a decade her junior who has no claim on her -- official or otherwise -- who is collapsed on top of her, is the sole power in her universe.
He is God, and the woman who doesn't understand nurturing or understand the simple, basic, inherent human need for it
is incredibly comforted by that.
[Ivan] Words can hardly express how deeply fucked up they both are. How much more deeply fucked up, riven, shattered, Hilary really is. So often he's angry at her, angry at her apparent inability to feel, to connect, to be human. Sometimes that makes her angry too: uncages that deep, black rage inside her that seems to have taken the place of every other emotion a normal human being is supposed to be born with.
She's angry because he's so fucking arrogant. So presumptuous, so full of assumptions; so assured of his own rightness. But perhaps sometimes she's angry, too, because the things he assumes are the very ones she's afraid are true. Or that she already knows are true.
She's different from other people. Or may as well have said. She became this way when she was so young -- or perhaps was simply born this way, hardwired to become this way, genetically predisposed to this sickness the way huntington's patients are to theirs, with the early trauma no more than a convenient excuse -- that she'll never change. She'll never learn to feel human. She may never learn any form of connection other than sex so brutal and rough there's nowhere to hide from the sensations that batter her like a hurricane. She may never learn any form of comfort that doesn't come from being carved open, hollowed out, scraped clean, filled again by someone else's will.
The truth is Ivan has no idea if his assumptions are even remotely correct. Or even remotely close.
Even so: the truth is, right now, Ivan feels like he understands -- intuitively, if only a little -- why she is the way she is.
After some time, he moves again. He lifts his brow from her breast, and it furrows as he looks down their bodies and draws himself out of her. It makes him shudder a little when he comes free. It makes him lower his mouth to her body again, taking her nipple into his mouth and sucking at her for a long, lush moment. It's the first time he's done this tonight. He was in such a furious hurry to just fuck earlier that it didn't even occur to him.
"Do you want to go upstairs for a while?" he murmurs, after.
[Hilary] Sometimes Ivan makes her angry because he asks so many questions, and she doesn't have answers, and it makes her feel like a fool. And that this young whelp, this worthless supposed scion of the goddamned 'Nation' wants to pretend he knows her, knows human nature, knows anything, enrages her. He makes her angry because she doesn't know. She doesn't know. And the fact that he keeps asking seems to indicate that she should know. A real person would know.
All of that is very far away right now, though. She's not angry. He hasn't stirred her to that deep, consuming wrath of her soul tonight. She's closing her eyes, laying back while he suckles her breast, laps at her nipple while it's enclosed in his mouth. She breathes slowly, coming down, shifting slightly underneath him as though they're already in bed and she's simply getting more comfortable.
Her eyelashes flicker open briefly when he asks her if she wants something. As though she can think about wants, as if she has any of her own. So Hilary's quiet for a long time, letting her eyes close again. Eventually she just whispers: "Okay."
And a few seconds later, even quieter: "Are you going to keep fucking me?" As though this is the end-all, be-all of their time together. As though that's what she needs. Not food. Not sleep. Not comfort, not something for the bruises along her back. Just for Ivan to keep doing this to her, as long as they're physically capable.
[Ivan] The first time Ivan tried to end this --
and he can't even remember now if that was the only time. He knows there's every likelihood it wasn't. Every likelihood that he's tried to end this again and again; goes right back to her like she's an addiction.
-- he told her he thought she would be fun. A pleasant diversion. Pleasing in and out of bed: more intelligent, more experienced, more than his usual vapid swans. And she is indeed more. Her blood alone makes her more. Whatever semi-surreptitious diversions he'd imagined, however, have not come to pass. Every time they meet, it's nothing but this. Nothing but fucking, nothing but sex, as though this is all she ever wants or needs from him.
Perhaps that's meant to be sufficient. He's a twenty-one-year-old male, after all, and the stereotype of that particular demographic is simple enough. Sex-crazed. Always horny. Interested primarily, if not purely, in sex.
There's a stitch in his brow, though, as he considers her question. And then just like that he's pushing himself up, sitting back on his heels. What a mess he is: welts on his back, welts on his shoulders, sweat on his skin, cum on his cock. His and hers, mingled. He rubs his cheekbone with the heel of his hand.
"Is that what you want?"
[Hilary] Maybe if he hadn't fucked her the way he did the first time, and with such gusto, with such evident -- if tormented -- enjoyment of the way she was getting him to treat her, the way she was begging him to treat her, it wouldn't be like this now. She could have been pleasant and diverting and they could have had their naughty little dalliance and it wouldn't be this. It wouldn't be something he keeps trying to pull away from, hold himself back from, quit.
Like an addiction.
Hilary's brow furrows briefly as he takes himself away from her, his cock out of her, his body away from her. She looks up at him, a mess on his marble entryway, those poor servants of his, and Kin of the tribe, too. She doesn't push herself up on her elbows or push herself up at all. She just looks at him. Perhaps she's hurt. Perhaps she's trying to read him. Her legs are still spread to either side of his lap. He can still see her pussy, pink and wet and fucked, see her nipple gleaming slightly where it's wet with his saliva.
Slowly, her head tips a bit to the side. Her earrings and her necklace shift to the side with the way she's lying there. And what a sight that was, the platinum and pearls across her throat after he put her on the floor and started banging her there, the chain weighing down against her every scream.
Then she breathes in, and she nods a little.
At least she's honest. The question was a simple one, after all, and for all she knows it's no more loaded than that. For all she knows it isn't necessarily exclusive, an and/or scenario, If This then Not That. Does she want him to keep fucking her.
Yes. Yes, please.
[Ivan] Ivan doesn't answer immediately. He puts his hands down instead. Puts his hands on her. His palms on her torso, low, to either side of and just below her navel; his fingers spreading over her skin. He touches her, moves his hands over her, feels the dimensions of her body, its length and slightness, the softness of her skin, the taut athletic muscle in that deceptively slender torso; the way her breasts move in his hands.
It would be unfair to blame it all on her. She's not the only reason fucking is all they do. He's growing aroused again at the very sight of her. The smell of her, the feel of her. And really. What did he expect from this, when he started pursuing her? She's not the sort of married woman who fucks around because she wants to feel young again. Feel courted. Feel loved. Feel cared for or cared about. She's not the sort of married woman who's fucking around because she wants to feel anything except, perhaps, feeling itself.
He's not the sort of young man who fucks a married woman because he's in love with her, either. He's not like Tomas, who fantasizes about beautiful dream-futures. He knows very well what this is and where it can and cannot lead. He knows in the end everything between them comes down to sex, and sooner or later he'll get sick of it.
Or she will.
And that thought is somehow unbearable to him.
Ivan takes his hands off her body. He knows this is inexplicable and cold; he knows even a woman far, far more aware and empathetic than Hilary would be puzzled at this sudden withdrawal. He regrets it. There's nothing he can do about it.
"Maybe you should go," he says. And then, some paltry attempt at explanation or apology -- "I'm having a hard time not ... resenting you right now. Or resenting this. And I can't really explain why."
[Hilary] Her brows flash together, her brow furrowing tightly. She's pulling herself up now, watching him where a moment ago she was relaxing under his palms, growing more and more content at the thought that he was going to have her again. She's puzzled, she's frustrated, she's sliding quickly into anger at his sudden oh, well if you want sex I guess I don't want you around and his refusal -- inability, whichever -- to explain himself.
"I hate you!" she finally snaps, petulant and meaningless as a child, smacking her hand against the marble. "You won't tell me you want me to stay. You won't let me stay when I want you. I hate you!"
[Hilary] [won't let me stay when I want TO, that is]
[Ivan] Ivan stares for a moment. Even people far, far more perceptive than Hilary have a hard time reading him. Like this, he may as well be stone. A moment passes, and then his eyes flick away. Impossible to say why: shame or disgust or boredom or ... what.
"I think you should go," he repeats quietly, and rises. Smooth, efficient of motion, balanced, the Ragabash turns his back; goes to the doorway where he begins to pick up his clothes and hers. "I don't want this to devolve any further than it has."
[Hilary] First he pulled out of her, just before asking if she wanted to go upstairs. And then he pulled away from her, sat back on his heels and told her to go. The way he keeps telling her to go, it seems, every time she joins him in his fucking penthouse or his yacht, places that are his but not the way the lake house is his.
Her hands clench at her sides as Ivan now gets up away from her, rises to his feet and doesn't just look down on her but turns away from her, walks away from her, picks up their clothes as though he's going to dump her dress and her shoes and her panties on her lap and tell her she might want to get dressed before the elevator reaches the lobby.
Where she can, she's sure he'll offer, be driven wherever she likes by one of his servants.
Her knuckles are white. And she's drawing her knees up, not in vulnerability but as though she's trying to contain her own anger, or whatever this is that's fighting its way to the surface through all that blackness. Hilary stares at her knees. "What did I do?" she gets out, her jaw so tight she can barely push the words into the air. She doesn't even sound angry. She sounds at a loss. She sounds out of her mind. "What did I do wrong, why do you keep doing this to me?"
[Ivan] His back is to her, so she can't see his eyes close for a searing second. A pulse of anger beats to the surface; is relentlessly driven down again. He finishes gathering their things and comes back toward her, holding her clothes out to her.
"You didn't do anything wrong," he says, and now that gentle tone has a note of strain in it. "It's how you are.
"Every time we're together you make me realize or admit how much I need this. And then you make me realize that 'this' is never going to be anything but you coming here when you want to get fucked out of your mind, and then leaving. That's all there is between us, Hilary: sex. You don't want anything else. Every conversation is an interrogation to you. Every activity that doesn't involve my cock in your cunt or your mouth is a waste of time or, worse, symptoms of an unwanted attachment.
"I just -- can't deal with it tonight. All right?" There's very little left of his calm, his coolness, his steady gentle tone. He's on the very edge of snapping the words out. "So please. Just go."
[Hilary] She rises to her feet with a level of grace that, coming from a mortal and unchanging woman -- particularly one in A Delicate Condition or one who has just been fucked as roughly as Ivan fucked her -- might be shocking. A moment ago she was curling up, trying to contain something, but the fact that she was straining to do so was, itself, her vulnerability. Or what there was of it, burgeoning in the wake of being broken down.
Which she needs. So she can be human. So she can feel. So she can be with him, and have something that doesn't exist elsewhere. Which is more than just sex --
they both know she can get sex elsewhere, she can get rough sex elsewhere, she can find someone else who ties her up and slaps her ass and then caresses her tenderly in the shower afterward
-- to her.
She's not an empathetic person. She doesn't try to read other people because most of the time it's futile. Even when Hilary tries to see under the surface other people show, she misunderstands what it means most of the time. She hears blame in the slightest hint of unhappiness in another -- even if it comes out in the form of questions. The greatest attachment she can remember is so far gone it barely means anything, and next to that the most she can come up with is a handful of people she was fond of, and wanted to please.
Let me make you happy.
Hilary is decidedly and severely fucked up. But she's not an idiot. She's not a simpleton. She's shown Ivan more than almost anyone in years just how uncertain she is about how to deal with other people, and every time what she gets back for it is his anger, his resentment, this. She's shown Ivan that she's a wreck, she's a shell of a person, she doesn't care about anything or really need anything but she told him she needed this.
The woman before him is, like all of them, the daughter of kings and so on and so forth. Disgraced House and nonexistent family ties notwithstanding, Hilary has the carriage of a duchess. She has the education of a well-born woman and, when she wants to be, she can be cool, collected, poised, perfect.
"Ivan," she says levelly, naked but for a scrap of lingerie hanging off of her and all those jewels she has, all that precious metal, "I have told you -- and I have done my best to make it clear to you -- that I want you. That I need this," and she forces the words out though her teeth clench against them, which makes her pause between one phrase and another:
"...and obviously 'this' is not something I am able to or wanting to try to find elsewhere. One would think you would understand from that that it's not about getting 'fucked out of my mind, then leaving'. If it weren't about anything but that, I would go find someone who didn't feel it necessary to shame me almost every time I see him."
Her hands uncurl. "I am tired of every conversation being an attempt to perform an in-depth psychoanalysis. You don't ask me where I studied or who taught me to cook. You don't ask me what I like to do or what makes me happy. You only ever ask why I'm 'like this'. Every conversation with you is an interrogation, because you apparently don't know how to have a conversation that doesn't begin with 'Hey, Hilary, why are you a soulless monster?'"
She exhales. She huffs out a laugh, her mouth widening in a brief, humorless smile as she gives a shake of her head. "I never came here, or to you, to play a game of reminding you what can't happen. I wasn't looking for this. And 'this', Ivan? Wasn't about the sex. Maybe at first. But for some time now, the reason I've kept coming back to you -- no matter how foully you treat me -- was for the way it is after." A beat. "The sex is just a way to get there, and I'm sick of you humiliating me because you don't understand that."
Her hand comes out, bangled. Gleaming. Glittering. "Hand me my clothes. I'll dress in the elevator. And I swear to god, if you offer me your driver I'm going to scream."
[Ivan] For what it's worth, Ivan says nothing throughout all that. He lets Hilary speak. Doesn't interrupt, doesn't - god forbid - roll his eyes like the spoiled barely-out-of-his-teens princeling he is. Then again, he doesn't feel particularly young around her. He feels ancient, raked over a thousand years' worth of coals.
A few times, flickers of emotions: the beginnings of winces, flinches. It doesn't matter what they mean. She can't read him anyway.
Then she's finished. She demands her clothes back. She's naked all this time, adorned only in jewels like some goddess; in jewels and sweat and cum and blood like some savage, pagan priestess. Or offering. His eyes fall to her hand for a moment. He hears the verb tense there; the wases, the tired of thises, the sick of yous.
His eyes come back to hers. For a moment the thought of asking her to stay, stay, please stay courses through his mind. Subsumes without a ripple, like a fish into a dark lake. He holds her clothes out to her wordlessly.
[Hilary] He has nothing to say to that. And, graceful creature that she is, Hilary takes no further parting shot. She lifts her clothes from his hands without a word and walks past him to the elevator. Her finger depresses the button, which opens the doors in a silent instant. The glory of luxury. She steps through, and presses the button to close them immediately again
This time on the way back down to earth, Hilary doesn't lose her temper. Doesn't scream, hit the walls, throw a fit because she genuinely doesn't know what else to do with thwarted longing. Right now that isn't what she's feeling. Right now she's feeling --
well. It doesn't matter, and he doesn't know anyway. Her elevator ride down is long enough to get her dressed, but she's wiggling her right foot into its heeled shoe when it reaches the ground floor, going from last step of covering herself to walking out of the elevator with little more than a pause to make sure her shoe was securely on.
Her cab is on its way to take her back to the Stock Exchange, where the Maserati is parked. She waits outside, and the night is finally growing dark.
It gets colder, too.
be like the deer.
6 years ago