Ivan Press

Ivan

Dubai holds their interest just a single day. Ivan was already half-tired of it by the time Hilary arrived, and Hilary finds it too gaudy by far. It doesn't help that he takes her to the most awful places: the glittering casinos, the gleaming malls, the dazzling stretches of white-sand beaches. He gambles. He drinks. He drops a luxury car's worth of money on a diamond tennis bracelet for her,

to match the other strand of diamonds he bought her, he says. And smirks that cool, sly smirk of his.

Evening comes and they go to dinner on the hundred-and-twenty-second floor of the Burj Khalifa. Private room, private attendants. There's a perfectly serviceable table but he eats lounging in an armchair, looking out over the endless desert, endless ocean. Flashy, careless young thing: dressed for the occasion, at least, sharp in a dark suit, a silver waistcoast, a white shirt and no tie.

After dinner he sends the attendants away. He fucks her against the floor-to-ceiling windows. No one can see them outside. They're too high up. They're stratospheric, royal, so far above the greedy eyes and grabby hands of the masses.

--

In the car, on the way back to their private fucking island, he watches the city slide by. The young and the decadent are out. He asks her if she wants to go out for drinks, but she doesn't. She's tired of this place. So is he.

They fly out in the morning, servants trailing them with unspeakable amounts of luggage. They take the jet, which he commandeers so often now that it may as well be his. His parents don't mind. His parents love it. They think he's off to see his son. They know he's off to see his lover, but

they don't mind that either. Her blood is so pure.

--

They're in the air and they have no direction. They are quite aimless. He lets himself out of his seat before they hit ten thousand feet; he pours himself a scotch at the wetbar. He makes her a mimosa, because of course he does, and when he comes back to the cabin he sits across from her. Those spacious leather seats. That couch in the back, the television, the bed, the goddamn shower. The plane banks gently; sunlight hits the mimosa in his hand, lights it up. He holds it out to her.

"Where do you want to go?"

It isn't that it's gaudy. It's that it's loud. The lights are loud, the young men give her a migraine, the covered-up women fill her with a nameless fear and revulsion that she knows, but cannot say, is tied to those loud, leering men. When he drives her one place or another, diamonds drip from her bracelet, her hand light across her brow, the wind in her hair because Ivan had the top down and for once she didn't force him to raise it.

They have dinner in the city. She is dressed in another of her long dresses, but her shoulders and arms are uncovered now, her body swathed in deep lilac silk, the neckline plunging. Diamonds still on her wrist, and in her earlobes, catching every bit of light and reflecting it, refracting it, rather than swallowing it

as she is wont to do.

Hilary is tasting some sort of honeyed dessert when Ivan sends the attendants away. Fork to her lips, she watches him with those soulless black eyes of hers as he comes back to her. Takes the fork from her hand, tosses it away. Takes her hand to help her up, ever the gentleman, as if he were asking her to dance.

Forces her down, first, after he's shrugged from his jacket. Tells her to suck it, and she does. Unfastens and unwraps his trousers and draws him out and sucks his cock while his hands press to the glass, his eyes on her mouth, her face, the city around them. Her mouth again. Takes it out; slaps her cheek with it and then shoves it back in her mouth. Fucks her like that, a bit, his hand clenching in her hair. Can't bear it any longer, and drags her up, yanks her dress up around her hips, lifts her onto him. She isn't wearing anything underneath. He told her no, long before they dressed for dinner.

--

Truth be told, Hilary is not really tired of Dubai. She's barely seen it. But she is tired of it in the way that she is often tired of most things, most places. The fact that she thinks, after dinner and after fucking against the windows, whether she wants to go out again or not... this is new. Different. She can hear boredom in his voice, and she usually does not. She looks at the city, and does not feel desperate for it, because she never feels desperate for anything but him, and her child, and so on. She thinks to herself that she can come back here whenever she wants.

She realizes, upon thinking it, that she doesn't think she will.

So she says: No, and breathes in slowly, sighs: I'm tired of this place.

--

Hilary only brought so much luggage. It is re-packed, and taken to the jet, which is fueled and readied for them. She makes breakfast, her hair twisted and turned and coiled and bound above her head. She wears an apron over her traveling clothes: a gray pencil skirt, a pair of black heels, a sleeveless white silk blouse with no buttons and an open mandarin collar, black piping at the armholes and along the downward slash of the neckline. She is wearing her bracelet. She is wearing pearl droplets in her earlobes. She refuses to let him fuck her.

Before they leave for the airfield, she takes down her hair, straightened and silken. This time she forces him to drive with the top up.

Secretly, his people have a plan on various places they could go. You have to file these sorts of things. You can't just wander around in the air. There's math involved, fuel consumption, national security. So on. But Ivan wants to be in the air when he decides where to go. So the illusion is maintained for him. He makes her a mimosa.

Hilary sits in one of the captain chairs, legs crossed, and looks up from the window when he hands it over to her. She looks at it like he's holding a handful of worms. Shakes her head a bit, not even saying a word to him about it, not even shaking her head at him; she merely turns up her nose at her offering and seems to reflect, to herself, what an idiot he is.

Maybe he sets it down. Or pours it out. God only knows what he does. But eventually he sits, and she is watching the world through the window.

Shakes her head a little. "There are many places I have never been." Turns to look at him, leans forward a bit, genuinely curious. "Have you ever been to Hawaii?"

The mimosa is neither set aside not poured out. Ivan drinks it himself, setting the scotch down for later. That's a drink for the evening, anyway. He can see why mimosas are so damn popular at brunch: light, sweet, crisp as they are.

"Mm. Yes, I believe I have. When I was about eight years old. Can't say I've been back since." The mimosa disappears quickly: a few swallows and he's down to the last mouthful, which he swirls around the glass. "Do you want to go? We'll have to stop somewhere to refuel, of course. I'm not even certain if it's closer to go east or west at this point."

And the mimosa disappears. And the glass is set down. And he watches her, fond, lazy, lounging in that well-crafted captain's chair across from hers. Whatever one might say about Ivan, this much is true: when Hilary raises a critique, he listens. See: he's dressed for her, slim-fitting shirt and thousand dollar jeans, a skinny wool tie. Looks sharp. Looks casual. Looks ... unpeasant-ly.

Hilary picks up his scotch and sniffs it, then sets it down. She doesn't want scotch. She wanted champagne. But he dumped a bunch of orange juice in there and spoiled it.

She tells him none of this.

"Maybe Italy, instead," she muses. She has not complimented him on his dress, today or last night. But she has noticed. She has not wanted to smack him for sullying her view. She feels... all right, at the moment. This plane, this man. Things fit together. He drinks the mimosa instead of scotch. It settles her, these things being the way they are.

"We could hop." He raises a hand, which, like the Ragabash himself, is lean and long and lovely. Points with a finger at an invisible map: "Italy. Montréal. Hawaii."

Hilary tips her head to the side as he pokes the invisble map. She cannot see it. Her imagination is... not her most expansive trait. It has never needed to be. It lives in the dark. It contents itself with horrors.

"What is in Montréal?"

"A break from flying," he says baldly. "That, and a city you might like. It's as close to France as you'll get, that side of the Atlantic."

A city you might like. He might think it's the mention of France. But it isn't. It's when he, who knows her in a way perhaps no one else ever has, says he thinks she might like something. He brings her a mimosa when she wants champagne and he sometimes is too rough when she needs him to be tender and is sometimes too gentle when she needs him to hurt her, but

he knows her. He loves her, and tells her what to do because it pleases her. He knows it pleases her to please him; he often knows what things might please him that would not please her. He often knows what might please her, that might not please him, and thus destroy her pleasure in it.

It is a delicate balance they keep, and a psychotic one, because they never speak of it except in whispers, in lurches, in strange dark moments.

Ivan thinks she might like Montreal. So she says, almost right away: "We shall go there, then."

Even now it's hard to say if he knows what it is that makes her agree so readily. Perhaps he does think it's the mention of France; that country, those cities that she claims to hate until she's there. Perhaps even in his knowing her -- more so than anyone else on this earth -- there are still great gaps, chasms in his knowledge. Breaks in the map he has of her heart, her soul.

It does not matter. For this ultimately small issue, at least: it does not matter.

"Montréal then. Perhaps with a refueling stop in Italy. We'll see what the pilot says." And on that note, he stands: comes easily to his feet and, picking up the emptied glass, heads up to the cockpit. There are no bulletproof doors on this plane. It is simply a matter of turning a latch and pulling. She can hear him speaking to the pilots: they'll head west. They're bound for Montreal. It's a long way; stop if they must, in Florence if they can.

They'll have to file corrections and updates to their flight plan. There are legalities, regulations. Ivan doesn't care about any of them. That's why he has people.

Returning, he drops the glass in the kitchenette; pauses at the bar. Quite well-stocked, considering space constraints. He calls to Hilary, who apparently no longer like mimosas: "What'll you have to drink, then?"

She hates everything, even when she is there. Does not really know much of how it feels to love. She does not love cooking, or dance. Not really. She could live without these things. She knows she is... soothed, by them. They give her a structure, a beauty, a blankness that absolves her mind from its otherwise horrific impulses.

She loves Anton. It is heartbreaking, in a way, that she did not really understand what love was until she loved him. Until losing him started to, in turn, show her what true madness felt like. Hilary always knew that love was a terror, learned that lesson early on, but it was one she thought she could choose, or disdain. Anton caught her in a lie, owned her from the moment of his birth, and since his first breath she has been learning how to survive this newest form of helplessness.

Because what choice does she have, but to survive it? If she succumbed, if she let herself be swallowed in the dark, then there would never be those brief moments when she feels love and knows, most shocking of all, tiny fragments of joy. So Hilary lives, and tries to learn a way to exist. Anew. Different than she was before.

These truths are heartbreaking because Ivan does not share them. Ivan loves her, her, only her, always her. He must know, surely he must know, that something changed in her when his offspring was born. Neither of them can know if it matters that Anton was theirs, and not some other man's brat. Hilary asks herself, and has no answer. She does know that whatever there was with Ivan before was changed, intrinsically, when she came to know what love actually felt like.

Learned that she did in fact love Ivan. Learned that it felt very different. Does not fill her with terror the way that loving Anton does. Fills her with rage, sometimes, when Ivan is not loving her back the right way. Fills her with grief, sometimes, when she longs for him and he is not there and she does not know how to ask for him. It is very different. Anton does not know her. She doesn't want him to know her, even if it means he never loves her back.

Ivan... must know her. If he does not know her, then no one does, and she is really alone. With Anton her love can exist in a strange, warped, purified state, which is unbearable and yet inescapable; it goes outward, and she never expects it back. With Ivan, it is always moving, hard to understand, or pin down, and the helplessness this creates in her is like an itch all over her body.

Hilary loves Anton.

Hilary loves Ivan.

Hilary thinks that Anton in some ways is Ivan's love, in her and through her and then, miraculously, from her. As though she were a path the love walks, and is changed by, on its little nightmare strolls. She has been transformed, absorbing Ivan's adoration no longer like a black hole devouring the light, but now somehow reflecting it, refracting it away from herself again, onto something else.

Maybe Anton is the black hole now. He seems like one, she thinks. She knows what black holes are. She isn't stupid. She wonders who ever loved Ivan, to give him enough that he could pour it into her the way he does. Or perhaps, as she has gone from black hole to silvery moon,

if he is the sun.

--

The sun is speaking as she watches the clouds. The man who knows her, the only being who has ever lived that can claim to know her, is moving about, and talking, and then coming closer again. The man she loves, who now she discovers she loves back in a way she once thought she did,

but really is only beginning to learn how.

He's talking?

Hilary blinks slow dark eyes. Turns her pale, regal head to observe him. Watches him in silence for a few moments as his elegant hands poise with bottles, glasses, what-have-you. She regards the shape of him, the cut of his shirt, the line of his tie, as though no matter what he wears he cannot help but draw a visual line down to his cock. She thinks of how powerfully, ferociously she loves him, and wants him, and her skin heats to look at him.

Her heart aches, and screams in her chest, raging at her rib-bones. It wants to be let out, and she does not know how. She never has.

Her eyes close again, open. He is watching her, and she takes a breath.

"I wasn't listening to you. What?"

The man she loves has no idea what she's thinking of. He has no idea of the strange tangled paths her mind has wandered: those little musings on life, on love, on the nature of light and dark. Normal people don't think the way she does. Normal people couldn't even begin to follow.

Not to imply, of course, that Ivan is anywhere near normal. Look at the way he lives. Look at his life. He has no idea what normal is; sometimes he pretends, and the results are somewhere between absurd and obscene, tragic and comic. He bought her a bracelet of shells once; thought it was a very normal, romantic thing to do. He bought her a bracelet of diamonds just yesterday. Thought that was a normal, romantic thing to do, too.

But: his brand of abnormality, of exceptionality, is not the same as hers. He knows her more than most, this is true, but so often he still has no idea how her mind works. How it moves amongst dark spaces like an eel in the benthic black. He does not know she thinks of him as a god, as the sun -- though he might sometimes suspect.

He knows, surely, that she thinks of him as master, maître, vladelets. Sometimes, anyway. When they play. Right now: he wouldn't suspect that she thinks of him that way. After all, she just ignored him. Stared right at him and somehow did not hear a word he said.

So he smirks at her, amused and peeved in equal parts. Standing behind the bar still, he looks at her across jewel-like bottles, phials, glasses, vessels: setting his lean hands down on the bartop, spread apart, bracing himself. He is an elegant beast, smooth and sleek and savage.

"I asked you," he repeats himself -- slowly, "what you wanted to drink, if not a mimosa."

"Oh," she says, looking at his arms. Follows one up to his shoulder, finds his eyes.

Does not look at him with disdain. Or sneer. Just... regards him. Perhaps with whatever passes for wonder in that twisted little mind of hers.

"Champagne, of course."

Is quiet a moment. Perhaps while he pours.

"Are you going to fuck me on the flight?"

Curious. Like she's trying to get an idea of the day's schedule.

He almost laughs. He does laugh. Champagne. Of course. Mimosa, minus the orange juice. No wonder she looked so affronted; he came so close, fell so far.

The bottle is still there, opened already. No satisfying bang! He just uncorks it -- it makes a little pop -- and pours. Sparkling golden liquid fills the glass almost to the brim.

"I don't know." His eyes don't leave what he's doing. Leisurely, he finishes the pour, pulls up the bottle. Corks it. Comes around the bar and back to her, extending the flute of champagne to her. Sits after she takes it, sinking into that seat across from him, picking up his scotch.

His eyes level on her. Green, and when the roving sunlight hits: sparking gold.

"Do you want me to fuck you on the flight?"

A tall, slender glass of champagne, as fine and rare and golden as he is.

-- Hilary does not think this to herself as he walks it over. She only watches him, thinking less and less. Takes the champagne. Takes a sip as he seats himself, picks up the scotch he thought he wanted earlier and then denied in favor of the drink that makes him think of her.

She does not answer at first. She looks at him, those glints in his eyes.

"I like to look at you," she says, her voice soft. Has never said it. Perhaps has never talked about his body, or his looks. Not very much, if at all. And never about how looking at him makes her feel: "My skin gets hot. My pussy aches." A pause. Something she does not know how to say: "My chest hurts."

These are not answers, and they are.

"I have no photographs of you. I would like some, for when you aren't there."

Another pause, a little longer.

"Mostly I would like for you to be there, though. With me. I like feeling you against me."

His face is a mask; his eyes are ablaze. He blinks, slow and lazy, like an animal in the sun: while she speaks of what she likes. Her skin. Her pussy.

A change, when she speaks of the next. Her chest hurts. Her heart aches. His heart aches: his brow furrows ever so faintly, tenderly. Strange that he can feel such things now. Tenderness and sympathy and love.

"Krasivaya devushka," he sighs, and holds out his free hand: turns his palm up, opens his fingers. "Idi syuda."

She comes, or she does not. She is not a dog; she does nothing he commands. Not unless she wants to, anyway. But perhaps she wants to go to him. Sink down on his lap. Curl up against his side. His body is lean and firm; never soft, never chiseled, powerful, huge, musclebound, whatever adjectives may or may not have described her previous lovers and husbands and mates.

"If I were here all the time you would be tired of me," he reminds her gently. Certainly he believes that. Harder to say whether it is the truth, or simply his truth reflected through her. "But I will be with you ... more, if that is what you desire."

Didn't answer his question. He didn't answer hers, either. It's fair. Not that 'fair' matters between the two of them. For the two of them, it is a strange new thing, to find their hearts aching. To feel tenderness. To care.

Hilary looks at him as he says her name. His name for her, his name when he feels tenderly towards her, is playing with her. When he is her vladelets. Knows what he is saying, even if the words are hard for her to discern. Sees his hand and rises. Brings her champagne with her, stepping out of her heels and stepping over to his side. She sinks down beside him, tucked and curled to his side, her feet on the cushion, her body fitting beneath his arm. Sips her drink, slightly.

She does want to go to him. And be protected by him, soothed the way only he really soothes her. Discovers that sometimes, she wants it even when she does not need soothing. Just the closeness. The contact. Just like she discovered: she likes to look at him. It feels good, to look at him.

He reminds her of his truth. And says... more. If she wants. Hilary looks into her champagne. Watches the bubbles rise, and rise, and rise, endlessly ascending.

"When I am with you, I grow tired of you." This is true. "But when you are gone, I am... distressed." She sips, and breathes. Lays her head on his shoulder. "I hurt when I am not with Anton. And I am bored most of the time when I am with him."

Quietly, but not hesitantly -- she would have to feel shame to hesitate, here: "I think I am always a little bored, and very rarely happy. Or content. But I think... I would rather feel boredom, than anguish."

She is so graceful. He can't remember, suddenly, if he's ever said the same to her. That he likes looking at her. That he likes watching her move, her grace, her lightness of foot, her smoothness of motion. She is a dancer. She is royalty; kin to wolves who quite literally breed for purity, and beauty, and intelligence, and strength, and rulership, and sanity. In that order. Both of them made it three steps down that list. Arguably four. It's not bad. It could have been worse.

She comes to him, and sinks down in the small space between his body and the side of the chair. They are tucked together; she fits him so well. Doesn't spill a drop of her champagne, not even when she drinks.

He drinks too. His liquor burns fiercer than hers. She can smell it on his breath in the immediate aftermath, a waft of alcohol vapor rising like the bubbles in her champagne.

"I rather like you bored. It makes me want to please you." He thinks a moment; even he can hear how perverse that is. "I enjoy the chase," he adds,

an admission,

a confession of sin. His great failing, as she put it so poetically.

"Here, then." He pulls his phone out; hands it to her. "Take a picture of us. Do you know how?"

It doesn't sound perverse to her. It sounds obvious. The corner of her mouth curls as she takes another sip of champagne. She does not tell him, I know. She says nothing at all. Sips. And he gets out his phone to hand it to her, and she --

"Of course I know how," she snaps, affronted. But she doesn't take the phone. Doesn't tell him that she takes pictures of Anton and takes pictures of the snow and takes pictures that are usually 2 second videos because she once tried to take a video and didn't ever switch it back, so now all her photos are tiny videos. She doesn't know that. She never looks at them again.

"That's not what I want," she goes on, looking disturbed, suddenly and sharply upset, tremulous with it. "Not -- no. That's stupid. Not like that."

Ivan doesn't really know she takes pictures. Tiny videos she thinks are pictures. She doesn't look at them again. She doesn't send them to anyone. The staff may or may not know, and if they do, they haven't thought to forward them to Ivan. It would amuse him terribly if he knew. It would also make his heart ache; make his chest hurt.

She doesn't take the phone. She is affronted; of course she knows how. And then she is disturbed, and upset, and all of it so sudden and unswerving that it feels like something simply -- falling through.

"Okay," Ivan says, even-toned. He puts the phone away. He is unhurried, but nor does he dally. "Not like that. A real picture, then? Something you can hang on the wall?"

Her reaction is bizarre. Intense. The floor dropped from under her, the plane itself, the world. She plummets, distressed by his suggestion. She does not know what a 'selfie' is, but she does not want what he is offering. Calls it stupid.

And Ivan doesn't get angry. Ivan doesn't panic. Ivan calmly, evenly puts it away, and feels her begin to rest again, settle again, soothe. He knows what she wants. A real picture. Something she can hang on the wall. Something worth hanging on a wall.

Something nice.

Just of him.

Hilary, calming but still ill at ease, nods. "Yes," she says, sounding testy but only because she's gripping the idea with whitened knuckles, with her very teeth. "Yes, a portrait. So I can look at you."

She exhales.

She drinks champagne.

"I don't think I've sat for a portrait in years," he says,

amused,

perhaps a little deliberately slow. Calm; cool. Collected. No need to upset his bizarre, perturbable lover. She drinks champagne. He remembers his whiskey, sips. Turns his head toward her after, nuzzles gently where her hair falls away from her temple. Her ear.

"I'll have some taken in Montreal. Perhaps we should have one taken together. For Anton."

She accepts the nuzzling. Her shoes are off, her bare feet on the cushion, her body slinking against his. This is right. This is good. This is... well, not proper, because then he would be drinking champagne as well. But there is some rightness in his manly drink, perhaps.

For once, Ivan thinks of Anton first. A gift for his son. A way to see his parents, strange and beautiful as they are, when they are not with him. Which one imagines might be often. Hilary lays her head on his shoulder again, as though in answer. It is a softening, a closeness, which from her is indeed a sort of gift.

There is quiet between them for a while. Not long. Until she says softly, like a confession:

"I take pictures of him. With the phone."

This time Ivan can't hold back a surprised blurt of laughter, short and crisp. "Really?" He didn't think she actually knew how. He wisely keeps that to himself. "Show me."

Hilary frowns. Deeply, darkly. Her brow wrinkles in a hard V, her body tense and affronted again. She glares at him, imperious and unforgiving.

Turns away, and sips her champagne, finishing the glass. "No. You laughed at me."

"Darling, no."

It's true, what he said. He likes it when she's bored. Or cold, or distant, or unforgiving. He likes it when she makes him work for it. See: he's working for it now, tender and cajoling, smiling.

"No. I didn't laugh at you. I laughed out of delight. Come on. Show me."

That smiling. That coaxing, condescending smile. Her scowl doesn't diminish.

"You're a liar," she informs him.

His smile fades a little; for the first time, a tiny furrow to this brow. Ivan sighs. He bows his head; dips his nose to her shoulder, his lips. Kisses her there, soft through her clothing.

"No," he murmurs. "Not really. I laughed because I didn't expect you to be the sort to take baby pictures. It surprised me. It did delight me. Don't be angry, Hilary. I didn't laugh out of mockery."

"He's not a baby."

This is the first argument she gives. While he kisses her through silk, while he nuzzles her body, endears himself to her in these animalistic touches. She watches him, her glass set aside some moment ago. She observes him, less scowly now. Still frowning.

"I don't want you to be delighted by it," she says quietly, after a while. Another admission. "I don't... I don't know why I do it."

There it is again, then: the yawning chasm beneath her. Her own mind. Her own whims, her impulses, her unconsidered needs. She does not understand. She is afraid to understand some of these things.

And it makes her so uncomfortable to discuss them at all. To try and put words to them.

"I never even look at them."

Ivan lifts his whiskey to his lips; takes one last swallow, then sets it aside. A touch of a button sends the seat reclining smoothly, gently, opening up the angles, extending their bodies. His arm circles her waist easily, familiarly. He tucks the other hand behind his head, lets his eyes defocus onto the softly lit ceiling of the fuselage.

"I don't know why either," he says. "Maybe because you're his mother. Maybe because he's your son. Maybe because no one's there for you to share whatever moment it is you wanted to preserve. I don't know.

"You should show me, though." He shifts; looks at her. "I'd like to see."

She takes a quick breath as he reclines. She remains sitting up; his arm circles her hips. She looks down at him, past her slender shoulder. Watches him place his hand under his head. The lines of his body, the askew fall of his tie. She takes a breath.

Hilary does not lie down. She rests her palm on his belly,

dangerous thing that she is, and his belly so soft.

Rolls her eyes, looking away, when he says she's his mother, he's her son. Stares out the window. No one's there to share. Her eyes don't roll. She looks at passing clouds, tinged golden and blue and pink. She looks at him as he says he wants to see.

He is wrong about why. She knows he is, but cannot put into words what it really is. She isn't sure she knows,

or wants to.

Hilary slowly lays herself down beside him, against his side. Toys with his tie, examining its lines, its fabric, its pattern woven in. "Tell me you love our son," she whispers. "That you sometimes think of him."

It is all right if he lies.

She thinks he is a liar anyway.

He is not ticklish; her hand on his abdomen doesn't make him flinch into giggles. He is sensitive there, though. His skin and muscles give a reflexive little shiver. When she lies beside him, he wraps her close. She reminds him of a cat, toying with his tie. The same sort of idle inattention. The same sort of baseline, unconsidered cruelty: she is, after all, playing with a rope tied around his neck.

His hand, the one that rests at her hip, rises when she asks these things of her. He touches her head, strokes her hair.

"I love Anton," he whispers, "but not so much as I love you. I think of him. But not so much as I think of you."

It soothes her to think of Ivan taking photos of their child, if she dies. It comforts her to know that if the darkness swallows her, Ivan will no abandon Anton entirely to his servants. He will not leave him as alone as she was. She needs to believe this.

She does believe this. Ivan is a liar. But Ivan loves her. He brought her the flashlight. He would not lie to her about this.

There is no segue, no soft transition. Her hand plays with his tie as he lifts his hand, touches her hair. He tells her the truth. And her hand sets his tie down, smooths it flat over his sternum. Her palm keeps smoothing, following his midline, until what warmth she has is radiating through his slacks, her touch covering his cock. Seeks him out, softly, exploratory, following the lines of his dick through all those layers of fabric. Her stroking is light, and strangely innocent, as though she's never done this before, as though she doesn't know what will happen.

But he knows she does. He knows, even as Hilary uses her manicured fingertips to trace his cock through his clothes, that she knows what this does to him.

Ivan's eyes don't leave his lover's face. Her touch descends and he watches her, relaxed, while his fingers gently comb through her hair. Her touch passes over so many vital organs; his heart, his solar plexus, his liver, his entrails. When she finds his cock beneath his jeans, he reacts in the subtlest way -- a soft inhale, a widening of the pupils. She explores. Her hands are warm. There's a saying out there, old and mawkish; something about cold hands, warm heart. Ivan wonders if the opposite must also be true. Warm hands. Cold, black, twisted, mangled heart.

Oh, but he doesn't think poorly of her. Whatever else his cynicism, his sardonicism, his untruths, he does adore her. His hand opens over the back of her heart. He lifts his head, pulls her down. Kisses her in the air between, which seems appropriate. They're in the air right now: the air between the middle east and asia minor and africa; the air between earth and deep, cold, lightless space.

Gradually he puts both hands on her; palms cupping her cheeks, fingers in her hair. Gradually one hand moves down, and there are women -- sane ones -- who would shudder with revulsion when his grip passes smoothly down her neck; his thumb gliding down her throat. Her blouse has no buttons. His fingers dip into the open collar, but that's not a way in. He cups her breast through her clothes, but only passingly; his hand continues on its way down, past the end of her ribcage, past her smooth abdomen. He finds the hem of her shirt and begins to pull it up,

kissing her still in that slow, patient way, as though he were devouring her little by little, by darts of the tongue and brushes of the lip.

As they kiss, Hilary goes on touching him. Strokes him lightly, softly, and keeps her eyes open as he's kissing her. She could unfasten his slacks. She could jerk him off. She could do any number of things, but she seems to pretend for now that she has forgotten how to do these things.

Kisses him, her mouth tasting of champagne and his of scotch, as she feels his body start to twitch, and shift, and harden to her touch. Her light, light touch. Ivan feels her draw a quick, overcome breath as he touches her throat, implies that he's going to grip her there, hold her by the neck, but

no.

He teases her with it, and then cups her through silk, which feels lovely but does not make her gasp the way his suggestion of brutality did. He finds that she is touching him more eagerly now, sliding her palm up and down his cock, her body leaning onto his a bit more. The hem of her blouse comes tugged from the waist of her skirt, slides over her skin in shimmers and suggestions.

There must be something wrong with them. They like it so much when they play rough. When he pulls her hair and grabs her by the throat; when he slaps her ass and

once, her face. When they do these things without any overt discussion, any lines in the sand, any indication of what is okay and what is too much beyond what he can infer. From her signals. Which are blurred and weak on the best of days.

But god they do like it. She gets so hot when he intimates abuse. He gets so hard when she's so hot, so wet, so willing, so --

he tugs her blouse up. It comes loose from the skirt, and then he grabs it in his fist, rumples the fine material, pulls it firmly and inexorably up over her head. Her face disappears for a moment. Her hair tumbles loose first, so long and cool and sleek; falling over him like rain. His mouth is there to catch hers when it emerges, and he kisses her like that, the blouse still covering her eyes; the tip of her nose and her mouth and her neck exposed.

Her bra underneath is seamless and fine, almost as soft as the silk, invisible beneath it. Her breasts, though never nourishing, retain some of the softness they gained when she was pregnant, when he fucked her behind her husband-mate's back and made his bastard. She is exposed, her paleness turned translucent from the winter in Novgorod. Her hair seems darker than ever against her skin. She still does not go to unfasten him, take him out. She just touches him, a little helplessly now, rubbing his cock and gasping softly against his mouth.

It's like she's afraid to undress him. Like she feels it's not her place, not her role. Or like she wants to pretend it's not her place. Pretend at innocence, pretend at helplessness. Pretend she's the lamb and not the viper.

His mouth parts from hers with that gasp. He lays back, undoing her bra; letting it loosen, letting it fall. Raises her up on her knees, then -- doesn't say anything, just urges her, lifts her with his hands. Unzips her skirt. Tugs that down. Hooks two fingers into the waist of her panties. Tugs that down too.

Strips her quite naked; everything but her stockings, her shoes, her jewelry. When he's done he runs his hands over her body, as though to admire his own handiwork: her skin bared, her body lovely. Touches her waist, her sides, lingers over her breasts.

"Go bend over that seat," he whispers. Gives her a little push to her feet.

She gasps again, as that clasp comes undone, as he pulls the garment away from her chest, slides the starps down her arms. He pushes her up on her knees and she goes, watching him with those wide, dark eyes, like she

has no idea

what's coming.

Finds her skirt's zipper, the hook and eye closure at the top, pulls it off. Hilary doesn't move. Hilary watches him, moves as he directs her to move with his hands, lets him draw her skirt down her legs and off. Lets him unwind those panties from her legs, as pale as her bra. She wears no stockings, not when they left a place as hot as Dubai. She slipped her shoes off some time ago, when she came to curl against his side, drink her champagne.

Her earrings, then. Her bracelets. Her ring. She kneels there, her breath coming shallowly, as Ivan observes her. Appreciates her. Tells her to go, bend over. Hilary's breath pauses as she licks her lips.

"How?"

A tiny, feral tilt to his head.

Then he moves, all at once, concerted and supple and savage. Comes to his feet and picks her up, turns her, half drops and half pushes her down on the seat she'd vacated not so long before. She's facing the tall seatback. Her knees are on the bottom cushion. He arranges her hands for her: puts them up over the back, pins them there with one hand. Pulls her hips back until her spine arches. Pushes her knees apart.

She can hear him undoing his own clothes, then. Undoing his tie one-handed, not merely loosening it but unknotting it, slipping one length through another, stripping it out from under his collar.

"Tell me, is your skin hot?" he murmurs. Whips the tie over the back of the seat, missing her hands by a scant few inches. He starts on the buttons of his shirt, flies through them swift and sure. "Does your cunt ache?"

Hilary cannot see him now. She looks at the fine, supple leather of the chair she's been arranged on. She feels the dig of her new diamond tennis bracelet into her wrist where Ivan holds her, pins her. She feels wetness on her hips, her inner thighs, feels cool conditioned air against that moisture. She feels like a slut, spread like this, where anyone else on the lithe little jet could step back and see her there, naked. See what he's doing to her. Forced to arch. She feels like a a whore. Or more accurate: an owned thing. A toy. A slave.

She wonders if Ivan can smell her. If he knows she's wet before he's touched her. If the pilot will hear her getting fucked and think what a slut his employer has back there, what a mindless little fucktoy he's brought with him.

And all of this soothes her. Eases her. Gives her something in her mind that she cares about, thinks about, takes her outside of herself while simultaneously forcing her deeply into her own body. Makes her feel

her hot skin. Her aching cunt.

Hilary doesn't speak. She just nods, bowing her head to her wrists, to his hand, spreading her legs a little wider,

please.

please.

Maybe it means something -- must mean something -- that he leaves the crucial third line off. Doesn't ask her about her hurting chest. Her aching heart. Can't bear to speak of it when they're like this, playing, pretending, acting like she's just a slut and he doesn't even care.

It'd break the illusion. Spoil the fantasy. Take her out of the moment, or him. Render him incapable of doing this, maybe, if he stopped. If he thought about it. If he remembered

how much he fucking loves her.

--

So he doesn't think about it. He pushes her down and moves her like she's a belonging, a poseable toy. He asks her a question; she's beyond words. She begs with her body, spreads herself wider, opens her wet cunt, entices him with the sight and scent. Of course he can smell her. He's a wolf. And now he's stripping out of his shirt, starting to, only has one hand.

Pauses. Pulls his tie off the chair. Winds it once, twice, three times around her wrists, tucks the ends; doesn't even bother to cinch it tight. Knows she won't wiggle out of it. Or maybe she'll try. Do it just to invite punishment. Wouldn't put that past her.

His shirt ends up on the floor. His belt clinks as he strips it off. Thuds onto the seatback, replacing the tie: heavier, more menacing. He undoes his jeans. Takes his cock out. Has it in his hand, strokes it while he takes a moment to pick up his scotch. Drinks. It's still on his breath when he comes back to her, leans over her, grips her wrists where he's bound her.

"I've decided," he tells her; shoves his cock into her even as he's informing her: "I'm going to fuck you on the flight."

Not today. Today she doesn't want to wiggle free, be a brat. She wants to be helpless, wordless, fragile. She wants him to hurt her because he likes it, not because she deserves it. She craves the powerlessness, the tenderness she finds in herself when he is being a true savage. Puts that on him, on his soul, so that she can be gentle in a way she never has been,

innocent, in a way she never was. And made moreso by the comparison to his brutality.

She loves him so much like this, because he gives it all to her. Because he is so willing. He is so generous, to let her be this way. To tie her up and bend her over and talk about her body like it exists solely, utterly, for his cock. His pleasure. Somehow it lets her be a person. Somehow, paradox that it is, it humanizes her. And she loves him so very much, even though to tell him so right now would spoil it all.

Hears him touching himself. Hears him drinking. She doesn't move. She doesn't try to get away, or look at him. She kneels there, legs spread, waiting to be fucked. Bites her lip a little, trembling as he leans into her,

shoves himself into her cunt. She gasps, clutching the back of the leather chair. Whimpers, at his words. As though she doesn't want it. As though he's forcing her to do this. As though she's been abducted, or given to him as a gift, and she has to let him do what he likes.

This should not arouse her. But it does. She cannot explain it, but it thrills her to her soul. It makes her feel like she's flying.

Which, technically, they both are.

--

Hilary doesn't fuck him back. She doesn't pant and swear or wriggle. She's a toy today, a doll for him. She's sweet and wet and her pussy quivers happily as he fucks her,

however he likes. But she has no aggression, no assertiveness, not this time. He's making her so happy. He's making her so incredibly happy, doing this to her. Fucking his slut. Fucking his dear, sweet

beautiful girl.

Ivan likes it when she gasps.

Ivan likes it when she acts like she doesn't know what's coming. He likes it when she plays the innocent, touches him like she's never touched him before. Never touched anyone before.

He likes it when she pretends she doesn't want it. He likes it when she resists him, disparages him, swears at him, calls him terrible things in one language or another; likes it when she wriggles and thrashes and pretends to fight. He likes her like this, too: likes her passive and so very submissive, giving in to him without a fight, like she's not supposed to fight, like she's not allowed to fight, like she's a toy, a doll, a thing created to be fucked.

By him.

However he wants.

--

Hard: that's how he wants it this time. Or maybe it's more complicated than that; maybe he gives it to her hard because it is brutal, it is impersonal, it's how you fuck a slut, it's how you use a toy, it's a cock in a cunt, it's her in her body, shorn of all responsibility or blame. He pounds her with his hands gripping the back of the seat; he slams her with his hands on her hips. He holds her by the hair. He holds her by the neck. He tells her to gasp, moan, make some fucking noise, and when she does he clamps his hand over her mouth and makes her scream against his palm.

Maybe they hear her in the cockpit. Maybe their servants -- hiding wherever it is they hide -- hear them. What does it matter? She is a toy; toys don't care. She is his toy, and he is a Silver Fang, a sun, a god. What do they care?

He has her face pushed against the leather when he comes. Holds her there while he pounds it into her, makes her take it, makes her filthy, makes her his. Tells her that, when he's done: tells her she took it like a good little whore, his filthy little toy.

Makes her straighten up, afterward. Leans her back against his chest, wraps an arm around her waist. Slides his knee between hers and holds her there, touches her, works her up, brings her off again, ruthlessly.

--

Then he's satisfied. Then he's gentle with her for the first time in ... how long? Then he holds her, soothes her, sinks down on the seat cradling her. They're somewhere over the arabian peninsula. Miles and miles of scorching desert below them.

"You make my chest hurt too," he tells her, soft. And strokes back her hair. And kisses her temple.

There is not way she can be quiet. He's being so terrible to her. She's trying to be good and he's being so cruel, fucking her like that, so hard and so fast and so careless. She cries out; she also cries. She gasps when he tells her to, and moans when she can't help it, and then he snarls and the way he fucks her almost hurts, and she screams into his hand as he covers her, silences her, tells her to take it. He's snarling that, one time or another, when she comes. Tears in her eyes and on her cheeks and on his hand, her eyes closing, her body trembling. Comes because he tells her to fucking take it, and comes for a long time, and can barely move after. It's just as well; he shoves her down and pounds her then, fucks his own orgasm into her.

Tells her, and feels her cunt quiver when he tells her, that she was a good little whore. His dirty, filthy little fucktoy. Maybe it's the quivering around his cock that makes him open her up again, fuck her with his hand. He doesn't have to touch her for long before she's coming again, arching against his chest, her hands still tied in front of her, her entire body squirming now, working herself off against his fingers. His dextrous, perfect fingers.

When she's spasming, when she can't take it anymore, he touches her a little more anyway. She starts crying again, overcome, her pussy still trembling, grabbing at his cock, his fingers, air. And he finally relents. He wraps her up close, warms her body where exposure to air and all that slick sweat threatens to chill her. He strokes her hair and her cheek and her arm, nuzzles her the way he does.

Tells her that his chest hurts, too.

He does not speak of his heart. She would not understand, or she would loathe it. Perhaps sometimes when she pretends not to understand, she really does not: cannot, like people who first felt these things when they were young, connect the pain in her chest with the love in her heart.

But Ivan feels it, too. And that gives her comfort. She trembles in his arms as he says it, but softens. She begins to relax again, adored as she is in his arms. Her back to his chest, his arms around her, she takes her tied hands and seeks his fingers. Wet perhaps, but she doesn't care. She puts his hand between her palms, and she cradles it to her chest, their arms tangled and twined above her heart.

Some things, she does understand.

From the beginning, he's taken care of her afterward. The first time it was out of shame, and guilt, and a feeling that he had transgressed in a way that went far, far beyond the laws and morals their kind supposedly lived by. He was trying to make up for what he did to her. He didn't understand yet, back then, that she wants what he did to her. Needs it.

He understands that now. And accordingly, this too is different now. He takes care of her because he does. It is tautological. He takes care of her because that is why they do these things: so he can get through to her, so she can get through to herself, so he can love her and not make her sick with boredom and disgust.

She takes his hand. She surrounds it with her own hands, nevermind that her wrists are still bound -- albeit loosely, and loosening by the moment. She cradles his hand to her heart, and he loves her so fiercely then that it nearly kills him. It feels like his ribs are crumpling inward. It feels like they are piercing his heart.

But they're not. And he doesn't die. He just wraps his arm around her tighter, presses his lips more firmly to her skin. He doesn't tell her he loves her. That, too, would destroy the moment. He knows she understands: understands the way children and animals do, intuitively, without words.

--

Some time later, his arms loosen a little, and he stirs.

They have passed the desert. They are passing the land between the rivers. They will soon be over the Mediterranean; ancient islands speckling that flawless blue. All along their path, the cradles of humanity beneath them: legendary lands with legendary names. Assyria and Sumeria, Babylon, Damascus, Cyprus, Athens; cities and civilizations that rose and fell long before Novgorod, Berlin, Paris or London were even clusterings of mud huts along a river. In the end, the Silver Fangs and their regimes are so young.

"Come," he urges her softly. "I'll wash you."