Hilary
A year ago, they saw fireworks over the lake and went to Lausanne the next day. She was pregnant with a child he had suspicions was his, and he could feel her drifting away every time he saw her. The idea that she could care for him at all was so new; the feeling of wanting something more than to be brutalized and emptied out was, too. Both were terrifying to her, and she ran. Ran and ran and hid all the way in Mexico, drenched by the sun and swelling with -- they learned months later -- his son.
That son is just a little over six months old now. He tries to crawl, determined and forceful in his motions. He's determined because, as well taken care of as he is, Ivan's instructions for his caregivers do not permit coddling, fussing, constant carrying. If he wants to move from place to place, if he wants to reach the rattle just out of reach, then he must find a way to get to it. When he is tired, he is held and sung to and rocked a little while to sleep; when he is hungry, he is put to his wetnurse's breast; when he is filthy he is changed and talked to and he memorizes faces, recognizes voices. He is coming towards the first winter of his life. He was born to early spring, between the chill early spring of his mother and the lazy dying summer of his father.
Pictures and videos are captured and sent regularly to his distant father; occasionally one of the senior members of the household writes letters that are almost like reports. When Ivan has both time and inclination, he looks through them all.
He watches a video that is a few weeks old that is nothing more than Anton lying on his back, bare but for a cloth diaper, reaching up and grabbing at a colorful ring suspended on a thin elastic cord from a mobile. He bats at it, watches it swing, kicking his legs in frustration and excitement, til he manages -- finally! -- to snag the ring in his miniscule fist, yanking it down with all the strength in his -- so very small -- body, putting it immediately into his mouth to gnaw and suck on it like an animal before it springs out of his grasp and the whole ordeal begins all over again.
He reads a report about the boy's health. Statistics concerning his size, notes on his development and interests. (What sort of 'interests' could a six month old baby have, really?) How much he's eating. These letters are mostly quite boring. The ones from the young man they brought in, which are more like actual letters, are shorter and from the perspective of a boy barely past childhood himself. They are a little more candid. They are also sometimes boring, but not always.
In the photographs he looks more like Hilary now. His eyes have that same unfathomable darkness to them, tiny black pearls that are no more expressive than his (poor, departed) mother's. His hair is still dusky gold, has a texture like Ivan's -- or like Hilary's when she was in Mexico and she didn't straighten it, didn't gloss it, let it grow long and untamed. It is hard to tell what he will look like when he's older and has his own true face. For now he is a baby, and like most babies is pretty fucking adorable. Something about the look of him reaches into Ivan's gut, grabs hold, and yanks. It is a terrifying and uncomfortable feeling with remedies that are impossible and not worth contemplating.
Hilary, on the other hand, is free from all this. She hasn't seen Anton since he cried in the dark and she went to get him, holding him to her naked body and carrying him back to bed where they laid down with his father. She has no pictures or videos or letters that bore her, fascinate her, or threaten to eviscerate her. Anton may as well not exist, except
her servants know about him. She practices her Russian for no discernable reason, at least no reason she's mentioned aloud. Ivan hasn't asked her why. She learns how to speak while, half a world away, Anton learns how to move.
A few days after Halloween and all of its aftermath, Max informs him that Ms. de Broqueville has requested -- via Miranda, through Max, as though to remove herself as far as possible from the preparation -- a meeting. And this, without any other explanation, is enough to tell him exactly what this is about, and what needs to be done. Not on a weekend. Not in the evening. Some early afternoon, around lunchtime, as though they have jobs or things to do during the day like working folk. Somewhere distant from anywhere either of them live, a cold an impersonal conference room rented out in an office park. Nothing intimate. Something they can walk away from.
The day of, she arrives downstairs and her driver lets her and another woman out of the car before he goes to park. The other woman is taller, her bone structure less delicate, her eyes cunning, her hair thick and black, her coat a lighter shade of blue than her dress. She is in her forties and walks with a sharp clip of her heels and a smirk on her lips that is belittling in its patience. If anyone were to look at them, they would think she were the boss, and the lady with her an employee of some kind. Hilary is dressed in a simple white floral dress from shoulders to mid-calf, a white sweater over it and buttoned once at the top. Her hair is bound back at the nape of her neck but tousled, loose with tendrils, messy and wavy. She wears almost no jewelry; her coat is camel-colored and her lipstick perhaps a shade too dark. She looks very tired, and it gives her face a gray cast under the porcelain paleness, makes her eyes sink darkly.
For all that, she is still lovely when she, Miranda (and Carlisle, returned from the car) ascend in the elevator and rendez-vous with Ivan and his people. She is lovely and silent, her coat removed gently by Miranda and handed to Carlisle for safekeeping. For a moment there, watching the black-haired woman ease Hilary out of her coat, it is not hard to imagine how she was with her caregivers long long go, as passive as a child or a doll well into adolescence, able to do so little for herself, willing to do even less.
There's Miranda, talking to one side with whoever is with Ivan about copying all of the information to a USB key; her voice is held low, as though to keep Hilary from overhearing. Nevermind that she is doing this under Hilary's orders. There's Carlisle, staying close to Hilary, holding her coat and staying quiet, being rather impressively subtle about the way he's checking out Max's legs.
And there's Hilary, holding a small satchel-like white purse in front of herself, looking around herself but not really looking at Ivan, until he comes closer to her. Close enough, deep enough into her sphere, that she looks up at him and he sees how frightened she is, how hollow. There's a plea in her eyes. It is not for anything in particular; it is simply
help me.
make it okay.
IvanThese days it's Ms. de Broqueville.
Ivan doesn't know if that divorce is finalized yet. He supposes he should find out; he promised her a party, after all. A nice, respectable, dressy affair where he'll invite the same people that came out for Halloween, and the two of them can smirk behind the masks of their polite faces at how little the guests really know. He considers asking Hilary when the Big Day is, but the timing seems a little off right now. She wants to meet. She wants to request an appointment. That alone tells him what the main topic will be, and that, really, drives much of the humor from his mind.
So he tells Max to go ahead and arrange a day. And a place, and a time. And when all that's done, forward it to his online planner. And when that's done,
get the materials ready.
Max knows what he means. And Max interfaces with Carlisle, who may or may not interface with Hilary, to determine just what she might want to see of her errant son. In the end, Max prepares everything; hands it off to Ivan.
So it is that on the appointed day, at the appointed time and place, Ivan comes to the appointed conference room at the appointed hotel with a slim white leather zip-portfolio in hand. The hotel is the Hilton Orrington: a large, stately building up on the North Shore, not far from that yacht club neither of them go to very often anymore. They spend almost all their time down in the city, which is perhaps why this is the venue chosen. It is distant. It is apart from their lives. It's a place they can go to, get this over with, and leave behind if need be. And the Hilton is suitably luxurious while still maintain a certain anonymity and conformity; nothing one-of-a-kind. The room they meet in is the Lunt Board Room. Everything inside is sedate, neutral, corporate. The table is long and hardwood. The chairs are leather, neither over- nor understuffed, and without overt hierarchy.
Ivan sits in the center of one long side. Max is at his right hand, Lane at his left, and Dmitri stands by a little behind him with ice water, coffee, and a fruit platter. When Hilary and her two servants enter, the Russian contingent rise as one. Hilary has chosen to wear light shades, which somehow make her look all the paler, all the more wan. In contrast, Ivan is in a dark, modern-cut suit, slim and sleek, his shirt blindingly white, his tie a conservative contrast - a bold knot, heavy at the base of his throat. Lane's entire getup is more solid, more reserved; Max, of course, looks cutting and sharp and detached.
Dmitri is in black. He is the only one of his party that has eschewed a tie, instead wearing a turtleneck under his coat. He stands with his hands folded behind his back, nodding respectfully to Hilary and her party as they enter. Miranda takes Hilary's coat, and Carlisle deals with it, and then Miranda is speaking quietly to Max who stands and moves away from the table to attend to her,
and Ivan comes closer to his lover. Close to her, close enough that she finally looks at him. Her eyes plead without ever filling. They are full of fear without ever being full of life. They are as black as ever, and this setting is so businesslike, so professional, that it seems strange for Ivan to do what he does,
which is to lay his hand against her cheek, stroking back her hair. He cups the back of her head and brings her forward, kissing her softly on the forehead.
Then he guides her to a chair. Not, as one might expect, to one of the ones opposite the table from his - as though they were negotiating a contract, a deal, a settlement, a divorce. He doesn't think she was remotely this frightened, this lost, at her own divorce proceedings. But no; not there. He guides her to the chair beside him instead. If Max is upset at her ousting, she doesn't show it. She's probably not upset at all.
After Hilary has taken a seat, Ivan pushes her chair in, then sits beside her. And he looks up at the servants, eyebrows slightly raised. "Thank you," he says. His tone is a clear dismissal.
And their people get the idea. They leave, going out to wait in the hall or grab coffee from the restaurant downstairs or whatever it is they might do when they're not waiting on Hilary and Ivan hand and foot. Ivan doesn't wonder for a moment what it is they do when they're out of his sight. Like a child, he has little object permanence when it comes to his servants. It barely occurs to him that they're alive sometimes, let alone with lives of their own.
When their servants are gone, Ivan finishes unzipping the slim white portfolio. When he opens it, the contents are neatly sorted. There is an iPad inside. A manila folder with something - papers? picture printouts? - inside. Two pens. A USB key. A small set of business cards. Ivan's hands rest a moment; then he slides the portfolio in front of Hilary.
He is watching her as he does this, looking at her as she looks at ... whatever it is she looks at. "I have reports," he says quietly, "and photographs. I have videos as well. And contact information.
"Tell me where you want to start. And tell me if you need to stop."
HilaryThey met on the water. Again in the darkness. Then, dockside, to go out on his yacht -- but no, she wouldn't be seen leaving the club with a playboy bachelor so many years her junior, going out alone on his Krasota. So they came here: the Orrington. This is where he was torn apart by her before she even drew his cock into her mouth, stroking him with jeweled fingers. This is where he was so wracked by what she dragged out of him that he stopped, he pulled out, panting, shaken. Terrified, if we're truthful. This is where he had her the first time, and in a year and a half they haven't come back. Not til today.
She looks so different than the last time he saw her, just a week or so ago. So pale, so strained, so terrifed -- yet not uncertain. There is, somewhere beneath it all, a resolve. He could tell her they don't have to do this, sweep it all away, but no: in the furthest depths of those black eyes of hers, a rock hard bottom to the abyss.
No one seems to so much as glance their way when Ivan rises, comes to her, and comforts her. There is so much tenderness -- and possession, which between the two of them is much the same thing -- in the way Ivan kisses her brow. She softens to it, relaxes a fraction, breathes. They go to chairs where they will sit together, and though there were times when she imagined a projector screen, something distant that they could watch in the dark, there's nothing like that here. Just that pretty white portfolio. She reaches out and touches it, curious more about the texture of the leather than its contents. It's possible that Hilary hasn't put together what's inside yet.
Thank you, he says, and Miranda and Carlisle leave with the rest of them. Dmitri closes the door behind him with a solid click, the door heavy and the room well insulated. They have food: coffee, water, and fruit, but nothing heavy. Nothing too serious. A good appetizer and holdover until lunch, that's all. Something to do with their mouths and hands if they need it. Hilary's chair is turned slightly, angled towards Ivan's, and he sits again, opening the portfolio. She sets her purse on the table to one side, silent still.
It's an iPad inside. He's promised to get her a tablet, but she's forgotten about that. He brought an iPad today instead of something of the kind he intends to give her, but the effort put into that careful decision is wasted on her; she can't tell the difference between one piece of flat, touchscreen technology and the other. This is bigger than her phone; that's roughly all she notices. She remembers this, though. She could play little games on it. For a moment she wants to ask if she can do that. Maybe there is a cooking game, too, where you take a cartoon knife and chop up carrots. That would be fun, she thinks.
Hilary's eyes flick to the manila folder then, and the USB key, and the pens. She wonders what they might write. There's business cards; that seems odd. Babies don't need business cards. This is what she's doing when he pushes it towards her: thinking about a cooking game. Wondering about the pens and the cards. She has her hands in her lap. A few moments later, Ivan begins to speak. Explains what he has. Videos? She wonders if the flat thing plays movies. Maybe that's why there's no projector.
For a woman in her mid-thirties, Hilary's relationship with technology is that of a seventy year-old.
"Oh," she says, in acknowledgement, drawing a few more lines of connection, creating a few more frames of understanding. She says nothing for a moment, then her brows draw together, looking at the iPad, then looking at Ivan.
"I'd like to see him," she whispers, sudden and shockingly decisive. "Right now. Can this do that?" she wants to know, tapping the screen of the iPad with a pale peach fingernail. "Do they have cameras there? What time is it there? Is he awake?"
IvanIvan hesitates a second. He hadn't expected this: this sudden burst of decisiveness, this sudden desire to not just see Anton, but see him. This moment. As he is.
"I have videos," Ivan says then. "Recordings. But it's only ten pm there. I could call Miron and have him use his cameraphone. You could see Anton live, if you want to. He might be sleeping right now."
HilaryIt all comes in such a rush. There's an iPad and a folder and promises of pictures and videos, but Hilary cuts through it all so suddenly. She wants to see him now. She wants to see him. Not a photo of him, not a video of him. She wants to see him.
Of course it's nighttime there -- long past the sort of bedtime a six-month old keeps. Of course he's asleep. Hilary has no idea what 'skype' is or how such things work, only that she's heard that the video-phone thing that used to be a piece of science fiction stories is real now, people can do it. She doesn't know or care who Miron is. She just gives a short, sharp nod.
"Do it."
IvanTo say Ivan is wary and uncertain of the wisdom of what Hilary asks for is an understatement. He remembers all too well what happened the last time Hilary was reminded of her son. Didn't even have to see him, or hear him, or think very much about him. Simply had to be reminded: Anton exists. Anton existed, and he was inside her, and now she's not,
and she is empty.
Still, his hesitation lasts only a heartbeat. Then Ivan gets his phone out, and perhaps it means something that Miron is on speeddial. The phone rings once, and then Anton's personal Dmitri picks up. Ivan speaks briefly in Russian. Perhaps Hilary understands enough to hear him ask Miron to turn on video conferencing, please. Then he hangs up, and the iPad comes alive at the touch of a finger, and with a few quick swipes Ivan is loading up some app or other, setting the tablet up to face Hilary.
"Do you want him to be able to see you?" Ivan asks quietly.
HilaryThat Hilary wanted to do something like this at all shocked Ivan the first time she mentioned it, after how she'd broken down when he brought up the existence of their son. She simply could not cope, could not stop screaming --
but then said, maybe once in awhile, they could talk about him. Scheduled. Not sprung on her, not a surprise. They could talk about him and she could look at pictures and the like, follow his life a little. This she could tolerate. This, if one thinks about it, she actually needs. She has to need it, or she wouldn't do this to herself. She wouldn't put herself through this if she didn't want it. Crave it. If at least some small part of her did not need this to survive.
She isn't looking at Ivan's phone, though. She's looking at the closed folder, and when he speaks to the teenager on the other end, Hilary thinks she recognizes the word 'on'. These are her concepts in Russian: on and off, up and down, in and out. Like a children's book. The iPad glows to life, and she startles a bit, thinking they were going to be looking on Ivan's phone -- but no. The larger screen. She peers at it, curious, as Ivan brings it all to life.
The question he asks makes her blink. She looks from the screen to Ivan. "Is he awake?" she says, her voice hushed as though,
no,
Anton isn't awake. As though he's asleep, right there in the room, and they have to be quiet. But she has so many questions: "Who is Miron? Does he know about me? Do any of them?"
Ivan"Probably not," Ivan replies. "He's still quite young. They tell me he sleeps much of the day and most of the night. But he might wake when Miron goes in."
Ivan is already looking at Hilary. He doesn't look away as she turns to meet his eyes. "Miron is Anton's valet," he explains. "At least, that's his title. In reality I hope he becomes to Anton what Dmitri is to me. A trusted servant, first amongst many. An able left hand, a listening ear, a closed mouth. Someone who can attend Anton throughout his life, even in the absence of his parents."
He is gentle when he says these things. Careful. He watches Hilary keenly, watches to see the effect of his words; takes such care. If there is no drastic reaction, he continues:
"He doesn't know you. No one does. No one except you and I, Dmitri, Lane and Max." A moment's pause. "I thought ... it would be impossible for that bond of trust to form between Anton and Miron if it's built around one colossal lie. But if you want Anton to see you, I'll have Miron turn the camera on and leave the room. He won't come back unless I call."
HilaryThere's no strong outward effect: no splintering, no shattering at the edges. She seems to relax a notch to think that Anton is sleeping -- it's late there. He should be asleep. He slept most of the way home from the hospital. She does remember that. She remembers that he slept so heavily, so much, for the few hours she was around him. He barely even stirred when she held him and took him to her bed. Of course he's sleeping. He's a baby.
And to the explanation of Miron: just a nod. Just simple understanding. What Ivan has in Dmitri, she did not know with her own caretakers. She wonders why; cultural differences can only be a part of it. There was no stability between generations, not when everyone she's related to is dead or scattered or homeless and insane under a bridge somewhere or god knows what. And then there is her. There is her own broken psyche, her own strangeness -- Ivan talks of Anton growing up with a bond of trust with someone else. Someone he can talk to. Someone who will never tell his secrets. Someone who will be both parent and brother to him, as well as servant. She just nods. Miron, she thinks. Like mirror. Which is what he'll be.
She thinks of Ivan's lawyer and Ivan's two hands. They are quite different from the three servants she's chosen to entrust with this monumental secret -- she hasn't even known them a year. She wonders if it was very stupid of her to tell them. She thinks about what it would be like to be able to tell someone anything without needing to care how they feel about it, without worrying that they will betray her or abandon her for it. That isn't Ivan. She does care how he feels.
Darya seems like such a moral young girl, very kind, more patient than one might expect from someone so young. She thinks that if she dies it would be nice if Darya went to Anton, too. She's Russian, after all. But then she would lie to him, always lie to him, and Ivan wants Anton to be able to trust the people around him. Perhaps not, then.
Carlisle seems to have a depth of loyalty to him, but she isn't sure. Miranda needs to know everything she knows so that she can do her job, but in the end: Hilary just doesn't know. They are hers because she pays them, and because they come from family lines that were bred for servitude among the Silver Fangs. For various reasons they are unsuitable as mates but too valuable or with friends too well-connected to be tossed aside or let go to other tribes. She wonders if they will always be with her. She wonders, too, why she's thinking of all this. She has always been solitary. She has never 'trusted' servants. She wonders why it matters to her at all.
Because Anton has it. Because Ivan does. And on this earth she can't think of anyone else she wants to be close to, to be similar to. But she isn't like them. She can't be.
"No," she whispers, moving the iPad a bit so she can see it more clearly. "he doesn't need to see me."
IvanThere's the slightest pause. "You wanted him to," Ivan says, his voice as soft as Hilary's. "For a moment there, you wanted it. Didn't you?"
It's not an accusation. It's a question.
Hilary"I thought about it," Hilary says, an evenness to her tone that is like a crack going out from the ice he just stepped onto, a creaking of the frozen water he's about to trust his weight to. That's all she says. Neither wanting not fearing, and her face is a mask but there's something awful in the corners of her eyes, caught and captured and thrashing. She doesn't take her eyes off of the iPad's screen.
"Why is it taking so long?" she asks then, her voice somehow bringing to mind the slide and thunk of her knife against a cutting board.
IvanIvan doesn't push. He hears that note, he hears the way she speaks, sees that look in her eyes, and he doesn't push.
Oh, but he wants to. For a second, he wants to drag what she wouldn't say, didn't say, perhaps didn't even want to say, out into the light. She thought about it. She wanted it. She wanted her son to see her, she wants some sort of connection with him, she's learning goddamn Russian for him, isn't she? He wants to say all this because
it's that old fantasy again, the mad one that burns through his mind like ice sometimes: the one where they run off to Russia together, wear fur coats and fuck like sables in the dead of winter, the one where they live in some remote, vast dacha in the countryside, the one where they raise their son together, only not really because an army of tutors and nannies and nurses and maids raise him, and they simply visit when it's convenient, and when they don't want to see him they can simply go into town and live at their opulent townhouse instead,
see the Mariinsky Ballet dance in St. Petersburg,
fly to Paris for a weekend.
Sometimes he wants her so badly he forgets he doesn't know how to have her. He doesn't know how to love somebody like that, continuously and tirelessly, day after day after day.
But: he doesn't bring any of this up. Hilary's voice speaks of madness, and he remembers the way she screamed and screamed, the black voids that were her eyes. He turns away from her and he taps something on the tablet and all at once streaming video starts up, blocky and blurry at first, then sharp as the signal strengthens.
She sees a room. It is not a bedroom; it looks like it may be a formal dining room. It is what your average American would call nice. Nicely furnished, nicely sized, but nothing truly extraordinary. Compared with Ivan's everyday surroundings, his life, it is almost a little downscale. It is not remotely in his stratum of wealth and privilege.
"He lives in a little house in the suburbs of Novgorod," Ivan explains quietly. They are not broadcasting video. Their microphone is muted. "Besides Miron, he has a maid and a wetnurse. When he's around a year old we'll release the wetnurse and hire on another maid. Plus a tutor. But when he's of age he'll go to school. I'm told there are several excellent bilingual academies in Novgorod."
A young man - a boy, really - has appeared on screen. He sits in one of the dining chairs, pulls the camera - laptop, perhaps? Another tablet? Larger than a phone, it seems - closer. He waves, and he says something, and then he calls a few times, Russians words that Hilary understands:
Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?
Ivan taps the mute off. "Yes," he replies, English, "I can hear you. Sorry, connection problems."
"Hello! Ivan!" Miron's English is quite good, though the accent is more British than American. "Would you like to see Anton, sir?"
"Yes, that would be delightful, Miron."
"Right away." The viewpoint spins suddenly. Then Hilary finds herself at eye level with Miron's chest, looking up at his face. He is dressed casually; his long-sleeved t-shirt bears the name of some soccer team or other. A hallway breezes by in the background. Furnishings look clean and modern without being cutting-edge. Then they're going up the stairs, and around, and back the other way. A door opens. The nursery is painted cheerful yellow. Miron carefully turns a light on. It has a dimmer. He keeps it dim, and he tiptoes in. At the cribside Miron turns the laptop around, sets it on a table or a chair or some sort of still surface. When the image resolves,
Hilary can see her son for the first time since he was taken from her, so many months before.
HilaryThat moment passes, and with it, all of Ivan's attempts to resolve his own curiosity by reading the crackling tones in her voice, the strain in her eyes. The longing he has to take her and take his son and go back to the homeland where his bloodline originates passes, too. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's mercy. Maybe it's a mingling of both. Hilary is taut with demand; she does not want to see Anton. She does not want to know Miron's face or his name or anything about her son's life. But she needs to. She needs to see him, minutes ago, hours ago, she needs him here and she's waited, she's been so goddamn patient that when the picture starts out so blurry she can't make anything out,
Hilary almost grabs the iPad and whips it across the room.
She does not. She laces her hands together, her forearms laid on the table in front of her, elbows out, back straight. She barely seems to be breathing as the picture resolves. They see a room. It is not her son. She thinks she's about to snap. What do they not understand about her request? Has she been somehow unclear? But Ivan begins talking and even though the edges of her vision seem white-hot, even though a muscle in her cheek twitches with clenched teeth, she listens. She stares at the screen, as though willing a six-month-old baby to appear on it.
It makes sense to get rid of the wetnurse. She probably has children of her own. And they don't want her lording some kind of special bond with Anton over any of the other servants, particularly Miron. School, Ivan says, and she looks at him for the first time in quite awhile, a flicker of disgust over her face -- or maybe that's surprise. Maybe she's just now realizing that Ivan probably went to a school. She settles quickly, primly returning her attention to the screen, refusing to comment.
There's a boy on the screen. Hilary tips her head to the side, looking him over. He prattles in Russian; Ivan answers in English. Hilary remains silent, remains still, even though she knows she can't be seen by this Miron creature. He switches to English without being asked; she exhales when the exchange tells her that yes, they will go see Anton now. Her back relaxes a little bit. She pays no attention to the surroundings, waiting instead for the door to open, the baby to make a noise, something, anything to tell her they have arrived.
It is nearly impossible to see at first, the room pitch dark. Miron gives them just enough light that, while heavily shadowed, they can make things out. At the cribside, the image blurs, sticks, pixelates, and Hilary makes a little noise -- a truncated, choked-off shriek of protest -- that goes back to silence as soon as the picture settles again. The video begins to stream once more, calmly. Hilary, like the screen, settles into something flowing and smooth, no longer tensing up and relaxing in hard little waves of anxiety and stress.
The sheet on the crib's mattress is pale, and he has a single blanket, not too big and not too heavy. He sleeps on his side; she does not know this but he's been doing this since he learned how to roll himself over. There's a thumb in his mouth, his fingers splayed. His body moves with each breath, steady and deep, but shorter than an adult's would be. They have him in a set of lightweight pajamas; she imagines the house is kept warm enough that he doesn't need to be swaddled. He doesn't look cold at all, nor sweaty.
Hilary watches him for a long time. And Anton doesn't do anything in particular; he sleeps the heavy, dark sleep of a being for whom just waking up and rolling around the floor a few times is exhausting, a creature whose brain and body still require so much development, so much growth that simply can not be done while still inside the mother. And he has grown a lot: he is quite a bit larger than he was the first time and only time she's seen him. His head is still disproportionately large, his body slender by comparison. He has long, tapered fingers with miniscule nails at the tips.
For awhile, she just stares at the screen, wordless and motionless and -- from all appearances -- reactionless. Ivan cannot read her thoughts. The fact that she sees his thumb-sucking and is reminded of his wetnurse and wants to kill something for a brief moment is hidden from him. The fact that she grows sleepy just looking at him is hard to tell. From the way Hilary looks at the screen, one might think she is simply let down. So much buildup, and this is all he is?
After what amounts to a few minutes, in fact, Hilary leans back in her seat and reaches up, toying with one of her earrings. "I detest the yellow," she mutters, looking irritated.
IvanFor the most part, Ivan doesn't look at Hilary now. He does not attempt to read her responses. He does not attempt to read her at all. This might be a sort of mercy: maybe he doesn't want her to feel scrutinized, stared at, stripped raw by his regard. Or perhaps it's simply a sort of avoidance. The tantrum she threw the one and only time he threw her son in her teeth was half-involuntary, a reaction she could not help. It was also half-deliberate: a warning so terrible, so unforgettable, that he will never, ever do anything like that again.
It still scars his memory. He's afraid of that madness in her, afraid to look at her lest he sees it brimming under her surface, seeping through the cracks.
So she stares at the screen, and so does he. His fingertips hover over the mute button. Miron doesn't even know Hilary is there. He talks a little; he whispers to Ivan that earlier today Anton was crawling quite well. Sometimes he even pulls himself up to stand. Only for a few seconds at a time, of course, but the wetnurse claims he's an early bloomer. A smart baby.
Ivan listens. He answers in short phrase. It's mostly just acknowledgment, and eventually conversation tapers off, and there's just silence as Hilary continues to look at the boy, her son.
When she sits back, Ivan instantly taps the mute. She speaks: the first thing out of her mouth is criticism. Something twists in Ivan. It's equal parts irritation and humor. He hardly understands how such a thing is possible. A beat or two of silence while he sorts his own emotions out into their appropriate piles.
"We can have it repainted," he replies. "What would you prefer?"
HilaryThey say that most children will pick a direction and swing for the fences: they will either verbalize early, learn to talk early, or they will begin crawling and standing and cruising and walking early. Of course this is a fallacy: children do everything in their own time, as soon as they're ready for it. For the most part, adults really don't need to intervene in any of it. Or worry. But these are the details parents are supposed to care about, even Miron knows: Anton was crawling quite well today. The last time they took a video, Anton was still getting the hang of lifting one arm after he'd pushed himself up on all fours, then smacking his hand down and rocking back and forth for awhile.
And now he's crawling. Scooting his knees across the floor, smacking his palms down. It's like an avalanche: so much struggle, so much tension, and then a swiftly rolling boulder down a hill, barreling forward: he's mobile. He takes off after the adults when they set him down, following the around. He cries out in angry frustration when they go too fast for him and he gets left behind -- cries out, too, in loneliness and fear, because he is still figuring out that when he can't see people they aren't gone forever, they are not on the other side of the world,
like his actual mother and father.
Pulling himself up, too! Grabbing the bars of his crib and trying to stand, then thumping back down on his diapered bottom on the mattress. Grabbing the edges of tables or the wall and wobbling on his feet for a few seconds before sitting back down, worn out. He is not over-helped. They do not hold his hands and walk him across the room. The wetnurse coos over him, tells anyone who will listen that he's such a smart baby, and she tells Anton himself that he's so strong! Yes he is. The wetnurse isn't there, though. Just Miron, the mirror, who eventually goes quiet, unaware of the woman who listens and watches. The woman he, like the rest of them, thinks is deathly ill or already dead. Poor woman, only able to love her son and dote on him, worship him, for a little while before she lost him.
Before he lost her.
All she has to say is something about the paint in the nursery, and it's about as kind as her comments on Evgeny's cooking. In fact, it's exactly like that: the same tone, the same expression, the same sort of flippant dismissal of something entirely because one detail doesn't meet her exacting standards.
The last time she mentioned Evgeny's cooking was the day after the Halloween party. She was in such high spirits. So open, so close to him. She admitted that Evgeny really is a fine cook. She didn't offer any explanation for the way she talks about it, though. It isn't too hard to understand, when one thinks about it, but Hilary herself doesn't think about it.
She toys with that earring, her eyes drifting back to the screen again. They can have it repainted. "Why yellow?" she asks, instead of answering, seeming distressed. "He's a boy. Why doesn't he have any toys or animals in his crib? Why don't they give him a pillow? He's not as big as I thought he'd be. Why aren't they feeding him?"
IvanIvan begins to answer why yellow, but there's no time. She's going on to the next question. And then the next. And Ivan stops trying; he just waits. He waits until the barrage is finished and Hilary is quiet again and
instead of answering any of her questions, he taps the mute button and speaks quietly to Miron. "Could you just leave the laptop where it is, Miron? I'll text you when it's all right to turn it off. Thank you."
Miron does as he's asked. And Ivan mutes the mic again, and in the image they can see Miron getting up and checking on Anton, tucking his light blanket around his small body a little more securely before leaving the room. They both watch this, Anton's distant parents. And then Ivan turns to Hilary, and he reaches out - and this is careful, almost ginger - to lay his hand on her back.
"He's all right, Hilary," he says gently. "He's doing well. You don't have to be afraid for him.
"He has toys. They just don't leave them in his crib at night because it's safer this way. And he's too young to need a pillow. They feed him when he's hungry; right now, he's just sleepy. And his room is yellow, I suppose, because I thought it was a bright, happy color. Not dark, and not bleak."
A small pause. His hand rubs gently on her back, as though she were the one in need to care. "He's doing well," Ivan repeats softly.
HilaryUnaware of how wary he is, how many times he's thought of that breakdown in her front hallway, Hilary flinches away when Ivan reaches for her. The unwillingness to be touched right now is clear before his hand even grazes her, her shoulders drawing in on themselves. God, she looks awful today. So scraped thin, so pale, so sleepless and hungry. She breathes through her nose as though she's trying not to pant, as though she's worn herself out, as though -- and this is the truth -- she is desperately staving off something she does not have the resources to deal with.
To Ivan, it will look like the oncoming storm of another cold, shrieking snap. Inside of her, it feels like something much worse. Losing control is easy. Feeling something is hard.
She watches, eyes unblinking, as Miron tucks the blanket around Anton, attends to him gently like this before he leaves the room even though no one told him to do this, even though Anton wasn't cold, even though it makes Anton stir a little in his sleep before settling again. What she feels then she cannot describe; she has no words to put that pain into. No words are deep enough that they won't overflow.
But Ivan talks to her anyway, even as she stares, unable to allow him to touch her, unable to accept physical comfort right now. That's what it is: comfort. Which means she's in pain. Which means something hurts. And it hurts in the way she's spent her entire life avoiding. It hurts the way she had him take Anton far, far away to avoid feeling -- and let's be honest, that was as much a part of the reason as to avoid Dion killing them all. She doesn't like to hurt. She can't bear this sort of pain, though there are other sorts she seeks out.
Needs.
She needs this, too. And she sits up as Ivan begins to talk to her, assuring her that Anton is okay. She looks at the screen still, staring at him sleeping, knowing this is him, right now, this is where he is and what he's doing. He's all right and she doesn't have to be afraid. He has toys but they don't let him sleep with them because it isn't safe. Why isn't it safe, she wants to know, and is reminded that this is why he had to go away, he wouldn't be safe with her, not at all. He doesn't need a pillow, he's too young, but she doesn't understand -- what does it mean to be old enough to need a pillow? Why doesn't he need one? If they feed him when he's hungry but he looks smaller than she expected, then does that mean he doesn't eat enough? Why isn't he hungrier?
Hilary never questions the fact that her mental image of what he should look like is closer to a toddler than a six month old. Of course he isn't that big. But he's so much bigger than he used to be and that, too, holds confusion and terror for her. How did he get so much bigger? Ivan tells her he's sleepy right now, not hungry, and she wants to snap that she knows that, she meant why aren't they feeding him enough, but the desire to snap at Ivan is exhausting and it makes her sad.
Ivan was the one who wanted the room yellow. So it wouldn't be dark. She thinks of her own childhood toy and the tears fill her eyes so instantly it's impossible to miss. She buckles a little at the waist, hunching, her eyes closing. The tears squeeze out from under her lashes and a couple of them drip down. Her hands are on her lap and she rocks a little, ever so slightly, no more than a tree bending to the wind and back again.
But no screams come. She doesn't throw the iPad across the room. She doesn't start hitting Ivan or shrieking. He doesn't have to grab her arms and hold them to her sides to calm her down; she just begins to cry. Quietly, actually, the sounds out of her mouth no more than intermittent, rhythmic little exhales, the pale ghosts of sobs. Her shoulders shake as she brings up a hand to cover her face, pressing her lips together to try not to sound quite so pathetic. She just weeps.
For once, she has the sanest reaction anyone could have, given the circumstances.
IvanThe first time Ivan tries to touch Hilary, her flinch is so palpable he stops instantly. They talked, a long time ago, about safewords, safeties to call on in the course of what they call play. She asked him how to tell him to stop when she couldn't speak. When she was gagged, or breathless with sobs, or simply so far beyond words that they could no longer come to her. And he told her: just move away. If he ever feels her move away, he'll understand.
He understands this, too. She doesn't want to be touched. So he returns his hand to the tabletop, and he doesn't touch her. He still talks to her though. He still tells her what he tells her, that their son is all right, that he's doing well; he still tells her all the answers to all those questions she asked without ever really stopping for the answers.
It was never really about the answers. It was about what she was feeling, what she felt, how she felt. And how she feels now is suddenly unmistakable, drawn all over her face and her body. It's the way she crumples. It's the paleness in her face, her bloodless cheeks and her haunted eyes, closing, closing, she's weeping now and she's trying to do it silently. This time when he touches her, she doesn't flinch away.
So he touches her. He does more than touch her. He wraps his arms around her. He scoops her up, more or less - Halloween night flashes into his mind, the way he scooped her up when all was said and done, walked away with her, took her away with him - but this time he doesn't take her anywhere. He simply moves her over, pulls her close, wraps his arms around her and holds her, very tightly, as she cries.
Ivan does not tell her it will be okay. He does not try to tell her anything. He simply holds Hilary, the woman he loves, the mother of his child, and rubs her back in slow, soothing circles, and gives her time to grieve.
HilaryFor a woman who craves extremity with him, she crumples under these softer, more sinister pains.
Ivan comes to her, wraps her up close, holds her as she cries, and this is right. This is good. This is the way it should be between two people who have said -- once or twice, at least -- that they love each other. They cannot raise their son together because he was born of adultery. If her soon-to-be ex-mate knew that Anton existed, with his fair skin and burnished gold hair, it would doom them both. Dion, mad as any Fang of his rank could be, might even go after the child as well. He is in Novgorod so that they can all be safe. All of this makes sense. It gives them the beauty of an old-world tragedy. Even her tears do.
But there is more to it than that. Anton is going to be raised by lies. His father, if he ever meets him, will lie to him, too. They are not simply waiting for Dion to die in the War; they are not waiting until Ivan is strong enough or has a pack or until Anton is of age to tell everyone the truth. Hilary is not going away in secret to visit him, to hold him close and kiss his brow and whisper to him she loves him, she loves him, don't ever forget her, she loves him. There will be other lies, and one day he may very well see through some of them.
The truth is this: his father cannot bear to be the hook on which anyone hangs their dependence. He does not like the feeling of being bonded, of being tied, of being with a pack or with a mate. What kind of a father could he ever be? His servants handle most of the details; choosing the color of the walls in Anton's nursery was a whim, a thought he tossed out -- maybe yellow -- before moving on to something more interesting to him. There was a rationale behind it, but even Hilary doesn't think that Ivan put much care into the decoration of the child's home. She doesn't know anyone, least of all herself, but she has learned a thing or two about the man she submits to.
And then there is Anton's mother. God, she's so broken that she critiques the paint because it might help her stave off feeling something about her son. She would rather be whipped with a leather flog than even consider raising her own child -- literally. She has to find fault with the people whose days and nights and even lives are devoted to the care of the boy she used to call an 'it' because that way she can hold herself back from her own feelings, be distant from him,
even as she learns Russian just so when she speaks it or hears it and understands a little she can feel close to him. Even though these critiques are also the only way she can show that she cares for him. Yes, Anton's mother: the woman so broken that caring, grieving, even following her own instincts, are horrifying things. His mother, who hid dead things in her room when she was a little girl to try and understand what death was, what had become of her brother, what the difference was between him (dead, like the bird) and her (alive, but not like other people at all).
Anton is in Novgorod to be safe from Dion's wrath. And from Ivan's rejection. Hilary's madness. Miron will protect him, for awhile. Then Anton will change and he will protect Miron and the maids, he will protect the kin who have raised him, he will find his own kind of madness that, if he had parents, they would all pretend wasn't there.
Hilary does not like this feeling. She doesn't mind being held by Ivan. She doesn't mind him comforting her -- there is no one else she would want this sort of thing from, in fact. But she hates this need, this weakness that she cannot choose, cannot walk away from, that she knows very well he has no idea how to protect her from. It's different when they fuck and she submits; she chooses that, she can stop it, and Ivan knows how to handle her. He knows what to do and he's very good at it. She can trust him.
But this.
In this, they're just... floundering. Drowning. She can feel it, despite his strength where he holds her -- he has no idea what to do but hold her. He cannot help her come down from this. And she doesn't know what to do. She feels panic bubbling up inside of her -- what if she never stops feeling this, this, right now, this sucking wound in her chest, this hemorrhaging of her soul, what if she dies, she can't survive this --
Her hands are clutched into fists that press against his shoulders, not grasping at him solely because she can't open her hands. She cries, and she sobs openly after a few gasps, and it seems to go on as long as the time she spent watching Anton sleep. It doesn't seem to fade, or get better, it just --
"I can't stop," she pleads, choking on the words. "I can't -- I don't know how -- I don't want to feel like this, Ivan -- Make it s-stop..."
IvanIt's a terrifying thing, to be needed like this. Worse, to be needed and to be utterly unable to provide. He doesn't know what she needs. He doesn't know how to give it to her. She won't stop crying, and all he can do is hold her, wrap his arms around her and tuck her head under his chin, her face against the hollow of his throat and his shoulder and his chest; hold her as closely as he can. She sobs. He rocks her, and it occurs to him that he's never even comforted Anton like this. The most he ever did was hold him in the plane on the way over, and even that was something Dmitri had to teach him.
They are utterly incapable of raising their own child. They would not know the least thing about it. And perhaps that more than anything proves that the Silver Fangs are through, are done. When a species becomes incapable of reproducing itself, there is nothing left but extinction.
After a long time, Ivan reaches past Hilary. He touches the button that makes the screen go dark, though the link isn't severed. Merely sleeping. Then he returns his hand to her, wraps his arms close around her again, strokes her hair. Does his best to comfort her, which is not enough.
"I don't know how," he confesses, very softly. "I'm sorry, but I don't know how."
HilaryWhen Ivan reaches past her, at a loss and just as uncomfortable with her outpouring of emotion as she is, Hilary sees him going for the button and lets out a little shriek. "No!" she says, grabbing his sleeve, clutching it rather than his arm, her small hand wrapping tight around the fabric.
"I'll stop," she says, gasping in hard, sniffing. "I'll stop, I'll stop."
Ivan"Oh, love." Ivan's arm relents immediately, drawing back, his hand wrapping gently around hers. Bringing it to his chest, holding it close against his body as though protecting this one small part of her might do something for all those parts he can't touch, can't help, can't heal.
He has a memory of fucking her, once, a long time ago. One of the first times. One of the first times, too, that he began to be aware of how dangerous this dalliance was, not because of her husband or even because of what she was doing to his desires, but because of how she made him feel. How she made him feel for her. He has a memory of holding her down, grabbing her hands and pinning them, gripping them so hard that afterward she barely seemed able to move them. And he covered her hands with his own, then, and it was tender and soft, and
so treacherous, that moment, because he could feel himself sliding into her gravity.
"It's all right," he whispers. "You'll be all right."
And he leaves the iPad where it is, the screen lit and showing their sleeping son. It's not a very exciting view, really. If it weren't Hilary's own son, if she were watching some other mother have a meltdown like this, she likely wouldn't understand at all. It's just a baby. It's just a thing, a small, noisy, needy thing. Strange how such things change so utterly when they come within one's own sphere of existence. Strange how something innocuous, if not a little irritating, transforms into something brutal and pivotal.
HilaryThere are men and women alike who take videos of their babies and put them on Youtube and cover their Facebook accounts with pictures of these babies, utterly fascinated by their own offspring, unable to comprehend for a moment that other people might not be quite as intrigued. This feed of Anton sleeping is not interesting. He barely even moves. Occasionally that thumb in his mouth receives a strong suck before his mouth goes slack again. At this point in his life he spends more time sleeping than anything else. All he does when he's sleeping is grow a little more, maybe pee into his diaper, and dream his way down long, dark pathways. He is very boring.
Hilary cannot bear for Ivan to press any buttons to take him away. Not again, she thinks, as thought she didn't engineer Anton's removal from her life right alongside Ivan. Not again. Don't let me hurt him; don't take him away again.
She does quiet, though. Ivan holds her, whispers, calls her love, tells her she'll be all right, and he thinks vaguely and strangely of how it was when he first began to fall for her. She leans against him and she lays her head on his chest, watching the screen. She forces the tears to stop, and chokes back on them, making herself breathe, because if she starts to break down again he might call a stop to all of this. It's hurting her very much to be here. She does not want it to stop, though.
Hilary wonders, a step outside of herself, why she doesn't want to look away. He isn't doing anything. It obviously upsets her to watch. But she doesn't want to let go quite yet. So she sits awkwardly along Ivan's lap, watching their son sleep from across the ocean. She thinks of Miron tucking the blanket around him before leaving and her heart breaks a little again -- that was that feeling, before. She names it now. Heartbreak.
How repulsive, to be feeling such a thing.
After awhile, she is breathing calmly again, her tears drying on her face, and she says quietly: "Leave it on for now. I want... to see pictures. And ...whatever they write to you about him."
IvanSo Ivan leaves it on. And while Anton sleeps in the background, he reaches past Hilary. He doesn't tell her to go back to her own seat. His arm remains where it is, looped around her waist, while he opens the manila folder inside the leather portfolio.
There are pictures inside. Just a handful. The best ones, one imagines, handpicked, but probably not by Ivan. They're printed out as glossy 8x10s that slide easily apart. There is one of Anton sleeping much as he is now, but in daylight, the afternoon sun lighting up the room around him without damaging his delicate newborn's skin. There is one of him wide awake, his eyes open and inquisitive. He's up on his hands, and he's staring at the camera. There is one of him outside, held by his wetnurse, his head protected by a tiny bucket hat. There is one of him gumming a silver rattle engraved with his initials, AP.
Even in his name, there is no trace of Hilary. In his full name there are traces of Hilary's brother, her lineage; but nothing of the woman herself. She does not share a name with Ivan. They share nothing at all except for some illicit encounters, some sordid little games, some inescapable bond of something almost too dark to be called love.
"There are more photos," Ivan says. "A lot more. There are videos as well. I can show you. I'll give a copy to your assistant. You can even take the portfolio home if you want." If you can bear it, he means. "Every letter they've written me is here, too."
A small hesitation.
"But we have to turn the live feed off if you want to read them now."
HilaryShe does go back to her own seat, though. She slides off of his lap and moves to her chair, bringing it over. There is a box of tissues on the table; she strips one from the cardboard and dabs at her face, getting a compact out of her purse while Ivan drags the portfolio over and opens up the folder. Snapping the compact closed after checking her face and patting on a bit of powder, Hilary slips it back into her purse -- white leather, like his portfolio, but patent and glossy -- and turns toward him, composed.
Freakishly, frighteningly composed, after that heavy sobbing that could dimly be heard outside the room by whichever servants chose to linger around in case they were called. Dmitri, probably. Carlisle. Lane and Miranda and Max down at the hotel restaurant, avoiding talking to each other.
Photographs. The best ones, large and pretty but candid -- not done by a professional. She looks through them slowly. Stares at each one. He's napping during the day, under a lighter blanket, shirtless, because it was quite warm. Sucking his thumb in that one, too. Another woman holding him, a stupid little hat on his head, the woman smiling and urging him to look at the camera, tickling him to try and get him to smile, Anton looking mostly curious about a tree over in the distance, or the wind on his arms. One of him gnawing on that rattle, slobbering all over it.
Hilary looks at the one of him pushed up on his arms for a long time, because it is the only picture in which he's looking directly at the camera. At her. He looks completely different than he does in the streaming video. He looks different than he does in her memory, tiny and red and more like Ivan. His nose is shockingly round, to her. She and Ivan don't have little button noses, but she imagines that may just be how children look. He barely has any hair at all. She imagines he's going to look quite a lot like his father. That's for the best.
After awhile, she sets the photo back down and looks at another one. A few more. Some of him when he was a few months younger, still too small to do things like sit up on his own or roll over. In these he is blessedly free of someone else's arms around him to hold him up; they propped him up with cushions or blankets. He looks like a little old man, staring upward, or sleeping, wrapped in blankets or wearing clothes that always seem too big because he is so very, very small. She flips back through the photos to the one where he stares at her.
In her mind, she thinks, in wary curiosity, in suspicious wonder: I made you. You come from me.
And you are not bad.
"Miranda has had a wall safe installed," she says. "She'll be taking all this for me." There's a pause. "She's from the same bloodline as the ones who raised me. Not ...directly related. An offshoot of the lineage."
Hilary closes the manila folder over her son's face and takes a deep breath. She gives a nod, looking at the iPad screen. "It's all right," she says now. "But --"
she hesitates a moment, then her brow wrinkles. "Isn't he scared? It's so very dark in there."
IvanInstantly Ivan understands that Hilary only worries about this because she, herself, is so very terrified of the dark. He understands that she cannot, and perhaps never will be able to, comprehend someone else's fear unless it mirrors her own. He understands that that likely encompasses so many other emotions as well. He thinks of all the times he was so angry and she didn't even seem to know why. He thinks of all the times he was being torn to shreds, and she didn't seem to care. Was incapable of caring, because caring required comprehension.
It's painful to understand that, and to see it reflected so utterly in the way she responds to her son. Somehow, it's almost as painful to know that with Ivan, at least, Hilary seems to try. Or wants to try. Simply can't, sometimes. Like sinking into darkness, she said once. Like going underwater, farther and farther away. Paradoxical that she's so frightened of the dark and yet so comforted by the thought of sinking away from the light.
These are the thoughts that course through his mind as he looks at the iPad and its image. He thinks of this, and then he exhales slowly, reaches out to close the video conference window.
"He doesn't seem to be afraid of the dark," Ivan says. "And his caretakers are always close by. They go to him if he cries." Another small pause, another small hesitation. "I remember ... what you told me about your toy and the hallway and the darkness. If he's ever scared of the dark, I've made sure he never has to look for help all alone."
HilarySometimes she understands, though. Rarely, and not for long, and usually only in a very broken manner, but: sometimes he can make her understand. Sometimes he can help her feel a little bit human, and when she is like that, she can see that he's human, too. Sort of. Like All Saint's Day, lounging and lazing around in bed, then by the fire in his -- their -- cabin. She was so open then. She could look in his eyes and recognize emotion. She could respond with her own emotion. It was nice. It was tender and aching, because they both knew it wouldn't last. It can't ever last.
Then again, that's what they thought when they began their little whirlwind affair. They never thought it would last. Only a fool would think it's gone on this long because she bore his child.
She worries that Anton is scared of the dark, too. He sleeps incredibly peacefully, even when the light changes, even when Miron steps in and out. It's so dark in the room, but the walls are a soft, bright yellow. When the sun is shining in through his windows, the room is like a solar, cheerful as being outside in summer. Truth be told, Hilary is just confused. He's a boy. Aren't boys supposed to have blue things? Is yellow a feminine color? Will he be weak because his room is yellow? Does it always look so drab and ugly? She is using so much of her mind -- which is, most of the time, quite sharp and adept -- to try and cope with emotions she fears that she doesn't put together that the lights are off. Of course the yellow looks different than it does when Anton is awake. But when Anton is awake, is he scared of the dark?
Did she ever sleep so deeply?
Hilary watches as the image vanishes. No slow fade, nothing so merciful. Just there and then gone with a tap of Ivan's finger. When it is gone, the entire room around her seems to brighten a little. She leaves the dark nursery in Novgorod and comes back to Chicago, blinking a few times as if the lights were just turned on. She exhales and turns to look at Ivan, processing what he tells her. He remembers the story she gave him about her own hallways, her own fear. He tells her that Anton doesn't seem scared of the dark.
He must be so brave, thinks Hilary, swelling inside a little with fierce, vengeful pride at the strength her son already has, never imagining that not every child is scared instantly and always of the dark. But, Ivan says, his people stay near. They don't sleep so far that they can't hear him. They go to him when they do. And he won't ever have to try to find someone to take care of him.
A small, tight smile flinches across Hilary's mouth. She gives a nod. "Okay," she says, and takes another breath. "Will you read some of these things to me now?"
IvanIf Ivan knew what Hilary was thinking, if he knew she wondered if she'd ever slept so deeply, he'd tell her: yes. You have. Perhaps not often, certainly not always, but I've seen it. And you're not always afraid of the dark. You're not always
broken.
He doesn't know what she's thinking, though. Hilary is not a good liar, but she is so unreadable sometimes. So inscrutable, her true self so far below the surface that he can't reach it. Her eyes are so black as she watches the image of her son disappear. She looks around, and her eyes flicker when he tells her that her son does not fear the dark, but he can't read that either. He can read that tight smile, and by instinct he raises his hand, touches her mouth with his thumb, touches her a moment before leaning to her and kissing her.
It is a soft kiss. Almost chaste. Just his lips to hers, very light, more for contact than anything like lust.
"All right," he says then. And he taps and swipes at the iPad, brings up the reports. They are collated into a notebook, and he gives her the tablet, shows her what he's doing so she can see for herself, if and when she brings this out of the safe where she'll hide it.
He thinks to himself that later he'll rearrange the icons on the screen. Make it so there's just one screen, and just one little row of icons. A button for Skype. A button for the reports. A button for pictures. A button for videos. Nothing else. She won't need to do anything else on this tablet, because he'll get her another one to play with, completely different from this one so she'll never have to mix the two associations. He'll do that for her, nothing but the best for her, nothing but the gentlest, most painless things for her, except when she asks him to hurt her.
There are notes on the screen now, arranged by date and time, quite dense. She can read for herself, but she asked him to read for her. So he takes a sip of ice water, clears his throat lightly, and begins.
"May fourth, 2011. Entry by Dmitri. 'We have signed the contracts on the property you chose. No delays anticipated. We should be able to close within two weeks, after which Cousin Oleg will be informed. Also interviewed several prospects yesterday and have settled on a wetnurse for when Anton departs from Oleg's estate. We should have the rest of the staff in place by the end of the week: a maid and a retainer, as you requested, as well as a legal representative on the ground here. Meanwhile, have already begun to purchase furniture. I have enclosed more photographs of the house, and will continue to update as it is furnished. Anton will be able to see the lake from his bedroom window when he is older. It will be a pleasant home ... '
The entry goes on. Ivan reads on. There are so many notes, but he reads them one by one, patiently. At least one entry a week. Oftentimes more. Sometimes even more than one a day. The first few are all written by Dmitri; then the rest of Anton's personal staff begin to add their voices. Each servant has his or her own tone, and though Ivan prefaces each entry with its time and author, it's not hard for Hilary to guess.
" ... May twenty-fourth, 2011. Entry by Izolda. 'Anton Ivanovich has quite an appetite! He nurses ten or more times a day and if I am late he is very displeased. He is sleeping soundly right now. Such an adorable baby. You are very lucky to have him, and he is very lucky to have you ... '
" ... July fourteenth, 2011. Entry by Polina. 'Anton Ivanovich was examined by the doctor today and pronounced very healthy. He has met or exceeded all growth standards. Height is in sixty-fifth percentile for his age. Weight is in forty-eighth, but doctor is not concerned, particularly when he saw your photograph. Slim parents make for slim children, he said. All reflexes are normal ... '
" ... August seventh, 2011. Entry by Miron. 'We took Anton Ivanovich to the lake yesterday. Izolda and Polina took turns holding him while I rowed a little boat over the water. It was very pleasant, though it became hot in the afternoon. Not to worry, little Anton was shaded and comfortable throughout. We returned to shore and had a picnic. I caught a butterfly for Anton, but he was not interested and wanted to eat a handful of dirt instead. Of course, Polina discouraged this ... '
" ... September first, 2011 ...
" ... September ninth, 2011 ...
" ... October twelfth, 2011 ...
" ... October twentieth, 2011 ...
" ... November sixth, 2011. Entry by Miron. 'It is growing cold in Novgorod, and the tailor came yesterday to make Anton Ivanovich his first sets of winter clothes. Then we asked him to duplicate each outfit in two larger sizes, because he grows so quickly. We celebrated his half-birthday on the first with cake and candles, and sang to him in English. He had a bit of frosting, which he seemed to like very much. We discovered he has one tooth now, and I thought this should earn him a tiny bite of cake as well. But Izolda vetoed the proposal. I suspect she merely fears for her job. She has been tirelessly cleaning and scrubbing in her spare time. Perhaps we could keep her on as a maid?
" 'Anton is also able to grasp his rattle well now. He likes to bang it on things; makes a terrific din. He crawls backwards very aptly, but he is still working on moving forward. Yesterday he stood on his own for several seconds before falling on his rump again. We suspect he will be rather mobile soon, and have begun to take appropriate precautions. His eyes have become quite dark; have you seen his latest photographs? I have enclosed two more.
" 'Will write again soon. Your servant, Miron Vadimevich.' "
And that's the last entry. Ivan's voice is hoarse from reading. He has finished two glasses of water; pours a third. The screen scrolls to a blank page, and then he closes the notes.
HilarySix months' worth of reports. Some of them are short, others longer. Miron writes well, and after a few in his voice it's clear that he is a perceptive, intelligent, thoughtful young man with obvious but not sentimental compassion for Anton. Dmitri's comments on the pleasantness of the home surprise her; she wouldn't have expected him to think about things like lake views, but hearing it, this makes sense. Polina is almost businesslike but personable; she reports details and facts more often (and better) than Miron does. Izolda is grating, annoying, and from the first entry in Anton's third week of life to the last one she hears from the wetnurse, her manner makes Hilary want to scratch her across the face. It does not help that she feeds him, that she holds him, that in so many photographs she can tell that it is Izolda's hand holding Anton's, that it is Izolda carrying him out to play in the sunshine.
He has a good appetite, though. He is hungry. It pleases her, perversely, that he is selfish and angry when he wants his food and it is not there, there, right now now now. She assigns personality where there is only infancy. And he's healthy. She is petulantly displeased to hear that his reflexes are 'normal'. His father's reflexes are not 'normal', she is a dancer, they should be exceptional, but she wonders why she cares. She wonders at her own opinions on everything, her own investment in the hows and whys and whoms and the color of his nursery walls, which she supposes -- from other photographs -- is not quite so ugly.
Miron is a strong boy, too, rowing two grown women, himself, and a baby across a lake. She imagines it as Lake Michigan, though it is nowhere near that size. She imagines it, too, as a lake not far from the estate she lived on when she was first married. Her departed husband and mate liked to row, and swim. He'd take her out to the middle and leave her there, dive into the water and swim around her, laughing, and she would sit very still and try not to upset the boat and was so frail and so meek that when he took her back to the household he'd fuck her all the harder, energetic and rough and biting at her skin, reveling in the screams she never released when she was afraid of drowning.
It says something about Hilary that these are some of the fondest memories of her life.
She actually smiles, actually gives a soft breath of a laugh, to hear that Anton wanted to eat dirt. Miron has good reflexes, too. Patience. He caught a butterfly. The thought comes unbidden and ridiculous into her head: Ivan caught one, too. It makes her happy that Anton wasn't scared of the butterfly, at least. That sort of silly weakness would be intolerable.
Izolda writes about the weather getting colder in autumn and tells Ivan not to worry, Anton is perfectly warm. She has knitted him a new blanket. Polina describes another trip to the doctor, a bout of chronic crying that turned out to be gas. Polina writes again, this time something more personal, and they can tell how pleased she is at Anton's crawling and scooting. She even mentions his surprise the first time, and how he started yelling and gurgling for attention, as though to make them all look! Look and see! Polina writes that he soon grew tired and that Izolda fed him and he was asleep in moments afterward.
Miron uses 'we' often, she thinks, listening to the last entry. They gave him a little cake and frosting for his half-birthday, and he has a tooth now. Izolda's bootlicking makes sense; Hilary wonders why she's so desperate to stay on the job even if her milk isn't needed. She wonders what 'appropriate precautions' Miron is talking about for a mobile baby, never thinking about things like the corners of tables, sharp edges of flagstone, or electrical outets. The cracks between a door and its hinges.
Ivan sips at more water. Hilary, who has not touched his hand or looked at him gently all this time to see if he's okay, lifts her eyes from the now-blank iPad and looks at him. She thinks for a moment, then leans back in her chair, facing him.
"I like Miron very much," she says, her tone businesslike, almost crisp. "Polina as well. She is like a version of Max that isn't an icy cunt. Talk to Miron about Izolda, though. See what he thinks. If the only reason to keep her on after her usefulness has expired is that she is frantic to be kept on, then send her away with a large enough severance and enough of a warning to remind her that she is not Anton's mother and she is not welcome in his life."
There's a pause there though, and of course there is. Hilary's voice gets a touch quieter: "But if she pleases him, and... he is quite attached to her, then she shouldn't be taken away from him. She must simply be brought in line, and made to understand that she has no authority in his life. She is just... an object of comfort. But I would rather he not lose any of them while he is very little, if it can be avoided."
Hilary takes a shallow breath, sitting up a bit straighter as she goes on: "This business of 'half-birthdays' and cake for a baby who can't even eat it is ludicrous, though. It is on their own heads if they want to deal with a spoiled little shitmonster, but someone should tell them that this sort of behavior is just silly."
IvanLike Hilary's own soft exhale of a laugh earlier, hearing that Anton was more interested in a mouthful of dirt than the butterfly Miron caught for him, Ivan gives a faint laugh as she gives her opinion of half-birthdays. "I suspect they just wanted an excuse to have a little fun," he says. "I imagine it's rather boring living in the suburbs, raising an infant."
Then his voice quiets a little. He adds, "As for Izolda, I'll consult with Miron. Perhaps fly in myself and make a decision. The original plan was to send her away with a generous severance when Anton was weaned. But you're right; perhaps he needs the stability more than I need a break from her relentless sap.
"You needn't worry, though." Ivan speaks carefully here; it's a truth more cutting than comforting. "She is not Anton's mother. She can never replace you."
He turns away after that, back to the iPad. He calls up the gallery app, hands it back to Hilary. "Pictures," he explains, "and videos. And if you're interested, I also have the contact information of all his caretakers, physicians, suppliers, and the like."
HilaryShe just gives a small, dismissive snort -- amazing how someone as well brought-up as she is can make a snort ladylike -- and shakes her head at the thought of the caretakers needing an excuse to have a little fun, a reason to have a tiny party, a focus for their energies. But she leaves it at that. They discuss the wetnurse.
"I'm not worried," she snaps, abrupt and sudden, her brows tightening and her eyes stormy for a brief second, a flicker of emotion. "I simply want her either gone before he's old enough to remember or submissive. The last thing anyone needs is an insolent maid who thinks she has as much influence as the child's father. That's all."
Hilary stews on that for a moment, breathing, but she calms on her own. It was a flareup, and given what he's seen of her before, a fairly mild one. She looks away, then back to Ivan as he hands her the iPaid. She takes it gingerly, remembering how cheap and flimsy and easily broken his last tablet was. There are pictures of Anton. Hundreds of them. Hundreds, in just six months. She flicks her finger across the screen a few times, dashing through them. Color and black and white. Posed and not. Happy and sad faces. Different outfits. Summer and fall. She looks up at Ivan, nodding, and sets the iPad back down.
Taking her purse, she opens the clasp and reaches inside, removing a reasonably large envelope. "I... brought something for him," she says, but does not hand the envelope over. It is as though she's waiting to see if this is okay, if this is permitted.
Nevermind presenting unsolicited opinions and demands on his caretakers, the house, the color of his walls, and whether or not his half-birthdays are celebrated. Next she'll be on about his diet. But this, she hesitates on.
IvanBefore Hilary, Ivan didn't really think his heart was capable of breaking. Aching, even. Before Hilary, many things were different. Now, in the space of an hour, he feels like his heart has cracked twice. Once when she wept: like she was gutted, devastated, like any mother who has lost her child forever. Again now, when she hesitates on the small gift she's brought for her son; the same one she just mercilessly vetoed half-birthdays for lest he grows up a spoiled little shitmonster.
Hilary has a way of making snorts ladylike. And ughs, and bursts of surprising profanity. It never ceases to startle Ivan, if only a little; sometimes, after the fact, he thinks of it at random when he's away from her, when he's otherwise engaged in some activity wholly unrelated to her, and smiles.
Even now, thinking of it, he smiles a little. It's a little aching. He holds his hand out. "May I see?"
HilaryShe's capable of making a snort ladylike, and an ugh graceful, and capable of breaking Ivan's heart with a look. With a word. He didn't see or hear how she was when she woke to find him and Anton gone; he has no idea. It would have shattered him, frightened him, as much as her breakdown in the hallway when he got back. There are no words for how she felt. She does not like to think about it. It was all just a bad dream, perhaps. Except there he is, in pictures and in promised videos. She's not sure she can bear that, but perhaps -- perhaps she'll watch them sometime. Watch them later, alone, when her inconsolability will not scare Ivan so much.
Hilary looks at him, her dark eyes momentarily furtive and wary as a hunted animal's, but it's a flicker. She pushes the envelope across the table to his hand. "He'll wonder," she says quietly, as Ivan opens the -- unstuck -- flap and slides out the single sheet inside. "If he gets older and doesn't know, he'll start to ask. I thought... in this day and age, it wouldn't make sense if he didn't have something like this as he grew up. It's suspicious enough that there will be no videos or pictures of the two of us together."
Inside that envelope is a photograph. 5x7, a bit grainy, clearly several years if not -- well, truth be told it's likely almost twenty years old. It's black and white, which only makes it seem more insubstantial. The angle of it is a big... wrong, too, canted to one side just enough to cause a visual disturbance. It's Hilary, not even twenty years old yet, or perhaps only just, dressed in a the costume of a peasant girl. There are flowers in her done-up hair, and she's standing in -- as she would put it -- fifth position sous-sus en pointe. Her arms are in graceful arcs over her head, but they cast shadows across her face. Her eyes are slightly downcast, her face cold, in a way. Distant. There are elements of a character there, but it is Hilary. It was always Hilary on stage -- cold and distant -- no matter the mood of the persona she took on.
She is standing in a set made up to look like a graveyard. It is a particularly dark photograph, and for that, it is unmistakably her. Even if she is younger, even if looking at her now it would be hard to draw a perfect line to the woman in the photo, it would also be hard for someone to look from Hilary to the picture and not see that it's the same woman.
"Do you think it's a bad idea?" she asks, quiet.
IvanIvan is silent a long time. He hardly seems to have heard Hilary speak. He's looking at the photograph, held carefully in his deft hands. He has never seen Hilary dance, never. He knows she danced in her youth because she told him when they went to Lausanne; he knows she danced because he can still see it in the way she moves. Felt it in the way she danced with him in Paris, but that was not the same, no.
He has never seen Hilary this young, either. Younger than he is now. He wonders for a moment what she was like, then. He would not, in a million years, suspect that once she was frail and meek, that she sat afraid of drowning on a boat while her athletic first mate - the one she actually liked - played a hunter's game with her. He doesn't even know she can't swim. He wonders if he'd met her then, if she'd been eighteen years old when he glimpsed her on the flybridge of the Cielo, if he would have been just as powerfully attracted to her. If he would have pursued her to this same, inescapable end.
The photograph is so dark. She is dressed like a peasant girl, but no one would believe that of her. She is dancing in a graveyard. She looks half a ghost already herself, shadowed by her hands, shadowed by her past. And suddenly he knows the ballet, knows the scene; knows that in this one scene, without truly understanding how or why, she has fully embodied the role. Perhaps for the only time in her almost-brilliant career, and so very fleetingly for the space of this one scene, she had it.
"Giselle," he murmurs, and hands the photograph back to her. "Rising from her grave." A soft exhale, painful. "I would have liked to see you dance. And I think it's a wonderful idea."
A long silence; he's so unsure, he doesn't know if he should say this. He does anyway:
"Hilary, if you want to ... if you want him to know you, if only in brief visits, it's not too late. He's too young to have understood any of the lies."
Ivan[gah! drop "...for the space of this one scene."]
HilaryIt's a strange photograph to give a child, but Hilary probably doesn't think about that. Loved ones that are ghosts when you are a child; that's all she's ever known. Her parents died before any of her memories begin, and though no one ever told her how they really died, there were always rumors in social circles about a murder-suicide. Her brother died in front of her, so gruesomely that there were never any rumors. People simply didn't speak of it. He drowned, it was said. His body was never recovered. She heard that over and over as a little girl, a lie that beat in her head against the truth she'd seen, the truth she still has nightmares about:
he drowned. he drowned. he drowned.
But what an odd picture. Anton's mother, young and beautiful, before she ever met his father, dancing a ballet that draws from the myths and poetry of his father's homelands. A ballet where the main charater, for a large part of the story, is a spectre. Perhaps in that, it's appropriate. Giselle does watch over her lover even from beyond the grave. Maybe that was why Hilary chose it. Still: a woman in a graveyard. A ghost. A dark picture and a distant face.
This was before she was mated the first time. She didn't know how to swim then, but her water-loving husband taught her, even when she'd shriek and sob and cling to him in the water, shaking with terror that something was going to come up from beneath and devour her whole, swallow her into eternal darkness. She hates to swim, though. Loathes it still, and does not even like taking a dip in a crystal-clear pool. But she knows how. She learned. He had insisted. But once he knew she could tread water and get across a small body of water safely, he let it go. He never asked her again. He was, in his way, quite gentle with her. His sadism in the bedroom was his own, though, and not so much a response to her need to submit, her craving for pain. That was simply good fortune.
Hilary gives Ivan a little nod. Giselle. She takes the photograph and slips it back into the envelope silently, closing it and laying it on the table. Ivan mentions that he'd like to have seen her dance and she raises an eyebrow at him. "It isn't as though I've forgotten how," she says dryly, belittlingly. "It was all but my life for close to fifteen years, Ivan. The only reason I stopped was because I got pregnant, and the estate in Mexico had no dance studio built in anyway. I simply have no place to practice now."
It's a wonderful idea, he thinks. So the photograph stays on the table. And Ivan brings up his dangerous, painful proposition: it's not too late. She is silent to that, staring at the cream-colored envelope. After awhile, her eyes unmoving and her spirits seemingly unmoved:
"What would be worse?" she muses aloud, her voice soft. "To grow up half-orphaned, knowing that the one person in the world who should love you did and the only reason your father can't be with you is because he's off fighting the war... or to grow up knowing what a bastard you are, that you were unplanned and unwanted, and have that rubbed in your face every time your mother deigns to see you -- at least until she's bored of you again, jetting back off to the States, pretending you don't exist?"
Hilary looks at him. "If he had been Dion's, I would have had him raised by nannies and servants anyway. That would have been his life regardless. I would never have thought twice about it." She closes her eyes a moment, opens them again. "For some reason, now I do."
IvanIvan doesn't attempt to theorize. He offers no possible explanation; he could not possibly know why she feels differently now, and he is not so arrogant as to think he can.
What he does offer is what little he does know. A small truth gleaned from his own life: "It's quite different, I think, growing up with a distant mother and no mother at all. I was raised largely by servants. My parents didn't even have the excuse of war or distance. They simply ... weren't in my life very much. My mother cared about a million different things, all of them passionately, all of them for about thirty minutes at a time. My number didn't come up very often. And my father didn't care about anything at all. None of that is ... pleasant to admit. Usually I make a cutting joke of it, but the truth is it cuts me deeper than anyone.
"Still. That is the truth of who they are, and no one has ever tried to hide that from me. I suppose in my way I do love them. They are my parents.
"If I had been told a lie all my life, perhaps I would have loved their memory more. Perhaps I would have onstructed some perfect fantasy in my head, and clung to that well into adulthood like a child to his blanket. I might still be clinging to it. Or, more likely, as I grew older and wiser I might have started to note the inconsistencies. There is no lie as perfect as the truth. There are always giveaways. I think sooner or later I would have discovered the truth for myself. And I don't think the outcome would have been pleasant."
He's quiet a moment. He realizes he's arguing for her to change her mind. He realizes he's arguing to erase the lie, undo what's half-done. This, too, he does not try to justify or explain.
Simply this:
"Our boy... if he's half as intelligent as his parents, this lie won't last forever. Long before he knows it to be a lie, he'll feel it. And then someday he'll hear something, or see something, and begin to put the pieces together. And once that begins, there'll be no stopping it."
HilaryHe was the one who brought it up, and now he's the one arguing for it, explaining his own upbringing, his parents. Hilary doesn't know if they're alive still or not. He doesn't talk about them in any way that would let herk now one way or the other. They don't even have names. They are just his parents. Wealthy and uninterested in him. Well, his mother occasionally was. Once, his father covered his ears because the fireworks were too loud.
Somewhere in what he says, when he gets in to talking about how the cracks would show, he would have learned the truth, no lie is perfect -- she tenses a little, breathing steadily, but it isn't a strong reaction. He stops, and pauses, then calls Anton our boy. It gets a little noise of disgust, derision, from Hilary, so quick as to be half reflexive, so quick as to be almost meaningless. She reaches up, touching the tips of her fingers to her brow, as Ivan finishes. She doesn't press. She doesn't squint her eyes shut. She just sits there, listening to him, silent.
After a long pause between Ivan's words and her own, Hilary lifts her head and exhales. "I don't know. I don't even know what I would do with him if I went to see him." She shakes her head. "We won't talk about it right now. This is too much right now."
IvanUnsurprising, given all she's already been through. He can still hear her sobbing. Ivan nods; he doesn't argue. "All right," he says quietly, and then he reaches to close the last remaining apps on the iPad. Stops; looks at Hilary.
"Do you want to see him again before I turn this off?"
HilaryIt really is too much. Her eyes are still ringed gently with red from her weeping earlier, her face still wan and worn thin. The picture she wants to give their son of herself is resting in its envelope on the table; the iPad is waiting to be attended to, one way or another. Hilary stares at it, thinking of how much she just wants this to be over now, when she was so frantic to see him, to see him even if he was sleeping, to know he was alive and that it was real and no one was lying to her, he exists. That he's okay. He's not afraid.
And now she just wants to go to lunch, is wishing they could take the yacht out, and thinking that if they can't, maybe they should just fly somewhere southerly and go lie on a sunny beach drinking things with umbrellas sticking out of them. A silly thought. Silly because the little umbrellas are stupid. Silly because she wants the sun but won't let it touch her. Silly because she envisions Izolda and Miron there, each with a finger held by Anton, his little feet feeling the hot sand between his toes for the first time, his legs wobbling. Ivan lazing in the sun, turning gold, the two of them mostly ignoring their child.
But he's there, in this little picture. He's there, and he's at the ocean for the very first time in his life, and she is there, too.
Hilary breathes in at the question, exhales slowly. "No, it's all right," she says, shaking her head. "I'll tell Miranda to come get all this," she adds, with a wave of her hand over the portfolio and pad and the like. She reaches into her purse, taking out her phone and tapping out a text message.
IvanIvan nods. This is the reality of their relationship. For all that he dominates her in the bedroom, for all that he spanks her, flogs her, whips her, bends her over the bed and rails her, holds her down and calls her slut and whore and mine to use, the truth is he does nothing to her that she does not will or want. In his own way, he bends so utterly to her will.
"Max will go over the contents again with Miranda," he says, "and have it set up so you can easily access everything if you choose to. And in the future, if we have another meeting like this, we can just upload the new data as it comes."
When she's done with her text, he stands and pulls her chair out for her. She stands as well, and he picks the envelope with its photograph up. He'll have it sent to Anton. Or perhaps he'll bring it himself when he visits; goes to assess the situation, the house he's never seen in person, the servants he's only met across video and phone. That's in the future, though, and in the end Hilary's imaginary picture is accurate. He pays so much more attention to the mother than the son.
At the door, he speaks briefly to Maxine. She nods, and disappears back into the conference room with Miranda, where they'll exchange information, details. A little ways down the hall, discreetly out of earshot, Dmitri and Carlisle are small-talking. And just outside the conference room, Ivan takes Hilary gently by the arm, turning to face her.
He keeps his voice low. "Are you all right?"
HilaryHe bought a house in Novgorod and put there son there, close enough to extended family to know them but in his own estate, with his own servants who will follow him as he grows up, with his own manservant and all the rest. It's possible that Polina will be groomed to be more like Max, her temperament already suitable, her mindset already pragmatic enough to handle the duties that Max undertakes for Ivan. It's possible that Izolda will be his cook and his maid and the mother figure that he rebels against as he establishes his adult identity. It's possible that Miron will ever be his confidant, his teacher, an anchor against the madness of his own purity.
That's all in the future, too, though. And it's a future that might not exist, if Ivan's proposal is given as much thought as it should. But right now she's a married woman. She's married to a living, breathing Adren who will one day achieve Athro if the War doesn't kill him in some faraway country full of Wyrmish beasts and strange diseases. There are complications. It would be as complicated to change things as it was to set them up in the first place, and the stakes would be just as high.
In the end, the decision to tell Anton that his mother had died but that she loved him very much was done as much for Anton's sanity as anything else. Please don't let me hurt him, she whispered, sleeping with her hand laying atop the swaddled baby, as though she could not believe he was alive unless she could feel him breathing, feel his warmth.
A part of her would like him to know about her brother, one of his namesakes. And know that she doesn't know very much about what it feels like to love anyone, but she loved her brother, and she loves Ivan, and she thinks sometimes she loves Anton, too. All these loves feel much the same. All of them are so powerfully different. She can't put into words what the connecting thread is. She just feels it. And she rises from the conference table, taking her purse and realizing she loves her son, and it makes her a little lightheaded with panic.
She nods. The ice-cold blonde cunt and the cunning, cunning brunette bitch stride into the room with their long legs and sharp heels to gather up the information, discuss updates, file contact information, but Ivan picks up the photograph. Hilary didn't bring it in a frame. He thinks he might take it himself when he visits. Whenever that is.
Carlisle, down the hall, is holding her coat. Hilary turns toward Ivan when he takes her arm and turns to her, holds her in place. She looks up, meeting his eyes before he speaks. After a moment of thought she gives a one-shouldered shrug, shaking her head. "It is difficult," she murmurs. "But we always knew it would be."
IvanSomehow he didn't think she would meet his eyes. Somehow it comforts him a little that she does, even though those eyes are the farthest thing from warm or comforting. They are so black. They are so boundless. Anton will long for them all his life, but it is wholly possible that if Anton knew his mother, if he grew up with his mother near enough to see and hear and occasionally touch, he would be afraid of those eyes of hers,
at least until he realized they were exactly the same as his own.
Ivan's hand shifts from Hilary's arm after a moment. He cups her head gently between his hands and kisses her brow, much the way he had when she first walked into the room. Before the tears, and before his dangerous, treacherous proposal. Before Giselle rose from her grave. Before Anton slept before their eyes.
"Let's send the servants away," he whispers. "I'll drive you."
HilaryAfraid of her eyes. Afraid of discovering that they're his eyes. That, maybe, he's just like her.
Hilary closes her eyes a moment as Ivan kisses her, more longsuffering than melting into the touch, though there is a bit of fondness to it, a note of submission that is inexplicably tender when it's between the two of them. It's different than it was when he first did this; it's the same. She holds her purse, and they turn to walk, and through some extra-sensory signal, Carlisle realizes that she's leaving, so he walks down and gives her coat
to Ivan, actually, before excusing himself. Hilary tells him to take Miranda back to their building, and Ivan tells Dmitri and Max and Lane to get lost. He helps Hilary into her coat, and she walks toward the elevator with him as the servants all walk a discreet distance behind them, taking a separate elevator.
As the doors close to descend, Hilary reaches over and slips her hand into Ivan's. She'll be dropping it when they get to the lobby, of course, but for now she holds his hand, offering no opinion on where to go, what to do now, not even asking him if he brought one of his ridiculous cars or one of the sensible ones.
Gravity shifts.
"Do we know yet what his fate is?" Hilary asks, her voice quiet. "If he's Garou or not?"
IvanEven now, Ivan is somehow still surprised when he feels Hilary's hand slipping into his. He looks down. Then his fingers curve around hers. They ride down the elevator together, and when Hilary speaks again he turns to look at her.
"I haven't asked anyone to come look at him," he says quietly, and turns back to the numbers moving on the wall. "Once you know, one way or the other, things change. People treat you differently. Either you're long-lived breeding stock and second-rate citizenry, or you're a short-lived sacrifice to Gaia.
"My greatuncle is beginning to inquire. My parents are curious. I won't be able to put them off forever. But I think we have at least a year, maybe. At least until he's one."
The elevator stops. The doors open, and Hilary drops his hand like that, and his fingers feel cold in the aftermath. He looks at her stepping out of the car, so collected, so elegant, so obviously highborn, so very remote. He loves her so desperately sometimes. He wonders if she really understands that.
At the door, he summons a valet, asks for his car. And at the curb they wait, the day dismal and grey and cold, until his car is brought around. It is one of his ridiculous ones, the Lamborghini with its exotic doors. He looks mildly apologetic, sending the valet away with his tip to open the passenger's door for her himself.
"Do you have time to go somewhere with me?" he asks.
HilaryHand-holding is such a sweet thing. But it's a gesture of equals. Each person is reaching out as though to admit that they need the other, they can't bear not to be close to the other. They are both vulnerable, and if they are both vulnerable, it is frightening to Hilary. When she's vulnerable and Ivan is strong, when she submits and he dominates, she feels safe. But this is harder. This is more frightening. And it is so very private. Even more private, than anything they do when they fuck -- she knows this now because of Halloween. She would never have held his hand in front of those people.
He answers her question and she simply nods. The elevator has stopped and she lets go of his hand, stepping forward. He is a moment behind her, and catches up easily, but she can't walk away from him forever anyway. He's the one with the car, and it's so cold already out here.
Upstairs, when he first told her he'd drive her, Hilary almost made the car he'd driven here a condition of whether or not she'd go with him. She does think his fast, low to the ground, shiny cars are ridiculous. Stupid doors and even worse seatbelts. She sighs when she sees it, which may make him less apologetic and more amused, but she allows him to help her into this monstrosity, her face twisting slightly into a half-disgusted mask when she sits down. She smooths it away, though, too tired to keep such things up, too tired emotionally even for annoyance.
"Of course," she tells him as she's settling in, and he shuts the door down. It's as simple as that.
IvanIt does, indeed, amuse him faintly when Hilary looks so typically disgusted by his car. He helps her buckle in, looping the two straps around her shoulders, clicking the buckles home at her waist and at each hip. Then, holding the harness rather than her body, he leans in and kisses her mouth,
the image flickering briefly in his mind of putting her in some sort of bondage harness; he's sure they make one for just this purpose. Suspending her from the ceiling, touching her like that, flogging her like that, fucking her like that, caught and spread and held at his will.
The kiss ends a little harder than it began. He takes a breath as he straightens, and then he lowers the door and clicks it into place. A moment later he's climbing in the driver's side, and if the valets saw the way he kissed her, they say nothing as they lower his door.
Off they go. Tearing down Lake Shore Drive, the lake as vast as an ocean to their left, grey to reflect the sky. The city grows in front of them, the apartment towers and then the skyscrapers; his building dark and stark and modern at the edge of the lake. Grant Park, then. Millennium Park. He pulls to the curb at State and Randolph, the Joffrey Ballet; puts on the emergency blinkers and tosses Hilary the keys.
"Wait for me a moment, will you?"
- and then he's gone, striding purposeful through the doors. He comes back ten minutes later, opening her door, holding his hand out for her.
"Come on." They leave the car where it is. "I just figured out what I'm getting you for Christmas."
HilaryFor a woman who has driven him crazy at times with her unpredictability, with the sense that he could never satisfy her, it is nice to do something and know exactly how she's going to respond. She looks irritated and perverse as he buckles her in. When he grabs her by the straps, at first she squirms away from his mouth, but never quite breaks contact with his lips. She submits, and his thoughts go to harnesses, suspension, the sort of heavy-risk bondage play that appeals to them, but which they haven't quite broached yet. Except the once, when he tied her arms over her head, when her feet just barely touched the ground.
She's always at his will, though. It's just in a different way than he's held at hers.
The valets have no idea who these two people are. They're college students, or townies, and they don't know about the de Broquevilles or the Presses or the Durantes; they don't care. They do, however, see something in how that woman in the car fights the kiss but then accepts it, see how there's heat in her as well, it isn't just an act, she isn't just putting up with him, there's something between these two people that they don't understand and have to look away from.
"Ugh," Hilary exhales, as Ivan drives fast, though he doesn't drive like a total madman because it irritates her so. She is uncomfortable, always cranky when he takes her around in these cars, and there's a dark cloud over her features when he yanks to a stop at the Joffrey, its blue sign not yet lit up. He tosses the keys and of course she doesn't bother to catch them; they land in her lap and she glares at him, wordless as he goes inside.
When he comes back out, she's looking out the window, her arms crossed over her chest, and he opens her door, holding out his hand. She just stares at him, petulant and dark. Come on, he says. Something about Christmas. She huffs and unfolds her arms, forcing him to reach in and unbuckle her as though it's all just far too complicated for her to mess with, and then she takes his hand and rises to her feet, dropping his keys back into his hand and waiting to be shown what is the great big deal.
"It isn't Christmas," she says. "It isn't even Thanksgiving."
Ivan"Why, thank you, Ms. de Broqueville," Ivan replies with exaggerated courtesy, "I would have never realized that on my own. But I never said you were getting your present today, now did I?"
The door thumps down and closed behind her. The sound is beautiful to Ivan's ears: so flawless, so expensive. Hilary ... likely does not notice. Coming back alongside her, Ivan's hand fits to the curve of her spine, guiding her up the steps. He reaches past her to open the door. She walks in ahead of him; he comes in behind her. This is not where the ballet performs; this building is strictly rehearsal space, with a stack of condominiums overhead. The lobby reflects the mix: the high heels and knotted ties of the resident yuppie contingent alongside the lithe bodies and tightly pinned-up hair of the dancers.
They board an elevator with a couple residents. They stop on the fourth floor and get off. This is where the rehearsal rooms are - large, well-lit, open spaces with hardwood floors and mirrored walls, vast floor-to-ceiling windows opening to the street below. The halls are crowded with dancers, most of them looking curious and at least a little irritated. All the studios are completely empty. Every head turns as the Silver Fangs stroll out of the elevator, down the hall. Somewhere they are whispers:
are those them?
yeah, i think so.
Ivan opens the door to the nearest studio, gesturing Hilary in. He shuts the door behind them, and the whispers fade behind the soundproofed walls. The ceilings are high, the air full of light. There's so much space here that even they with their brilliance of blood and presence seem a little dwarfed. There are doors interconnecting the rehearsal studios; these are all open.
"You mentioned you didn't have a studio anymore," he says. "Pick one you like."
HilaryFor a man who does almost everything on whim, it's hard to imagine him setting up everything he did for Anton. Even that he changed at the last minute, though. Poor Cousin Oleg. She mentions in the conference room that she hasn't danced since getting pregnant, which makes it a little over a year since she's practiced, but that she didn't exactly give it up when she got mated the first time. Neither of her mates have ever been particularly interested in her dancing; the first liked that she was a dancer, liked her body, her fragility. Her second likely has only the vaguest awareness that it was ever a part of her life. Ivan muses aloud that he would have liked to see it, and Hilary mentions that it isn't so far in the past as he thinks,
now here they are.
His hand on her back meets a thick layer of wool from her coat, a layer of her sweater, the thick silk of her dress, her skin so far away that he barely can tell what part of her body his hand is resting on except by long practice with her, familiarity with her form. People look at them. They can tell her age today; in her mid-thirties, likely at the peak of being a trophy wife and head of various charities. They do not assume Ivan is her beau, or even her husband. They don't have a clue why these people are together. Maybe he's a producer and she's a former prima? Maybe they're here to pick girls for an audition of some kind?
Then they go to the fourth floor, and the stares are different. The dancers up here, male and female alike, have already heard the gossip that started about five minutes ago and are curious, are annoyed. She's so old. A few of them can tell from the way Hilary walks that she used to dance; a few look at Ivan's physique and silent footsteps and assume the same of him.
She walks in and the room seems lighter even than outside, which is gray and cloudy. She surveys it, and then Ivan speaks. Hilary turns her head to look at him, then unbuttons and sheds her coat, dropping it on the floor, made of a somewhat springy parquet. She steps out of her heels, and for once he can see the seams of her stockings across her toes. She walks out, her purse dumped atop her coat, and begins to wander through the studios in silence. She is, quietly and thoughtfully, testing the floors, noting the light, running her hand along the barre.
After a little while, a few studios down, he hears her call: "This one."
IvanIvan is so confident, so blithe, that it's hard to imagine he's ever uncertain. But with her he is, so often. Up until she sheds her coat and steps out of her shoes, up until she begins to wander, right up until she calls this one, he genuinely doesn't know for certain that she will accept this impromptu not-christmas gift.
When she does call to him - distant by then, quite a ways down - he exhales a little. Smiles to himself. And then he follows her through those silent studios, silent except for the faint hum of ventilation, the very distant rush of cars, shutting doors as he goes. When he finds her, he crosses the entire length of the room. Shuts the connecting door on the other side, too. And then he goes to the hallway door, opening it and leaning out just long enough to address the dancers in the hall. Hilary hears him say,
"We'll be taking this one. Thank you."
The door shuts behind him, cutting off the buzz of voices outside. Most dancers get back to work. A few are miffed, milling, damn it, i knew she'd pick that one, it's my favorite and that's just my luck; why the hell did she have to pick my rehearsal room? They hear none of it. With the door shut, Ivan crosses about half the length of the floor, then leans against the mirror, spreads his hands along the barre. And he looks around, noting the same light she had, the same floor, the mirrors, the windows.
And her.
"What do you like about this one?" he asks.
HilaryThe one Hilary chose is spacious. It is in a corner, and so has a rather nice view of the city. The floor is worn in places, and even through his dress shoes Ivan can feel the springiness of it. There are, of course, shades to let in light while blocking enough to keep it from glaring. The hallway door is set into the little corner so the wall of mirrors is unbroken, sheening. These rooms have not been renovated in a long time, and the edges of the panels of mirrored glass are a bit dark.
She is in stockinged feet and a calf-length dress, standing in the middle of the room with her feet in third position, her arms crossed over her chest, looking around. He enters, closing all these doors against the complaining of the dancers who have a right to be here. She wonders what he did, that he's going to be allowed this. She wonders if he used Garou superpowers to do it, or just money.
"It's a good floor," she tells him, watching him. "It ...feels right."
IvanHe looks down at the floor as she speaks of it. His shoes are still on. This is probably a cardinal sin of some sort, he reflects, but doesn't bother to take them off. He is dark in this well-lit space, dark in his fine wool coat that hit just above the knee; dark in the suit and tie he wears under that. His head is bare and his hair is burnished gold, but it only makes him look a little more like lucifer, beautiful and fallen. Light is bouncing off the floors, the mirrors, but not off of him.
And Ivan nods, accepting her explanation as it is; not quite understanding it, but accepting it. Then he unbuttons his coat, takes it off, hangs it over the barre. His palm traces the surface of the wood a moment. Then he looks at Hilary again.
"I'd like to build you a studio," he says. "Like this one. Better." Nothing but the best for his krasivaya devushka, after all. "Wherever you want. Here in the city. Atop the cabin. At your house, if and when you decide on one. But that'll likely take until Christmas. Longer, if it doesn't 'feel right', and we need to start anew.
"In the meantime, you can come here whenever you like. I would call ten or fifteen minutes in advance. Give them a chance to clear the room out."
HilaryIt is a sin, but not one Hilary cares about anymore. She looks at him, so dark and imposing in his clothes, so out of place in this studio, so cherubic in appearance, and she thinks of Lucifer as well. She thinks of him standing over his party guests a week and a half ago in his red mask, each one of them his slave, and
she was his favorite.
He tells her what she suspected: he doesn't want to give her this studio. He doesn't even want to renovate it. He wants to build her one, like he built the cabin because his lake house upset her. He wouldn't give her one used, no, not Ivan. Not her. Anywhere she wants, and her eyes are watching him as he gives options. Somewhere in her there is still some of the humanity that was stirred to life by an instinct as old as their very species, and she aches a bit to hear how much he would give her. How he would tear it down and start over, how he'll give her anything, anything she wants, if only --
and there really is no 'if only' that she can understand. She does not know what he wants from her, that he bends so much to her will.
Hilary walks across the studio to him, to the barre, and puts her right hand on his left cheek, smoothing her thumb over his cheekbone before she stands on her toes and gives him a soft kiss on his right cheek. "Spasibo, vladelets," she whispers, close to his skin, and lowers her heels. "Atop the cabin would be lovely. Perhaps in my own place, as well."
IvanIvan's eyes watch Hilary cross the studio. She is reflected on three walls; four Hilarys converge on him and his own reflections. When she is before him, her hand covering his cheek, his hand covers hers for a moment. He lowers his head to receive that kiss. Turns to press one of his own against her palm. It's one of their hidden moments, their tender moments shared between only the two of them. Outside, the daylight is grey, but in here the great lights overhead add their own brightness and warmth. They are quite lovely, the two of them, poised and gracile as dancers, themselves.
"Then it's settled," he murmurs, and he raises his head, and she lowers her hand. His fingers hold hers another moment, and then release. His hands return to the barre, and he nods to the open studio behind her.
"Do you want to stay a while, then?"
HilaryMoments like this are often unthinkable between them, especially on a day like today. She never spoke to him about the meeting; it was all done through servants, Miranda and Max, Max and Miranda, the interactions cold and businesslike. And then she broke down in the conference room, and she broke down because when she came to him with a plea in her eyes he kissed her brow and that was a promise to take care of her, to protect her, to do what it seems sometimes he was put on earth to do.
It didn't bother Ivan at all to see Anton sleeping. It's just a baby, and one that he never really thought of as 'his' until it was born, but there are moments. Moments like the one where someone asks him what color to paint the walls and he finds he has an opinion. Moments like the one where he ensures that Anton will never have to wander dark hallways looking for help, crying by himself. Moments like the one where he held the child to begin with, and Dmitri told him that when he was a baby, he did all right when he was held by a Garou.
When Hilary wept in the conference room, all that really mattered was that she cared. That seeing Miron tuck the blanket around the baby broke her a little. So: it's not too late, he says, and he'd make it happen, he'd make sure Dion never found out, he'd keep them all safe, somehow, he would, he'd move heaven and earth if Hilary wanted to be near the baby sometimes, and damn the impact it has on that baby, if it will only please her, if it will make her a little bit happy, if it is what she wants.
So here they are, because of all that: because he would like to see her dance, and she has no place to dance right now, nowhere to practice. He can oust ballerinas if he likes. He could buy out an entire performance of anything she wants to see and they can watch it by themselves. He could get her pregnant again if she wants another baby, or he could find one, Dmitri or Evgeny or someone will know someone and they could get one, even a Kinfolk baby, maybe an orphan, if
Hilary wanted it.
Today, a dance studio. A rehearsal space. Because he'd like to see her dance, but because, simply: to do it for her. To do anything for her.
For such a small reward. A moment of tenderness. A soft kiss on the cheek, and her allowing him to press his lips fervently to her palm in answer without rolling her eyes or simply coolly accepting it. For a moment of warmth from her, the world.
It is not hard to imagine Anton turning out much the same, if exposed to her for years on end, but Ivan likely isn't thinking of that right now. She has stayed close even after that kiss, her hand still on his face, his hand covering it. They remain in contact even as he lowers her hand from his face, lifting his eyes to hers again. Hilary, passive as she so often is, does not seem to feel one way or another about his release of her hand, even though sometimes when she lets his go, it breaks him in half.
Her eyebrow quirks. "Not today," she murmurs, almost a whisper, and steps back, turning away. "Where are my things?" she says, meaning her coat, her bag, her heels.
IvanIt's not that Ivan cares nothing for anyone but himself. It's not even that he cares nothing for his son. It's simply that his caring never lasts for long. Can't last for long before it starts scraping at him, grating at him, threatening to flay him raw. In the end, he behaves much like his mother, though that cause is fundamentally different.
And he has this, too, that neither of his parents ever had: a focus, an axis, a lightning rod on which his emotions are grounded. Someone he loves, and someone he would move heaven and earth for, do just about anything for, and not for any greater reason than to please her. To make her happy, which is such a rare thing.
Perhaps that's necessary and critical, though. That her pleasure be rare. That the signs of her caring, her need, are equally rare. If she adored him openly, if she clung to him night and day, every minute, wanted to see him always, always -- he would run away.
She's not like that, though. She gives him a moment of warmth. And then she's stepping back, turning away. Where are her things, she wonders. He laughs under his breath.
"I forgot them," he says, unashamed. "I'll go get them."
Hilary"You do that," she murmurs to him, watching him past her shoulder. Of course he's unashamed; she can't imagine shame playing across his face. It's possible she's never truly seen it. They are Silver Fangs, and to feel shame is, itself, an embarrassment. Graceful people never feel shame. Graceful people never need to.
When he leaves her there, to walk back through a few studios to pick up her dropped coat, her tossed-aside bag, her elegant champagne-colored pumps, Hilary turns on the ball of one foot to look at herself in the wall of mirrors. She thinks about Anton again, and hasn't thought of him this much in one day since, perhaps, the day he was born. She wonders if she would think about him so much if he were right there. If he were waiting at one home or another, oblivious and happy with his caretakers, gnawing and drooling on things, kicking his legs to strengthen them, rocking on his hands and knees and learning the balance of his own body, the balance of the world. She wonders if her caring would come in little waves every few weeks or every few months, powerful surges of need to hold him, to be adored by him, to simply sit back and watch him crawl, and walk, and babble, and sleep. She wonders if she would care much at all, when he began to get older. When he developed a will of his own.
Ivan is back too soon for any of those thoughts to reach a conclusion. He's willing to move heaven and earth -- again -- to take her to Novgorod and let her be with the baby, visit whenever she wants, be known by him, even distantly. To be told not that his mother loved him before she died, but that she loves him even though she is never there. What an interesting picture of love that would give him,
but Hilary doesn't get that far. She turns when she hears Ivan, and there's a particular sort of darkness in her eyes that he knows all too well. She doesn't stand with her back to him to have him help her into her coat once more, doesn't step into her heels, but meets him on the floor when he walks to her, stepping close enough that when he stops she can feel the front of his coat brushing against her chest, and looks up at him. Her voice holds the same color as her eyes when she asks, her voice low:
"Do you want to have me here?"
IvanThis is how they recover from the unspeakable trauma of seeing a lost son. This is how they recover from an almost-unspeakable proposition: that they reverse that loss, that they bring him back, that they be his parents again, terrible, negligent, careless people that they are to have abandoned him in the first place.
This is how they recover: they come here, and they trample on the rights of others, and they take what they want, and then
she stands very close to him, close enough that she can hear the way he's breathing, faster than he was just moments ago. When he reentered the room she had barely moved. She turned and looked at him and there was that darkness in her eyes, and she came to him, and her stockinged feet were as silent as his. They met in the middle and he was already breathing faster; breathing hard enough that the front of his coat brushes her body every time he inhales.
But he smiles; he smiles like his arousal is a lazy, languid thing, which it so rarely is with her. They stand together in the middle of the room and he lowers his head to hers, rubs the side of his face over her temple, her cheekbone. He bites at her neck, and that's her answer long before he speaks.
As a matter of fact, it's a long time before he speaks. Before he speaks he drops her coat and purse and shoes again. They fall with soft thuds. This place is very well sound-insulated. It has to be, or every move the dancers on the fourth floor make will sound like an elephant derby on the third floor. He drops her things and he turns her around, his hands on her shoulders and then at the small of her back, guiding her much the way he escorted her into this building in the first place.
They walk together. They are such lovely people, and the wall of mirrors do not make either of them shy, or ashamed. They are reflected there, their proportions perfect, slim and tall, the crown of the man's shoulder. One could almost imagine any moment now she'll push off the balls of her feet, and his hands will be at her waist; the lifts and leaps that he doesn't even know the name of, but she does.
There are no leaps, no turns, no lifts. They get to the barre and now they are very close to the mirror; close enough to see that she is well past her prime as a dancer, that he is not even a dancer at all, that the grace of his motion comes from the savagery of his nature, that the preservation of her beauty comes from some mixture of strict upkeep and good genetics. Excellent genetics. The very best, the very purest, so pure that it can't even sustain itself anymore. But that doesn't seem to trouble them. They stand at the barre and he stands behind her and he's kissing her neck; he's not biting her anymore, he's kissing her very tenderly along the slender strap of muscle there, dropping his overcoat on the floor behind them, dropping his coat, undoing his tie in clever, blind flicks of his fingers.
"I thought about it," he confesses, "the moment you shed your coat and began to walk around. You made me think of ... some animal, some wild creature exploring a potential territory. I thought about,"
he pauses a moment to strip the tie off, his collar skewing. And then he reaches around to take her by the hands, to take her by the wrists, gently and swiftly binding one to the other, and then both to the barre,
"this."
His eyes find hers in reflection. Watching her, he touches his lips to her neck again; starts to undo her dress.
HilaryThis is how they recover: because it comforts her, and because he always wants her. Because she has a demanding, insatiable appetite, and because he will do anything for her. Because she wants him so badly sometimes she can't think of anything else, doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to acknowledge anything else, just wants him fucking her, holding her, possessing her and filling her,
and because he likes, very much now, the violence and darkness she stirs up in him. Is maybe even comforted by it.
He does want her here. She knows before she asks, and before he touches her. He smiles and she just lifts that eyebrow, and then he leans down and rubs himself on her like an animal, smelling her perfume and her own scent, a powerful combination. He bites at her, and can't see it but there's a solar flare in her dark eyes, an intake of breath that moves her chest. And then he turns her. Takes her body in his hands and moves her where he wants her to be, feeling her pliant and passive as he knew she would be as he takes her to the barre.
Instinctively she reaches out and puts her hands on it, lightly at first, then holding tighter as he kisses her neck, sheds his coat and undoes his tie, whispers in her ear about what he's been thinking about.
She thinks, suddenly, that the last time they fucked was almost two weeks ago, and they were writhing on the sheepskin rug in their cabin, and he didn't want to fuck her pussy because she was so tender, she'd been used so roughly, but in the end she needed it, she needed him inside of her, coming inside of her, hurting and pleasuring her at once, protecting her by owning her completely, submitting to her need by holding her dress up over her ass while he fucked his cum into her, dripped sweat on her, showed her he loved her like that, like that.
Her arousal, now, feels warm and slick, slow clenches of muscle and the lowborn desire to rub her thighs together. But she doesn't. She licks her lips, her eyes closed, and feels his arms come around her. The moment the silk of his tie touches her wrists she has to exhale a held breath, ragged already. His hands are warm where they reach up under her little cardigan to the top of her dress's zipper -- she wonders if he'll untie her to get it all off or just out of the way enough to fuck her, and it doesn't really matter but she's curious how he'll do it, she's always curious if he's going to just hike up her skirt and push down his pants and pin her to the wall or do
something like this.
Hilary's lingerie is pale, like the rest of her clothes today, but like her dress, the accents are in vivid reds, little ribbon bows on the front of her panties and garter belt, the spot between her breasts. The straps of her garter belt themselves are red, down her pale skin to clip onto the laced tops of her stockings. It's hard to get a good view; her zipper of her dress only goes down so far, after all.
She smirks at him in the mirror. "How long's it been?" she asks, coyly and unnecessarily.
IvanHer clothes today were demure even for her, and Hilary isn't prone to dressing flashily. He can't remember the last time he saw her in something scandalous or shocking. He's probably never seen her in anything remotely scandalous or shocking or, god forbid, trashy. She's not like that. Civilized people, after all, don't rub their thighs together when they get turned on. Civilized people don't let themselves hang out of their clothes, don't dress like sluts.
Which makes those little accents of red on her lingerie all the more intriguing. All the more inflaming. He discovers them in little glimpses: the bow on the front of her bra when he lowers the zipper and loosens her dress, tugs it down until it drapes around her upper arms, caught on her elbows. And the flash of red at her garters when he lowers his hands to her hips, pulls her dress up to get a look at her panties. What she has for him under those panties.
She asks him how long it's been. She's smirking at him in the mirror. They can very dimly hear the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of feet next door. The corps are practicing something or other. It better not be the Nutcracker, Ivan reflects; he hates that stupid ballet. He wonders if someone will forget, or if someone will not have heard that rehearsal studio six is off limits; if someone will walk in on them while he has her
tied to the barre, her clothes pushed down or pushed up or pushed aside, her hair still up in that artfully messy bun.
And his hand caresses the curvature of her ass as he considers her question. The city is behind him in that reflection. Those big windows, the street outside. The building across the way. The voyeurism of it all turns Ivan on. Maybe it's because the last time he had her -- well, no. The second-to-last time he had her was a performance in every sense of the word.
"Since I've fucked you?" he asks her back, rhetorically, coolly. "Almost two weeks, I think. Don't pretend you don't remember."
He reaches under her dress. Curling a single finger around the waist of her panties, he draws them down until gravity catches them and takes them the rest of the way. They land soundlessly and he takes her by the hips, draws her back until her back is arched, her ass lifted. Her dress falls softly over her waist when he turns it up. Ivan is still looking at her in the mirror, looking her in the eye when he licks his first two fingers and reaches down to slip them inside her.
"Since I've gotten myself off thinking about you? About sixteen hours, give or take." And then he's smirking back at her, giving her a single slow slide of his fingers. "Oh, Hilary. Wet already."
HilaryNot many people would look at Hilary today and imagine fucking her. Certainly not bending her over and tying her to anything. They might, at most, imagine what she wore underneath but probably disappoint themselves in the fantasy. Sedate pumps, calf-length floral dress, a cardigan of all things. But she has such nice legs. Such graceful arms. Such pristine features. They would be afraid to touch her, afraid of damaging her beauty or her perfection,
her purity.
Not Ivan. He's as pure as she is, and he's Garou; she belongs to him and his kind anyway. Even if the Silver Fangs have made themselves posh and remote, have written laws about succession and who may mate with the offspring of whom and so forth, he is still an animal by nature. A predator and beast who sees one of his own blood and wants her. So he takes her. No other lesson of the Fangs has driven itself quite so deep as that of entitlement. He sees her, aloof and beautiful and pure, and decides to shred all the trappings in his hands, sink his teeth into her neck and take her.
It doesn't even matter if he can get her stupid sweater off, or pull her dress all the way off, or see her tits sway when he fucks her. He runs his hands over her inside her dress, hikes it up high around her hips so he can stroke her ass, and she shivers for him, which is quite nice to feel. She aches for him to spank her, strike her, punish her for whatever he likes, but she doesn't say a word now. Those smirks never last long when she's like this. He tells her not to pretend and the simple tone of his voice makes her cunt clench.
He takes her panties off -- well, down. They hang on her ankles and she steps out of them, opens her legs a little as he's moving his hand between her legs, across her bared pussy. Her eyes are open now, at least for a moment, and she watches him lick his fingers, speak to her. "That long?" she murmurs back, but it's all she can do before he reaches down and slides his fingers into her. She gives a hushed gasp, closing her eyes and resting her forehead on the mirror. Slowly, but thoughtlessly, she begins to work herself on those fingers of his,
wanting to fuck. Be fucked. Wanting, period.
IvanAgain and again the truth becomes self-evident: that the woman the rest of the world sees is not the woman Hilary is. They see a trophy wife, and an exceptionally well-bred and well-mannered one. An old family. Finishing schools. Just enough of an education to be a scintillating conversationalist. Sophisticated, demure, always dresses her age. They are shocked when she lashes out, vicious as she can be. And even then, they could not possibly imagine
bending her over in front of a mirror designed to reflect every aspect of a dancer's poise and movement. Bending her over, and fucking her with their hands.
That's why when Ivan throws that party of his, the second one he'll invite Hilary to, no one will for a moment believe this really is the same woman he fucked on the stone table on Halloween. They might suspect it, though. Their subconscious might recognize her, and they won't understand for a minute why the very sight of this woman,
this trophy wife,
this sophisticated, demure, well-mannered creature,
makes the lizard parts of their brains turn over in mingled uneasiness and arousal. Dread and lust.
Ivan likes the way her eyes close. He likes the way she leans against the mirror, and the way her mouth opens in a gasp he can barely hear. Next door, those thumps in rhythm. Practicing the same steps over and over until perfection. He imagines she did that once too. Bent that pliable body of hers in ways thoroughly unnatural, albeit pleasing to the eye. And she says something, the conversation goes on, hardly scintillating, and he laughs low and pleased as he leans forward to kiss
and bite her shoulder.
"That long," he agrees, and he doesn't know whether she means since they've fucked or since he got himself off. It doesn't really matter. He picks one, "since I had this sweet little cunt of yours. Open your eyes."
He's looking right at her when she does. He's looking at her and kissing her shoulder and stroking her with his hand, idly, as though he were exploring her and rediscovering her. Soon enough he slides his fingers out of her and straightens, reaches around her - leaves wetness on his tie as he unbinds her in the same swift, efficient gestures he bound her with. And it turns out he doesn't want to simply push all her clothes aside and take her just like that, after all. It turns out he wants to strip her naked, utterly naked, her sweater peeled off and her dress pulled down, her elbow held as he guides her to the left a few feet, away from that pile of shed clothing, wearing only her bra.
That, he leaves on. Sheer whim, nothing more. He binds her to the barre again, bends her over at the waist with his hand on the center of her back, and then steps back. And away. Back to her things, her clothes, her coat, her shoes, her bag. He circles them, wolflike, studying the patternless scatter they make.
"How long has it been," he wonders, "since I've punished you?"
HilaryIt's easier to think of a younger woman being submissive. Then again, many equate inexperience with submission and passivity, do not often combine eagerness and aloofness together. He likes that about her; the contrast. The fact that he sees something about her that no one else is privy to, has access to a part of her that others wouldn't even imagine exists. That kind of power over her is intoxicating. That kind of closeness with her is heartrending.
They are both so beautiful. They are both untouchable: the flightly women he used to fuck could tell, sometimes only after they'd been pushed out of his bed, but they could tell. The young men that even now are drawn to Hilary because she is both familiar and terrifying at once, comforting and arousing, can tell that this is wrong, that this is going nowhere good, that they can never really have her. And no one can ever have her like this. Not like Ivan has her.
A voice rings out from other studios; a woman who used to be at her peak, who now trains women thirty years younger how to dance, how to warp their bodies, how to become what she was for a few gleaming years. Hilary did not go down that path. She was meant for another, but no one would have ever guessed it would lead here:
the Joffrey Ballet, two thousand eleven, a man's fingers in her cunt, his voice in her ear, chastising and praising her with the same tone of voice for being so wet, for being his to fuck.
Hilary's head tips as he kisses her, bites her, and she breathes to keep herself steady. She meant how long it's been since he jerked off, since he came all over himself thinking about her, thinking about fucking her, thinking about coming inside of her or just leaving it on her tits, on her ass, knowing she'd all but weep because he withheld his cum from her pussy. This is the woman who thinks of being forced to her knees and gagged on his cock as a reward for being good, for being pretty, for obeying. This is the woman who he worshipped by holding her legs open and allowing stranger after stranger to fuck her. They are not normal. They are not like other people. They know it. They recognize it in each other.
She opens her eyes. He told her to, and she obeys without thinking. The decision to submit comes only a half-heartbeat later, as her resistance usually does. She looks at him in the mirror, biting her lip as he strokes her, quivering a little. He leaves her and she closes her eyes a moment, gasping out, but opens her eyes again --- he did not, after all, tell her to close them again, or tell her that she could.
And he unbinds her. She wants to cry out in disappointment or protest, but she doesn't: she trusts. She looks at him in faint bewilderment, but there is that deep trust, too, as she straightens up and he unties her from the barre, but does not unbind her wrists. That pleases her. She restrains a shiver and watches him. He unties her wrists and she frowns, her brow wrinkling; Ivan yanks off her sweater and her dress like they're rags and she gasps at the way they tear off her skin, trembling. Ivan ties her wrists back together, turns her around, bends her over, pushes her down, ties her to the barre again.
Hilary's slender fingers wrap around the pole, her back arching a little with need, primal and thoughtless, her breath leaving a cloud on the mirror.
Her eyes close again at the question. "Summer, I think," she murmurs, uncertain. He's spanked her, she's almost certain. Fucked her in a bathroom and made her clean his cock with her mouth while she was handcuffed to a different kind of bar. Or took her roughly in the cabin of her yacht, but that was ages ago. It doesn't quite count, she thinks. It's been a long time since he formally, ritualistically punished her. It's entirely possible he hasn't done that since
"May, maybe," Hilary whispers. "When I gave you the flogger."
IvanIvan is kneeling over their things when she speaks, picking his gloves out of the mire. He raises his head; he looks at Hilary across the line of his shoulder, over the crisp white of his shirt. His eyebrows are raised. He smiles, sudden and brilliant - and yes, he is beautiful, they are both beautiful and rarefied and different.
Abnormal.
"That long?" he parrots back at her. And he leaves that tangle of clothing and accessories, things they've left behind. He finds nothing else there he can use. As he returns to her he undoes his belt, stripping it out of its loops with a whisper, leather on very finespun wool. He used his belt on her once, just once, in a fit of angry black lust that frightened him. This won't be like that. He folds the belt over once, grips the hard buckle in his hand. And when he returns to her he caresses her with the leather, lays it light and gentle over the small of her back, tracing it over her rear.
"Eyes open," he reminds her, his voice as gentle as the touch. "Look at yourself." He's looking at her too, watching her face as he strokes her with the makeshift lash, the round of her ass and the slope of her thigh, the cleft between her legs where she's so very, very wet. "Look at what a beautiful little slut you are. Open,"
her mouth, he means, and he gives her his gloves to clamp between her teeth, a gag,
"good," and when she bites down he lays the belt across her ass, a solid lash that cracks across the large, open room. Not as hard as he could. Not as softly, either. Almost immediately there's an imprint on her ass. He smooths his left hand over it, skin to skin, soothing her. Praising her, "That's my good little whore."
HilaryThat long. That long since he gave her what she craves so much: not just the roughness but the ritual of it, the formality of what borders on abuse. She likes that. Occasionally, she needs it. Moreover: she needs it from him, the one she calls master, owner, possessor, acknowledging every time she uses that word that she belongs to him, and she's at the mercy of what he wants to give her. What attention he feels like offering her. She likes hearing it on her own lips. She likes the way he accepts it like a mantle, heavy and warming at once.
Hilary watches him in the mirror as he takes off his belt, her heart thudding in her chest, her pussy wet with anticipation for this. She thought he'd never use a belt on her again. But the sight of him removing it like that, knowing what he's going to do with it, turns her on so vividly she wants to squirm, she wants to fuck. If she weren't Hilary, she might start begging for cock there and then, whimpering and bucking for it.
But she is who she is. She just watches, a deep pain of want coiling tightly inside of her, and opens her legs a little more as though to invite him, as though to show off her
wet,
pink
pussy.
Eyes open, he says, and strokes her body with the leather. She moans softly, and he rubs the edge of the leather gently between her lips, makes her buck slightly. He gags her with his gloves, which she bites into, and soon thereafter, he hits her for the first time. A loud groan is stifled by his accessory, her body jolting forward a bit and then swaying back. Her skin turns pink around the cutting red ribbons of her garter belts stretching down the backs of her thighs to her stockings. Hilary's eyes roll back a bit as he strokes her with his palm, soothing her flesh, telling her she's good, she's a good whore, a good slut. She opens her legs further and she's splayed now, tilted so he can see her, the gloves in her mouth stopping her from begging, begging, pleading with him to fuck her.
IvanTo this day Ivan doesn't quite understand how badly Hilary needs to be told she's good. She's not sick, she's not utterly worthless and irredeemable because of the childhood trauma that fractured her soul and let the darkness in. She's not ugly and deformed. She's not broken.
He came so close to that realization once. When they fought, viciously, when he tore into her because why can't she be human for him; when she said, painful to hear:
you know I'm not right.
She knows she's not right. She thinks she's not right, and she wants so badly - she craves it so much - for him to say otherwise. Beautiful. The word itself made her orgasm once, wildly, her pleasure tearing apart under him like paper.
Good, he calls her. And she's moaning so softly, and then making that stifled noise when he strikes her with the belt. A psychologist could have a field day with her need to be punished, but really, the crux of it isn't there. The crux of it is that this is a way for her to feel loved. And for all her emptiness, all the blackness of her depthless eyes, Hilary needs that so very much. From him, anyway.
And this is how he shows his love. By tying her up. By bending her over. By stripping her utterly naked in this room in this building full of dancers and choreographers and artistic directors, full of strangers who might at any moment forget that this room is off limits, might come in and see him
flogging her with that belt, lashing her across the ass and the backs of her thighs, laying the leather across her skin with what is unmistakably a growing expertise. He's learning to control just how hard to hit her. He's learning that frequency and repetition makes up for force; that he doesn't have to hit her hard, per se, to bring her to that jagged edge. He just has to hit her again
and again
and again
until she's moaning for it, screaming for it, until he's gagging her not just with his glove but with his hand clamped over her mouth, holding in her cries.
He does not touch her cunt with his hands, or his mouth, or his cock. He does not stimulate her in any way but this. Leather on skin, and sometimes skin on skin: spanking her and whipping her, lightly but relentlessly, and all the while muttering at her, telling her
what a hungry little cunt she is, what a little cockslut, this is what she wants, isn't it, this is what she wants, so take it.
HilaryWhen she gave him that flogger, she told him he didn't have to be so gentle. It broke him a little to hear that, to feel -- even for a moment -- that even then he couldn't satisfy her, wasn't enough for her. But it wasn't that. And she spilled out onto the pillow a dozen or more things she's thought of, wished for, things he could do to her. Hit her more. He doesn't have to hit her harder. Tease her. Gag her. And months later, here they are.
Ivan improvises, lacking the flogger today, and hits her with his belt instead. Over and over, til her skin is pink and she's taking it as though he's thrusting into her every time, rubbing her ass into his hand whenever he soothes her with his palm. She wonders how hard he is. She wonders what he's going to do to her next. And the not knowing which is always a part of her life merges with this absolute, utterly yielding trust, and she falls apart within it all.
Hilary doesn't understand herself either. And she thinks of it so much less than Ivan does. She gets off when he tells her she's good, she's beautiful, she's such a good little slut for him. She gets off when he snarls at her that she's a whore, that she's dirty, filthy, so fucking wet. She couldn't explain it to him if she tried, except to say: she's not right. And she knows it.
In another studio, they hear a crack that doesn't quite sound like dancing. They look, pausing, then go on with their dancing, snapped at by the instructor. Drills.
Ivan is close now, covering her mouth with his hand as well, gagging her even more forcefully on his gloves, and he isn't pleasuring her. He doesn't caress her breasts or roll her nipples between his fingers. He doesn't grind his erection between her legs. He just... keeps... hitting her, muttering in her ear, until her knees start to buckle and she moans, her eyes closing hard, tears coming out from her lashes, her hands gripping the barre to keep from falling as she comes,
suddenly, without any warning, without anything between her legs to truly satisfy her.
IvanThe truth is she doesn't have to grip the barre like that. Ivan would never let her fall. Her knees start to buckle but his arms are around her; he's supporting her against his body, against his arms, his belt laying warm against her thigh. He holds her, stroking her back as the last of her orgasm quivers through her.
When it's done, Ivan helps Hilary upright. He is very gentle about this. He's so gentle with her, so often, and it makes his moments of dominance - of play, of punishment, of violence - all the starker. The pad of his thumb wipes away her tears, and then he kisses her softly before he takes his belt and slides the tongue through the buckle; forms a loop that he slips over Hilary's head and around her neck,
like a collar.
Even in this he's careful, though. He pulls the belt almost snug around her throat, but then he punches a hole forcibly where there was none; keeps it from choking too tight. Even in this, somehow, improbably, he tries to take care of her.
He undoes one of her wrists, then. And he leans back against the mirror and the barre, guiding her over to stand before him. Belt in hand, he tugs her closer: close enough that her feet are between his, her body against his, their heat comingling through the remaining layers of his clothes. He looks at her body, decorated as it is by what remains of her lingerie. Sexual warpaint indeed: the bra, the garter belt, the stockings. She's close enough to feel what she was wondering: that he's hard, that he's so fucking hard, that he wants to fuck just as much as she does.
"I like the way you look," he tells her, half-smiling, "just like this. Wanting and naked. Decorated for my viewing pleasure."
Ivan tugs again on the belt. The leash. Downward this time - kissing her just before she starts to bend. Then his hand is on her shoulder, pushing her gently down; he's murmuring, "On your knees," and she knows what he wants even before he shows her. Even before he lowers his zipper with one hand; even before he wraps the belt a few time around his fist to tighten the slack. Long before he pulls her forward, takes his cock out, strokes it once or twice, lays the head against her lips.
"Open," he whispers. And then -- "don't move your head. Just suck it. Nice and easy. That's it." His chest rises and falls; there's a shudder under his breath. "That's good. Now,"
his free hand touches her hair. Traces her arm to her bound wrist; holds her bound hand against the barre,
"touch yourself. And keep it in your mouth. I want to hear you come with my cock in your mouth."
HilaryIt's a weak, quivering orgasm with nothing to stimulate her, to really snap her over that edge. She comes anyway, crying because it doesn't satisfy that deeper, darker need, crying because she wants him so much, because,
je vais mourir
je t'aime tellement.
It doesn't last long. He helps her up, straightens her legs again under her, and soothes her tears, her lips. Her eyes open and he collars her,
only not. It isn't the same. He uses his belt as a lash, uses it then as a leash, and she trembles when the edges of the leather come to the tender skin of her throat. She tips her head back while he punches a new hole in the leather, finding it hard to breathe. She has no idea what he intends when he draws her back and unties her wrists -- one of them. Turns her to face him instead, pulls her to him. Her free hand touches his chest, partly for balance, partly just to have contact. As much as he lets her, she leans on him, closing her eyes for a moment at the feel of how hard he is through his slacks.
In the next room, and the rooms after that, the troupe keeps dancing.
Here and now, Ivan murmurs to her about what he likes. Decorated, he calls her. She shivers a little, and then
he tugs her down. Forces her to her knees, which makes her moan softly, her mouth already opening, her face seeking his groin, opening over him through the fabric, wanting, wanting. He has to push her face back -- tug her with the leash, maybe -- to unzip himself, to push clothes down or out of the way enough to get his cock out. She leans forward for him, gasping, but he holds her back another moment, tightens his grip on her, while he strokes himself. Open, he says, but he doesn't have to: she's learning for it, opening her mouth and groaning when she feels him inside. She starts in enthusiastically, too much so, and he won't let her move her head. Just lets her suck.
Hilary groans again, wants to cry again, but she obeys. Her tongue swirls around the head of his cock; she takes him as far as she can without moving her head, without truly blowing him, as much as he'll let her, and when he tells her to touch herself she moans in protest, in disappointment, but her hand is between her legs in seconds, rubbing at her cunt, squeezing her thighs together.
IvanIt was a little like this Halloween night, too. Hilary bare; Ivan almost entirely clothed. There are no audiences today, though, and he's at least shed tie and jacket. His hand on her wrist is gentle, is soothing; he strokes her skin as she sucks on him, licks him, holds him in her mouth
and reaches between her legs.
"That's it," he murmurs. "Touch yourself for me. Stroke that hot, hungry little pussy. Show me how you do it when I'm not there."
His hand cups over her head again. He combs her hair back, and it's quite delicate and loving, the way he touches her: his fingertips stroking over her scalp, his fingers parting her hair and pushing it back, following through to caress the back of her neck. He thinks again of how he feels about her, and for her. He wonders how it's possible to adore a woman so much and treat her like this. To treat her like this, because he adores her so much.
He wants to speak of his adoration, but what he says instead is this, hushed and low:
"Get yourself off like a good little girl, and maybe I'll let you come on this cock."
HilaryThey could have just gone home -- somewhere, anywhere. 'Home' isn't something either of them are particularly attached to, conceptually or geographically. The cabin, most likely, where he takes her and where she feels so strangely comforted. There are under-bed hooks he can use to restrain her there that he's never used. There are, in fact, loops embedded in the walls of the shower at the cabin, just in case, and rust-proof shackles in the little linen closet along with a few other waterproof toys, if they should ever want to play there. The cabin is well-stocked for when Hilary wants to cook, and she has taken advantage of the kitchen (largest area of the cabin, to tell the truth) once or twice to make breakfast or make dinner or prepare an artful little snack. But the cabin is also well-stocked for the sort of play they like, and yet they've never taken advantage of it there.
Really no reason for that. It just hasn't happened.
She gasps a little when Ivan mentions getting herself off when he's not there. But she keeps licking him within her mouth, tasting his precum, sliding her fingers into herself and moaning. She only has one hand free: can't stroke him, can't caress his balls or grab his ass and thrust him into her mouth. Ivan's hands stroke her hair, dismantling the bun and letting it all down in a tangle. It's unstraightened, wavy; a few bobby pins here and there that he doesn't bother to take out, but it doesn't stop him from getting her hair down, pushing his fingers into her hair, cupping her head while she gives him slow, soft, wet attention with her mouth.
The way she's on her knees, stroking herself and licking him like that, is so tender. So gentle. So adoring, in fact, that it's hard to reconcile with the woman that he normally sees, talks to, takes verbal abuse and dismissal from. But she does adore him. She whimpers around him, and works her hand faster between her legs, grinding her pussy into her hand. Hilary pushes forward, taking more of him in her mouth, starting to disobey, starting to build up a rhythm, groaning and suckling on him like she's hungry for it.
IvanShe does adore him. He does know that. Believe that, if only in moments and fragments. He believed her when they fucked
-- when they made love at the cabin, and afterward she held him in her arms and legs, in her body, and whispered it to him like a secret. He believed her when she told him through the translation of another, when she, sobbing, pushed past what she could take, could not even summon the presence of mind to speak in a language he understood.
He believes her now, watching her moaning around his cock, watching her suck at him like somehow his pleasure is more important to her than her own; like the greatest reward he could possibly give her right now
is to grab her head and use her mouth like he doesn't care about her at all.
For a moment his head falls back. For a moment he lets her disobey like that. Lets her suck at him, move on him, build a rhythm between her lips and his cock, build up to something more than he's given her. Just a moment: because he can't resist, because he's not made of stone, because what she's doing to him makes his mind dissolve.
But then he pushes her away, firmly and unyieldingly, until his cock slips out of her mouth. Pushes her head back, bares her throat, leans down and bites a kiss onto her mouth.
"What did I say?" His voice is silk and venom. "Shameless, disobedient little slut. Get up."
He yanks - on the belt, and then on her arm, hauling her to her feet, pushing her around - pivoting on the axis of her tied wrist, slamming her back to the mirrors. It's rough. He manhandles her. He crowds her against the barre, grabs her free hand and pins it to the wood, grabs her by the waist and holds her still as he mauls her face again, kisses her like he owns her.
"Open your legs," when he's done. She taught him this. He uses it against her now. "Close them around my cock. There you go." His arm wraps behind her back. He hauls her against him, until she's standing on tiptoe and he can fuck her in straight throws of his hips; holds her tight against his chest, holds her tight so she can't get away, but also, even now, so she can feel him. Feel close to him. Feel close to another human being, and held,
and loved.
Someone in the building across Randolph could look in and see them. They're so exposed here: light pouring from the glass walls, light bouncing off the sheet mirrors, light skimming off their bodies. They're so exposed, but in some strange way Ivan's body protects Hilary's even as he entraps her against the mirror. His back faces the windows behind them. His arms cover her sides. His feet are to either side of hers, and his neck is bent over her shoulder. He covers her like that, surrounds her and envelopes her, leaves nothing but the impression of her fair, fair skin between his dark slacks, his white shirt,
his tie knotted around her wrist.
Ivan doesn't dally around. He doesn't tease her with his cock, and he doesn't withhold pleasure from himself. He grips her shoulder in his teeth and fucks her thighs, fast and hard and unrestrained, panting and grunting against her skin, using her body to get himself off. It doesn't take long, and it's possible he does this not only to punish her for her transgressions, not only to push her to some more ragged edge of need, but because he needs it himself. He needs this release to be able to go on, and to be able to give her what she needs.
He bites her when he comes, his cock jerking between her thighs, his groans muffled against her neck. He's clutching at her back, hugging her so tightly to his chest. The force of his thrusts slams her against the mirror, makes the barre shudder ever so slightly behind her back. He nuzzles her neck a moment or two when he's finished. Kisses her where he bit her, and then
steps back from her. Tucks himself away, zips up. Loosens his belt from her neck, folds it over itself once, twice. Gives it to her to clamp between her teeth, telling her,
drop it and I'll stop,
turning her around and binding her against the barre; pulling her back by the hips until she's bent over for him again, presented for him again.
And so it goes. They haven't played since May. So they play. They play for a long while. And he uses his hands on her, smacks her ass and her thighs, slaps the sides of her breasts, tugs her nipples, pulls her hair, bites her, holds her still, hits her harder every time she squirms, makes her stifle screams against that belt, makes her moan, makes her beg. He likes it when she begs. He tells her to beg: beg him to spank her again, beg him to put his fingers inside her, beg him to make her come, beg him to hit her again, again, please,
beg for it, this is what you want, isn't it, so beg, slut.
Slut. The woman who gave birth to his son; that son of his he rarely thinks about, but takes care of nonetheless. Has opinions on, wants to do right by, wants to give a good life to - so far as he can, anyway, irresponsible, careless thing that he is. The woman who is mother to his child. The woman who he loves, very much, painfully sometimes; the woman that's here because she told him offhandedly that she still danced as recently as a year ago; that she doesn't anymore because she has no place to practice. The woman that's here because whatever she asks for, whatever she so much as mentions she might want or like, he gives her.
Beg, he tells her. As if she ever needs to.
He's lost track of how many times he's brought her off. She comes so easily when she's like this; it's like she hits a certain state where she's nothing but sensation and submission. It's intoxicating to be here with her. It's intoxicating, dangerous, addictive. He has to be so careful. He has to watch her so carefully; she trusts him so entirely. His cheeks are flushed, his palm warm from slapping against her skin over and over and over. He's breathing hard, and he wipes sweat off the side of his face on the sleeve of his shirt. He steps back a moment. Looks at her, looks at how far he's taken her,
decides: enough.
"Krasivaya devushka," he murmurs. He's so gentle now. He unties her wrists. He helps her straighten up, turns her around, wraps his arms around her and gathers her close. He holds her like this, shushing her, stroking her, comforting her. It's starting to get dark outside: a blue twilight descending on the street. He wants to fuck her. He restrains himself. Strange, he thinks, that this began because she asked if he wanted to have her. Strange that after all that, he hasn't.
Maybe they'll go to the cabin after this, he thinks. Maybe he'll run her a bath, and take care of her,
and maybe they'll make love in their bed, after.
HilaryHilary never told Ivan how precious she feels when he grabs her hair and fucks her mouth. She never told him that having him in her mouth is a reward, is a gift, is her present for being a very good girl, but he figured it out. He figures a lot out on his own; he has to. And they're still together because he, unlike so many of the young men she drove to their edge, was able to understand what she needs without constant guidance. She can, with Ivan, truly let go. It's the greatest of all the gifts he gives her.
She moans around his cock, taking him as deep as she can before sliding away, then sucking him in again. Ivan holds the barre, panting, the pleasure too much right now for him to escape. He knows how wet she must be; he felt her on his fingers earlier, he knows what she likes, and he knows she likes this almost as much as he does. Maybe as much. Maybe more, somehow. She's so wet, and she's so hungry, one wrist tied above her head still, her mouth so wet on his cock til he manages to pull his hips back and push her away and lean over, mauling her mouth. Hilary gasps, her hand still moving between her legs, faster now while he's seething at her. She doesn't get up.
So Ivan pulls her up, forces her to her feet, and she's still touching herself, still playing with that wet, needy pussy of hers, never stopping even as he slams her to the barre, to the mirror. She's flexible -- he knows this -- but then her foot is on the barre beside her, her cunt displayed, open, ready --
but he doesn't give her that. Ivan pulls her leg down, snarling at her what he wants her to do. And she whimpers, submits, obedient again as her legs close around him. She can feel his cock throbbing right against her pussy lips and starts to buck and rub against him almost instantly, grabbing his shirt with her slick-wet hand to hold onto him. That's how they fuck: with him outside of her. With him clothed. With Hilary down to lingerie and loose hair, burying her face against his neck while he pounds against her, harder than he could ever fuck her if he entered her. Uses her, and she melts for him when he does so, becomes so soft and so tender and coming in seconds, in moments.
And again, not long after, moaning into his neck, as her back slaps against the mirrors, against the barre. He lets himself go a little, so that he can last through the abuse he's going to heap on her, so that he doesn't just put her on the wood floor and fuck her, come in her, turn her over and do it again like they're animals. They're both sweating when he comes, Hilary trembling, wondering if he's going to be done with her, but no. He wipes sweat off of himself, looks at the bite imprint left in her shoulder, looks at the cum on her thighs, the mess he's made of her and of -- frankly -- a spot on the barre. He nuzzles her and soothes her a little, helps her stop shaking, and then
puts his cock away. And, almost businesslike, makes her clamp down on her own leash, since she lost his gloves earlier. He tells her what he does, and she nods, watching him with wide eyes that make her look much younger than she is.
She thinks he might fuck her now, when he bends her filthy body over and makes her hold the bar. But that's not what Ivan does. He spanks her -- beats her til she's screaming around the leather, til his hand is warm and her ass is red. Til there are imprints of his hands on the sides of her breasts, til her nipples are hard and pink and sore, til she's come again from when he finally, finally puts his fingers in her and fucks her like that. Slaps her again and again afterward for coming too soon, for not saying 'please' when she can't or he'll stop, for being such a fucking slut, such a whore.
At one point he hears the creak of the door, the snap of the door being turned, and shouts at whoever is outside of it -- whoever hasn't even opened the door a crack yet -- to stay out. They are undisturbed after that, remain alone, and the sound of rehearsals around them die down later on, and he's slapped his gloves against her cunt, asking her if that dirty pussy needs to be punished. He makes her rub herself off against them, holds them hard against her til she comes on them,
before he removes the belt and puts them back in her mouth. Taste it. Taste what a little slut you are. And goes back to punishing her, as creatively as he can and as forcefully as he dares.
All because he loves her so, so much.
When Ivan steps away, wiping sweat from his brow and panting from both the physical effort and the emotional exertion of controlling this game so carefully, Hilary is barely able to hold herself up. She's whimpering almost nonstop, shaking, crying, but not once has she pulled away from him, or closed her legs. In fact a half a dozen times she's opened her legs up and tilted her hips back, begging just like he told her to, begging to be fucked,
and only earning more punishment for being such a whore about it.
She almost falls when he unties her, as though that binding was keeping her upright. She still hasn't dropped the gloves from her teeth, but he takes them out for her and she gives a soft sob, tucking herself to his chest. He calls her that pretty pet name, gathering her up to himself, stroking her back, gently finding and removing the bobby pins still stuck and tangled in her hair. He doesn't pull now. He just unwinds them, careful not to let them pull at her scalp. They still haven't eaten. They've been here over an hour, almost two; it is late enough in the year that the sun is getting towards setting.
Ivan has already decided where they'll go after this. What they'll do. Hilary, right now, is not capable of making any decisions. She just trembles, and breathes, and wishes she had words. Wishes, not for the first or last time, that she had some way of showing him her gratitude.
IvanWhat Hilary doesn't realize is that he understands, without her ever needing to speak or show him, her gratitude. He understands it through the lens of her adoration, her love and her need, all of which he feels so powerfully when she's like this. When she's trembling, unsteady on her feet, clinging to him: this so often disdainful, so flawlessly graceful woman, who calls herself his even if she's not, really, and never really can be outside of these raw, brutal moments. Not in the way his instinct understands, anyway.
And maybe that is why he's grown to need this as much as her. Maybe that is why, at its core, he's driven to possess her like this. Take her like this. Because this is the only way he really has of connecting with her, grasping her, holding her: the only real way he has of
being hers. Now that's an odd thought, and rather inverted in its logic. Yet that's what burns in his mind right now, when she clings to him like this: like she trusts him to stay, like she knows he won't go. He's hers, like this. And he can never be, otherwise.
Good girl, he's whispering, one language or another. My beautiful, good girl.
He helps her dress when she's stopped shaking. They have no shower, no place to clean themselves off in, no place to put themselves back together in. So he uses his scarf to wipe her clean - the cum he left on her thighs, the slick of her own arousal; the saliva on her face, and the sweat. Sex is messy business, but he doesn't seem disgusted by her, or by what he does for her. He cleans her carefully, and when he's done he tips her face up to his and kisses her softly, sweetly.
Then he helps her back into her dress. He zips her up, kneels to put her shoes on for her. Holds her coat for her. When she's dressed he picks up his own things - tossing his scarf and belt and gloves in the wastebasket, putting her panties and his tie in his coat pocket. When he's ready to go, he comes back to her and puts his arm around Hilary's waist. Guides her like that out the door.
There's a dancer there, leaving one of the other rehearsal rooms. Maybe she heard the panting, the moaning, the screaming, the beating. Maybe not; the walls are thick and sound-insulated. She looks at them wide-eyed over her shoulder, though, and she's young and slender and pretty in a plain way; she's staying late and working hard and hoping, hoping she'll have that glory and incandescence for one brief season in her life, and that was not the path Hilary's life took, but it could so easily have been. Sometimes Ivan wonders if she would have been happier like that. If she's capable of happiness at all, except in brief, glorious, incandescent moments that he can't seem to help but destroy.
He kisses Hilary's temple softly as they wait for the elevator. The dancer decides to take the stairs.
There is a ticket on the illegally parked Lamborghini when they get downstairs. Ivan takes it off the windshield and drops it in the gutter without looking at it.
And they drive north: through the magnificent mile and then onto Lake Shore Drive, past the near north side and its wealthy midrises, its parks, its zoo. Ivan makes a call in the car, orders dinner -- it's hard to tell if he's calling a restaurant or Evgeny; his instructions would be just as specific and entitled, either way. They're halfway to Winnetka when he hangs up, and he looks at Hilary, and the lake is grey and the sky is grey behind her, and though it's barely past midafternoon by the clock, the sun is setting behind the clouds. It will be bitterly cold tomorrow, and colder still the day after. Winter is closing in.
Halfway around the world, Anton's servants are sleeping, and so is Anton. They have had warm winter clothes made for him. It is still clear and cold, the trees stripped of leaves. There is some talk of taking Anton outside in the first snow. There is talk of filming that so his father can see. Miron thinks when the lake freezes over he'll take Anton skating, too, even though Anton is too small to really skate. Oh well; he'll carry Anton, and they'll skate together. He thinks Anton will like that, and he's right, and these are details Ivan cannot, may never be able to intuit about his own son.
"Dinner should be ready by the time we've bathed," he says quietly, when they're perhaps five minutes from the lakehouse and the cabin. "Stay the night."
HilaryOn the other side of the world, Anton is still sleeping. It's late enough now that the servants are tucked into bed as well, bundled against the cold. Miron is musing about filming Anton outside in the first snow of his life, is thinking about taking him out on the ice, making sure the baby boy's head is well-covered, his face turned towards Miron's body so the wind of movement will not make him hiccup and cry. He doesn't know if Anton will like that or not, but he's an adventurous sort of baby, he gets over upsets quickly; maybe he will. They'll film him in the snow regardless; Izolda will be delighted. Polina will set a timer for when they have to go back in, lest the baby get too cold. What a funny little family they are, he thinks, then dashes that thought from his mind as too fond, too familiar, by half.
Anton is not his son or his brother. Anton is the Silver Fang he serves. The one he'll devote the rest of his life to. He'll raise him and keep his secrets and teach him that a skinned knee is nothing to cry about, but he will never be blood of his blood. Never.
He thinks about Izolda before he goes to sleep. Never that, either.
In Chicago, the sun is only just beginning to set, and it's hours before bedtime. Ivan is helping Hilary now, soothing his fingertips over her reddened wrist, wiping her off slightly with his scarf, whispering to her all the while that she's so pretty, she did so good, what a good girl, so beautiful. He dresses her in her floral gown and helps her into her sweater, covering the bite mark on her shoulder. He helps her arrange her hair, or rather -- helps her gain the momentum necessary to pull it back, hands her pins from the floor to make it reasonable. He helps her into her champagne-colored pumps and wraps her in her coat, and tosses the cum-covered gloves and scarf he won't be needing anymore. She is sill dazed, still responding mostly to his instructions and his guidance, as he leads her out of the practice room.
And down the elevator.
And helps her into the car.
Somewhere along the drive she wakes up. Stirs. She breathes a little differently, and Ivan is talking to someone on the phone. She turns her head, stops staring emptily out the window, looks at Ivan. He hangs up and she is resting her forehead against the glass. "It's cold," she whispers, little more than a movement of her lips. She smiles.
Later, he mentions dinner, a bath, staying. She is still smiling that lazy, drowsy smile. "Love," she whispers. "Where else would I be going?"
IvanPolina will, indeed, set a timer for when they should go in. She'll have it in her pocket, ticking loudly down, standing grimly in the snow with her hands in those pockets, her coat dove-grey and buttoned right up to her chin. Meanwhile Miron and Izolda will play in the snow with Anton: Izolda holding the baby more often than not, Miron running about and building snowmen and giving Anton handfuls of snow to fling about, getting redcheeked with exertion, undoing his scarf. When time is up Polina will clap her hands sharply and announce it is Time To Go Inside, and Miron will want Five More Minutes, and when Anton is a little older, old enough to speak, he might very well echo:
Pyat minut'!
What a funny little family they'll be. Even though they are not a family, and never will be.
In the car, in two thousand eleven, Anton's mother whispers that it is cold. And Anton's father turns up the heat a little, directs the vents toward her. He reaches out with his hand and takes hers, warms them with the heat of his palm, the heat of his body.
She calls him love. He looks at her, and he smiles, and he squeezes her hand, and they are, for a moment, something like family, something like lovers, something like a couple.
"Ya lyublyu tebya," he murmurs. "Do you understand what that means?"
HilaryAnton, being given a ball of snow, may very well have only one of two reactions: to try to eat it, or to drop it on the ground and watch to see if it bounces. Or gets back up again. It will be another year or two before he can throw overhand without whatever object he's throwing just going straight to the ground. It will be hard, as well, to move about when he's in a snowsuit, and as he tries to walk through the snow he will stumble and fall often, faceplant into the cold. It will be Izolda who picks him up and uses her glove-warmed hands to dry and warm his face and shush his tears. It will be Miron who makes him laugh and gets him walking again, holding his hand, teaching him how to tromp, how to get up after he falls.
It will always be Polina, however, who tells them it's time to go in. Sooner than they should like. Polina who, when Anton gets old enough to talk back and argue and beg for more time, will pin him with a hawk-eyed stare that will quell his earliest rebellions. Polina, too,
who he will go to when Izolda cannot handle his will, when Miron is thrown off by his growing madness, when he just needs someone in his sphere to be stronger than him, wiser than him, push back against him so that he doesn't tailspin out of control. When he is older he will get them gifts at Christmastime, he will learn that these are his servants and he should take care of them, but with his father still paying salaries and bonuses, he will craft and search and want to find something for each of them. He will ask Polina for a little money so he can buy Izolda a scarf, and Miron a computer gadget, and then he will buy Polina a watch. And then he will show her, crawling up on the couch beside her on Christmas day,
Vy vidite? Ona imyeet taĭmer na nem.
And Polina will laugh. Til she cries.
In some ways they will be very lucky if Anton's mother just stays dead.
She laughs at all his sudden efforts: his hands, the heater, the aiming of the vents. "The glass, you idiot," she says drolly, fondly, and closes her eyes while he holds her hand and drives with his left. "I'm wearing wool."
Ivan just smiles. And he says something in Russian. She doesn't open her eyes, but shakes her head. "Gde nakhodit·sya amerikanskoe posolʹstvo?" she recites, instead.
IvanIvan bursts into laughter. It's quick and sudden and bright, the way his smiles were across the July water when he met her - shouted to her from flybridge to flybridge, asked her to race him, talk to him, anything, come over so he could seduce her,
come over to his yacht so he could kiss her, touch her body, fuck her.
It's November now. It's been nearly a year and a half. And he never laughed quite like this when he met her, unguardedly. She trusts him, and that's devastating sometimes. He trusts her. That's almost unthinkable, but he does.
"It means I love you," he says. "Do you want formal lessons? I can arrange to have a tutor visit you once or twice a week."
Hilary"That's not how anyone learns a language," Hilary mutters, and she isn't laughing but she's amused, her tone is lazy and fond still, her eyes closed as they drive, feeling the motion outside of herself, rushing her from place to place, carrying her without her having to think, having to see. She dismisses the idea.
And ignores the fact that he told her he loved her.
A little while later, though, they are pulling onto the drive to his estate. She can still taste her own cum. And his sweat. She says, opening her eyes to look at the grand house that she cannot bear to stay in unless he is with her at all times: "Say it again."
IvanNo, he supposes she's right. That's not how anyone learns a language. He can't remember how he learned his languages. He's not even quite sure how he speaks perfect Russian when he never hears his parents speak it. Maybe it was Dmitri. Maybe, if he hadn't been born a Fang, if he wasn't always taught his own exceptional worth and his servants' lack thereof, he would have thought of Dmitri as a father figure, an older brother.
They drive on. Her eyes close, making him think of how her eyes were closed almost the whole time on Halloween night, even thought strangers were pawing her, touching her, licking her, fucking her. She trusted him so utterly, as she trusts him now.
Tires on the thick-paved drive to the estate. Bare-branched trees overhead, and the Lamborghini's massive engine rumbling off the enclosed spaces of the drive. They pass the enormous house, circle behind it to where the lake spreads along the shore. The cabin is there, already lit inside - some servant doing his or her job, doubtless - and he is parking when she says what she does. The Reventon falls silent. Ivan looks at his lover.
Say it again, he snarled at her in the rehearsal studio, while his fingers were inside her, while he was gagging her on his gloves, after he made her beg. Say it, you cunt.
"Ya lyublyu tebya," he whispers.
HilaryShe closed her eyes then, closes her eyes now. Pretended it was him then, while knowing it was him holding her. She knows, too, that he's carrying her, he's driving her. He's only going to take her someplace safe, somewhere that makes her happy, a place he crafted especially for her. He put more effort into this lake cabin than he did into anything for his son; perhaps because he simply knows Hilary better. Knows what she likes and how to create an environment that is right for her. Like a little dollhouse, she thinks sometimes, when she steps inside and he can dress her there and play with her there and let her cook and play house, let her sleep for hours on end, no one bothering her.
Even if Ivan were to leave her there, she would stay. She'd wait. He'd always come back to her. She cannot feel that sort of perfect trust anywhere else. It's possible he doesn't know, would never assume, that she could feel it at the cabin, either.
He murmurs it again, rolling over asphalt, noting that someone is in the cabin. She hasn't seen that yet. "Ya lublu tebyu," she says, getting it a bit wrong, but whispering it, so it's hard to tell. She opens her eyes a little and looks at him, smiling softly. "U menya budet fazana," she adds, reciting again.
IvanShe gets it a bit wrong. But that hardly seems to matter. She says it so softly, and he looks at her as she speaks, but her eyes are closed, and he wants to kiss her.
Then she looks at him again. Smiles, and says something patently ridiculous without even quite seeming aware of its ridiculousness. Her snippets of Russian - from some book, he thinks, some How To Survive In Moscow travelguide or something - make him grin irrepressibly. "Well, I'm afraid I didn't order pheasant tonight," he says, "but I did order a rather fantastic quail dish. I hope you won't mind the substitution."
He gets out of the car then. She didn't seem to mind the ridiculous seatbelts and body-hugging seats as much this time. He undoes them for her anyway, taking her by the hands afterward and helping her out of the lowslung car. They walk down the short path to the pier, and the long pier out to their cabin.
"Ya lyublyu tebya," Ivan repeats, their footsteps a steady cadence over wood and water. "Russian vowels are held on the back of the tongue, and often high in the mouth. We don't open our lips very far when we speak. It's too cold there, you see." He smiles at her a little; he's kidding, gently, and besides - he wants her not to feel chastised. He doesn't want to discourage this new little hobby of hers.
And one more time: "Ya lyublyu tebya." It is very soft. Hard to hear, hard to mimic; not at all hard to mistake. They are at their door by then. He is standing close to her, whispering the words to her, cupping his hand over the base of her neck, the back of her skull. Kissing her right after, as though to seal the words to her mouth.
Then he unlocks the door to the cabin, and they enter. This space, paramount amongst all others, is unmistakably his and hers and no one else's. He guards it ferociously. Only Yuliya is allowed here, and only once a week to clean. Everyone else stops at the door, leaves things for him at the door. Once, one of the maids, young and a little absentminded, stepped inside to drop off a tray of pastries. He shouted at her, chased her out, reamed her out standing on the pier between cabin and shore until she was in tears. No one else has made the mistake, nor ever will.
He is not ferocious with Hilary. He takes her coat at the door, and while he's hanging it up she drops her coat and steps out of her shoes, leaves them carelessly where they lay. He picks those up, too, and by then she's in the bathroom, shrugging out of her dress. He clicks the remote control on the shades in the main room. They're coming down, sealing out the blue twilight and the black night, as he follows her into the bathroom.
Ivan is the one that fills the tub. It is enormous, practically a hot tub. He closes the door, and as steam fills the room, undresses himself; undresses her. Though she's not quite so lost in subspace as she usually is when he bathes her, he still washes her with the same care, the same attention to detail; still rubs the soreness from the muscles. Flushes it all from her skin. Washes it all down the drain, and refills the tub.
And he still holds her afterward, drowsing in the tub, even when he hears the discreet knock on his door as dinner is left on the threshold. They are lazy and languid, and the water is warm, and her head rests on his shoulder and his chest; her fingertips dripping water on the floor until he takes her hand in his.
I love you, he said to her, three or four times. He was teaching her. He meant it every time.
Eventually, of course, they get out of the bath. And he wraps her up in a thick robe; puts a second one on himself. They both have clothes here. She brought some things over, filled the closets and the kitchen. He'll put a dance studio overhead, he thinks, with the same vast windows and the same warm brilliance of lighting as the one at Joffrey Tower, but better. The same springy floor, but better. The same mirrors, the same barre,
and maybe someday she'll put her foot up like that again,
and he'll take her against the mirror like that, have her the way she wants him to and the way he can't resist; rail her until she's screaming his name. The sacred and the profane seem to mix when he's around her. He adores her so, and yet when he thinks of her, his thoughts are so very filthy.
Dinner comes from a restaurant after all. Some little North Shore gem tucked away in some quiet affluent community: brought to their door in ever-so-environmentally-friendly little waxed cardboard boxes. Ivan doesn't know how to cook - he spends most of his time in the kitchen "helping" Hilary and getting yelled at for his efforts - but he can unbox dinner with the best of them. While Hilary selects a wine from their little wine cooler, he plates out quail drizzled in a citrus-parsley-honey reduction; clams, chorizo and dill mashed potatoes on the side. A little bit of berry garnish. A few pieces of warm, crusty sliced bread.
It's not an absurdly opulent spread, but Ivan was right after all: the quail is fantastic, and the meal fills them. They eat together on the kitchen island, side by side on their barstools, sipping the light-bodied red Hilary picked. There isn't much in the way of conversation, but there doesn't need to be. At one point, scooping the meat from a clam, Ivan mentions offhandedly that he might like to see Hilary's eyes while he fucked her tonight. And then he asks her to please pass the garnish.
There's dessert, too: tulipes filled with a light blackberry sorbet.
The last of the fireworks are done now. Ivan regrets a little that he never took Hilary out on the lake to watch them this year. He thinks maybe watching fireworks with her was the moment he began to fall for her, but he's wrong. He thinks of half a hundred alternate moments where he may have begun to fall for her, and he's wrong every time. He began to fall for her almost the moment he met her. Those old tales of his homeland would have called it fate: as in, fatal.
At some point, he thinks, he should have his own fireworks show. Hilary would like that.
After dinner, they leave their plates in the sink for someone else to worry about. And Ivan closes the very last shade, the one in the kitchen. It is still early enough. Barely past seven. They bring the wine to the couches. Ivan lights a fire in the fireplace. Hilary watches. She doesn't know how to light fires. He asks if she wants to learn, and he teaches her if she does, and he doesn't mind if she doesn't. He mentions, at one point, that there's a gala in Monaco around Thanksgiving. Apparently Russian gastronomy was one of the major themes this year He wonders if she'd like to accompany him, and he's pleased if she does, but he doesn't seem to mind if she doesn't. After the fire is lit Ivan stretches out on the couch, yawning, and there's a little idle conversation, none of it consequential, and
as the night grows deeper and the darkness a little blacker, as the wine drops in the bottle and they get a little looser, Ivan stretches, sits up, stands up. When he turns to Hilary she can see what he wants in his eyes. He holds his hand to her and draws her to her feet, and there in the firelight he undoes the sash of her robe; pushes it from her shoulders
and lets it fall.
His, as well. And they're bare in the firelight that gives a little warmth to her porcelain skin; gives a little summer back to his golden complexion. He touches her with the pads of his fingers, the palms of his hands; turns her body around, looks at every inch of her. He's already hard when he puts his mouth to her breast, already hard when he puts his hand between her legs, makes her wet, makes her sigh, makes her lips part and her eyes close, makes her head fall back in something so like surrender that his heart clenches in his chest.
Nearly all the lights are off, and the cabin lit by fire alone, when he guides her to the bed. They are not speaking now. He urges her up on the mattress, up on all fours, and he eats her out at the edge of the bed. It's something he does so rarely for her. She doesn't seem comfortable with it half the time, but he hasn't been dominating her just now; it's not such a sharp contrast when he parts her lips with his fingers, holds her open to him with his thumbs, and takes what he wants of her. Licks and sucks and tastes of her until he's satisfied, satisfied, until she's gasping and crying out with her cheek pressed to the sheets, her fingers clutching the bed.
Beautiful girl.
The first time he fucks her, he drags her off the bed, bends her over the edge, keeps her there with her hands at the small of her back. His dominance is so overt again after so long an absence. He controls her, holds her, pins her while he rails her, and it's hard and fast and more than a little rough; he gives it to her with very little held back, panting harshly as he pounds her. He keeps holding her down after he comes. Keeps her pressed hard to the bed, caught between his hips and thighs and the edge of the mattress; keeps himself pressed hard inside her, telling her to squeeze that cunt around his cock, go on, work that cock inside herself, milk it with her cunt, keep going, you can do it, you can take it,
while he reaches between her legs to play with her, fondle her clit, bring her off on his hand again until the clench of her pussy becomes involuntary, uncontrollable, shuddering and quivering all around his cock until he's as hard as if he'd never come at all.
And then he's pulling out of her, pulling her up, turning her around and pushing her down on the bed. Pushing her up and across, climbing over her, prying her legs open and shoving his cock back into her, and
the second time they fuck he has her hands pinned down over her head at first, their bodies pressed together. He can see her eyes like this, just like he wanted. He holds her eyes and kisses her mouth, kisses her over and over again while he's fucking her cunt all over again, filling her full of cock, says these things as they cross his mind, snarls filthy, dirty things to her that only seem to make her wilder, make her cry out louder, make her surrender to him all the more,
and that's incomparable; that's intoxicating. He forgets to hold her down. He lets her hands go, and he wraps his arms around her. He's kissing her when he comes the second time. He's kissing her, and fucking his cum into her, and her legs are wrapping so tight around his ribs, and
her hands come to his face. She holds him there, kissing him, gasping into his mouth. He loses himself in her.
They fall asleep just like that, messy and sweaty and entwined. They wake a few hours later, and the fire has died down to embers. They're a little sore, a little stiff. They draw apart and he peels the covers back and they crawl under them. She curls herself to his chest, tucks her hands between them. He covers her wrists with his palm, which makes her smile, makes her feel safe and secure, adored.
They sleep.
Early in the morning, Yuliya leaves breakfast outside, the hot foods on a burner, the cold on ice. They don't know, and they don't care. Late in the morning, they wake up, and they're drowsy and lazy and warm, and they share a shower where Hilary spends most her time drowsing against Ivan's chest. Later, she sits at the kitchen island, drinking a milk or coffee or juice. Ivan tries to cook: eggs and pancakes and french toast. Hilary idly and fondly and viciously eviscerates his efforts.
He smiles at the burning french toast, the lumpy pancakes, the uneven eggs. He feels adored.
