Ivan Press

[Hilary] The protest is childish. I might, she insists. Might be able to tell if she loves him. And that really was the only difference in what they said: love, says Hilary. In love, says Ivan. Truth be told, though? It was just a matter of what words came to mind while she was reeling from orgasm and submission. There is no precision to it. No easy explanation, either, for why she presses even that much.

I might love you.

And I might even know what that means.

The slowness of Ivan's touch is hypnotic. She whimpers when his finger so much as graze her clit, her body tightening up with overstimulation. Her eyes close again, fresh tears coming to her face that, somehow, don't seem upset. It's a physical reaction more than anything. She curls even further into his arms, as though seeking respite and sanctuary from the very one who is overwhelming her. A broken thing to do, in reality; the only thing she can do, too.

When Ivan relents, she shudders, tucking her legs up a bit, rubbing her face on the bedspread like an animal to dry her tears. She sniffs, and he speaks quietly to her, and she takes in a breath at the last words. Nods, shivering a little.

But she doesn't move yet. Hard to, anyway, still tied up. She doesn't ask him if he'll chain her to the bed like he did at his lake house, because perhaps she thinks it goes without saying that when he wants to keep her in his bed to fuck at his leisure, he'll make sure she can't get away. Hilary does lick her lips, though, and turns her head to nuzzle against him.

"My ass is still warm where you punished me," she whispers. Yet, conversely: "You know you don't have to be so gentle, right?"

[Ivan] He didn't even tense up when she said love to him, but Ivan tenses a little now. He pulls back a little, far enough to meet her eyes over her shoulder. There's a bit of a frown on his brow.

"I don't want to hit you much harder than that, Hilary," he replies, just above a whisper. "Please don't ask me to."

[Hilary] To that, there's little more than a sigh, her head turning again to lay down on his bedspread, on his arm. It's hard not to hear disappointment in it. Or resignation. Just a moment or two passes, though, and she breathes in to speak again.

"I like it so much," she says, a deep ache in her voice, a sort of yearning coupled with anxiety or sorrow at his refusal. "You don't... you don't even have to hit me harder. Y--" but she stops herself there, pressing her lips together. Her hand, wrist wrapped in leather and padding as it is and connected by chain, wiggles against the bedding til it works underneath his hand, or seeks out some part of him to make contact with. The chain clatters a bit, the oddest sound to hear in the aftermath of a fuck,

just as the oddest thing to feel is himself, still held inside a warm cunt long after he's come inside of it. Even with Hilary, staying this close to her afterward is still not common. And not expected.

A beat later: "I just meant you don't have to be so gentle and careful," she whispers. "We can be creative."

[Ivan] Behind her, Ivan stirs, raising his head, propping his cheekbone on his knuckles. His arm is still around her; it's that hand she works her own under, and his fingers fold over hers. Enveloping. Protective, perhaps.

They're unusually close. They're unusually open. He hears disappointment in that sigh; he hears ache, yearning, anxiety in her voice. And he bends to her briefly, kissing her arm, kissing her skin wherever he can reach it.

"How?" He's whispering now, too. "I know part of it is to surprise you, but ... teach me what you mean."

[Hilary] "You can hit me more," Hilary says, almost immediately, but it's different from 'hit me harder'. She doesn't stop. "Or in other places. You can stroke it and slap it against my pussy,"

and he can feel new wetness, faintly, against the nerve endings of his own hypersensitive flesh, as she goes on,

"and you can use it on me even if you're not fingering me or fucking me. You can use it on me while you're making me suck your cock. You can leave me and come back and hit me when I don't expect it. You can make me rub against it to get myself off. You can... blindfold me and gag me. We can play and not even have sex," she says, almost like this is a bargaining tool, or something he'd never think of,

which is probably true,

but she's still going on, as though he's opened up a floodgate of her kink just by asing right now, when she's already so open. Right now, listening to her, she seems younger. And she seems more human than she has all day, closer to him, without being shattered and without being lost in subspace.

"You can scratch me with your nails or drip hot wax on me or ice or make me dress up." A beat, a moment of thought. "Or tickle me." She's slowing down. "Or... "

Almost sleepily now, tired after this recitation, like she's telling him what she put in her letter to Santa before she falls asleep for the night, a self-imposed sort of lullabye: "...lots of things," she finishes. Her eyes close again and, calmer, she nuzzles the bedding as though it smells like him when it only dimly does. "I could wear gloves," Hilary murmurs, like this has some kind of meaning, before she finally goes quiet.

[Hilary] [asing? asking!]

[Ivan] It's hard to tell what he's thinking during all that. A single, simple question seems to have opened a hidden floodgate, and now everything, all these bottled up thoughts that might have sent one of her other lovers running for the hills, might have simply been too private for her to ever share, would have certainly convinced Espiridion she and all her house were, in fact, quite wyrmridden -- everything comes whispering out of her. Like dear, beloved little wishes that she keeps locked up inside herself. Pleasant things she thinks of to lull herself back from whatever black rage resides inside her.

When she's quiet, he is too. Give him this much: at no point he did pull out of her. Get away from her. Throw her out of his penthouse because while he'll happily fuck another wolf's mate, the harmless little games she suggests are too much for his sensibilities. He stays with her, his arm around her, his cock inside her,

half-hardening again.

After a while he reaches past her. His fingertips brush the strap at the end of the flogger, and he pulls it closer until he can wrap his fingers around it, thoughtful. "I thought about gagging you with this," he whispers. A confession of his own, this. "I thought about leaving you tied up. Making you hold it in your teeth while I pounded your cunt. And if you screamed too loudly and dropped it, I thought about just leaving you there for a while. Or turning you around and making you suck on my cock for a while."

He leaves the flogger where it is. His hand comes back to her, finds her breast, caresses it as he lays down behind her again.

"But I didn't know if you'd like it. I need a way to know if you like it or not." A small pause. Then, as though it just occurred to him, "Gloves?"

[Hilary] She hasn't said any of this to anyone for so long she almost forgot some of it. Ivan's been the only one to ask for years now, and there's a faint tremor of excitement in her voice to share it all. There's even a bit of shyness, though not very much -- his cock is half-hard inside of her, his cum and her own all over their thighs, her wrists still carefully locked up and their bodies entwined naked on a bed that's more like an altar. There isn't much to be shy about.

When Ivan finally responds, Hilary is still lulled, calm, still and peaceful in his arms. She seems sleepy and content, where a few moments go she was disappointed and a little sad, where a moment before that she was sensorily overcome, where a little while before that she was gasping that she might, she might, she thinks she might love him.

He tells her what he thought about doing with her and she moans softly, shivering on him. That poor, discarded toy she brought for them to play with is dragged a bit closer, and taken in hand again. The mere sight of his fingers wrapping around the handle makes Hilary's breathing ratchet up again slightly. That flicker of a fantasy he had fills the air between his mouth and her ear, and she breathes out as he lets go of the flogger, puts his hand on her tit, holds her on the bed they can't seem to leave.

Ivan didn't know if she'd like it. And he needs to know if she'd like it. A moment later, he asks about the gloves, and she huffs a small laugh:

"It might be pretty," is all she says, as though -- like the jolt of arousal in him when he sees some of her underthings, when he peels them off of her or tears them -- it is simply inexplicable, what on earth it has to do with 'playing' like they do. She's quiet a moment, though. "What do you want me to do?" she asks after awhile, her voice small. "If I don't like something you want to do to me."

[Ivan] Ivan smiles a little, but he's behind her again, and she can't see it. She can still hear it on his voice, though. "Yes," he agrees softly, "it might be quite pretty."

His hand seeks hers then. He touches the backs of her fingers, the soft skin between them. The backs of her hands, still bound together when he let her down from the ceiling fan and wrapped the chain around her wrists instead to hold her. Keep her. She's the quiet one now, thinking. When she speaks again, it's his turn to think.

"I want you to tell me," he says finally. "Say, not like that. And I'll know."

[Hilary] There have been two instances when Hilary has made it unequivocably clear to Ivan that something he's doing is not okay. Both times she's struck at him, lashed out whether she could land a hit or not. Once was in Mexico. Once was not three hours ago.

Then there was the time in his yacht, down below, when her whole body tucked into a self-protective ball and she sobbed, pushed so far into submission she couldn't even come back to find words, to tell him no, and it was up to him to notice. To see that going any farther would be ghastly of him. Wrong of him. It's possible he looks back on that with terror even now, because if he hadn't recognized, if he hadn't seen how Hilary really felt, he would have raped her.

Though the truth is, if he hadn't realized then that she was no longer even capable of telling him yes and that that was an inherent no, he wouldn't be the sort of man who'd understand the difference between sex and rape.

Maybe on some level Hilary realizes the need to let him know one way or the other. If only because he's so overwhelmed by the burden of control sometimes, doesn't want to hurt her, can't bear to truly break her, just wants her to feel... well. Like she always says of him: I just want to make you feel good. So she asks him what he wants her to do.

"What if I can't talk?" she asks softly after awhile, without saying because I'm gagged. Without saying: because sometimes I can't find words.

[Ivan] The fact is, Ivan doesn't ask her -- or tell her -- what to say if she wants him to continue. That she's all right. That she's enjoying what he's doing. That she's turned on. He doesn't have to. Whatever Hilary Durante

(though he supposes that's not even really her name anymore)

is, she's not coy. She doesn't pretend innocence. She's always been so very frank about what she likes, so very open about showing him.

And he doesn't tell her what to say if she wants him to stop, just stop, stop everything and shut it all down. He doesn't have to ask that, either. For one thing, he doubts she'll ever hit that point in their 'play' before he does. For another -- if she does, he knows she'll let him know. Utterly and unequivocally.

It's that middle ground he's wary of. When she's not wholly enjoying herself. When she might be doing it for his sake. Because she wants him to feel good. Because -- in her own, strange, crippled way -- she wants to take care of him.

So he asks her. And he tells her. And they have this quiet, naked little discussion, more honest now with each other than they've been in ... ever, perhaps.

"If you can't speak," he says after a moment's thought, "shake your head and make a 'no' sound. And move away from me if you can." He nuzzles against the back of her neck, the back of her shoulder. "I don't think I've ever felt you move away from something you liked," he muses softly. "I think if I felt you moving away, I'd know."

[Hilary] Once, offhandedly, Hilary mentioned that she doesn't even go by her first name. She may have mentioned it to Cordelia, or some other meaningless person she's met. It might not have been Ivan. He's heard the last name she uttered when she told him why Anton would have her brother's name as one of his own, though it will of course be some time before Hilary takes on that moniker again; technically she is still supposed to be a happily married woman.

Lying in another man's bed, her wrists manacled together, her skin pink from a light flogging, his cock still inside of her, occasionally throbbing.

No, she's not a coy young thing at all. He doesn't have to pretend to be romantic with her. If anything, she's got a tendency to pull away when he is too tender -- if he hasn't broken her first. Then she'll let him stroke her hair. Kiss her softly. Hold her. Tell her the things he only sometimes feels, during the only-sometimes that she can handle hearing them.

What they've worked out now is a thin 'fix' at best. There are so many questions. What if she's immobilized and can't move away? What if she can't show him no, no, no? What if he doesn't notice? What if she moans stop and moves away and what she really wants is for him to grab her,drag her back, and fuck her harder? Hilary isn't asking these questions because Hilary isn't worried about Ivan pushing her too far. Usually, it's Hilary getting ruffled because Ivan isn't being rougher.

She almost wants to ask if he's the one that needs a way to say stop, no, really, I don't want to do this anymore. She doesn't ask that, either, though. She lies there with him, curled warmly against him, and she trusts him when he says that if she really doesn't want something, if she's moving away, he'll know. She doesn't quite understand that he's worried about that 'middle ground', that place where she's almost... bored.

Quiet for some time, Hilary closes her eyes while he nuzzles her, breathing steadily. A couple of times her body gently squeezes his cock, warm and slow and deep. It seems at least half-unconscious. When she speaks again, it's awhile later, and she's languid. Languid and still.

"I like it when you tell me what to do," she says softly. "I like that you're strong when you're with me."

There's a pause.

"I like that when you're with me, you're different." Which may be the first acknowledgement she's made of that, and truth be told, it's partly a guess. Just something she senses. Knows. Feels.

And Ivan, because of who and what he is, can hear the undercurrent to that sentiment as well. She doesn't dare say it when she's submitted like this, though, doesn't dare murmur that when he's with her, he belongs to her. And this is how she knows.

[Ivan] The truth is, no matter how many safeguards and checks they set up, they'll never cover all the bases. What if she's tied up, gagged, can't speak, can't move away. What if she's moving away, but she wants him to drag her back and put her under him and spank her, pound her, teach her to be a good little whore for him. What if --

It comes down to this: there's no perfect answer. No perfect solution. No single, master list of everything they could possibly do. Everything that could possibly come up in their play. And even if there is -- they wouldn't want to see it. That spoils the fun, you see. At the end of the day, they'll have to proceed exactly as they have all this time:

step by step, with Ivan always paying attention, always watchful on some level; always careful not to push her too far.

In the end, perhaps that's why he wants a safeword. She wonders, and she's wondered more than once, if he wants a one because he's really the one that sometimes needs to call a stop to it. It's understandable. Between the two of them, he's always been the one to put his foot down faster. To draw the line closer. But that's not it. When he needs to stop -- well. She's seen it. He stops. He gets away from her. Sometimes, when he's particularly overwhelmed, he all but curls into a ball and stiffarms her away from him.

What he needs is something altogether different. He wants -- in an odd way -- permission not to stop. He wants something that can assure him, if imperfectly, that it's okay. That he can go on. Get creative, as she says. Push the boundaries, and not worry that he's going to far, hurting her, pushing her past what she can handle. In a sense, what he wants is her sanction, if only by omission.


Whether or not Hilary realizes that, they lie together. And he nuzzles her, and she holds him inside her, and for a while they're almost whole.

She tells him --

well. Really, she tells him that she likes him like this. The way he is with her, which is different. The way he is with her after, which is different upon different. He listens. His hand caresses her breast again, his arm tightening gently around her.

"I know," he says softly. They really should move. They really should get cleaned up again. Showered and warm and fresh again, if only so he could bind her up again. Chain her to his bed like the owned, possessed thing she so wants to be, even if -- in a far more subdued, subsurface way -- what she likes, too, is that he belongs just as much to her.

"I want you to stay with me for a while," he says quietly. "We'll be discreet. We'll go elsewhere. You don't even have to spend every moment with me. But I want you to stay. It's been so long."

[Hilary] What Ivan needs is knowledge that if there is an abosolute limit, he will be made instantly aware if it is reached. That way, anything before that point is... okay. Is wanted. Is even needed, by a woman like this. He wants to know he can do what he likes with her without suddenly, unexpectedly being told no, without losing her, without losing the vital presence of her that he gains through dominance, through sadism, though tying her up and disciplining her.

Hilary tells him to be creative. That they can play even without sex. That she likes it when he tells her what to do. What she doesn't know is how much the ritualized training of a submissive is a part of relationships that consider this their foundation and style. What she does know is that sometimes, Ivan can bring her to this place with a word or a look, a tone of voice -- that he doesn't have to hit her. That he doesn't have to leave marks on her. That he can own her, in a way.

That she can have him, too, when they're like that. Like this.

Hilary smiles a little to herself. She melts against him, warm and content, warm and safe in a way she rarely is except when all other thoughts are driven from her mind. She knows -- because Ivan said so, because that in itself is all but a promise -- that later on tonight she'll get to sleep here and he'll chain her up and have her sleep naked and vulnerable so he can roll her over and fuck her whenever he wants. That makes her happy. That makes her feel peaceful. That makes the future less of a dark, yawning thing, endless and deathless, exhausting and terrifying to think about all at once. That makes her feel good.

So she smiles. So she listens to him and she doesn't move to get up because Ivan hasn't told her to yet, or unlocked her wrists and sent her off to go clean herself up or wait for him to wash her. And he tells her he wants her to stay.

"We can travel separately," she murmurs, as though telling a story with him. "Get rooms in different hotels within a walk of each other. Leave one room empty every night."

[Ivan] Behind her, unseen, Ivan's mouth tilts up at the corner at that last part. One room empty every night. Otherwise: traveling separately. Living separately. Different hotels. The picture of propriety -- and, because he's not a fool: of privacy. Private time to herself, when she can't stand to be close to him. Or to herself.

He shifts, pushing up on his elbow again, leaning over her to see her profile, her eyes if she turns. She feels peaceful. Safe and happy. He can tell; it's in her quietness, her little smiles that she gives herself. The way she curls back against him, tucks her arms close to her chest.

"You like the performing arts," he says. "Perhaps Vienna this time."

His hand slides from her breast now, follows the crest of her side -- down to her waist, up to rest over her hip. Very slowly, very carefully, he shifts his hips and slides out of her at last. It's been so long that they're sticky with each other's cum, tacky and filthy with it. Even so, he leans down and kisses her shoulder, nips at her skin; affectionate, even playful.

Then he reaches past her and undoes the manacles with a few sure flicks of his fingers. He tosses them, chain and all, rather negligently to the head of the bed -- but not off to the floor, discarded. His hand falls against her ass with a gentle slap.

"Go get in the shower," he says. "I'll join you in a few moments and clean you up."

[Hilary] "Vienna," repeats Hilary, musing and amused, turning her head and letting Ivan see that smile.

They would be such a picture of bliss -- normal, sane, loving, tender in the afterglow of lovemaking -- if it weren't for the fact that neither of them can mention love without doubting each other's capacity for it. If it weren't for the fact that the pink in her skin is fading finally. If it weren't for the chains. If it weren't for the discussion they just had about, essentially, safewords.

As he touches her, though, she relaxes again, lying on the bed like a cat being stroked from ears to tail. She closes her eyes and senses, long before his hand stills on her hip, that he's going to draw away from her. She sighs at the sensation when he does, letting out a soft, satisfied sort of noise between her lips. Rolling onto her back, she opens her eyes as Ivan comes up over her, and she holds her wrists out so he can remove her bindings. Her wrists are as pink as her ass was, but not rubbed raw.

The chains clank together as Ivan tosses them aside for later. Hilary rolls over again, and he spanks her. She laughs, the swat giving her a stinging, burning sensation -- her skin still so tender, so sensitive. She doesn't think she'll bruise. Maybe next time he'll be nicer to her. Go, he says, and she nods, rolling over again towards the edge of the bed. Sitting up, swinging her legs around, it's evident again just how much grace she has, and how much grace she lost while pregnant. It becomes evident just how different her body is right now, so much softness still left on her silhouette. Her hair swings across her back.

She rises to her feet, steady this time -- he's fucked her before hard enough to make her legs coltish and her steps shaky -- and pushes down that scrap of lace that he just yanked and nudged out of his way. Stepping out of her panties at last, she walks loosely, slowly towards the temple that is his bathroom, the door left open behind her. Her clothes left on the floor. Manacles and flogger left on the bed with her guardian.

The water turns on, from multiple showerheads, pattering against the tile.

As he has before, and as he will again, Ivan sends Hilary ahead of him with a few mild commands. Gives her some track to follow. Gives her some time alone. Gives her something to anticipate. She's not left alone very long: just long enough for him to walk downstairs and, in the absence of his servants, see to his own refreshments.

He brings a few bottles of clear cold water up. It's absurd; even in this, there's luxury -- not your average flimsy plastic Evian bottles but angular, hard-edged bottles that look like perfume vials. Or modern art. He sets them on Hilary's side of the bed, and then he sets a small snack beside it: some of the fruit and cheeses left over from dinner under a clear cover to prevent their drying out. He does this because he's going to keep her with him tonight. And he suspects that she won't unbind herself to go get a drink of water or a midnight snack. She might not even wake him if she was hungry.

After that, he strips the top layers of the bed: the bedspread, the decorative throw, the comforters. His bed is a temple, but it's not, surprisingly, a temple of sin. It looks clean and inviting, defined edges and crisp colors against a dark backdrop. There's greenery in the room, offsetting the sterility of the penthouse. All that careful art is marred when he tosses the soiled bedclothes outside, then walks down the hall to steal the coverings from one of the guest bedrooms.

The sheets underneath are still clean. He leaves those where they are, spreading the new comforter atop it.


Ivan's bathroom lies past his closet. The door was open. If Hilary looked, she could see rows and rows of clothes hung neatly from oak hangars. He certainly didn't hang them there. He doesn't make sure they get dry-cleaned or wet-cleaned as appropriate; he doesn't do his own laundry; he might not even have bought half the articles in there himself. Ivan has a full-time staff of ten or twelve, and in truth, it's not at all excessive. He lives so extravagantly, and so grandly, that it takes the full time and devotion and attention of a dozen people to keep up with him.

Past that closet is the bathroom she's been in before, though perhaps only once or twice. If that. Has she been here before? He can't remember, suddenly -- but nonetheless, it's there: vast and full of smooth tile and clear glass. A separate shower and an enormous tub. Through the glass shower walls she can see him coming into the bathroom. There's no way, no chance in hell, she could possibly hear him. He hasn't bothered dressing at all. He stands outside a moment, naked, looking in on her,

naked.

There's consideration in his eyes. And a sort of cool, hungry gleam.

A small rush of cool air as he steps in with her, but then the heat of his body overwhelms it. When the door closes, steam rises again. Multiple showerheads in here, and even if she waited for him to come wash her -- which he asked her to -- she can't help but get a little cleaner from the spray. Even so, he reaches for the shower puff, squeezes shower gel into it, and begins to wash her body.

It's not quite so tender, so careful, so wary, as the way he bathed her in her tub. But he still takes a long time, and he's still gentle and thorough, and when he's finished with her he washes himself. When they're both clean,

he turns her to face the wall. He raises her hands to the tile, showing her where to put them. He pulls her hips back a little, pushes gently on her lower back to make her arch her spine, raise her ass.


It's the gentlest he's taken her today, when he slides into her. It's a slow, lazy fuck, and while he moves inside her he touches her, rubs her back, massages her shoulders, kneads down the slender columns of muscle supporting her dancer's spine. Only at the end does he go a little faster. A little harder. Only then does he wrap his arm around her ribcage, around her hips. He comes kissing her neck, whispering in her ear, but she can't hear what he's saying; too much water, too much noise. When he's finished he stays inside her a while. Plays with her a while, his fingers stroking her labia, stroking her clit, and

if we're honest, this is also the cruelest he's been today. His lean arm locks around her and he holds her there, right there, playing with her regardless of whether she's come already or not, is going to come again or not, can stand to be touched or not; can stand to come again or not. He toys with her, fucks her with his hand, holds her half-caught between his body and the wall and tells her, low, to breathe, to relax, to let him, just let him do this for her, just feel it, just shhh, yes,

until he does, in fact, get her off again.


When he's done with her, he has to wash her again. And himself. Their fingertips are wrinkled when they finally step out of the shower, their bodies limp with heat and exertion. He brings her bag into the bathroom. He leaves her alone while she applies creams and lotions, brushes her teeth, uses the bathroom, takes mood-altering pills -- whatever it is she might do before bed. He uncaps a bottle of water and drinks a few gulps. He has some cheese. And he comes back to the bathroom as she's finishing up.

There Ivan brushes his teeth, catching her eye in the mirror, smiling at her through a mouthful of foam. His breath is minty when he wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her against his side as she's leaning the bathroom, kissing her quickly on the temple. "Go wait for me in bed," he says, and they could be a normal couple, getting ready for bed. Happy. Affectionate. Fond of each other; still learning each other's quirks.

Except when he follows her into the bedroom proper, turning the lights down as he comes, there are manacles on the covers. There's a chain attached to the bed. He climbs onto the bed after her and takes her wrists and rather tenderly, but absolutely unwaveringly, shackles her to his bed. And kisses her manacled wrists, lips against padded leather.

"Mine," he whispers, and smiles. A little later, he slides in behind her, his arm loose over her waist. He kisses her gently over her shoulder, and he sleeps with his brow pressed gently to her upper back.


Sometime in the night, he wakes her. There's no clock visible; there's no telling what time it is. His hands on her body are gentle but insistent. He rolls her on her back and slides between her legs and she hears him whispering to her, telling her to wrap her legs around him. She feels his hands on his wrists, holding her arms down against the bed even though she's already bound there.

He stays close to her, fucking her under the covers. It's the middle of the night. It's dark in his room, but the shades are up, and the lights of the gold coast come in the north windows. In that uncertain light she can see his expression, pulling with pleasure, oddly intense. It's an oddly urgent, ferocious fuck, albeit silent -- at least on his part -- his body driving into hers, pounding her solidly, firmly against the bed. He rides her to orgasm; he's lost track how many times he's done this today, but it's one more.

Afterward, he kisses her throat, kisses her breastbone, rolls off her and folds her legs gently to the side again, rolls her to the side again and sleeps the way he slept half the night already: wrapped loosely around her, his arm over her side.


And again, before the dawn. When the light over the lake is no longer black, but not yet blue -- in the grey pre-dawn, when the sky's color is just beginning to turn. He wakes her again, and this time he puts her atop him, the dimensions of the chain keeping her bent down to him nonetheless.

He's inside her almost before she's completely coherent this time. She's on top, but he's still the one doing most of the moving: holding her by the hips, fucking up into her. After a while it gets hot under the covers, and he folds them down. He starts spanking her then, slapping her ass with the palm of his hand again and again, interspersing the sharp little smacks with words like harder and roll your hips for me, baby and there you go. oh, that's my good little slut and i'm going to come. oh, god, i'm going to come, take that cock deep, take that cum. take it.

When he's finished, he lets her fall asleep like that, stretched over her, laying against him. She may or may not wake again when he very gently, very tenderly undoes those manacles at last and sets them aside, the flogger nestled amongst the links.

He keeps that toy she brought to share. He doesn't think she wants it back, anyway.


When Hilary wakes for good, it's midmorning. Ivan is still there. He's awake, and he's reading something on a cunning little android tablet, and when he sees she's awake he smiles at her like he has a right to sleep beside her. Like he has a right to wake beside her. Like she belongs there, and so does he.

[Ivan] There's a moment in there where she almost kisses him. A moment where she almost asks him to kiss her. There's a moment when she's looking at him, and he's looking at her, and his gentle, caressing hands are stilled for a second, stilled and tender, but

then she simply leans her brow to his, and he allows it. Returns it, that subdued little gesture of affection.

Soon enough he's telling her her crime and her punishment. Soon enough she's moaning softly for him again while he slowly, slowly nudges her panties down. She's so wet, and he can feel it. He catches her slick on the tips of his fingers and rubs it slowly, decadently over her clit, the lips of her cunt. Draws his hand back and tastes her, sucking her taste off his own fingers, considering her while she asks to come down.

The wait isn't entirely theatrical. It's not really theatrical at all. He's thinking about it. He's thinking about her, what she wants, what she really wants out of this, and in the end

he leans into her and kisses her, slow and soft, touching her so luxuriously all the while.

When it tapers off Ivan reaches up and unsnaps the chain from one manacle. Lets her arms down, bracing her, supporting her, his hands sliding up the length of those fine slender arms as though she were more fragile than she is. More glass than woman, and genuinely fractured now.

It doesn't stop him from binding her again, though. From wrapping that thin chain around her wrists once or twice, then around his fist. When he kisses her again, it's a little harder, a little more demanding. He eats at her mouth for a moment, and when that moment's passed, he takes her to the bed, turns her around and pushes her down, presses her down by the shoulder, raises her hips up. The flogger lashes across her ass again, just once, and then he tosses it down on the bed beside her. He grabs her by the hips and, nearly growling, pushes his mouth against her cunt.

[Hilary] Her wants and desires are, at the moment, so blasted and floating that reading what Hilary really wants and why is difficult. She probably couldn't explain to him what she wants if he asked and if she tried. So there's this:

he knows she wouldn't ask lightly, not when she's like this. Not when he has her bound and tied to his ceiling fan, not when she's descending into this space where she does not so much give up her will as twines it into his, braids her desires into his to give her something strong to hold onto. He notes that she asks, and he tries to understand why, because Hilary asking him for something at a time like this deserves notice. Deserves understanding, however thin.

Her panties are half down while he's thinking, her cunt so overstimulated that she almost can't react anymore when he touches her. She jerks slightly, whimpers a little, but she looks a little overcome. She puts her forehead on him while he licks her off his hands, unable to even watch.

A little later he comes to some conclusion, some decision, and kisses her. She loves that kiss, but can't say it to him. She kisses him slowly in return, lazily, almost sleepily. Then he unlocks her arm. She sinks into his arms almost immediately, the chain rattling as it leaves the spot on the fan where it's tied, her hands going to his biceps to try and keep her balance. Hilary's stamina is obviously less right now, even after two weeks of rest. There are times when her joints still seem out of place. Her mouth falls on him somewhere, leaves a brushing kiss, a searching, rooting sort of graze

that it's best not to notice too much right now.

She is, indeed, more glass than woman right now, or more child. She's easily led, watching him quietly while he wraps the chain around her wrists, binds it up in his fist. That sight, more than anything, makes her breathing shudder a bit, makes her eyes lift to find his. She looks, briefly, anticipatory, expectant

and then he yanks her closer and kisses her, harder, bitingly. She moans, squirming, trying to rub herself against his hands or thigh or cock all over again. So quickly, so easily. So fucking tenderly she comes right back to this, over and over again. Begging him for it, opening her body to him, giving herself over.

The next thing she knows she's facedown against the bed, her heeled feet on the floor, her ass up in the air. She turns her face to the side, cheek against the bedspread, and lets out the softest, sweetest little moan of expectation. She thinks he's going to fuck her now. She thinks he might finally start using that flogger on her now.

Ivan can see her ass and thighs all pink from the lash, her pussy swollen and wet from stimulation. Can hear her let out a loud, helpless moan when he spanks her with the flogger again. Can hear her whimper, almost sob, wracked with disappointed pleading when he starts to eat her out.

[Ivan] Ivan notices, of course. He notices that Hilary responds not with sharp fervor, twisting want, but with disappointment. Paradoxically, when he's like this -- when he's simply taking her, taking what he wants, bending her to his will, bending her literally over the bed to pound and possess and rail and fuck -- this is also when he's the most attuned. The most careful, and caring. The most giving.

These days, anyway. Now that he's figured it out. Now that he's grown to discover, to learn, and to understand what an entire subculture of human sexuality has discovered, learned and understood before him.

So he stops. But not immediately. Because this is what he wants, and in some complex way what she wants is to give him what he wants, and so he stays on her, grabs her harder by the hips when she makes that pleading noise, smacks her with his hand to shut her up because he's still eating her out, going at her cunt with singleminded, ferocious fervor. He grinds his face into her pussy. He dips lower, finds her clit, tongues it, sucks on it, uses her as much with his mouth as he will with his cock. When he's done with her, rising up to stand on his kneels behind her, his face is wet. He slaps her ass again as though to cap off the whole experience; as though to draw a line for himself:

there. done.

"Stay where you are," he tells her. The second time today.

He leaves the bed then. Stands up and pushes his boxer briefs down. Steps out of it with one foot, lifts it with the other, tosses it aside. When the bed dips again with his weight, he moves in right behind her, holds his cock so it's flush against his abdomen, caught between his body and hers, gliding along the slick wet slit of her cunt. He fucks her like that, thrusts against her with long smooth pistons of his hips like he's fucking her, like he's already inside her, teases her like that, but only for a while. Just long enough to slick his cock up. Just long enough to get himself messy with her wetness, messy all over again.

Hilary can feel her lover, this young, pretty, sleek thing whose golden exterior hides such a brutally dominant core, getting ready to fuck her. She can feel him pressing the head of his cock down, tracing down to her pussy, pressing against the opening of her cunt. He's fucked her once already today. Wedged her against a wall and pounded her. He wasn't terribly careful that first time, didn't give her much time to adjust to him. Compared to this, though, that was gentle. This time

he shoves his cock into her the moment he's found her cunt. One hard thrust, on the edge of vicious, carried forward with the full momentum of his body. He leans over her as he fills her up. Plants his hands on either side of her, balances himself on knees and on fists, starts pounding her just like that. Hard enough to slap their bodies together. Hard enough to push the slick out of her tight cunt, send it slipping down her inner thighs, over his balls, everywhere.

His breathing is harshly audible. He starts muttering at her between panting inhales, a string of filth and curses, talking about her tight cunt, talking about her hot pussy, calling her his, laying claim to her body, her cunt, telling her that cunt is his to fuck now, his to use just like this; she's his to rail like this whenever he wants, however he wants, because that's what you want, isn't it, she's his, his, all his, isn't she, say it. He doesn't let her say it. The moment she tries, if she tries, he fucks her that much harder, a vicious thrust that interrupts whatever word might be tumbling off her tongue.

And his has left the bedsheets. Grips the back of her neck now, heavy, forcing her down. He holds her like that, holds her down for the fucking he's giving her while he, put bluntly, uses her like a whore.

[Hilary] There are times when Ivan can look so deeply into Hilary that he catches shadows of feelings and thoughts she doesn't even know are there, connecting threads that keep the pieces of her mind from floating ever further away from each other. Sometimes that's when he's inside of her. Or when he's holding himself back from fucking her, when he's holding her down and she's shaking, crying, coming all at once.

Right now Ivan can't even see that deeply into Hilary, isn't even looking. But he knows what she wants. He knows how she is now. He knows there are other signs, stronger signals, when something is truly wrong. He knows that in the end, what she wants isn't for him to give her whatever she could ask for or thinks she might want in the moment. He knows how happy it makes her -- or how aroused, as though happiness isn't even a real option -- when he uses her.

A sharp hand comes flying across her ass at the noise she makes. Hilary yelps and likely he smacks her again to make her be quiet, and then she's squirming and burying her moans in the bedspread, biting back whimpers while he licks her pussy. Tongues her clit and makes her cunt clench on nothing in response. She starts to buck a little on the bed, as though trying to fuck the mattress.

Ivan spanks her again, drawing his face away from her pussy. Tells her to stay. And, biting her lip, Hilary nods against the mattress and tries not to move.

A sigh leaves her when he comes back. When she feels his heat and the movement of the bed. Her hands are still locked together above her head, and she has little control over how she moves or not, but she pushes against his chest with her back, works herself closer to him as best she can. It passes, in this strange blend of brutality and comfort, for an embrace.

Silently, selfishly, Ivan rubs himself against her. Uses her almost as though this is just a practicality, a chore: slicks himself up against her cunt so that he can fuck her, so that she'll stop squirming already, or so he can get himself off inside of her and roll over, move on with his life, at least until he gets hard again and wants something tight and willing to fuck.

Or at least that's how it feels, to Hilary. And feeling that, she whimpers, opening her legs a little wider, welcoming him in, inviting him to please, please give it to her. Not that she needs to; he's going to use that pussy regardless.

And then he does. She grips the sheets suddenly in her manacled hands and cries out when he slams into her, instantly starts pounding her. She holds on, moaning, and all the while he's starting to swear at her. Whore, he calls her, slut. Mine, most of all, over and over again. He wants her to tell him that she's his, and she tries, but it lands in a scream. Soon even that's falling away, his hand on her neck pushing her down, fucking her in a way any sane woman would just try to survive, just try to get through.

Hilary starts to come again.

[Ivan] Maybe this is why he sent his staff away. So they wouldn't hear, even passingly, even through the thick walls and frosted-glass door, what Ivan was doing to his lover in here. His soon-to-be-divorced, recently-bastard-carrying, utterly-socially-unacceptable lover. Wouldn't hear her crying out on the razor's edge between pleasure and pain and insanity; wouldn't hear the things he snarls at her while he drives her up against that edge, presses her there, splits her asunder there.

Wouldn't hear her crying, period in the aftermath. Wouldn't wonder, wouldn't balk, wouldn't look at him strangely the next day,

not that they'd dare, anyway.

So maybe that's not it. Maybe it has something more to do with privacy, with her privacy and her comfort, a complete lack of necessity for her to keep up any sort of front at all, even something so flimsy as needing to simply ignore the wait staff. Maybe --

well. It doesn't matter. The servants aren't here. They are, and they're doing things that even his servants, accustomed to his excesses as they are, might find to be a little ...

much.


Hilary's starting to come again. Ivan's got her pinned down, held down by the back of the neck, pushed into the bedspread and the comforters and the mattress. She's bound. She's not as strong as he is, even though he's not particularly strong at all, and even if she were -- it wouldn't do her any good, like this. All she can do right now is take it, endure, get through it, survive. At least, that's what any other woman would do.

Hilary

is starting to come again.

And feeling it, or hearing it in the pitch of her voice, Ivan shifts his grip to her shoulder. Leans almost all his weight on her for a moment, reaching back to smack her ass again, hard, to slap her and smack her and to clamp his hand down between her legs as though to feel it better, every slide of his cock, every time he slams so hard into her that the sound she makes hitches.

And all the while he's snarling, panting at her, asking her if she's going to come again, is she going to come again, is she, she is, isn't she, the filthy little whore, she's going to come on his cock while he's railing her like she's his dirty fucking cockslut, making her take that cock because that's what she wants, isn't it, she wants to get stuffed full of hard cock and fucked senseless because

you're my little whore, my fucktoy, my slut, and you love it when i use your cunt,

your sweet, tight, cockhungry little cunt,

mine.


No stopping, no slowing, even when she comes. If anything he pushes her harder, farther. Fondles her clit, touches her -- play is too gentle a word, here. He fucks her: that's the only word for it, fucks her with his hand while he's fucking her with his cock, pounds into her while he holds her in place by his hand on her shoulder, his hand between her legs; wrings every last pleasure out of her and then

just keeps going. Bearing her down to the mattress now, down until his forearms bracket her slender torso, until his chest is all but pressed to her back, until she can feel him panting for breath against her back, exhaling that breath over her shoulder, filling her so full, so deep, with every unflagging stroke. He's still muttering at her, but it's snatches and gasps of words now, harsh whispers, nothing but

yes, that's it, yes, take it

and

take it, take it for me, take that cock, just fucking take it

while he makes her do exactly that. Makes her: caught under his body, pounded in place by every thrust, and even that doesn't seem to be enough. His hand finds her wrists. Clamps over them. Holds her pinned by that point, nailed down between his cock and his grip. The closer he gets to his own orgasm, the harder he rails her. The closer he gets, the harder he grips her wrists, the more incoherent his words, the more unrestrained the harsh, panting groans he can't even seem to hold back now.

[Hilary] They'd never dare look at him strangely. But those young maids of his -- one has to wonder if he just has them fired when they get above twenty-five, or if Max makes sure they get mated off to some other kinfolk or something by then -- would struggle. Those maids he may or may not have fucked, and how can he really be expected to remember, honestly? Those maids who would look at him with jolts of fear or startlement, nerves clenching their guts whenever he called them up to his bedroom because

what might they see

and what might he ask them to do.

Maids who would not meet his eyes regularly but would scarcely even want to look at his shoes. Maids that would be fired promptly sooner or later by Dmitri or Max or whichever older, more seasoned servant realized they were going to make their master displeased. They wouldn't be able to handle this. Christ only knows what will become of that poor girl he took with him to Russia to drop off his bastard. She certainly can't be trusted to stay with Anton; she might let slip one day that his life as he knows it is a lie. That his mother is alive somewhere.

In any case: they're alone. No one to hear and be terrified of Ivan, no one to hear and judge Hilary, no one to save either of them from what they're doing to each other. And no one would. He's a purely bred, insanely wealthy Ragabash of House Crescent Moon. She's purebred enough to be valuable -- or to have been valuable at one point. She's got enough money to keep herself solvent for long enough to figure out how to keep herself solvent til the bitter end. She's been born to one house, married into two others, and may very well be considered an adoptee of a fourth now that she has no guardian but Ivan. They are so far above his servants it's not even funny. Who would dare judge them?

They don't even judge themselves very much. Not even when they abandon their own child.


She comes against his bed now, moaning wildly, clutching at the blankets and squirming her hips in circles against his lap, bouncing herself between his cock and the edge of the bed, riding out this sweet, bright little orgasm like it's something far gentler than it is. When he grabs her, slaps her ass again, works her clit like a toy, she starts to scream. It stops being cute and sweet and bright. It stops being little. She starts shrieking, hardly even able to hear him, discern his words.

The actual words, their order, don't matter as much. She moans, wetness slicking out of her and all over him, unable to answer him with anything but orgasm, sweat, screams.

The only word that does matter is mine. To that, she moans.


There's no pause, no hitch, no moment when Ivan lets her have that orgasm. It comes anyway, and rolls out underneath him, as though suddenly she's far, far away, untouchable, unreachable,

til it starts to let her back down and he's right there again, hammering at her cunt, holding her down and sweating over her, swearing over her, fucking her like his whore. Ivan's closer now and her cunt is holding him as tightly as her hands hold the bedsheets. Her hair is all askew now, her fair profile flushed with color against his covers, her shoulder and neck pink where he grabbed her, and her body taking his cock, holding him the only way she can, her moans now less of a ramping up towards her own peak

but an urging towards his, a pleading,

"Come in me. Come in me, come in me, come in me," she's starting to moan, begging him now, gasping, as though desperate, as though if he doesn't she'll fall, she'll fade, she'll die.

[Ivan] In the beginning, what they did to each other, they did for themselves. Hilary pushed Ivan from the very start, tested his limits, pushed his buttons, waited and saw just how far he would go. Took him to that edge and pushed him right over it so he would give her what she wanted from him.

And when he did that, when he finally tipped over into some dark abyss he never even knew existed in him, he gave her what she wanted. But not because she wanted it. Because he wanted to hurt her by then. Punish her. Make her pay, make her suffer, make her remember not to fuck with him like that because

how dare she.

And even he recognized there was something dangerous and resentful and abusive in that. Hateful. And he hated it, and he begged her please, please, don't ask him to go that far again --

and maybe that's the first link that was forged between them. The first real connection.

Or maybe it was when, after he took her that far, took himself that far, he looked around at the shattered pieces of themselves and what they were and what their world was. Looked at them, and tried to put them together again. Held her in the shower. Cared for her in a way that he's only very rarely able to bring himself to care for anyone.

As though shattered her into fragments shattered some armored vault in himself, too. As though allowing her to be human for a little while

did the same for him.


What they do to each other now is perhaps no less vicious, no less brutal, than what they did at the beginning. But at least there's this: to some degree, they do it for each other now. He doesn't pound her like this because he hates her. He doesn't rail her, wreck her, leave her a dazed, moaning, whimpering mess because he wants to degrade her or punish her. He does it because she wants him to,

and she wants him to because -- at least in part -- because he wants to. She's not much of a stereotypical cougar; she hasn't taken him firmly in hand and guided him to adulthood. He's hardly the blushing virgin. But in this, at least, she showed him something new he didn't know before. Called out to something in him, something dark and primal and a little bit twisted, and made him feel it. Made him respond.


So now,

she's laid out beneath him, receiving him, her slender hands clutching his sheets, her sleek body clutching his cock. He fucks her so hard, and she just takes it. She moans for him: come in me, come in me, come in me, as though this were a necessity. Like air, like light. It's as much the tone as the words that tips him over. That makes him bow to her, his brow to the crest of her shoulder, his eyes closing, his own moans taking on an edge of desperation.

Both his hands cover her wrists when he comes. He grips her hands in his, his fingers locked over her wrists, the backs of her hands, her knuckles; stretched over her like that, pressed against her and into her, she can feel every muscle in his body straining to bring him deep into her, deeper. She can feel him coming into her, clenching taut for an instant, making a sound like he might just die after this

before he starts hammering her, pounding his cum into her, slamming into her over and over and over until everything he is may as well be burning up, burning to ash, burning itself to a pure white ash as silent as snow.


His mind is empty when he finally gentles. Goes slower and slower, moaning on every thrust, moaning every time he slides so deep into her. Stops, eventually, buried inside her. Originally he'd meant to come in her and leave her. Flip her over. Make her suck his cock clean before he fucked her again. Something like that --

but he can't bear to move right now. He can't bear to part from her, right now.

His hand follows her arm down to her shoulder, half caught beneath his chest. He kneads the muscle there absently, thoughtlessly, massaging her as though even now -- especially now -- he's driven to

take care of her somehow. The only way he really knows how.

[Hilary] Strangely, Hilary was a bit submissive even in the beginning. She didn't yet know what he wanted her to be. She didn't yet know if he would reject her wholeheartedly if she indicated that she'd rather get on her knees and suck his cock while he pulled her hair than anything else. She made overtures -- she could tell he bristled at being told what to do, watched like he was the whore. She could tell he sparked and ignited when she beckoned him over and blew him, slow and luxurious and wanton. She could tell he turned half-animal when she took hold of his cock and told him that he was Garou and she was on the Pill so he could just fill her up with his

hot,

sticky cum. And when he got on top of her, when he stopped letting her lead him around by the dick, when he threw her on that hotel bed -- she knew he had it in him, too. And she reveled. She rejoiced. She begged. It was all for him, and in that way it was all for her. Every act, every persona, every word. She loved discovering it in him while her hand stroked his cock. She loved it.

And she loves this:


When Ivan collapses like he does, folds in on himself, cannot restrain himself any longer, cannot stop himself. When, for these brief shattering seconds he's the one submitting and surrended, when he's given over completely. When he's made her his, and when, for a little while, he's hers. She doesn't ever realize she wants him to be hers until these incandescent moments when he is. Ivan holds her, lost in her, coming into her, needing her like he never needs her.

For a very small period of time, every time they do this, they can be together. Human, and strangely whole. The tragedy is what it takes to get them there. The tragedy is that they can't carry it on past these moments. But that they can get there at all, being what they are, is something of a small miracle.

And Hilary loves it.


Chained up, bent over the bed, her ankles aching in her shoes and her underwear stretched to the point of breaking between her calves, her wrists hugged tight by those gently padded manacles, Hilary squeezes Ivan's cock tenderly inside of herself. She doesn't try to ride out yet another orgasm on him while he's coming down. She feels him touch her shoulder and massage it, caress her like that, and she closes her eyes.

Still panting, still gasping, she whispers: "I think I might love you, too."

[Ivan] The conversation Hilary's finally answering is weeks old. When he told her that, they were in this very room. She was resting after her flight, from south to north, the heart of mexico back to chicago. She was enormously pregnant; she hated to be seen, hated herself, hated her body, hated the thing inside her, and he told her he thought he might be in love with her.

Her eyes were so black when they met his. Her voice so soft. But how would you know?

She acknowledges her own uncertainty more than even he did. She thinks. Might. Love you.

He's collapsed atop her, his chest to her back. He's still so deep inside her. They're such messes, sweating and wrecked again. They're still panting for breath, her slighter frame straining for air under his. Not that he's particularly huge. Hilary's lover -- her favorite lover, if we're honest about it, because even now he's not sure he's her only one

and wouldn't ask now, not after last time.

Hilary's favorite lover, then: he's not nearly so large and husky as her soon-to-be-ex-husband. He's a lean, sleek thing, and right now he has none of his usual grace, none of his usual composure, none of his usual poise. He's sprawled over her like it takes all his strength to breathe. To touch her like this, gently, soothingly. When she squeezes him inside her, tenderly, he moans aloud against the back of her neck, overcome.

There's a silence after she tells him what she does. His hand keeps stroking her arm, rubbing her shoulder. Eventually he stirs. He rolls off of her, onto his side; brings her with him. Slowly, slowly, staying inside her. His breathing changes a little, then evens out again. He wraps his arm around her. The last time he did this, her abdomen was an entirely foreign thing. She feels a little more like the way he remembers now, but he can't make the comparison in his mind. That was so long ago. He barely knows her at all.

"I suppose you wouldn't know, either," he murmurs. He kisses her shoulder, and holds her a little tighter.

[Hilary] It's a fair question that she asked back then, half-asleep and feeling his fingertips warm against her cheek, brushing a lock of hair back. Tonight it isn't wavy like it was then. She'll likely get it cut. Won't wear it so freely anymore, so lazily. Her body changes, her Look changes, she'll get rid of the clothes. The only reminder will be that apartment and the place they sat on the couch while they stared at her sleeping son, the bed where they cradled him for a few hours. Other than that, it will be as though it never happened.

Lying facedown, arms chained together and lover firmly inside of her, Hilary continues catching her breath. Ivan is silent for awhile, and she isn't really expecting -- or needing -- an answer. She tells him this because she's on the verge of tears, or crying already, and she's clinging to her humanity and wondering how much farther he could push her, if maybe it would last longer if he were more cruel, more brutal. He really is, in her mind, so very gentle with her sometimes.

Favorite lover, all the same.

Slowly they roll, and Ivan is holding her, panting, and Hilary is curling against his chest, her own moving still-rapidly with her breathing. She closes her eyes again, her hair stuck to her damp cheek, and she tucks her chained arms closer to her body. Those chrome heels of hers gently bump against his feet, and she whispers, "Sorry," as though that could hurt him.

And a little while later he can breathe again, think again, and he murmurs to her, kisses her shoulder. She stirs a bit and almost turns her head, eyes opening. "I might," she half-argues, and lays her head down again, too worn out to lift it.

[Ivan] Ivan has no real answer for that. Nothing he can say for or against; no way he can prove it either way. He doesn't want to prove it either. Each path is fraught with its own dangers.

So he's silent now. His hand moves idly over her body, thumb sweeping slowly across her stomach. To and fro. To and fro. After a while, his hand moves downward. When he touches her again, it's gentle; it's not meant to arouse. Something closer to soothe, perhaps, as though this slow, lazy fondling is the sexual equivalent of the way he touches her in the shower after one of their play-sessions. And he kisses the back of her neck again, softly.

"Let's get cleaned up," he says after a time, when his fingers have stilled again. "I want you to come to bed naked tonight," he adds, quieter; thoughtful, almost, "so I can have you whenever I want."

[Hilary] When Ivan holds out his hand, Hilary hesitates. She doesn't walk to him right then, uncertain of what he's doing, what it means. Going to him and handing it over feels too much like having the very control over all this that she dreads -- that, when he offered, she refused because she knew she'd hurt him. Somewhere in those broken fragments that make up what she has left of a psyche she feels awkward having even bought it herself, brought it to him like this.

Once, having her laid out on a bed in Trump Tower, he told her to open her legs and she whispered, like a secret so she could forget she was the one who said, she told him: you do it. The neverending push and pull between them includes the way they are in the bedroom, where her need to give up control so utterly is countered by the psychological shattering that will happen to him if he never gets relief from the pressure of bearing that burden every time, every day. How far he'll let himself go. How violent he'll become. What she wants, and how to tell when she doesn't want it anymore, and whether or not he notices in time to stop himself before he snaps her in half.

Thinking, perhaps, of how he literally pulled away from her and went to the other side of the room, all but crumpling against the wall and begging her please don't ask me to hurt you again,

Hilary takes a step, and then another, and ends up standing in front of him. Perhaps it defeats the purpose a little for her. She doesn't want to give; she wants him to take. But there's some other purpose on the horizon of her thoughts, one she doesn't quite understand entirely, and perhaps it serves that purpose, instead.

She doesn't put the flog in his hands, though. When Ivan first wraps his hand around the grip, it's to take it from her where it's offered, the way he's taken her body so many times when she's been laid out for him. Her hands go to her sides while he experiments with it. There's a soft slap-crack of the suede hitting his thigh, the straps hitting each other as well as his skin, and Hilary's eyes spark a little again at the sound of it,

as though it's familiar.

The way he pulls her to his body makes her eyes sharpen with ache; the way he uses the flogger itself to control her. Her hands go to his chest, and they stay there, very light, as her eyes close. Ivan touches her. Hilary moves her arms obediently, smoothly, when he takes off her bra, and he can see her black eyelashes but not her eyes, he can see her breathing quicken but not her gaze. He can see her eyebrows tug together when he teases her nipples almost to the point of pain, hardens them in his fingertips, and he can see her thighs tighten against one another as though to put some kind of stimulation against her poor, neglected clit.

A long while he plays with her breasts, and after a long while she tries to lean forward and kiss him. There's a stiff moment where it seems he considers not allowing her that, before Ivan lets her mouth touch his. It isn't a deep kiss, but a soft one, and it doesn't last long. When it ends, Hilary's eyes finally open again, and Ivan lowers his head to her breasts. Her head tips back -- and she feels the handle of the flogger against her neck, and shudders.


When he rises she meets his eyes because she knows now he wants her to, and watches him,

and stays where she is, her skin cooling slightly where the flogger had warmed to it and warmed it. She doesn't move. Not when he's gone. Not when he comes back. Only when he holds out the manacles and demands her wrist,

and then she gives it to him.

[Ivan] Long before she writhes her legs together like that, Ivan knows where she wants to be touched, and how. He doesn't, though. His hand never strays far below her waist. He leaves her nipples hard and wet, cooling in the conditioned air of the room. She doesn't touch herself while he's gone. She moves only when he tells her to,

exactly as he expected.

The first manacle goes around her wrist with smooth efficiency: snug, though not quite cutting off circulation. He buckles her in, tests it with a tug on the cord, deliberately hard -- hard enough to send her forward a step, where his mouth is there to catch hers, kissing her harder than that kiss while he was undressing her, playing with her tits. Hard enough to push her head back, bare her neck to him. He sucks on her neck then, his mouth leaving faint red suction-welts on her pale skin. It's an effort to break off to buckle that second manacle around her wrist. His chest rises and falls at a quicker pace now, smooth skin over smooth muscling.

Ivan doesn't exactly outfit his residences with bondage fixtures. Last time, he chained her to a closet door. This time -- after a moment's pause -- he tosses the chain over the ceiling fan, looping it twice, tightly, around the thin spoke of a blade. The ends affix to the manacles. Even in heels, her arms are held over her head; her body is arched, taut, lovely.

He touches her then. Lightly, in long, gentle strokes. Breast to navel. Shoulderblade to ass. First with his fingertips. Then the flat of his hand. Then the supple leather thongs of the flogger, sweeping delicately over her body, catching briefly on a nipple; over her shoulder. Then both: standing at her side, caressing her back with the flogger, her front with his free hand. Palming her breasts, stroking her ass. Sliding his hand down her belly and into her panties. Spreading his fingers along her labia; never quite touching her clit, her cunt.

The first time he hits her,

it comes out of nowhere. It isn't hard. It's lighter than that one experimental lash he gave himself. There's no warning and no prelude, though. The straps flash across her ass and the backs of her thighs, leaving a transient, warm sting. On the tail of it, his hand finally finds her clit. He starts to finger her, slowly, very slowly, watching her all the while.

[Hilary] They've known each other only a short time. Months spent apart with a handful of letters and a couple of visits doesn't quite count. They don't know each other very well, though, except when they're like this.

Like this, Ivan knows -- if not what she wants -- how she'll behave. He knows that when he tells her to stay that he's not going to walk back in the room and find her on the bed pleasuring herself, hand down her panties and face pressed to the bedspread, moaning as she wriggles around on his bed. He knows she's going to do what he says. Exactly as he says. He knows that when she does disobey him, it will be --

well. We haven't gotten there yet.


Hilary watches him bind her first wrist and she smiles, but that smile gets knocked off her face when he yanks her forward, nearly pulling her off her heels, and kisses her like that. She moans, her still-free hand covering his pectoral, smoothing over his skin. He opens her up then, sucks on her neck like he wants to bite it, and she's pressed half-naked against him, rubbing herself against him -- when he pulls away, breathing harder, so he can bind her other wrist.

At first she thinks he's going to take her over to the bed and chain her there someplace, or maybe to the bathroom, anywhere he can tie her up, but then -- the ceiling fan. She lets out a sharp breath of a laugh, but her arms are drawn up and she's stretching out, feet on the floor but

Hilary loses track of what the rest of her body is doing then. She feels her cunt. She feels her clit throbbing, wetness leaving her pussy, feels a hot, firm ache between her legs. Another woman would tell him she wants him, say please, say anything before that feeling goes away from boredom or frustration. Tell him to give her that hard cock, arousing herself with the very words out of her mouth. Hilary is quiet.

Ivan will give her his cock when he's damn well ready. He'll give her his cock when and only if she's a good girl. So she says nothing. Begs for nothing.

So far.

Hilary bites her lip when he gives her the flogger, but that doesn't mean she's passive when he's touching her with his hands. She shivers faintly at that, closing her eyes to feel it, but it's when he touches her with the suede that she starts to tremble, starts to bite down on sounds she doesn't want to release yet. A moan is caught when it touches her nipple. She moves her body into his palms, trying to rub her tit against his fingers, trying to lift her ass as though begging for the spanking that hasn't yet come.

Til he puts his hand in her panties and she all but shakes apart. Til he slaps the flogger against her ass and makes her thighs clench together around his hand again, makes her gasp -- but not moan. She twists her hips, and she keeps her eyes closed as though to ward off any hint of what's coming. She waits for something else. For his hand to move, for him to hit her again. Both. For him to take his hands away and leave her there wanting, confused, begging him to come back. Anything.

The first time Ivan touches her clit, Hilary cries out. She fucks his finger with abandon then, rides his finger like it's his cock between her legs, already trying to work herself up to orgasm. To something.

"More," she says, pleading. "Please, more."

[Ivan] More. It's always more with her, more and please and yes, Ivan. He could be pressing against her side, his bare chest to her bare side, but he's not. He's holding himself literally at arm's length -- his forearm against her abdomen where another woman would be scarred, but where she's healed clean; his hand between her thighs, fondling her, fucking her.

He gives her more. He plays with her rather expertly, if one is honest. God knows how many other women he's fingered to orgasm just like this,

though not quite just like this. She's not like them. He's not like he is when he's with anyone else, anyone but her, and there's a fierceness in his concentration, in the way he focuses on the side of her face, the way her tits shiver when she trembles, the way her thighs want to twist together

only he stops her, laying the flogger firmly between her legs, pushing them apart again. "Open," he tells her silkily, "like the cock-hungry little slut you are."

More, she begged. And he knows that she only partly means his hand, her clit. Mostly, she means the leather, her ass. After he's pushed her legs apart again, her heeled feet sliding to shoulderwidth, wider, he resumes stroking her with the suede straps. They're so soft like this, soft and napped on one side, smooth on the other. Very supple, very fine; the sort of thing expensive spring jackets are made of. That softness is deceptive, though. A more flexible, pliant lash bites harder than a stiff one.

He's sliding his fingers inside her now, one and then another and then a third, grinding the palm of his hand against her clit, dipping his fingers into her and making a sound, low, at what he feels there. "There's my dirty little whore," he murmurs,

and that's when he lays down the second lash, harder than the first. Holding her with his hand against her cunt, his fingers inside her. Holding her with his eyes on her face, on the sway of her hair and the partin of her lips.

Softly, softly, "There's my sweet little cunt."

[Hilary] More, please,

harder

harder

-- always more, always harder, but she's always so polite, at least. So pleading. And there's something to be said for restraint. For making her wait. See how she closes her eyes herself, without Ivan ever producing or suggesting a blindfold. See how he came to this on his own, stretching her out like this. How much she likes being unable to touch him back, even when she might want to. How many cards he holds: to let her free or not. To pleasure her or not. To arouse her with his words or not. To strike her or not.

And he can play them or shuffle them back into the deck at his leisure. And the very fact that he has this control, this luxury of withholding or giving, is itself a great part of what makes Hilary let go, let him in,

and often, come like wildfire.


Before she can work herself up very much at all, he uses that soft, sinister toy she brought in her overnight bag -- had in her overnight bag when they argued about his accounts, had in the bag he carried while they struggled with every single moment from her bathtub to his windows -- to spread her legs and keep them open. She whimpers once, truncates it, shuddering at that one word, that order: Open.

But he knows that her pleading is for more than his hand, getting slick and wet from her cunt now. Moreover, and even mostly: hit me again. She was so scared he wouldn't want to, that he'd balk, that he'd refuse. She would have accepted it. Put the flogger away and not looked at it again, if he didn't want to play with her like that. But she would have been disappointed. Interestingly, she wouldn't have left him. Wouldn't have told him that she didn't want to see him anymore. And for the two of them, who scarcely tolerate being told 'no' from anyone, that's something.

Her balance is more difficult now. She relies more on the chain, the ceiling fan that will not hold the weight it needs to in order to be used as a bondage hook, but they can deal with hardware another time. Truth be told, while he went to get manacles, she started fantasizing about what else Ivan might be willing to do to her. What other toys, what games, and she wanted to cry from relief.

But by then he was back in the room, and she didn't explore that feeling, didn't ask herself why that emotion, why that reaction.

There's no restraint right now, no withholding: he fucks her with his hand, calls her slut, calls her whore, dirty, murmurs about her sweet cunt, and she whimpers again, her eyes shut so tight, so tight. Slaps her again with the flogger, harder now, enough to leave her skin pink. She jumps slightly, her cunt clenching on his fingers.

This time, she manages not to say anything.

[Ivan] It means something that even if he'd balked, she wouldn't have left him. It means something that the first thing he asked when she produced this new toy was is this what you want?

It means something that the wariness, the uncertainty on her face as she waited for his response made him ache a little inside. It means something that instead of going to her, instead of embracing her and soothing her like she were something weak and small and injured, he took the flogger in hand and bound her wrists without her even having to ask, and strung her up like a possession, like a work of art, and started to give her

what they both want.

She's whimpering now. She was trying to hold that back earlier. She's not screaming yet, not shrieking, but perhaps that comes later. He's drawing his fingers out of her again, quite wet now, rubbing her slick into her as he returns to her clit. The way he plays with her now has such undertones of domination. He fondles her the way a man might stroke a pet, or play with some small, manual toy. He fondles her like her pleasure is only a mild side effect, and not the purpose of this entire production. He fondles her like he has a right to this

and the terrifying thing is, perhaps he does now. She doesn't belong to Dion anymore. She belongs, as much as any Fang kinswoman ever could, to herself. And she gives herself over to him so completely.

He comes one step closer. His arm across her torso, his talented, deft fingers stroking her, rubbing her, rolling her, playing. He kisses her arm, low on her slender tricep. His body is against hers, his feet straddling her leg, his cock hard and hot against her hip beneath his boxerbriefs, and all this time he's touching her like that, fucking her with his hand, stroking the soft leather of the flogger up and down the inside of her thigh

until some internal clock runs up, or some hidden switch is tripped, and he sees fit to hit her again. Lightly this time. Lightly, but again, so quickly after. And again. Over and over, grazing, almost lazy stings against her fine skin that build one atop the other while his fingers between her thighs rub her harder, ramp her up, edge her rather mercilessly toward some precipice he knows is there.

Some part of his mind wonders, perversely, what Espiridion would think to see her like this. Some part of his mind wonders who taught her this in the first place. His teeth catch gently at the underside of her arm. He's fucking her so methodically, so ruinously with his hand now, striking her again and again with the toy she's brought to share, and despite all that,

despite that he's quite frankly trying to bring her off just like that, bound and stretched in the middle of his bedroom,

he murmurs to her, "Don't come."

[Hilary] There's no screaming yet because he isn't hurting her yet, he hasn't teased her to that point yet, he isn't fucking her to orgasm yet. Hilary whimpers and whines and bites all of it back, closes her lips and tries to stay quiet as though they aren't flying above the entire city in the rain, unheard and alone. He's her sole guardian now; what he does with her is his business, particularly because Hilary is so very willing. If he likes, Ivan can make her scream. If he wants to, he can even go so far as to hurt her, and he knows she'll like it. Ask him for more.

But now he's giving her more, more, slipping his soaking fingers out of her cunt and rubbing her, kissing her arm, keeping his distance til he decides to let her feel his hardness through his underwear. Not anywhere that will give her great pleasure, of course: just her thigh. Just a little bit. She shivers at the suede sliding against her skin, and he can feel more trickles of wetness leave her body and slick his fingers even further.

Hilary yelps when he hits her that first time, but when he just. keeps. going. she starts to gasp, panting, like he's not striking her with a flogger but giving her his cock, ramping up his thrusts to bring her off. She squirms down on his hand, not aware in the slightest of Ivan's mind flashing to her husband and what he'd think, to her past and when she first realized this was how she liked it. She knows that he bites her, and she groans, rubbing herself on his hand while he takes her closer and closer to orgasm.

Don't, he tells her instead, and she lets out a long, ruined moan, clenching up, trying to obey. Her breathing shudders, ragged and helpless. "Ivan..."

[Ivan] "Don't come," is all he has to say in response. His tone is a caress. He's using that flogger like he knows how to, like he's done this before, when before this he's never used anything more than the palm of his hand.

Well. No. That's not true. There was once when he was angry at her, when he hated her for what she did to him; when he stripped his belt off and folded it double and lashed her across the back of the thighs, across the ass, twice in quick, furious succession. She'd liked that, too. He wanted her to hate it, wanted her to see how far she pushed him and how dangerous it was for him to ride that edge, but --

she liked it. Wanted more.

These are the thoughts drifting amorphous in his mind even as he's fondling her. She's thinking of nothing more than the way she feels right now, the slow caving in of a building, inevitable orgasm. He's thinking of many things, dark things, but most of all he's thinking of

the way she's moaning, the way she's pulling on those chains that pull on that fan, the clanking of metal on metal, the way she pants for breath every time the suede switches hit her. "Don't come," he tells her again, and this time it sounds like a warning, soft and insidious. He's fucking her methodically with his hand, and he's just as methodically, lightly and regularly, timed to every other circling rub of his fingers. Quickening now, biting her arm gently, stepping in even closer until he's rubbing himself against her hip, grinding lazily against her body, the ends of the flogger lashing off his thigh as well.

"Don't come, baby," whispered over and over as he ramps her higher, until his fingers are slipsliding with her slick, until her moans aren't so bitten-back anymore, until he's telling her instead,

Come for me. Come.

getting her off on his hand, lashing her abruptly harder, quite hard, three times in relentless succession.

[Hilary] The backs of her thighs are quite pink now, verging on red. Even with those light slaps of the flogger, enough of them and it will have some effect, some mark left on her. Just like his teeth, nipping and then biting, holding her skin. The truth is, this is so very mild, compared to what they could do. She could ask him to bend her over, chain her up, and just hit her until she's screaming. She could beg him to bite her until he leaves sharp bruises from his teeth everywhere.

She doesn't beg him to hit her harder for the same reason that she didn't make him walk over to her and take the flogger himself. She doesn't try to make him angry right now for the same reason that she doesn't beg him to hit her harder, really use her.

Right now, stretched out like this with his hand in her panties and that sweet, supple flogger being slapped across her ass, Hilary is showing Ivan compassion. Of a sort.

Don't come, he says again, and she whimpers, and she isn't fucking his hand now because if she does she'll come and he keeps telling her not to, but that third time he repeats it she squirms sharply, biting her lip til it reddens under her fine white teeth. The change in his voice has as much effect as his hand does, timing his strikes and his strokes of her clit togther. It's when she feels his cock against her, rubbing slowly, that Hilary starts to lose herself. Starts to dissolve.

She groans, unable to hold back any longer. Her hips roll in circles, her ass lifted for the switch, her hands gripping the chains that keep her tied to the fan. Ivan hasn't yet gotten to telling her to come yet. Because she's whimpering in defeat, her breasts trembling as her whole body shudders, her cunt pulsing, clenching around nothing. She jerks when he hits her, three times over and over, and that tight, wanting orgasm rolls into a harder one, a longer one, one that makes her wail aloud with pleasure.

[Ivan] It's different. This, from the time he laid his belt across her skin. And from the last time he had her chained up like this, even. There's more ... well. Anyone else, and it wouldn't be compassion at all, but between them, it passes for it. She doesn't beg him for more than he can give. She doesn't force him to give it anyway by making him angry enough, hateful enough, to no longer give a damn.

And in return --

she comes apart. She's shuddering, vibrating like a plucked string, trembling as she comes. That quivering orgasm crests into a harder one, and now she's wailing, and he's laying down that last blow that leaves her skin stinging and bright pink, leaves an afterflare of hot pain dissolving into a warm, oversaturated numbness. She rides his hand like it's his cock and he lets her have it, carries her through it, fucks her firmly and tirelessly with those elegant fingers of his until she's all but hanging from the fan.

Ivan's arm comes around her then. He steps into her, fully flush to her now, wraps his arm around her and supports her, holds her up, holds her while he teases out the last shuddering cries with slow, long strokes of his fingers.

"There you go," he murmurs to her -- like he cares about her, like this is a form of caregiving. "Shh, that's it. That's it."

The flogger is hanging from his wrist now, bumping gently against her ribs, swaying against her hip. She's slender enough, and his lean limbs long enough, that he can wrap his arm around her, find her breast with his hand. He holds her like that for a while, close and safe, his hand between her legs still gently, gently stroking in counterpoint to his hand on her breast. He holds her until that long, shuddering orgasm is past,

but only barely past,

and then he shifts against her, kisses the side of her face. She can feel the change, the dominance resumed so easily, even before he murmurs to her.

"You came," he says, and he says it so gently. He's starting to play with her again, finding her clit unerringly, rubbing her with his fingertips. "So now," and he takes his hand from her breast, takes the flogger in hand again, uses it to nudge her panties down, inch by slow inch, "I'm going to have to fuck you like the filthy, disobedient little slut you are."

[Hilary] Always like this, with him. It's the real reason she comes to him, and can't stay away from him. It isn't the way he hits her, his willingness to brutalize and dominate her. It's the way he shifts so easily, so smoothly, from one form of control to another. From chaining her up and lashing her to holding her, cradling her, whispering to her that it's okay, everything's all right,

and right back to smacking his hand on her ass, telling her she likes it, that's what she really wants, isn't it.

But lacking any of that, he wouldn't be so compelling to her. Lacking any of that, he would be just another young, pretty man with smoothly defined muscles and enough energy to fuck her all night. She's fucked young men who looked to her to be a true cougar, to tell them what to do and be the aggressor, the domitor, the one in charge. That's all well and good, she supposes. She still gets off. She doesn't mind them. She doesn't fuck them more than once.

Used to. But then she'd start to grab their throats as she rode them, rake her nails down their chest to bleeding while she used their cocks. And it angered her when they stopped her. It scared her when they didn't. So she doesn't fuck boys like that more than once anymore.

She's had sex with Ivan more than any young man on the side that she can think of. And she's never... been quite so much herself with any of them, either. She's never been asked to, and while he doesn't remind her of her first mate, when she's with him she reminds herself of how she was then. A little. It was such a very long time ago.


Draped from the ceiling fan, Hilary shudders and gasps, all but crying as Ivan holds her there, stroking her more gently now as she comes down from her orgasm, caressing her breast. Her heartbeat slams into his palm, her pussy quivering against his fingers. She thinks of herself sobbing I'm empty and then a few hot, wet tears do come. Her eyes open and search for him, the world too bright and spotty for her after such a long time with them closed. She finds Ivan's eyes and whispers -- almost whispers -- for him to kiss her, but the words never quite make it out. She leans into him, though, laying her head against his shoulder and neck for those brief moments when he lets her.

Soon though, he kisses her face, and she smiles. It's a small, soft, flickering thing, and she looks for him. Sees something in his eyes, dark and maybe even twisted, wanting again -- still. She feels his cock pressed to her body through his underwear and breathes in as he tells her what they both already know. She came.

His finger slides across her clit and she breathes in, shivering and quick, her nipples still hardened. She moans softly as the rod of the flogger moves between her buttocks, against them, nudging her panties down. It takes time -- they're such fine, lacy things, and so wet now.

Ivan goes on, and Hilary answer with a helpless little nod, watching him now, watching him the way she wouldn't even look at him during that first round. She whispers: "Can I come down?" Her hands have let go of the chain, but she tugs at it with her wrists. The ceiling fan jostles a bit.

[Ivan] [EMPAFEE]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Ivan] [FANGS DO NOT FAIL.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Ivan] [ONE MORE TIME!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Hilary] Dinner is, not surprisingly, French. The easiest and fastest thing to throw together -- and for Hilary, this is nothing more than thrown together -- is steak au poivre. Of course he has strip steaks, and shallots, and Cognac. Everything else is just staples. She has no idea if Ivan ever watches his cook in the kitchen, or if he has attempted to make his own meals at some point, or if he realizes that her skill is more than what anyone who chooses to enter a kitchen is capable of. She wonders if he might realize that this dish is so second-nature to her that it requires no thought, little energy, almost no creativity. She doubts he has the insight to recognize that she is not trying to impress him but just feed him,

take care

of him, but then: sometimes she forgets how perceptive he can be.

Ivan is not allowed anywhere near the stove when the Cognac is put in the pan, flaring up. He has been relegated to non-cooking sous chef duties, because -- as Hilary so scathingly puts it -- she hopes she can trust him to at least not screw up slicing and assembling cheese and fruit on a platter. He earns corrections on even this, his bizarre lover looking at his work and shaking her head, putting down her own utensils, and crossing the kitchen over to him to start rearranging strawberries, roquefort, pears, almonds, brie, etorki and other delectables. She mutters Nous mangeons d'abord avec nos yeux at him as she begins doing so.

But she also tells him to contrast the colors. She tells him, as though he's just a child: make it pretty. like so. no, not so precise. like you're painting.

As though either of them ever do any painting, really.

So in the end, dinner is -- perhaps startlingly -- simple. Red meat, quickly seared and kept warm but bright red throughout the interior, served alongside nothing more complicated than fruit, cheese, and a baguette. Hilary lets him choose the wine. It's something of a gift to him, trusting him with that, but she supposes -- aloud -- that at least he knows something about how to drink.

By the time they sit down to sup, Hilary has still not removed her heels, only the jewelry adorning her wrists and fingers. These she puts back on after untying and hanging her apron, ring after ring, bangle after bangle. Dinner is grotesquely early -- it could be considered a very late lunch, even -- but the day outside is still rainy and gray. She asks, as they carry their plates and glasses and platter -- how novel, serving themselves so -- if they could eat near the windows. It's the most spectacular view in the city, next to Sears tower, and perhaps better because it's private. It makes even the rain-soaked, filthy city look at least artistic, if not lovely.

She sits by the window, and eases her feet out of her heels. The afternoon sun comes through the dark clouds and casts her in dingy white light, speckled with the shadows of raindrops, like teardrop-cut diamonds inverted against her cheek.


There really is no need to clean up. No children or pets or -- heaven forbid -- ants will be nosing around their meal if it's left out. Hilary has more than one glass of wine, entering a lulled and compliant state that is, nonetheless, difficult to deal with. She's quieter when she's drunk, her eyes not just dark but glassy, her stares long and penetrating and hard to understand, her mood even more baseline than usual. And yet, there's this: she becomes silently and gently affectionate, moving over to sit beside him, to lean against him, to rest her hands on his thigh as though to keep them warm. She welcomes his arm around her waist or her shoulders, his mouth to her neck, his hand on her breast, and it is at this last that she moans softly for the first time,

a sound so plaintive, so tenderly wanting, it sounds nothing at all like the demand and desperation of the woman who answered the door in lingerie and fucked him against her entryway's wall.

They long ago took her bag upstairs, Ivan dropping it inside his own room because with her husband gone again and his servants out of the penthouse and the days now ticking away towards her discreet divorce, there is absolutely no other place he would have her. Pregnant, unavailable to his lust, he still wanted her there. Even when he wasn't in the bed, he wanted her there. my bed, my bed, my bed as though this would give him ownership of her, as though it would bring him closer to her, as though this would keep her from simply floating down beneath the dark surfaces of her own mind, impossible to reach. That is where she will stay, and so that is where he took her bag, and that is where he takes her now.

She goes much more quickly up the stairs with him when she's not carrying his child.


Upstairs, the windows opened to the vast view and the rain and the dim midday, Hilary pauses in the midst of one deep, wine-flavored, soul-breathing kiss to put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She opens her eyes and focuses on his, and leans against him. "I have something for you," she tells him, very quietly,

almost as though fearing rejection,

even as the mention of Something causes a small firework of lust to go off in the black skies of her gaze.

[Ivan] The first time Ivan cooked with Hilary, he discovered just how demanding she was in the kitchen. Later he mentioned it, found it odd: such a submissive in the bedroom. Such an overbearing bitch in the kitchen. No wonder those nurses called Max spitting nails -- or crying.

To be fair, though, she isn't quite so vicious with him as she was with those nurses. And he -- well. His livelihood hardly depends on his ability to sear a steak. He's content playing sous-chef to Hilary, cutting fruit

(and being critiqued on his uneven slices, his bruised strawberries, his improperly cored pears)

and slicing cheese

(and getting reprimanded for the torn slices and the way they pair together so unartistically)

and simply laying down his utensils and watching over her shoulder as she ends up rearranging the platter herself, anyway. She mutters in French. He doesn't understand, and he's not meant to. He puts his hand on her back, though, idly and musingly stroking the dip of her spine as she makes food into art before his eyes.

He doesn't know just how talented she is in the kitchen. He knows, though, that Evgeny -- despite a misspent youth that earned him a body full of Russian prison tattoos -- is quite good; wouldn't be here if he weren't. He knows that Hilary is better. He can taste the difference, and that's the truth for so much of his expertise and knowledge: ever from the standpoint of the consumer. Never from the standpoint of the creator.

Ivan smiles when he's allowed to choose the wine. She treats him like a messy, ill-educated child, and for once he doesn't mind. He comes back with a nice red from the south of france, mentions that one of his many uncles actually spends his time -- what time he's not spending doing Family Business at the behest of his greatuncle -- importing fine wines. Specializes in discovering small, little-known vineyards, apparently, and sinks money in to make them something more. Investment, venture capitalism, millions and millions thrown at gambles that may or may not pan out: that, apparently, is considered a hobby in his family; a side pursuit to dabble in and drop when it grows tiresome.


It's too cold to eat outside so they eat near the windows, turning a couch around to face the view instead of the expansive spaces of the living room. Ivan lights the long, wall-embedded fireplace; it's far away enough that the gas flame burns silently, the madrone logs piled atop only occasionally popping. He sits beside Hilary, cutting his steak with precise, subdued motions, grazing the cheese and fruit platter he helped to prepare.

Whenever her wineglass runs down to its last quarter, he refills it. When she starts to lean against him, he puts his arm around her, eats one-handed after that. Eventually, he's not eating at all; his plate nearly cleared, set aside. A slice of pear is the last thing he samples. Its sweetness is still on his tongue when he turns to kiss her, his hand going first to her waist, then to her breast.

That first soft moan he catches in his mouth, tastes on his tongue. Swallows whole, muted in his kiss.


They're quick to retire to his room after that, climbing through the grey light, ascending the spiral staircase that vibrates faintly beneath their steps. Her heels are off. Their footfalls are very quiet, his fingers linked through hers as he leads her down the upstairs gallery, past the guest rooms and their sterile environments, not quite to the two-story library at the end of the hall, where a second set of stairs slashes its way back down to the first floor.

His bedroom door is closed, but when it opens her things are already there -- the bag set out of the way atop a luggage rack that magically appeared there before his servants departed. Clear grey light washes everything here, too. His hands have already worked to undo the zipper of her dress when she stops him, hands on his shoulders. His eyes are already darkened, a little dazed with lust. It takes him a moment to register, and then

he pulls her forward, kisses her again, then steps back with a nod.

"Okay," he murmurs. "What is it?"

[Hilary] She's only been in one of those other guest rooms once. She came here to escape, even when she and Ivan had all but given up on each other. He was a respite. He was, in this strange and aching way, a sanctuary she sought without questioning, or doubting why. Ivan might forget that sometimes -- when she wanted to run and hide, she went to him, the one she pushes away because he just won't stop 'raking her over the coals' sometimes. Hilary forgets that, too.

What she doesn't forget is the way he lifted her up when she got on top of him and took her into this bedroom, his bedroom. She doesn't forget him rolling her under him and taking her like that. They didn't have any restraints that time, they barely even got their clothes out of the way, and it was the first time they fucked that something felt... different.

And that's where the child came from. That exhausted, desperate rush to union and completion, followed by panic at Dion's arrival, and Hilary and Ivan running away from each other. That's how Anton was made, but what Hilary remembers isn't her husband's obsession with her threatening everything, but that even though he was mad at her, Ivan sent her upstairs to rest. Ivan, in his way, took care of her.


There's lace underneath his fingers when he unzips her dress, draws that tab down, down past the middle of her back. They could be a regular couple, almost, making half-drunk love after a lovely meal on a rainy day, and that would be enough. But they both know what they've been through today, and they both know what they're going to end up doing to each other.

They're not normal or regular people at all.

Hilary draws her arms out of her dress and puts her hands on his face when he kisses her the second time. That black sheath falls to her hips, and a nudge or two, a tug from Ivan's fingers, and it drops to her ankles. She is still leaning on him when he draws back, and then she returns to herself, taking a breath and stepping out of the puddle of black fabric. Her lingerie is equally funereal, a widow's veil over her breasts, her cunt, the curve of her ass. She's still wearing that pretty little headband. She walks over to the door where she dropped her heels when they first entered and picks them up. Sits on a little chair and bends over, strapping them back on her feet with slow motions. Slow because she's inebriated. Slow because it's almost ritualistic, putting them back on.

Standing, taller again, Hilary crosses over to that luggage rack and her overnight back, undoing the clasp and opening it up. She reaches up and tucks her fingers underneath her headband, drawing it off and down; her hair washes forward a bit, but there's a faint impression of where it sat in her hair all the same. Long fingers run through her hair while her other hand searches the bag and produces

a toy to share with her friend. He can't see it at first, til she looks over her shoulder at him, still a bit hesitant. When she turns, half-naked and wearing lingerie and heels and jewels and holding --

he could get whores to do this for him. ones with safewords and practice and daddy issues. wear whatever salacious costumes he wants them to, ankle-breaking high heels, even jewelry so he can pretend he's fucking a princess if he likes. he could get a whore just like this. even one holding

-- a suede flog, perhaps eighteen inches from the tip of the handle to the ends of the straps. The leather is black but for accents of deep blue, a midnight indigo: the wrist loop, the bow that adorns the base of the tails themselves. Two metal studs indicate the sheer build quality of the plaything. It looks new. It looks dark. It looks vaguely feminine, and yet somehow, that's more suggestive of the one who'll receive it than the one who will give it.

Punishment, that is.

The truth is, by virtue of the femininity of the flogger itself, it's obvious that it isn't really for Ivan. But of course it isn't. Hilary doesn't even hold it like she might use it, by the handle, the straps dangling down. She holds it in both hands, one palm cupped around the end of the handle, one hand holding the straps like a handful of ribbons. She does not cross over to Ivan, watching him, wary of his reaction.

[Ivan] When Hilary steps away from him, Ivan's hands follow her a ways, then let her go. Fall to his sides. He tips his head slightly to the side as she goes to find her heels: a feral, curious mannerism he may not be aware of himself. She puts them back on. He starts to take off his clothes for the second time today. The same set of clothes, for that matter -- the fitted, v-necked shirt that was more silk than cotton; the pressed slacks that, after all the exertions of the day, are now more rumpled than not.

He tosses his clothes aside while she's unclasping her bag, undoing her hair. His boxer-briefs are a blue so dark they may as well be black, and if she looks she can see the shape of his cock through them. He strokes himself through his underwear lightly, idly, the tips of his fingers passing along the length of his erection while he watches her, curious, a little wary. When she straightens he lowers his hand to his side. She turns around

and he stands very still, not a single muscle moving, hardly breathing when he sees what she holds.

She's wary too. They stand a room apart. She holds the flog in her hands; he thinks of a ceremony he saw as a cub, the bestowing of a klaive upon the daughter of a recently-fallen Garou. The ritesmaster had held the weapon like that -- like something cherished, something powerful and meaningful and holy, something he himself had no right to. She can see his throat move; he swallows.

"Do you want me to use that on you?" he asks softly. And a moment later, the same question only not quite, "Is that what you want?"

[Hilary] They're both in their underwear now, Hilary wet and Ivan hard, ignoring the occasional rolls of thunder outside in the distance.

She knows, on some level, that he likes her like this. She knows he wants her like this, that whether he accepts the flog or not he'll want to hold her down and fuck her and make her his the way he always does. Looking at him, never getting to see his hand stroking his cock through his underwear, though she'd have gone to him and get on her knees if she had.

That didn't happen, though, and now she's standing all that distance away, holding a flogger that is brand new, unused, sacred in the way that sometimes what he does to her seems sacred. Hilary can't read his reaction very well, and she doesn't try to understand him more deeply. She just nods, quietly, when he asks her those questions. "If you want to," she all but whispers.

"It doesn't have to hurt," she adds a moment later, as though to reassure him, because he told her -- no. He begged her once not to ask him to hurt her again, not to take him to that level of darkness again. It's Hilary's turn to swallow, uncharacteristically vulnerable. "But... I'd like it if you spanked me with it. Or ..."

She stops there, closing her mouth, not because she's shy or shamed but because of what he's seen before -- she doesn't want to tell him what to do. Doesn't want to instruct him, hold his hand, show him here, like this. not like that. Because that just defeats the purpose.

[Ivan] Another moment of stillness.

Then he holds his hand out to her. Palm up, waiting for the instrument to be laid in his palm. He could walk to her and take it. Some part of him very much wants to walk to her, take her in his arms, give her some measure of comfort so she doesn't feel so alone, so exposed, so vulnerable to his rejection. But that, too, seems to defeat the purpose.

So there's just his extended hand, his open palm. And he waits, waits while she comes to him in her lingerie and her heels, dressed like this -- provocatively -- as though it were part of the ritual. Part of this deadly-serious game between them.

The handle of the flog is leather-wrapped. It feels cool and smooth to his touch. He grips it in hand the way he might grip a sword or a dagger, solidly, running the soft suede thongs across his palm once in experiment. And then harder, laying down a blow across his own thigh to see what it feels like, to test the measure of his own strength.

When he lays the flog against her skin for the first time, it's very gentle: the bar of the handle behind her neck, the straps cool and soft against her back. By that alone he draws her forward those last two steps, draws her forward until her body is nearly flush against his.

His fingertips explore the curve of her hip and side; up across her ribcage, under the cup of her bra. He caresses her breast for a moment. Then he reaches around behind her and undoes the clasp, slides her bra down her arms and off, a black scrap on the floor. All this time, he faces her. All this time, he looks her in the eye.

Her panties, he leaves on. His touch is a little lazy, explorative, as it comes back around to her breasts. He fondles one, then the other. He caresses her nipples until they harden; squeezes them, tugs them, keeps her where she is by the handle laid across the back of her neck as he plays with her like that. Like he can claim some ownership over her. Like the real toy she's brought isn't the flog at all, but herself.

A long while he plays with her breasts, his hand occasionally drifting up to her neck, across her collarbones, down to her stomach; never past the waistband of her panties. A long while he plays with her like that, not speaking, watching her face. Toward the end, he holds her by the shoulder, holds her right there while he lowers his head to suck at her nipples, kiss her breasts.

When he's finished -- satisfied in some unspoken way -- the leather thongs against her back have warmed to her skin. He straightens and finds her eyes again. The look in his is complex; perhaps too much for her to decipher. "Beautiful," he says of her, a whisper. Then a little more audibly, "Stay where you are."


Ivan walks away from her then. He walks around the corner to his bathroom, or his closet. She can't hear him at all after he rounds the bend. After a while there are some muffled sounds in the closet. Then the clinking of a chain.

When he comes back, he has manacles in hand. Different from the ones they used on the Krasota; a little heavier. Padded and sturdy. He tucks the flog under his arm, growing more accustomed to its weight and swing by the moment. With agile fingers he undoes the first manacle, holds it between his hands.

"Your wrist," he says.