Ivan Press

Ivan Press

Who knows what becomes of that voicemail. Who knows what will happen when Edmund Grey gets it. Who knows what becomes of Oliver Grey, or what becomes of Oliver Grey's already strained relationship with his father, or --

likely it's out of Hilary's mind the moment her finger taps the hang up button. She's never been one to look back. Likely doesn't even remember the names of all those she's ruined.

The gangplank is drawn in. The last mooring ropes are loosed. Deep in the belly of the yacht, the engines begins to run. Her helmsman eases the sprawlingly luxurious catamaran from its dock; turns it toward the open waters. They slide by smaller, humbler vessels. Powerboats and sailboats. Yachts of the twenty, thirty, forty-foot variety. All of them dwarfed by Cielo's length, her graceful double-hull, her beauty.

Hilary disappears belowdecks to change into her swimsuit. By the time she reemerges they've left the harbor behind. The sails have been raised and unfurled. The engines have fallen silent. Lapped by water, driven by wind, Cielo sails eastward to that imaginary point where Hilary's lover awaits her.

--

It is nearer to evening than to noon when Cielo drops her sails. They are far enough from the shore that the waves are small and mild. Far enough that there are few gulls overhead. With the sails down, the engine silent, the water mild, the world is quiet. A long glittering trail of shattered sunlight leads back toward the west. In the east awaits a small sailing yacht.

It is not the Krasota. This is a much smaller vessel, a third the size of the Krasota, a quarter the size of Cielo. She is built for one and built for speed. White trimmed with pale wood, there is no trapping of luxury about her. The hull is long and lean and light, the deck spare and sparse. The cabin is barely a bump in the profile. Even with her sails furled she seems on the verge of motion, agile and high on the waves.

There is a single sailor aboard. It is Ivan, sitting with his feet in the water. As Cielo draws near and comes to a stop he stands, his bare feet spread wide for balance. In the evening light he is as lean and beautiful as his yacht, and just as white-and-gold.

[for posterity: http://www.chuckpaine.com/paine26/]

Down in the cabin, it's not much quieter as Cielo gets going. Darya does not speak and so her voice is not drowned out by the engines. She kneels to remove Ms. de Broqueville's shoes. She rises to help Ms. de Broqueville out of her jewelry, to take her earrings and bangles and set them neatly aside on velvet trays. She unzips Ms. de Broqueville's dress and works it down far more gently than Ivan ever has, and holds it as Hilary steps out of it. She drapes it, to hang it shortly. She brings out Hilary's swimsuit, a one-piece number with a halter, slightly old-fashioned in the way pinups are old-fashioned, the fabric twisted over the breasts. She takes Hilary's lingerie as Hilary discards it, putting the pieces in a sturdy mesh bag. When Hilary is in her swimsuit, Darya helps her into her cover-up, a long, wide-sleeved white robe. She brings Hilary a pair of light deck shoes, a different pair of sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat. She escorts her lady upward, where Carlisle takes her arm and takes over, and Darya vanishes again to put things away: to stow Hilary's jewelry, to hang up her dress, to put away her shoes, to close the closet doors and hope that tonight she can sleep through the screaming.

--

Upward, above everyone, Hilary takes the deck of Cielo for the first time in more than a year. She has not sailed in all the time since Anton was born, in all the time while she was pregnant. She remembers enjoying this, in a way. There are no teenage boys splashing in the water to impress her right now. Cielo, paradise, heaven -- she moves into deeper waters, where she is alone and she is queen. Hilary sits in the shade of a vast umbrella, sipping white wine, feeling the warmth on her body without letting the sun touch her skin.

She watches the horizon. She thinks of nothing.

--

The world goes silent. Hilary removes her hat and her sunglasses as the day cools, and as the sky changes colors, taking on hues of pink and purple and even touches of green, yet mostly a fiery orange. She wraps her cover-up around her body, tucks her feet up, as they head toward the meeting place that Ivan dictated. They are late. Hilary does not think of this; she does not recall that he had initially said 3. She has forgotten.

It is Carlisle who comes to tell her that they have come abreast of Mr. Press. Hilary takes the glass of wine he hands her and walks, barefoot, to the edge of her deck, looking far, far down at him. She is quite high above him when she sees him.

Hilary looks at him. Says nothing. Sips her chardonnay.

Maybe Ivan did engineer this to remind himself of the first time he saw her. Maybe on some level conscious or subconscious he is trying to reclaim that moment. Trying to bring himself back to her. Coming back to her the same way he came to her the very first time.

Their eyes meet across waters colored by the sunset. It is already feeling like full-blown summer, though the solstice is still weeks away. The air is heavy and warm, lazy and humid. His lover looks down from her beautiful catamaran and he looks up; he feels a little like a castaway. A wild thing returned again to civilization.

Ivan turns away after a moment. Nimbly he crosses the foredeck, jumps down into the cockpit. The anchor goes overboard; the chain whizzes off its spool until it stops. Ivan cranks it back a few turns until the chain goes taut, and then he lets it slacken a little again. Straightening, he pulls his shirt off, sheds his trousers, dives into the water in a singular arc of golden skin, sleek muscle.

For a few seconds he's gone from sight. Then he resurfaces, his stroke long and languid, cutting through the distance. Someone on Cielo tosses a rope ladder over the side and he swims to it, grasps it and pulls himself up hand over hand, foot over foot. Something feral and agile about him, scaling the hull, grasping the rail, swinging himself over. Nearly naked in those tiny squarecut swimtrunks and all the more savage for it, he winnows water from his hair as he crosses the deck to his beloved, his lover, his beautiful girl.

There is a servant offering a towel, because of course there is. He doesn't so much as glance her way as he swipes it over, dries his face. He does not notice the help. He would notice their absence, though. A few steps later he casts the towel aside for someone else to pick up, and then

he is in front of Hilary, taking her chardonnay from her, easing it out of her fingers as he slides his into her hair. His skin is cool from the water but beneath he is hot, and engine of heat and subtle rage. His body presses to hers. He kisses her hungrily, hotly, and then his arm slides around her and he draws her firmly, almost ruthlessly into his arms.

Their eyes meet, because she is no longer hiding behind tinted glass. He is golden and bright even at sunset, and she is a contrast of deep darkness and lifeless white atop her feat of human engineering. She watches as he strips, dives. She moves, following his movement in the water, hand trailing over the railing. Until he comes to the side, and someone -- likely one of his people -- starts to toss a ladder down.

"Don't," she says, sharp enough, cutting through the air, a stern order, a demand. They look up. She is lowering her glass, staring at Ivan in the water. "He can climb."

Which should garder a

WHAT.

THE FUCK, HILARY.

if ever anything did. But she has a savagery in her eyes, and an imperious fury behind those eyes, and deeper still, a vicious admiration. She does not say make him. She says he can. Which he must, then, unless she is ignored, unless Ivan, himself, ignores her. It will not be easy. Ships' hulls are not made for scaling. But he can.

--

Should he, then, she is waiting. She has not left that highest deck, walks up there in bare feet and fluttering robe, sipping wine, somewhat drunk but not direly so. He will have to come up. He will have to climb to the lowest deck before he ascends to this one, and he has likely already tossed aside that towel.

Hilary, perhaps,

does not give up her wine for him. Or permit him to take her, any more than she made it easy for him to board her Cielo.

Well, then.

Ivan can climb. Ivan does climb. Ivan, whose eyes lock with Hilary's as she issues that viciously petty order, whose eyes flash, whose teeth flash a moment later in a carnivore grin. He climbs. Like nothing human he climbs. Like something supernatural he climbs, or perhaps more accurately simply advances: angry and agile, his fingertips finding purchase on what seems like absolutely nothing, the balls of his feet propelling him up the smooth slope of the hull. No leisurely swing over the railing after all: the moment his hands grasp it the fine taut musculature of his torso knots, heaves, he leaps over the side and storms the lower deck,

snatches that towel as it is offered. With one furious swipe he plows his face clear of water, slaps that towel over the rail in that small spiral staircase up to the flybridge. Those steps he takes in twos and threes, pounding up to where cold, vengeful, queenly Hilary holds court.

It is fine if she does not give up her wine. He doesn't take it anyway. He backhands it the fuck out of her grasp. The tips of his fingers fly past a hairsbreadth from her knuckles but the strike is not for her, and so she is not struck. The glass sails over the side and shatters on the maindeck. Or possibly makes it all the way into the lake, disappearing with barely a splash.

And then he takes Hilary's face between his hands. He does not kiss her: but he does close the distance, presses her to him, holds her fast. Eyes black and gold threaded in green. Mouth an angry, set line. He says nothing.

He can climb. And for her, or to prove something, or because he wants to, Ivan does climb. Climbs up the very side of her yacht, pulling himself aloft, ascending and then conquering, dripping water everywhere. It runs off of him in rivulets. The towel they hand him is embroidered with her monogram; it is thick and fluffy and white but for those curling black letters. It drinks the water from his skin, and all the same, he is still wet when he comes to her.

Hilary is watching him, and then she turns slightly, angles herself, shoulders perpendicular, a bit petulant. He advances, and he smacks her wine out of her hand -- the glass goes sailing, spilling wine, knocking off the railing and then breaking on the lower deck.

She wrenches away from him even as he's looking for her face. "No," she snaps at him, for grabbing at her, for knocking her wine like that, for being brutal and vicious and angry when she has done nothing at all to deserve his anger, she never deserves his anger.

Hilary's eyes glitter at him in anger. If she has to she will lash out at him, but she hasn't yet. She doesn't want his stupid hands on her face or his body pressed up against hers. "No," she repeats, firm but still touched with insolence. Like she does not know any other way.

No, the first time, and:

dangerous, but he doesn't listen. He gets his palm on her face, she jerks away, he tries again but he's not the only viciously swift creature here. Perhaps he earns a slap. A swipe of her nails. Something. It's not that that stops him, though. It's:

No,

a second time, firm. And he stops, his hands dropping to his sides, fingers loose and open, palms a little ways away from his sides. Ready. They watch each other, wary, glitter-eyed, like cobra and mongoose. He circles, puts himself between her and the staircase down.

Soft: "No?"

Not a slap or swipe of her nails. A shriek, high and shrill and warning and -- if he listens -- frightened, recoiling. This, in tandem with her biting at him, getting a quick stab of her teeth into the meat of his palm because she said no, goddammit. And so the second 'No' has no softness to it, just anger, just that firmity, just that warning and that curling, coiling withdrawal.

Hilary moves away, walks away, hunching her shoulders, glaring at him. "Why are you doing this? Why are you like this with me? Why won't you treat me like a lady? This is my boat," oh honey it's a ship, let's be real, "and that was my wine and you don't -- you don't! -- get to be so mean to me every time you see me, especially every time you leave me."

She whips her robe around her legs, glowering, throwing herself on a cushioned lounge, turning her head to glare at the horizon instead, her brow a knot of discomfort and upset. "Show some respect, god damn you."

For seconds on end Ivan is silent, motionless. Baffled perhaps; how would she know? She can hardly read him on the best of days. This is not the best of days. This is a very bad day, and the sun is setting, and she's not even looking at him.

So: he's silent. She glares at the horizon. A little bit of time goes on like this, and meanwhile on the maindeck her servants and his are being as quiet and unobtrusive as possible about cleaning up the mess he made on his way up.

Then Ivan approaches her again. Differently though, if she can sense it. A little gentler this time. Sidelong, footfalls silent. Coming into her view first before coming toward her; sitting slowly at the edge of that cushioned seat. Nothing sudden. Nothing coarse or harsh or abrupt.

He watches her for a while. Then:

"You're right." Another beat. "I'm sorry."

She nearly hisses at him. Silent as he is, she can sense him, feel him on her periphery, and she flinches, yanking her glare away from the horizon to give it back to him, warning him from touching her, from getting too close, from invading her space.

That's what this is about. That's why she made him climb. That's why she keeps saying no. Because she can. Because she needs to. Because she has to say those things, and do them, and know that she won't be killed for them. They won't be ignored.

Sometimes, these days, Hilary says 'no'. Or says I want. And Ivan has waited so long for her to care enough to do either. She is still getting used to doing either.

--

She watches him, tugging her feet away from the end of the lounger where he sits. Stares at him.

He says she's right.

He says he's sorry.

The corners of Hilary's mouth pull downward, a bit sadly. "Did you hear?"

Ivan's eyes flick down when Hilary retreats like that. Edges even her toes away from him, as though otherwise he might seize the opportunity. Grab her, take her, take ownership over her in a way that

right now, and after so long,

she does not want. Even he, selfish and fickle he, can see the significance in that. And the ache.

She speaks. He looks at her again, eyes animal in the gathering twilight. Once, then twice more, he nods.

"I heard," he says softly.

--

Of course he heard. He heard, and he was miles offshore, as good as a world away; he heard and she was late and he was waiting and there was only so much space on that slender little sailboat and he watched the horizon, he watched the distant skyline of the city, he watched every single set of sails that appeared to be moving his way until finally, finally, her sails moved his way and her catamaran pulled alongside and she showed herself up on the flybridge, so far above him, so far from his reach.

Of course he swam to her. Of course he climbed the smooth sides of the yacht when she wouldn't let him aboard, of course he stormed her castle, of course he grabbed at her and grasped at her and he was angry with her and she was vengeful with him; somewhere inside they were both panicked.

She screamed. He stopped.

Now here they are.

--

A silence. Then:

"Are you hurt?"

They haven't really talked for some time now. Him snarling in her ear as he comes one dark night doesn't count, and a few snappish things she's said while eating together don't make for much of a conversation. This is different; he called her out here, and she came, and Something Happened on her way to meet him. Something bad and violent and, for another woman, perhaps frightening.

Strange that she wasn't frightened. She was hurt when he grabbed her hair and smacked her head against the railing, but that's not the same thing. She was furious with him, repulsed by him, and it bothers her that she did not -- could not -- physically claw his eyes out. For her, at least, there was no panic when she came out on the water and saw her consort swimming toward her, climbing toward her. Only a sort of imperiousness, and then a frustration, an exasperation, an anger that rounded on him so easily,

as it so often does.

But Ivan -- something in him was panicked. What could have happened. What Oliver might have done. Then Anton really would have been a motherless child, with only that photograph of her dancing in her youth, playing the ghost of a girl he would never meet. And somehow that panic turned to rage, so easily,

as it so often does.

--

He heard. He had no distractions on his sailboat, no room to pace, just a vast sky and deep lake to reflect back to him his relative powerlessness. Now he has her teeth imprints in the meat of his hand, and she is tucked up away from him, her body telling him not even to wrap that hand around her ankle.

Hilary's brow furrows with annoyance, but she's not looking at Ivan now, just the water and the horizon and the line between the two that can drive you mad if you stare at it too long. She is already mad, and it does not hurt her mind to stare at that horizon. Nor does it inspire her, to stare at that changing, darkening end of the sky as the sun sets behind them.

"He pulled my hair and banged my head against the railing at the dock," she says, like she's tattling. Like Oliver took her toy and wouldn't give it back or something like that, something that isn't life-threatening, something that isn't on the edge of being beaten by a Galliard.

She turns to look at Ivan, diffident, adding: "I told him he was a whiny little boy and his penis wasn't big enough," not with pride, but firmly, defiantly, like she's daring him to scold her for it, because obviously what Oliver did was so much worse.

Her hand lifts slowly, and she touches her brow, which isn't even pink anymore, has no bruise. "It hurt my head. So I stepped on his foot." And in point of fact, she hurt Oliver far more than he hurt her. But that's not what's important. What's important is that Oliver did a bad thing and he should be in trouble and she was completely justified and she shouldn't be and Ivan should agree with her that Oliver is a bad, bad boy and should be in very big trouble.

She tucks her arms around herself, laying her head on the lounge chair and looking back at the water. It is possible, with how she scoots, that there is room behind her on the lounger. For him to come to her, to curve around her, for his warmth to burn through the water on his body and surround her through that gauze-thin robe, for his arms to encircle her, for him to... perhaps be someone he is in name but not always to his heart: protector and guardian and beloved. "This is my boat," she says again, more quietly, less angrily. "And that was my wine. Why are you so mean?" she asks, almost like he's not there, asking the sky to fill in for his voice. "I didn't do anything bad." This time.

Hilary looks down the lounger at him, frowning but not glaring. "Come hold me," she says, like he's slow to catch on, which he is decidedly not. "I'm cold."

What Hilary says terrifies Ivan. What she says incenses him, though he can't tell if he is more angry at her or Oliver Grey. And what she says makes him absurdly, dangerously, madly

proud of her.

--

His hand aches where she bit him. That, too, is a reminder of her madness, her recklessness, that side of her that is not tame and not human and not even remotely controlled. The pain reminds him of her refusal; her refusal holds him at bay.

Even when she tells him what Oliver did to her. Even when she says it hurt her head. Even when she wraps her arms around herself, moves in such a way that there is room behind her. He thinks maybe there's an invitation there, but he's uncertain, and more so than that: he senses her need to eke out the boundaries. To define what is and is not. What can be and cannot be.

She tells him again that this is her boat. Her wine. She asks him why,

and his brow furrows. He shakes his head mutely, aching, unable to tell her why he is so mean, unable even to rationalize to her that what he does is not meanness but some strange, twisted form of love. That sort of argument would never fly with anyone else but them. Right now, it doesn't seem hold water even between the two of them, mad as they are.

--

She doesn't have to ask twice. She barely has to ask. Come hold me, she says, and while she is telling him that she is cold he is rising, he is moving, he slides in behind her and wraps his arms around her and draws her tightly against him.

There is still moisture on his skin, freshwater caught in the crook of his elbow and the dip of his navel; all those places where the towel didn't quite reach. His swim trunks are wet. His warmth is already burning through that chill, though, and despite everything he is so much warmer than she is. He keeps her warm, and he keeps her near: his arm wrapped around her shoulders, her back to his chest and his side. He kisses her temple fiercely.

"You didn't do anything bad," he says, and saying it, realizes it is true. It is not a pretty lie he gives her to stave off some shrieking wrath, some shattering of her psyche. It is not a lie at all, and it is certainly not pretty: a cold and ugly truth, that what she did,

which was to refuse a man she did not want,

was not bad. Was not wrong. Was perhaps one of the few inarguably, absolutely right things Hilary has done this entire day, or week, or month.

What was bad and wrong was that Oliver -- monstrous, self-centered, sociopathic wretch that he is -- slammed her head into a wooden rail for it and felt himself entirely justified. What is bad and wrong is that four times out of five, the Garou Nation would likely agree with Oliver. What is bad and wrong is that some part of Ivan wants to tell Hilary to never, ever, ever do anything so stupid and reckless as that again because she needs to stay alive, nothing else matters but to stay alive, if she's not alive he can't imagine living.

He doesn't say any of that. He holds her very tightly and he presses his lips to her temple and her cheekbone and her jawline. "You did nothing wrong," he whispers.

She insulted him. She degraded him. She rejected him -- and not kindly.

He assaulted her. He slammed her head against hardwood. He would have done worse, if no one else had stopped him.

No. She did nothing wrong. Even at the worst of what she said or did: she did nothing deserving of what he did.

--

Of course Ivan's mad about it, and Hilary is adamantly insisting to him that he's not allowed to be mad at her, and he's not allowed to touch her or talk to her or come near her until he admits this, or at least accepts it. If only she were afraid. If only she realized what could have happened, what almost happened, or if she could grasp the seriousness of what did happen. If only she were more wary, if only she were more sane, if only her mind did not snap right before the point where she would be sane enough to fear a werewolf's rage.

Ivan does not move until she grouses at him that she's cold, and then he is quite suddenly and firmly there, wrapping himself all around her. The gauze-thin robe is even softer than it looks, almost silken -- perhaps it really is a silk blend, but who cares, what does it matter, because she feels right underneath it. Feels whole and as healthy as she ever is, which means she is thin and pale and graceful as a white doe, and sometimes as tremulous. Right now she is not, though; he can feel her pulse as though it takes over her entire body, sense it as he senses her breeding, and she is unafraid. She isn't even shivering from the cold she just complained of.

He doesn't tell her to please, please stay alive, don't die, anything but that, please don't die. No explanation of why, except that she might be mad at him if he said that right now.

Hilary closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them once more so she can go on watching the water. She lays her arm over Ivan's arm where it wraps around her. She doesn't feel aroused or angry or afraid. She doesn't feel much of anything, except she realizes she is looking eastward and that Anton is eastward. She thinks of the tickets Ivan left for her, Labor Day, and that maybe it will be tolerable to her to go sometimes, to visit, to know that she will go back. It won't be so agonizing every time, maybe. Maybe he will learn to say her name, or say Mother, because Hilary does not remember being a child herself and saying mama and does not immediately imagine Anton saying that, instead, as a baby.

She can smell Ivan around her, and he smells of the lake and of himself a bit. She touches his hand with her fingertips. Strokes the thin, fine skin over his knuckles. She loves him, but does not say it, as it does not occur to her to say everything that she thinks of, even something that arguably he might need to know, need to hear. Selfish thing.

"What have you been up to?" she asks him, after a long while. Which must be small talk, because it is almost -- almost -- unthinkable that she would ask out of genuine interest.

Sometimes she touches him like this: tiny, delicate strokes with the pads of her fingers. He is reminded of a cat, a kitten. Something curious and cautious, light of touch without quite being gentle. She strokes him like she enjoys the feel of his skin, his proximity, but if she loves him

(and he knows she does)

he cannot quite glean that from her touch. Time passes. She makes something like small talk, though perhaps it is not so. He turns his head and rests his mouth, his nose gently against the back of her head. Inhales the scent of her for a moment, dark and sweet and mad.

"Nothing of importance," he murmurs. "I went to Paris. I bought some art. I paid my father and my mother a visit. They had questions about Anton; I answered some of them. I bought that sailboat. Haven't named it yet."

Pause; slight.

"Sometimes..." he aches; he falls quiet; he tries again. "Sometimes I just need to go away for a while. Do things on whim and impulse. It doesn't mean I've left you. Or that I don't love you. Or that I don't care when terrible things happen to you."

Hilary scowls at the horizon when he says he went to Paris without her, but she tires of her own anger so quickly. It drains her, it leaves her raw without giving anything back, it makes her feel monstrous but she is what gets devoured. She has little strength right now for any more anger, even the petulant kind. He visited his parents, which she finds absurd, to think that Anton has grandparents.

"Mon petit faucon," she suggests, without irony, "or whatever that is in Russian."

She knows that his yacht's name is Russian. And he is Russian. And her handmaid is Russian, and her son is French-Russian, with lines to Belgium, of course.

Ivan speaks on. Hilary's hand is still now, but still resting atop his. "I know this," she says. "It is your great failing." What a pretty euphemism, though it isn't even that kind of her to say it aloud. It's not polite. "But you would do well," she adds testily, "to try and woo me back when you return, to make it up to me."

"Moy malenkiy sokol," he teaches her, absently, while her fingers come to a rest atop his knuckles; while her hair stirs gently against his face in the evening wind. "You haven't called me that in a long time. I like it."

She says something, then, that she does not say often. I know this, says Hilary, and that is such a rare thing when she says it of someone else. Some trait, some half-hidden, unobvious aspect of their personality. I know you, she said to him once -- maybe only the once, but still: she said it. He doesn't think she can say that of many people. Doesn't think she'd try.

"It's my madness," he says softly. It is not so much a correction as a lifting of the veil. Here, then, the truth they try to prettify and deny. "And we all have one, don't we? The price of greatness."

Then, almost in spite of himself, Ivan's mood lifts a little. He grins silently. She can't see him, and by the time he speaks again he's schooled his expression back to a slight, sparse smile. "I was trying to woo you back," he points out. "You pulled the ladder up and made me climb."

Hilary utterly, completely ignores that Ivan likes something -- or at least, she does not respond to it.

Hilary utterly, completely ignores that Ivan corrects her and calls his failing his madness. She does not answer him at all, and in fact does not listen to what he says there.

"Only a fool would think that being hauled up on a ladder is a greater act of romance than being forced to climb," she tells him, "and so you are a fool. I meant once you got up here."

"And what would you like, love?" This time he doesn't try to hide his smirk. "Roses? Chocolates? Diamond rings?"

"I don't believe you've ever given me flowers, roses or otherwise," she comments, because the truth is: he has given her chocolates. Hell, he gave her a chocolate bunny with a Santa hat on Christmas just because he remembered, from eight months prior, that she had jealously eaten one, savage as an animal about it. She did not understand the joke or the gift, but she knows he's given her chocolate. And he has given her one rather spectacular, world-renowned diamond ring, and he has fucked her while she's worn it, and he has given her diamonds on her nipple clamps and diamonds for her throat and a deep sable fur and hundred-dollar pans and a fucking house built over a lake and a fucking dance studio atop that and a car.

And her soul. Her little soul, who sometimes crawls around and eats dirt, who has fallen asleep in her arms just twice, in his entire little life. Ivan gave her that, too.

--

Hilary turns slowly under his arm, onto her back, on that lounger that is more than wide enough for both of them to snuggle on without falling to either side. She looks up at him, into his face for the first time in several minutes. They have been interminable minutes. She looks at him anew, like she is just now seeing him for the first time. Not tonight. Ever.

"Were you really trying to woo me, when you swam over here? Did you grab at me and smash my drink because of the ladder?"

She doesn't know. She is bewildered. It flickers like a fish underwater in those deep, black eyes of hers.

His arm loosens to allow her to turn. Ivan is stretched out lazy as a cat himself, lean and lithe, quite unself-conscious -- nevermind that he is still wearing that scant little swimsuit. His knuckles prop against his cheekbone. His eyes are downcast, shadowed beneath that deep brow. She looks into his face and he looks into hers. His hand stirs, thumb tracing arcs over her side, warm through the silk.

"I was trying to woo you," the term brings him some distant flicker of amusement, "when I orchestrated this little rendezvous. I thought it might please you. You seemed to like sailing, or at least find it unobjectionable. You like watching me swim.

"But while I was waiting, Dmitri called me."

That brief flame of mirth gutters out. Ivan's brow furrows. He looks at her body, her white skin beneath that thin robe. Carefully, thoughtfully, even delicately, he undoes the knot; slips his hand inside. He doesn't fondle her. He doesn't grope her. He rests his hand against her skin, right where it was before, but closer.

"He told me what had happened. And I was frightened for you. He told me you were all right, you were on your way, but -- I couldn't believe it until I saw it for myself. And a yacht is so slow when one is in a hurry.

"By the time you were finally in view, I had no patience left. I was quite beside myself. I just wanted to see you. Be near you. Touch you." His hand grasps for a moment at her side, as though to cement that. He lowers his head, then. Touches his brow to the center of her chest, like a prayer. An exhale, "So when you had them pull that damned ladder away, fear turned to anger. And need stayed need.

"So I smashed your drink. And I grabbed at you. And I did not treat you like a lady." Ivan presses his lips to her skin, like a blessing. He lifts his head and he looks at his bizarre, incomparable lover.

"Forgive me."

When Ivan dresses up, he often dresses it down a second later. A rakishly half-done tie, a suit cut that doesn't respect the occasion, his hair mussed, a woman's lipstick on his collar -- or he might have done that last, before. Hilary doesn't know if he fucks others. She has. Oliver. They both regret that.

He was going to woo her. Summoning her to the water, recreating their meeting. He wanted to please her, let her watch him swim, have her doing something that she finds unobjectionable, at least. Then he heard that Oliver came to her, assaulted her, and he had to wait. He had to wait and wait and wait and he was going mad from it. He had to touch her somehow, and then the ladder was pulled away and something in him snapped.

The robe, which is more of a swimsuit cover-up, has no knot or tie for him to undo with those deft, long fingers of his. Still, he parts the fabric, opens it, finding her in her swimsuit still underneath, black and lean and classic, not very high-cut here or low-cut there. Perhaps he touches her through that lycra, or perhaps runs his fingers over her bared clavicles, her hip, her arm, somewhere: her flesh. Maybe he touches her throat, that point of such submission, his and his alone.

Hers alone, given to him alone.

Ivan curls to her then. He rests his brow to her body, feeling her heartbeat and her breath beneath him. Hilary, because she is not a loving or lovable woman, does not stroke his hair or embrace him. She just looks at him there, the way she often does, as though she is a cat and he is simply being a strange mortal. She understand. He was scared, so he got angry. He needed, and so he needed, and did not question or pause. He became violent and savage. He kisses her now and supplicates himself to her forgiveness, and as he looks up at her, she tips her head to the side.

"That was stupid," she says gently, or as gently as she says anything. Someone nicer might have said 'silly'. "I stepped on his foot and they came with tasers and he left. Surely Dmitri told you all that."

Which he did. But that didn't change his feelings. And anyone sane, anyone with a heart, would just know. Hilary doesn't get it. She does turn toward him, pulling her robe around her again, because she really is a bit cold as the sun goes down and the water begins to lose the heat it gathered during the day.

"I will forgive you, if you promise to never treat me so rashly again,"

which is a promise he can't make, it's an insane promise to ask someone she begs to tie her up and beat her on a regular basis. But she is letting him hold her, and she is touching his waist, lightly, her head to his chest, and he is lean and golden and she likes him quite very much like this, dressed skimpily. She likes knowing it was all for her, that he is all for her, that everything he is is all for her, right here, laid out beside her.

She gives him a little kiss on his chest. "You're such a horrible little savage," she murmurs, with some fondness.

She has such odd names for him. Mon petit faucon. Horrible little savage. Vladelets. She draws another smirk from him with that latest nickname; makes him laugh a little under his breath.

Then he curves his hand over the back of her head; holds her to him a moment as her lips touch his chest. His skin is dry now, and warm. Tastes a little of lakewater still. Tastes of himself beneath it, his heat and his rage and his cunning and his devotion.

Because he is that. Devoted to her.

"I promise to try," he says, and perhaps that means something. That he'll try. That he doesn't lie and say he will. Perhaps the distinction is lost on her. It doesn't seem to matter right now; he shifts, he sets a hand on the lounger and pushes himself up.

"Take me inside," he invites. "It's getting dark and cold. Show me Cielo. I've waited two years to see this catamaran of yours."

She has, by the time he speaks, forgotten that she tried to exact a promise from him of anything at all. She is kissing his chest, touching his waist, and her hand is straying to his midsection, brushing over his stomach. She expects it to flinch; that not-so-soft underbelly, that terrifically sensitive spot on any mammal, the one you must protect because it houses all your most precious life-giving parts. She strays. She kisses. She feels him moving, giving her an order that is an invitation, explaining it.

Hilary rolls a little as he sits up, onto her back, looking up at him in limpid silence. Her robe has fallen from her shoulder, opened over her body and that demure little swimsuit. She says nothing. Of course she says nothing. Her invitations only seldom have words.

Also, she does not know what a catamaran is.

Even when Hilary's invitations have words, they're whispered ones. She says it like she wants to pretend she never said anything at all. Like she wants to forget she had to prompt her lover; like she wants to believe he simply knew.

And sometimes,

times like this, he does simply know. Ivan sits up and Hilary does not. Ivan looks down at her, and she is looking at him, and though she tugged her robe closed a moment ago she has allowed it to fall askew again. Her swimsuit, like what she sometimes wears and says and does, seems almost to be borrowed from a bygone age. She uses words like woo, like in cahoots, like mustn't and shan't and --

-- words like fuck. Like cunt, pussy, filthy, whore.

Ivan pauses a moment. He is sitting on the edge of the lounger. He reaches out to her, thoughtful, considerating. He slides her robe aside and he does touch her this time: he does cup his hand over her breast, though that demure little swimsuit.

"Won't you be cold up here?"

Oh, it's cooling. It's not frigid yet, but May is a complicated time in Chicago. Even late May. And they are on the water, and wearing almost nothing, and her suggestion seems to be that she should be wearing even less.

She breathes in, chest lifting, when he covers her breast with his hand, feeling her through the rucking of that artfully twisted fabric. Hilary gives the tiniest shake of her head. "I can keep my robe on," she whispers to him, and so she can: the swimsuit ties behind her neck, he could untie it, peel it down, without baring her delicate arms to the cruel air. "You'll keep me warm."

And so he can. Shall.

This time there's a certain ache in Ivan's smile. Somehow, beneath her cruelty and her viciousness and her inhumanity and her arrogance, there's a certain simplicity to Hilary. A certain innocence, even, and nevermind her corruption, her madness, her all-devouring lust.

She thinks in such simple, clear terms right now. It's cold up here, but she can keep her robe on. And she won't be cold if he keeps her warm.

So he smiles like that. And then he slides his hand up and over her shoulder, behind her neck. He undoes that knot with a little tug. Her swimsuit comes down easily. He has no doubt that she hasn't dipped so much as a toe into the water. He pulls it down and down and down, and she lifts her hips when it is time, and he slides the lycra down her legs.

Ivan discovers, sinking back down on the lounger, gathering her in his arms, that he does not want to fuck her. He does not want to nail her, bang her, pound her, hammer her. He wants closeness. He wants -- if ever they think of it in such terms -- to make love. He goes to her. He comes over her, covering her, and his body settles against hers, skin aligning to skin, as his mouth finds hers. He kisses her slowly, gently, lightly; deepening kiss by kiss, like a tide washing in.

Of course she has not dipped a toe in the water. Of course the fabric is snug to her skin but not stuck there with moisture. Of course he tugs and it comes undone, of course he pulls and it peels away, her body coming loose from that tight fabric, and gradually she becomes naked.

Naked but for that robe, which he can see through it's so thin, see the lack of contrast between the creamy white of the fabric and the creamy white of her skin. She wears nothing at all now, not even jewelry, just her body and her hair and that robe that could not keep anyone warm.

He comes down over her, wrapping his arms around her, and she melts. He must be keeping her warm, she becomes so relaxed. Her hands are on his shoulders, pressing slightly but not in refusal -- at least not genuine refusal, nothing more than the resistance she offers because she is a lady and he is not her husband. Her head tips back to bare her throat, because that is who she is, what she is, what she wants to feel right now. Her throat bared, and Ivan... not biting, not claiming, not hurting.

Ivan who does not come to her with collar or chains or clamps right now, but just his body, his arms, his mouth finding her mouth to kiss her. His swimsuit is still wet, and the coldest thing about him. Hilary gives a startled little cry when he comes closer and she feels it on her thighs, against the curve of her cunt. She whimpers into his mouth, pressing her body against his all the same. Her nipples are hard where they touch his chest. Of course.

Gentle as he wants to be, the way she bares her throat arouses him in a low, fierce way. The way her nipples harden so quickly. The way she gives that startled little cry when his wet swim trunks brush her thighs, her cunt; all those places she is most tender, all those places she is most sensitive.

He covers her mouth with his. He sips that sound from her lips, and her breath with it. Pauses to draw back and to look at her, and looking at her, reaches down to work his swim trunks down. The squarecut little item loses its shape as soon as it peels down from his hips. It becomes a scrap of fabric, tensile and flexible, rolling down in a little coil that he may very well forget altogether before the night is through. He kicks it off his feet and then he comes back to her, entirely bare now, svelte and hotskinned, sliding between her thighs.

His arms scoop under her. He finds her mouth again. Returns to it as though he'd never left: kissing her in that slow, deepening way, his lips coaxing hers open, his tongue grazing hers.

Earlier, moments ago, she was going to touch him through his swimming trunks. She was going to delicately, slowly graze her hand downward until she could trace his cock through the fabric. She was going to stroke him until he was shuddering and grabbing her wrists, stopping her or forcing her onward. Instead he started to sit up, and she rolled onto her back like an animal. Instead he bared her to him, and bares himself to her, and he is not just warm when he comes to her but hot, hot enough to make her grateful for the cold.

They do not speak, and Ivan keeps kissing her. More than that: he keeps finding her mouth open to his, supplicant, eager. Hilary is touching his arms, holding onto his shoulders; she parts her legs for him. Sometimes she resists him so fiercely, if only to make him force submission on her, hold her down, give it to her. It is almost strange now that she doesn't. It is almost strange that she welcomes him so easily, almost as if

she missed him while he was gone, and missed the faint feeling of Being Loved that he sometimes can give her, and missed his body, and missed the way that he knows her, understands her, sees her for what she is -- which is not good or lovable or sweet -- and is sometimes good and loving and tender with her, all the same. It is very different from those who abuse her because they do not know her or are gentle with her because they do not know her.

It's been two years, and he knows her now. She has hidden nothing. Look at him, though, kissing her like he loves her, moving between her legs to tangle their naked and cool bodies together. Look at her, letting him. Even wanting it like that.

Hilary slides her hands down his arms and over his back. She finds his ass and chuckles softly, darkly to herself, grabbing his flesh in her hands and squeezing, groaning softly. He feels good to her. Look at her, showing him that. Enjoying him. And letting him see it.

Even now they don't often mate like this. So much more often it's a brutal, dangerous thing: full of false resistance that rides the very edge of being real; full of his hands rough on her wrists, in her hair, on her ass; full of her face tear-streaked and transcendant, his teeth locked in her flesh.

They need that. She needs that. She needs him to break her down like that more often than not, to strip her down, to make her feel. She needs him to build her back up, afterward. To be gentle, to care, to stay. That is how they find each other. That is how they express their own, strange, violent brand of love.

Except,

except sometimes, now, it's changed. It's different. Not always; but sometimes. Sometimes when he wants her like this she doesn't respond with apathy and boredom. Sometimes -- a rare few times -- she has responded like this, soft and welcoming and needful, almost like she missed him. Almost like she misses him when he isn't there. Almost like she keeps him in her mind even when he isn't present, as though she'd learned object permanence at last, as though she'd learned at last that the world is not comprised solely of her.

He's there, too. And so love is there, no matter how strange and alien it may be.

Anton is there. And so her soul is there, no matter how small and frail it may be.

--

Ivan growls against her mouth as she grabs him like that, laughs like that. He nips at her lower lip. He pulls back, enough that they can see each other. It is not quite dark yet. The sun has gone down while they weren't watching. Slipped behind the distant skyline. Slipped behind the earth. The west is purple-red and the east is a flatline horizon, the lake seemingly limitless. They are quite alone out here, and the night is cool, and the twilight wind is rising.

He comes back to her. Kisses her again, open-eyed this time, watching her eyes close. Watching her as he kisses her, and as he pulls one arm from beneath her, runs his hand up her body. Finds her breast and covers it, holds it in his palm. Finds her abdomen, the thinness of her that tears sometimes at his soul; a reminder of the grief she suffered all over again when they returned from Novgorod and she disappeared into herself and he disappeared from her and how could he, he's always leaving her.

He wraps both arms around her again. Sudden and fierce, full of regret that transmutes strangely into lust and love, the same way fear transmuted into anger. He never was and never will be as strong as his more warlike brethren, but even in his lean body there is a wiry sort of strength. He crushes her against him and he kisses that throat she bares, now, he bites at her delicate skin and grips her in his teeth

the way he does, he way he cannot help but do

as he aligns himself to her and moves into her. The entry is slow and sure, a steady smooth slide; not quite gentle. Firm; on the edge of unrelenting. He fills her up and he gasps against her skin, pants through his teeth gripping her.

That's what it is, isn't it? This time, this way -- mating. He comes at her, flexes his strength and cunning because she demands it, exercises his fury and desperation because he needs to, and in the end he only wraps her in his arms because she invites him, only covers her body with his own because she allows it, mounts her because she wants it, and yet.

And yet this is not Ivan supplicating himself to Hilary's whims, waiting for her to let him fuck her. If anything this is the greatest form her submission takes, and when it truly stops being submission and just becomes the love she occasionally professes and sometimes even means. He touches her and she shivers; he covers her and she whimpers at the cold of his shorts. He removes them and she gentles again, softens, touches him in response, strokes him.

She feels without being shattered. She is soft and almost caring without having to be broken in half first. She is not bored with him, not pushing him towards the edge of violence, not refusing him because he is trying to show her his tenderness during their lovemaking and not just afterward. Hilary, who cannot even connect to herself half the time, connects with him tonight, a rare thing in a rarer love affair. She even kisses him. Not just: lets him kiss her, tolerates him kissing her. She kisses him, touching his shoulders and his arms, his back, his ass, wrapping her legs around him as he guides himself to her opening, gasping a little as he enters her.

Hilary, who is seldom soft despite how she feels in his hands, whimpers a little when he bites her neck, because of what it does to him. She isn't resisting that, either. She shivers under him, wetness slicking his cock again, because even now she cannot help how she responds to those edges, those hints of brutality, of ownership.

She does not see the colors in the sky, only the darkness past Ivan's golden head. She feels like she might be falling, and holds on tightly to him, even as he is holding her so very, very tight again, achingly tight as he pushes into her. It is not quite gentle; she gasps and she arches a bit to take it, to take him, her body and her legs and her arms all clutching at him.

"Oh," she says, as though this means something. Sighs it, as though she forgets he can hear her.

It does mean something. It means something that Ivan could not possibly put into words -- not now, not ever -- and that Hilary perhaps would never even try to verbalize. It means the same thing meant by the way she clutches at him; the same thing meant by the way she welcomes him, and draws him in, and closes herself all around him as though to keep him here, right here. It means the same thing he means when he covers her like this, and when he takes her in his arms like this, and when he

(shall we say it? can we say it?)

loves her like this.

He does love her. Terribly, achingly: a love that is not human or humane. The sort of love wolves feel for their mates, monsters for their matches. He loves her and this is what makes him seize her in his teeth like that, biting her with a passion and a depth of feeling that shares boundaries with ferocity, dominance. He loves her and this is what makes him climb the ivory tower of her yacht, batter down the porticullis of her wineglass and her peevishness. It is not a healthy sort of love, but then they never pretended it was. Most days, they seem almost to pretend it is not love at all.

Most days.

Not today.

Oh, she says. As though it means something. As though she has discovered or rediscovered something. And he loosens his teeth and kisses her shoulder, her collarbone, her sternum. He kisses her to rediscover her, loosens his arms as well and now there is enough space between them for him to look at her, the bottomless darkness of her eyes, the parting of her lips. He kisses her with his eyes open, and then with his eyes shut, he falls into that kiss as he moves into her, steady long strokes, steady sleek flexions of that long back, that supple spine, those taut muscles her hands run over: back to flank to thigh. His hands run through her hair and he can't seem to help but tighten his grasp, pull her head back. He kisses her again like he can't help that, either, his breath shuddering in the small darkness between their lips. He licks at her mouth, eats at it, drinks at her underlip like he might find some sustenance there. He bites at her neck and he laps at her breast, and all through it he bears her onward, ever onward on the rhythm of his

-- their lovemaking. There under the dusking sky. There on the flybridge of her yacht, which is the first, the very first place where he ever laid eyes on her. Couldn't have foreseen this then. Any of this.

This will not be a catastrophic encounter. They aren't playing, though perhaps they might later. He isn't using her the way he does, the way she likes him to, the way he did that night when he snuck back into the lakehouse and turned her over and snarled at her never to doubt his love for her, the way he does when he chains her to the bed so she's there when he wakes in the night with a hard-on. He is adoring her the way that -- perhaps -- he often longs to and is not permitted to. He is stroking her like the treasure she really is to him, the precious thing he has longed for and cherished since... sometime. Whenever it hit him that this dalliance of theirs was something else entirely, that he wanted her in a way he didn't want that pretty blonde virgin who was younger than her and had bigger breasts than her, in a way he didn't want that bespectacled girl or the wounded dove or the mountain-climbing duelist or... anyone he'd ever wanted before.

Hilayr wants him like this right now. Wants him even if she cannot phrase it like that, think of it that way. She trusts him, though again, this is a word that never enters her mind. He will not leave her right after, he never has. Even if he leaves her and leaves her, he will not zip up his trousers and adjust his collar and be on his way while she crumples naked to the ground, his cum on her cunt, her thighs, his voice echoing in her ears. He would never, ever do that to her. He would make her clean again. He would stroke her until she stopped shaking. He would dry her in soft towels, even comb out her hair, and wrap her in a robe before carrying her to bed, to clean sheets, tucking her in. Even if he left right as she fell asleep, it would not be the sort of abandonment that Oliver wrought on her.

She trusts Ivan. She belongs to him. He is her protector and her beloved, and because she trusts him,

she can start to give him this, she can start to feel it growing inside of her like a shoot in the desert, fragile and not likely to survive but for a brief and shining moment alive and reaching. She can feel that in herself, the way she feels something when she is near Anton, the way she felt when she decided that no she would not marry Edmund no she would not let Ivan marry Edmund's daughter no she would not give up her son forever no she would not marry again no, no, no, she would not live in that place she was before she would live in her little lakehouse and be left alone this is the life she wants this is what she wants and she will nail to a cross anyone who tries to wrest it from her.

This is what she wants. Even if she makes him climb a tower and fight a dragon to get it, even if she only has a few specks of clarity amidst the madness to know that this is what she wants, and this is what she has. Even if it destroys his life, trying to make it happen for her, trying to keep her, hold onto her. Even if he devotes the next several years of his already foreshortened life to giving her what she wants. It is not healthy. It is not safe, and it is not kind.

But it is love. And it's what they have.

This is love.

This is what they have.

It's a far cry from what they usually have. A far cry from what they call play, which would harrow most people, shock all the rest. There is no snarling, no screaming, no ecstatic, uncontrollable weeping. Their servants aren't pale and trying not to listen. Their servants likely hardly even hear them, because

they are being so quiet. They are being tender, if not quite gentle. His hands spread over her back and her legs are wound around his waist and on every thrust he pants against her skin; on every stroke she gasps past his ear. He is kissing her, and he is kissing her, and he keeps kissing her until he can't anymore, until his mouth slips past hers to groan low and rough past her ear, until he takes her in his teeth, until he reaches down to hold her waist and tilt her hips and keep her there, right there, right there.

This is not one of those encounters where he slams her facedown and pounds her from behind. This is not one of those encounters where he strings her up naked and bound, pearls swaying from her neck, diamonds swinging from her nipples. This is not rough,

though it is firm,

though it is deep and unyielding and far, far from gentle. His body pins hers all the same. He drives her hard against the cushion beneath them, grinds into her as he comes, holds her between his teeth and his hands. He hardly makes a sound, but his breathing is harsh. He shudders, all over, as his orgasm crests and starts to let him go, and then his hands are running all over her, up and down her sides, grasping at her here and there as though to remind himself that she is here. She is here and she is his and she has allowed him back, welcomed him back, he is forgiven. All his trespasses are forgiven.

--

He rolls off her, after a while. Onto his back, with the canopy over them, the blue-black sky all around. The lake feels limitless. The night, too. He holds her to his side, their sweat mingling and drying together, salty as the sea.

He thinks of Lausanne. Of their little inn across the lake in France. What was that little town called -- that picturesque little place with the switchback roads and the whitewashed, sunbeaten walls. He bought her inexpensive little trinkets; the cheapest, most worthless gifts he ever gave her. Strange that he thinks of them now.

"I love you," he whispers. "Sometimes I'm ... happy with you. And I don't think I can say that for anyone else."

The first time they were together, he fucked her so hard he terrified himself. He found himself wanting to hurt her, wanting to hurt her badly, and the pain he wanted to inflict was sexual and sexually violent and it was horrific and he stopped. He pulled himself out of her, off of her, away from her, because he couldn't.

Until he could again. Until he told her he liked her best on her stomach. Pinned her hands down. Fucked her hard, and firm, and not gently at all, and made a date to do it to her again a week later.

--

Now they are in love. They have a son together. They have been to various global destinations together and fallen more deeply and soul-wrenchingly in love in each one. Now they are in love and back on her flybridge and his eagerness for her isn't about fucking the mate of another garou or trying to open her up so he can see what's inside and certainly not about hurting her. She is not just bored and looking for something to do, someone to distract her for a few hours, someone who might be rougher with her than her husband. He knows what's inside. She knows she has a soul, and that there are things to live for and be awake for. Ivan is one of them.

So she wakes up. She makes love to him. She gives something, for once in her hellish little life. And it is different than it usually is with them. It is different but it is the same, because he knows her, and he is giving it to her the way he likes it, the way he knows she likes it, which is not tender or soft at all, no matter how loving. She's crying out softly, oh-oh-oh, and she's coming once, and again, and both are languid and wet things, unrolling slowly underneath him while he fucks her against those all-weather cushions. He is not making her scream or sob or weep but

she is still transcendant.

--

There is no canopy to cover them up on the flybridge. There is the sail, vast and unfurled at the moment, overhead, but it reaches for the sky. Looking straight up he will see the beginnings of stars, despite the light from Chicago's shoreline. Hilary gasps softly when he moves, curling against him, holding him, not wanting him to go at all, not wanting to lose his warmth. He thinks of Lausanne and that little place they stayed in, he thinks of gifts, and she thinks of these things: the sky, the light, the cold air, his body. In many ways, though he is the animal, she is more base, the more carnal, of the two of them.

She does not know what to say to that. Not right now, not when she feels very real and very exposed and very frightened of how much in the moment she is without being wasted and wrecked. She isn't sure what to do with her arms when they are not bound. She is shaking slightly, trying to hide against his side and his chest. She tries to think of something, anything, that can come out of her mouth.

"Okay."

That is what she settles on.

Ivan laughs softly at that. He shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. He can feel the way she shakes, the way she tries to hide herself against his side. Some part of him aches terribly to feel it; to sense how terribly unequipped she is to deal with the intricacies of the human heart. And yet at the same time, her response -- so uncertain, so small, so inane -- makes him laugh. He can't help it. He laughs that soft laugh and he turns his head and he kisses her temple, tries to show her that his laughter is not mockery, is not cruelty.

"My darling girl," he whispers. "My krasivaya devushka."

And his hand finds her hand. His fingers stroke over the backs of hers, and over her knuckles. The back of her hand. His fingers curve around her wrist, an intimation of those ropes and belts and scarves and ties and manacles he's used on her before. He holds her like that, bound not by artificial things but by his own grasp.

Steadies her like that. Tries.

She makes him happy. That's nice, she guesses. She's not sure what else she might say to that. She's so far past the version of herself that would just dismiss it, say something cold and cutting. She doesn't want to be mean to Ivan, even if no one else matters. She doesn't know if she's supposed to say she's happy, too, because she's not sure if she is or what that means or feels like. She can, however, accept it. He is happy with her, and she is singular in this way. Okay.

Ivan laughs, kisses her, strokes her, calls her pretty names. She shivers, not just from the cold, as he wraps her wrist in his hand. She lays her head on his shoulder like a child, trembling from... well, from the cold coming off the water.

She takes a breath, exhaling warm air against his chest. "When we sleep tonight," she murmurs, assuming he will stay long enough to sleep with her, "will you tie me to the bed? I like it when you do that. When you wake me to use me. I like it very much." There is a pause there, long and still. She whispers: "It makes me feel happy."

What she tells him, Hilary speaks like a secret. Whispered, hesitant: as though maybe if he knew he would reject her, he would be disgusted, he would turn away.

What she tells him, he already knows. The same way he knows she likes it when he flogs her, slaps her, treats her -- well. Not at all like a lady. Like a whore, like a plaything, like a toy. He knows these things. Sometimes, even now, he wrestles with it; pits what society tells him is acceptable and good and right against what she wants, what she craves, what they both derive such dark satisfaction from.

He wrestles with it, but: he knows it. Understands it. To some degree, accepts it. And so, when she tells him, Ivan smiles a little. It is a bit wry. A bit aching. He lifts her hand to his mouth, kisses her fingertips. Kisses her over her pulse, over those delicate bundles of nerve and tender that make up her wrist.

"Of course," he whispers. "And I know."

She's just not sure. What happy means, or feels like. If he'll disconnect from her, think her strange and unknowable, if she says that being tied up and used in the middle of the night makes her happy. It shouldn't; there are so many ways for that to go wrong, for that to end up being nonconsensual, for that to be painful and twisted. But she thinks that the way it makes her feel might mean... happiness. And she hopes he doesn't reject her, tell her she's wrong, that's not what it is. Back to the drawing board. Try again.

But he knows it. He accepts it because it is already a truth he's discovered without her speaking it aloud. He smiles, because he can accept this, past all the struggle and wrestling and guilt and fear and everything else. He kisses her fingertips, lightly, and she smiles, her fingertips fluttering slightly on his mouth as she trembles with pleasure as well as the chill now.

He will. This excites her. Tonight she will be bound, which is a treat, because he does not do it every night. He will, perhaps, wake up and nail her to the bed, snarling and biting her, wordless and animal as he fucks his cum into her. And this excites her, too, because she's not sure it will happen but it might, and she's not even sure she'll be able to sleep from the anticipation. Not that she would be disappointed to wake and find that he hasn't stirred, hasn't found himself wanting her under the moonlight like that. But the possibility: that thrills her.

"I am cold and hungry," she says then, more firmly, emboldened by saying that one thing makes her happy. "I think we should go down and wash and dress and eat." Hilary bats her lashes. "I will make you sushi."