Ivan Press

Hilary

They have been here for months now: in the villa that overlooks the sea, in the cottage that hides somewhere in the woods, in Ivan's loft in the city. Spring has come and gone; summer is soon to slip away, unnoticed until the first chill of autumn reveals itself.

They have moved the servants in: Miranda also lives in the city from where she manages Hilary's affairs and finances, but Darya and Elodie share a room at the villa, while Polina and Miron have their own. Miron's adjoins Anton's suite, of course. Carlisle actually lives in a small apartment not far from the villa, but generally out of the way, invisible unless called for. This is for a number of reasons, chief among them that Ivan dislikes Hilary's driver, but no one really minds. Hilary doesn't need a driver as much as she once did. The other servants don't mind, either; they occasionally congregate at Carlisle's apartment to escape their mad, mad, mad, mad masters. Dmitri is wherever he is. Wherever Ivan needs him to be. As ever. As always.

--

Hilary has seen Ivan's loft a number of times by now. The first tour, when she was unimpressed and bored, distant and impassive. There was also the evening after Anton's second birthday, when they fought, or something like it, and Ivan punished her, and there was some kind of catharsis in her screams that she couldn't explain and was afraid to look at closely. There have been dinners. There have been other visits. They happen. They matter. Everything between them seems to matter, to a dangerous degree.

But she has never come to his loft of her own accord. She has never dropped in on him, or called to see if he was 'home', though she never calls it that. He has summoned her there, or asked her there, or has driven her there once he's gotten her in a car, tricked her like that. It is not an obvious avoidance; with Hilary it could be as simple as never thinking of the place as a place for her to go, or never thinking it might please Ivan to have her there, or never really feeling like it.

After all: she is more content here than she was in Russia. It is warmer here, and she likes that. The household is bustling with servants and one small child, and that is distracting and sometimes amusing, and when it overwhelms or angers her, she goes to her little path and disappears for a while. Very occasionally, she takes Anton to her cottage to play, or to eat, just the two of them. Miron stays nearby, reading outside or sometimes simply hovering out of Hilary's sight, because she inevitably needs him. She is, inevitably, something of a threat to the child she loves so much. It isn't that she means to be; it's just that she herself is a somewhat wild thing, rather mad, and as likely to throw a violent, shrieking tantrum as the toddler is.

That has not happened. She has grown frustrated or scared or confused and gone to the door to call Miron, pleadingly, and has never questioned how he gets to them so rapidly. He takes care of it. Sometimes she delves into her stash of saved pills when she thinks she's been very bad, and she goes away for a while, further even than her odd little cottage.

But for the most part, yes, she is content. She cooks. Sometimes she goes shopping or she and Ivan go to things like plays, museums. There is a little studio for her to dance in, close to the cottage but quite small, and she practices. She has not yet thought to be bored. No more than her baseline, at least.

--

Tonight it is early evening. Friday, August, and the air is thick and sweet. Everyone wears light, loose clothing at the villa. They sweat as soon as they step outdoors. Summer is still long, and there is still light when it is getting close to Anton's bedtime. But right now they are in the courtyard, near the fountain, and Elodie is teaching Anton how to do little rolling somersaults across the grass, tucking his head and tumbling. He is graceful. He picks it up quickly, fearless. When he flops over he has no concern for being hurt but seems angry somehow, like the ground has betrayed him. It would be more charitable to say he is just striving, he wants to do it well, but this is the child of a wolf and a madwoman, both possessed of their own forms of implacable rage.

Miron is also tumbling. Darya wants to but doesn't dare. Polina is waiting for someone to break their goddamn head open because they aren't watching for the flagstones or fountain's edge. And Hilary is sitting on a bench in the courtyard, sipping a glass of chilled wine, watching with that black, almost lifeless stare of hers. She thinks Anton looks more and more like his father every day. She thinks Anton sometimes looks dead when he is sleeping, his neck snapped. He does not look dead right now, and this calms her: his cheeks are pink with exertion, his eyes bright and ferocious, his hands grass-stained.

Soon they will spot a glassy look in his eyes, or he will make a mistake and yawn, or it will be a little longer in between tumbles, and then Elodie will slow her playing down with him. Miron will gather him up and ask if he would like a story, and Anton -- fiercely, cunningly intelligent thing that he is -- will know what this really means, and will let Miron know in no uncertain terms that he is not to be trifled with, he won't be fooled. The battle will begin, because Anton has only become more willful and only more attracted to the night. Also: he is two years old now. He will fight Miron through washing-up. He will cry during tooth-brushing. He will refuse to use the toilet and only submit -- angrily, defeatedly -- when he is reminded how bad it feels to wet his clothes. By the time he is finally in pajamas he will have softened, worn out by his own struggling, and lean gratefully into Miron's seemingly infinite patience with him as they sit together on the patio outside Anton's room, reading a story by lamplight and listening to the bugs coming out, the water sloshing invisibly against the shore. He will be half-asleep before he falls into his little bed.

Hilary has watched this battle a few times. It doesn't happen every night, but it has happened often enough that she finally no longer panics or interferes or lashes out at the servants -- or at Ivan, days later, always bewildering him -- because of her unspeakable distress. It has happened often enough that she knows how it plays out. She grew curious about it after she stopped being afraid of it, and then she rapidly became bored by it, and to be frank: now that she doesn't watch or follow or stare or involve herself, the whole thing takes less time and is less fraught.

No one dares suggest to Hilary that her presence could wind her son up, or create anxiety in the servants. No one would dare suggest it but Ivan, and he is more or less disinterested in the details of domestic life and child-rearing, and likely entirely unaware that his offspring is going through normal developmental processes made slightly more difficult by having an insane mother. It is Miron and Polina and Elodie's livelihood and purpose to take care of Anton's development and upbringing, not Ivan's. Perish the thought.

--

She sips her wine. She watches the tumbling practice go on, as though considering something, and then she abruptly rises. She is not rushing; there is nothing hurried about her movement, just abrupt. They have all gotten used to this by now; even Anton doesn't look up, startled. Hilary just rises, setting her mostly-empty glass down on the table by the bench, and walks out of the courtyard. She goes upstairs to her own suite of rooms, glancing down at the courtyard through the atrium at where the child and servants still play, and then she goes inside, and closes her heavy wooden doors behind her.

Some time later, mid-bedtime, just after the sun has finally dipped below the horizon, Hilary's towncar slows to a stop outside. A silent message is sent to her phone, and she walks downstairs again. The courtyard is now empty; her wineglass is gone. The fountain's gurgling and a light breeze are the only sound to be heard, though if one pauses and listens, they can hear Miron negotiating with a two year old who keeps snapping NO in response to every last thing his caretaker says.

Hilary walks out to the towncar, and Carlisle is waiting for her beside the passenger-side rear door, because that is where she prefers to sit. He opens the door smoothly, assists her with his waiting palm, waits for her to settle, then gently shuts the door and returns to his post behind the wheel. They pull away. In the villa behind them, Miron deftly avoids being bitten by an angry Silver Fang pup who does not agree with him on the finer points of dental hygiene.

--

They drive into town. Hilary is silent, as always. She does not care if the partition is up or down, so Carlisle usually leaves it up and listens to the radio with the volume turned low, the balance shifted so that it doesn't disturb the rear speakers.

When they arrive at the loft, they reverse the process: he exits the car, he opens her door, he helps her out, he waits, he shuts the door behind her. He walks ahead of her to the low -- compared to Chicago, compared to Dubai, compared to any major city -- building and pulls open the front door for her. It's Carlisle who removes the access card to the elevator from his inner jacket pocket. This is a trick that Ivan might not like, but Ivan doesn't know about it. Hilary can't keep track of a card. Hilary doesn't like access cards like this one; she always made Darya take care of such things in Chicago. They make her feel a faint disgust, just like some of Ivan's flashier cars.

When the old, cage-style elevator thunks down to them, Carlisle opens the cage for her, lets her in, and then -- after she has begun to ascend -- he leaves. He goes back to the car, gets back in, and drives around the block. There he'll stay for at least an hour, before going anywhere else. Sometimes he is summoned back immediately from wherever he's left Hilary. Sometimes he goes to libraries. Oftentimes he ends up on some overlook, eating a sandwich from a cooler in the trunk and watching the water while he waits to be told where to go next.

Who cares.

--

The elevator ascends to Ivan's floors. Hilary doesn't even get anxious this time when it stops and she has to open the two sets of doors by herself to step out. She is distracted.

She is wearing a pair of those pointed-toe high heels she favors: black ones. Her skirt is narrow, pale grey, and of a demure length that stops just shy of matronly. Her blouse is silk, and the color of fresh, warm cream; there are faint ruffles serving as cap sleeves. Her bare arms are uncovered even by a shawl; it is that warm outside, that muggy. Even Hilary doesn't pretend to have a chill. She wears a trio bangles on one wrist, one gold, one rose gold, one white gold. Her diamond earrings dangle slightly from her lobes. She is not wearing that enormous red diamond he gave her on her finger, but she has a circle of diamonds on her right ring finger. Her lips are tinted just slightly darker than usual. Her hair is up in a low, silky chignon, smooth and unfrayed. She is carrying a small, structured black purse with a gold clasp. She is also carrying a box, a few shades darker and more cerulean than Tiffany Blue, with a small white and gold seal and the words CASA DRAGONES in gold down the side.

A lazy, sunwashed summer has passed since Ivan and Hilary's bizarre little family settled across its various nests, holdings and properties. The season is long here, though, and the winters are warm -- and besides, they always live like they care nothing about the passage of time. As though they were immortal, gods in truth, unbound and untouched and uncaring of its ceaseless march.

Yet time does pass, and Anton is growing. He has grown agile. He has gained a shocking level of coordination. He can tumble across the grass, swift and determined and -- troublingly -- angry, but not at himself, when he fails. Ivan knows nothing of this; he is around his son as rarely as ever, even when he stays at the villa: he has his own wing of the house, his own amusements, and it is occasional at best that he drops by to share a meal or a moment. Two interactions in a week would be considered plentiful.

And so, likewise, Ivan knows nothing about the bedtime struggles. Miron worries, privately. He thinks Anton could do with a little more discipline. He thinks it was easier when they were in Novgorod, and easier when Anton was smaller and less cunning, less aware. He thinks Hilary will not allow him to be disciplined now. He thinks Anton is learning this day by day. He thinks Ivan, once he discovers this latest behavioral turn, may insist on it -- as unbendingly entitled himself as he will fault his son for being.

Miron thinks he may be caught in the middle of that unpleasant tug of war. He does not relish it, and he may well be right. Then again, he could be wrong. Ivan could continue to care as little as ever, and Hilary's influence could continue unopposed, and Anton could continue to act out, and -- well. That was a wholly different quandary.

He is relieved when Hilary disappears without word or explanation. It is relief mixed with guilt; she is the boy's mother, after all, and one cannot deny there is some strange bond between dam and pup. Yet her absence will make bedtime run smoother tonight. He knows that for a fact.

--

Hilary's ride into the city runs along the Mediterranean shore. Some light still lingers in the sky, a deep glow in the west. Nice is unlike Chicago, unlike New York, unlike Novgorod. It is small. It has no skyscrapers. Its streets are narrow. Its buildings are low and, in the heart of the old city, rather uniform: squared edges and symmetric windowing, red tile roofs, old stucco walls in warm shades of yellow and burnt orange. They are not meant to catch the eye. They are not meant to take attention away from the sea, the sky, the perfect weather, the inundating warmth.

Ivan has taken over the top two floors of one of these buildings. It is one of the smaller buildings, significantly wider than it is deep, and it faces the ocean. Surprisingly, in a show of considerable restraint, he has not grotesquely altered the outer architecture of the building: no bare concrete, no steel, no wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling glass. Instead, a multitude of double-doors opening onto tiny, pretty balconies. The same stucco walls, sun-warmed and sun-cracked. A building that, really, looks no different from any other in this town. One would never guess he lived here if they didn't already know.

Inside, of course, he has taken liberties. He's gutted those top two floors, knocked down all the walls, reorganized, rewired, repiped; the interior is open-plan now, most things on the first floor, a floating staircase to a half-enclosed sleeping loft on the second. It is minimalistic and modern and well-lit and smooth inside, but not quite the same as the Chicago penthouse. It is not so cold and sleek; not all glass and steel and polished stone. This one is all warm woods and brick accents and darker, wrought irons. By day, sunlight pours through the windows. By night, the lighting is subtle, soft. Perhaps the warmth of the city suffuses him too, prodigal son of the coldest house of the coldest tribe.

--

The old elevator labors up to the eighth floor. It opens directly into the loft, which means surely he heard her coming if he is home. Knew it was her, because no one else apart from the two of them would come here. Through two seets of rattling collapsible doors Hilary can see her lover's hideaway: dimly lit, the overheads off, a few floor lamps throwing light up along the tall walls. She opens one set. She opens the other. The sound does not echo, but it does dissipate into the openness.

One set of balcony doors lies open. It is incredibly wasteful; the air conditioning is humming. The sea air finds its way in, though, humid and salt-laden. Bare feet are coming down the stairs. Bare shins. Light shorts, the fabric smooth and unrumpled; belted; a button-up shirt that's not buttoned up terribly far. He is smooth and lean and golden. He steps off the last stair and comes toward her, eyeing the box she carries without comment.

"Hilary," he greets her. "What an unexpected pleasure."

When Hilary decided to come here, she did not think that perhaps he would not be home. She didn't consider that he might be out -- dining in town, perhaps, or seeing a show without her, or even farther away, at some sleek club in a real city. It did not occur to her to call and check first. Had she come up and found herself alone, she might have simply sat down and waited, more or less motionless, for him to come back. She might have called him and verbally torn his throat out for not being where she wanted him to be that moment, unexpected as she is. She might have just gone home, and been depressed and miserable for days until he came to her, bewildered by finding her inconsolable, angry, and self-loathing.

One would think that such possible outcomes would teach Hilary to simply send him a text and see what he's up to before she dresses herself, gets a box from the cellar, and has her driver bring her to his place. But it didn't occur to her. It never does.

--

But he is here. He is waiting for her, because he heard her. The loft is quiet, the walls thick and old and reinforced now, the thrum of the HVAC system dampening everything else. But from an open door comes the sound of wind and distant sea, comes what little noise there is in Nice at night. Hilary looks that way, thinking she will see him, but he is not out there, wearing pajama pants and no shirt. Her head tips, curiously. Then the vibration of footsteps, more than the sound. Easy to miss; Ivan walks lightly even without trying. She looks up, seeing him through her lashes, and her hand tightens on the blue box she holds.

There is something dark and fierce and guarded in her eyes.

And then he speaks, and her nostrils flare slightly as she breathes in. Something about the formal pleasantry of his greeting relaxes her, and her hand grips the tequila a little less. She half-turns, angling herself to him without moving from the spot she is standing in.

"Ivan," she answers simply, with the same French softening of his name that she has always used, the same familiar shift of emphasis that is unfamiliar in anyone else's mouth. "I hope it isn't too late to visit."

There is such poise in her. It is her breeding or her training or something of both. She faces him without shifting her feet. He pads closer, a wild animal who pretends to be civilized.

They are both very courteous tonight. The corners of his mouth flicker upward. He thinks he would like to put his hands on her, kiss her with his hands on her waist or her face, or perhaps simply seizing her by the throat. He refrains. He folds his hands behind his back, elegant. After all: they are both very courteous, tonight.

"Of course not. You know how late I sleep." He glances again at the box. "How is it I never knew you enjoyed tequila?"

Her head tips when he says that. Does she know that? She doesn't think about it. She's never commented on his hours; sometimes she sleeps the day away. But she is being polite, and he almost gives up the game by insinuating their intimacy with each other into the conversation. Hilary glances aside a moment, back when he mentions the tequila.

She looks down at it, then -- taking the box with her, holding it at her side -- begins to walk towards the kitchen area. "There is a time for it," she says, setting it on the island, going to the cabinet where she can see glassware, taking out a pair of sleek, simple shot glasses.

Of course she does not go to get a lime. Or reach for the salt shaker. That is for blue collar tequila. This is sipping tequila.

"I think," says Ivan, following her, "you're absolutely correct."

His path diverges. He goes over to those open doors and shuts them; he does it, perhaps erroneously, out of consideration for her comfort. She hates climate extremes, after all. Or at least she usually behaves as though she does. He thinks she may have loved Hawaii though, tropical though it was.

By the time he returns to her, she has found his shotglasses and set two out. The darkest hues are in the kitchen: the cabinetry, the countertops. Granite, mostly, but the bar is old-fashioned, wood planked. As though in balance, brushed steel makes its only appearance here as well -- appliances, light fixtures. A flick of Ivan's hand snaps on a row of lights, focal and bright-hot, illuminating the bar and bringing out the texture in the wood.

"Shall I pour?"

It's hard to tell when Hilary is happy. It's hard for Hilary herself to recognize it. She may never really be happy. Contentment is a high ideal, and perhaps better than happiness; she can manage it sometimes.

Maybe she was happy in Mexico. She was unhappy in winter, in Novgorod, when she was lone. It was merely tolerable when Ivan was there, and then being there with him was equally intolerable. She seems to prefer warm climates. She seems to prefer being near water. She doesn't want to be too far from a city; she doesn't like being in cities very much; they're so gauche. She likes old places.

If she were at all kind, seemed at all wise, people would say she has an old soul.

Perhaps she does. But people don't say that sort of thing about ancient, dark souls. Just the bright ones.

--

Light glints off the crystalline tequila in the bottle as she removes it from its box. There is a little flick of a blue ribbon tied around its neck. The same golden eagle seal decorates the bottle; nothing more but its name again; Casa Dragones. She uncorks the bottle with a surprisingly strong grip -- surprising only if one has not seen her wielding a chef's knife or a garlic press. Ivan has. Many, many times. She has cooked for him here, a ballet of quiet, determined activity between butcher block and stovetop.

"No need," Hilary says lightly, pouring two quick shots. Well: fairly speaking, both glasses are doubles.

And then she downs hers. She doesn't even offer to toast. No chin-chin. Nothing. She just knocks it back. Which really is a waste of tequila of this quality. But she does it, and then she lowers her glass and pours herself another.

Ivan watches the first double go down. While she is pouring the second, he drinks his first. He watches the second go down too. They lower their shotglasses together.

There is something watchful in his eyes, then. He holds his hand out for the bottle. If she gives it to him, he pours himself another double. And holds on to the bottle, his fingers loose around the neck.

"So. What's the occasion?"

The tequila is... eloquent. It is biteless, smooth, complex, heady. Ivan drinks more slowly. Hilary drinks like she's trying to get smashed. She isn't holding onto the bottle. She pours, drinks, then reaches for it again. He doesn't have to wait for it.

But she is reaching for it a third time when she sees he is still holding it. She flicks her eyes up; they meet his without wavering. It hasn't all hit her yet.

There's a moment of silence after his question. She is waiting for him to relinquish the bottle.

He does not relinquish it. He holds it, and her gaze.

"Perhaps we should let the first two settle," he says. Lightly.

Something rises in her eyes. Rage, perhaps.

But Hilary says nothing. She straightens her back slightly. She looks at him for a long moment, her hand calm on the island's top.

"Give me the bottle, Ivan. Please."

This is said slowly. Politely. Firmly. There is no request in the last word.

[Charisma (Captivating) + Leadership (0) + Pure Breed (Silver Fang, obvs)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

[WP resist!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

He is watching her coolly. There is something reserved in that regard, careful and cautious. His hand is still relaxed, but it rests heavily on the bottle.

A few beats go by.

Then he pushes the bottle across the counter. Glass scrapes dully over fine wood.

She's never tried to compel him before. Not like that. And he is not compelled, though she is endlessly fascinating to him and infinitely desirable. But that she would even attempt: perhaps that's why he lets go of the bottle. Perhaps some other reason. Maybe he's pissed at her; let her drink herself sick, then. Fine.

Hilary does not reply. She takes the tequila, perhaps thinking she won that little exchange, and she pours herself another shot. This one is a single; she is not a total idiot. She lives on pills and white wine. Her tolerance -- and stamina -- are surprising for her delicate frame, but she has little with which to absorb that much liquor, of that high a potency, that quickly.

This one, she sips. She still does not toast him. Now she is not even looking at him, but it isn't because she's angry. That wasn't enough to ruin... whatever it is that's going on. It was merely a divergence from something already far, far more distracting.

"To answer your question of a moment ago," Hilary continues lightly, as though there were no struggle of wills just now, "there is no occasion. I simply... had a craving. I thought you would indulge me."

She glances at him, with this. Sidelong. One slender hand holds her glass loosely by the sides; the other arm is folded elegantly across her middle, fingertips touching her opposite bicep.

Somewhat mollified by her more reasonable rate of consumption, Ivan relaxes a touch. His weight sinks back on one heel. He considers her directly, even as she flicks him a sidelong glance; speaks somewhat obliquely of cravings, indulgences.

"Well," he replies wryly, "it seems I am."

"Not yet."

Ivan's eyebrow rises.

Then, with an air of -- well, indulgence -- he downs the second double.

There's something akin to normal human emotion in the amused little exhalation Hilary gives to that. She sips her tequila, and then when he sets down his glass, she pours him what she gave herself: a single. To sip. Slowly. Even as the shots of slammed alcohol go straight to their heads.

First she hands him the glass. Then she picks up her own again.

And then she offers him her hand, her palm upward, inviting.

There is a thawing, somehow. She exhales that little huff. He looks at the third shot. Fifth, really. Exhales one of his own.

"You realize I don't have superhuman stamina in this shape?"

It is a rhetorical question. He drinks it anyway. And takes her hand.

"I might pass out," he adds.

"I'm not forcing you to do anything," Hilary says, with the slightest edge. Her hand tightens, but it isn't a vicious thing; it's a flinch.

In response, his tightens as well. It isn't vicious either. It's something closer to reassurance.

He pulls her a step closer, two. "You're not," he murmurs. "I'm only teasing, Hilary." And then that little laugh again, alcohol on his breath -- "Or at least giving fair warning."

She almost squirms away, but steels herself: he can almost see it in her eyes, feel it in her sinews. He reassures; she wants to get away. She isn't letting herself. It feels like something else entirely, but here they are: drinking tequila. And she is trying to nearly black herself out. Blot herself out.

Then he comes closer, and she pulls away: a step farther, two. She almost pulls her hand from his. Her forehead wrinkles, just a little. And he says he's just teasing, warning, and she seems to shake it off, not wanting to hear it. She ignores it.

And since he did give her his hand, she turns away, and does what she intended to do before anyway: she walks towards the balcony doors he so respectfully closed earlier. Just moments ago.

Ivan is never certain what Hilary is up to. What she wants. She might be leading him to the balcony so she can look out over the ocean. She might want him to fuck her there for all the world to see. She might try to pitch herself over the side.

Well. Perhaps not the latter. He's never seen her suicidal. Self-harm, yes -- in the deepest pits of her rage, which tunnel right into despair. But he gives her this much credit: to wipe her existence out entirely -- no. She's never gone that far.

So he follows her to the balcony. The doors have a lock, but it is not engaged. They swing open easily and soundlessly. The little balcony is barely enough to step out on, and the railing is light and pretty, filigreed.

So far she is not fumbling. Moving a little slower though. She untwists the lock; she lets them out, the doors swinging wide, the humid air hitting their skin. Even Hilary, in all her elegance, will find her hair start to frizz out here. She sighs as she breathes the night air; she closes her eyes for a moment, and just stands with him there, as far as they can go. It isn't far.

It's enough.

--

For a little while, Hilary just sips in silence. She doesn't even want the tequila very much; she sips it now more to have something to do. She blinks a few times. She listens to the water, to the town. She waits a long time before she looks at him.

The moon is waxing tonight, and touches her skin, illuminating her. It is impossible for her to not seem beautiful; in moonlight, she looks like something not of this world. And yet she is: there's a loose hair, tugged by breeze. There is the softness of her lips parting. There, written in her face, are all the memories of the ways he has seen her, from lost in shuddering ecstasy to screaming in rage to holding Anton in anxious, devoted protection. He was there when she gave birth. He was there before, when she was so fat and unhappy about it. He has seen her utterly exhausted. Afraid. Trusting. Content.

As close to happy as someone like her can be.

Hilary licks her lips.

Truth be told, Ivan has grown rather drunk. It was a lot of tequila. It was quite fast. He subsists on somewhat more than white wine and pills, but -- what he said was truth. He is little more resilient in this shape than a human would be. He has only his genetics and health to rely on.

So they step out on that tiny balcony. And she lets the sea wind catch her hair; she lets the humidity curl it. He thinks, inevitably, of Mexico. She can't blame him for it. That mid-continental heat, the tequila. What else would he think of?

She does not look at him. She seems remote, pristine, inhuman. He leans against the doorjamb, his limbs feeling heavy. She watches the sea and he watches her, tirelessly, intently, something unashamed and rapt and animal about his regard.

Eventually she does look at him. And it is true: he has seen nearly every permutation, every shade, every mood. She is a terrible, mad thing, and he has seen nearly ever fracture. Sometimes he wonders why he loves her. How. But not tonight.

He still has a little tequila left. He drains it, and then -- too lazy to do anything else -- he lets the glass slip out of his fingers. It thuds heavily on the balcony floor. Doesn't break. High quality craftsmanship. But then it rolls off the edge. Eight stories below, it breaks.

"Come here," he says. He has yet to straighten, but he lets his hands fall to his sides.

That makes her laugh. Incomprehensibly. She laughs as Ivan -- who never lets anything fall, who is so deft even though he is so careless -- drops the glass. As it rolls, and falls, and she can almost feel the plummet as though the glass was herself and she were the glass: shatters.

"Oh, Ivan," she murmurs, and does not 'come here' as requested. "Don't be so lazy."

She laughs. He grins a little, lazily. "Oops," he says, sounding thoroughly unsorry. Then again: it wasn't an apology to begin with.

And then he tells her to come here. And she chides him for laziness. And he makes this sound, this muffled little scoff. Straightens.

Effortlessly. Just -- loosely. As though his limbs weren't riveted quite so seamlessly together, tonight. As though there's space between the joints, fluid. Now he's standing on the balcony, not leaning on anything, not holding on to anything. He doesn't sway. He is closer. She could reach out and touch him.

"Come here," he says again.

Before he met her, around the time he met her, Ivan sometimes did things like drive very fast and wrap his cars around telephone poles. Just because he could; just to feel them break all around him.

That could be a clue to the question of why he loves her.

Part of the answer, maybe.

--

Hilary sips her tequila. She is inches away. He keeps telling her to 'come here'. Like she came here to be commanded.

She does not move. But she does finish that sip, then extends her arm over the balcony railing, glass in hand, a few sips left, and simply: lets go. Lets it fall, and plummet, and shatter. She doesn't laugh this time. Her arm falls to her side, as softly as if she were performing something for him. A dance.

Now she's drunk, too.

And her voice is soft: "Stop being stupid. Treat me as you would if..." she struggles with this part, "if you liked me. If you wanted me."

Drawn instinctively by motion, Ivan's eyes go to the glass. He watches it fall. Sees it shatter. Sees the pieces, glistening in the streetlight below.

His attention returns to her. Liked, she says. Wanted, she says. He wonders if she knows how pale those words are, how inadequate. He is breathing slowly, steadily, deeply. He can feel his vessels dilating, heart speeding. It is the alcohol. It is also her. Sometimes he can't tell one intoxication from the other.

He closes those last few inches then. He takes her by the waist the way he wanted to at the beginning, when first she came up in that creaking old elevator, unexpected and unannounced. He pulls her closer, and now their bodies are touching. Now her feet in their demure, fashionable shoes are between his, which are bare.

"Look how beautiful you are," he says, softly, inexplicably, as though he has forgotten she cannot see herself, and cannot see through his eyes. "I don't think you even know how I adore you."

Something in her relaxes when he steps closer to her, which is what she wanted all along. When he puts his hand on her waist, pulls her closer. She exhales softly and her breath is all sweetness and bite. He tells her to look at herself, or at some aspect of herself, and she cannot. He tells her something he has said many, many times, in one fashion or another.

And she watches him. And she says nothing. She is waiting for something. She is waiting for some next step, some key thing she needs from him, or wants him to do, which she cannot tell him, or it would ruin everything. It is always so. It never gets any less unfair.

He knew it is what she wanted all along. Ivan can be a little cruel sometimes, and other times, more than a little. He likes to toy. He likes to play. He likes, sometimes, to withhold. Just a little.

And now she is waiting again. And this time he is not certain what it is she wants. He has some guesses. But the truth is they hardly matter. His head is light, and he has stopped caring about a great many things. He touches her body through that blouse, her demure fashionable clothes and her demure fashionable shoes and her demure fashionable goddamn conservative upper east side, old money, old world, old france or old belgium or old whatever the hell self. He has thoughts of tearing things, popping buttons, but he doesn't. She wants to be treated as though he liked her, wanted her, but that's not what she meant.

As though he respected her. That's what she meant. And he discovers, just as inexplicably as many other things tonight, that he does still care about this.

His hands fold behind her back; he pulls her very near. And he kisses her.

The very first time they kissed was not on a yacht, or in a hotel room, but in a nightclub. She didn't want to be there. She had to go out with other women. She was told she should do this, and she knew that meant it was something she had to do. There is no middle ground, for Hilary: you either do not have to do something, or you do. The word 'should' is just 'have to' from someone who wants you to think they're doing it for your own good. She was at a nightclub, pretending to wish she was still twenty years old like the other women, and IVAN PREEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS was announced, as he entered with his entourage, buying drinks for everyone in the whole goddamn venue. Showing off. Flashing. Likely even getting laid that night, but not by her.

She let him kiss her, though. On a stairway between dancefloor and mezzanine. They passed each other; she leaned against a railing. It was one of the only soft kisses they've ever shared. He likely never knew what a test that was. How restrained he'd be. How he'd respect her need to be careful, or not. How he would kiss her. She had wanted him to press into her so hard that the metal rail would dig into her hips, hurt her back. She had wanted to wake up the next morning with a long stripe of bruise. She'd wanted to taste blood in her mouth when he kissed her. She had wanted him to pull her hair back, yank on her scalp, and bite her throat.

The fact that she wanted all this when he kissed her ever so softly, ever so searchingly, was how she knew she wanted him at all.

--

No bruise tonight, though. He kisses her, and it's a soft thing again. There's moonlight and tequila and this is not all she wanted ever ever ever but this is what she was starting to get frustrated with him for withholding; just kiss her. Just kiss her on the balcony under the goddamn moonlight, idiot. Stupid boy.

Hilary sighs into his mouth as he finally kisses her. Like he likes her. Like he wants her. She feels his arms around her and she knows she's meant to feel safe and she almost wants to trick herself into really feeling it this time. So finally, after several interminable seconds of their soft lips touching, she lifts her hand and gently touches his cheek with her fingertips. It doesn't turn rough a moment later; she doesn't soften and then snarl. She doesn't claw or slap. She just touches him, kissing him for a little while.

For all the games they play, sometimes it gets lost: they are both very good kissers.

--

It goes on for a little while. She kisses him, eventually both her hands on his cheeks. Perhaps he turns her back to the wall and kisses her like that. Perhaps he presses himself between her legs, or at least against her, since that long narrow skirt of hers doesn't allow him to grind against her like some sort of animal. She didn't dress for him to rip her apart tonight, though of course there's no way for him to tell the differeence. Sometimes she dresses like this when she very much does want him to tear her apart.

"Take me upstairs," she whispers, her lips very close to his lips still, her breath coming more quickly.

There's an interesting notion: that she is supposed to feel safe when her lover embraces her. Perhaps that, too, is a 'should'. One can imagine one or both of her former mates would be insulted if she didn't. Certainly, that third almost-mate would have been devastated. But ask Ivan, and he wouldn't be able to say for certain if he's ever made her feel safe.

He thinks he might have. In the dark, when she woke frightened and he calmed her. In Chicago, after the Greys. In Chicago, a long time ago, when she came to him exhausted by her husband. Maybe there were other instances. He wouldn't be able to think easily of them.

He wouldn't think she easily felt safe, either. He wouldn't think she ever quite feels safe when he embraces her like this. Kisses her like this. He would not expect it. Their love, or at least their passion, is not protection. It is closer to predation, and they are each the devourer and the devoured.

--

Still. A soft kiss. And it goes on a while. And it is sensuous, and slow, and they are both good at this. They take their time. They allow themselves, drunken, to drink in the moment.

He has not pressed her against the wall. He cannot press her against the rail -- they'd both tip over. They are still standing where they were when it ends,

when she makes a request and, for once, does not try to pretend she never said it.

His hands linger as he draws back. Then he takes her hand and leads her inside. They leave the door open. A ribbon of warm humid air follows them inside, dissipating into the cooler, dryer spaces within. Up the stairs, then, their footfalls vibrating ever so slightly through the suspended planks.

The bedroom, which is not truly a room at all, is half-hidden by partial-height walls. There is no door to trouble oneself with. The bed is, of course, luxury itself. Hilary has been here before, though not terribly often. Releasing her hand, he starts to undo the buttons of his shirt. The first fastened one is mid-sternal. There aren't too many more to go.

Of the two of them, only Ivan would choose a sleeping place like this. Hilary likes rooms that are all but windowless. She likes small spaces. She wants to shut herself away but not too tightly; her bed at the cottage is against a wall, tucked in an alcove, barely big enough for another person to wrap around her,

and in the months since they came here, it has been very rare that he's held her in that bed. Vanishingly rare.

Still: she doesn't flinch when he leads her up the floating staircase, so magical, to his half-open sleeping space. If she were tired, if she wanted to rest, if she wanted him to hold her while she slept, Hilary simply would have called him to come stay at the villa. Sleep with her there, in her suite of rooms, in her enormous bed.

She wanted this to be separate, somehow. In a place that makes her borderline uncomfortable, since what she craves is, in fact, somewhat uncomfortable for her.

Hence the tequila.

--

Upstairs, Ivan begins to unbutton his shirt. He goes through them quickly, and she doesn't stop him. She wanted to go slowly, but she is drunk now, and in the rush of the moment she is thoughtless, uncaring, heedless: Hilary reaches for him, kisses him, and undoes his shorts. Quickly. Pushes them down, then lifts her hands, sliding her palms up his sides to his shoulders, helping his shirt off his arms.

Perhaps it says something about his confidence and his sense of ownership, the way he seems to construct these spaces that are open, unfettered, with clear sightlines from one end to the other, windows to let in light. The way he seems to avoid walls if at all possible. Or perhaps it's some sort of trait inherited from the patron god of the Silver Fangs: to fear enclosure more than exposure.

Regardless, it is not something Hilary shares. He suspects she would never come here by herself -- would have little reason to, and would not enjoy it. Yet she doesn't flinch now, or resist. They go upstairs together. He might've carried her if he weren't so ... fucking drunk.

And they are both quick about it now. Or they try to be, but when she kisses him, and helps him, his fingers grow clumsy for the first time. It takes him a little longer to coax the buttons from their holes. She pushes his shorts off, then his shirt. He pauses to untangle his arms, and then he reaches around to undo the zipper on her narrow little skirt.

Then the buttons on her blouse. He is still kissing her, or kissing her again. He peels the fabric from one shoulder, then the other, and pauses to kiss her skin as it is revealed. She has allowed herself to grow ever so slightly sunkissed. It is a rarity, and so he lingers.

Then her lingerie.

Then his boxer-briefs, which -- in her absence, and without expectation of her presence -- are almost unostentatious. Just soft, supple cotton, dove-grey, with a crimson-red waistband. Well; we did say almost.

Then they are bare, and he pulls her close again. They touch everywhere, skin and skin; feels like electricity, live wires. He backs her up until backs of her legs hit the bed, and then he scoops her up and tumbles her down at once, crawling over her lean and intent and pursuing.

His clothes are easier. Of course they are. Her skirt has some hidden clasp; the single button on her blouse is behind her neck, a button an loop, hard to grasp. She helps him; she is familiar with it, even though it's usually Darya who buttons it for her. She lets her skirt slide off; it is snug and he has to help it. He probably likes having to help it down to the floor, even drunk. Her blouse is a challenge; she steps forward to brace herself as he helps her peel it off her upper body.

Her lingerie is simple: seamless, soft, pale. Clasps and straps are easy. Her bangles slide off her wrist and clatter on the floor. She keeps kissing him, running her palms over him, panting softly now. What light comes in through the half-walls glints off the diamonds in her ears.

And she is still in her heels, her ring, her chignon, her panties, as she starts to push him towards his bed. As he starts to take her there himself, both of them fighting in their eagerness. She lets him turn her around, scoop her up, fall to bed with her. She lets him act like she is some twenty-something idiot he's fucking, who will be overcome with lust at being led around. She lets him crawl on top of her and she doesn't even bother with her shoes; they thump to the ground off of her feet, unimportant.

Her hair is still up. She is still not naked. Not entirely. Perhaps he is. Perhaps he tugged off his underwear as rapidly as everything else.

Ivan likes it when she wears her jewelry to bed. Likes it when she takes certain articles off, too. Likes that metallic clatter of bangles hitting the floor, three of them, every variety of gold. Who bought those for her? Perhaps a former lover. Perhaps him. Perhaps Hilary herself. That would have been shocking a year ago. Less so, now.

Diamonds in her ears still. He kisses her, pressing her into the mattress; kisses her neck, licks her earlobe. Feels that cold, hard stone against his tongue and pauses, sucks softly, releases.

He pushes up, then. He's still quite intoxicated. His head spins; he doesn't tip over, but he does close his eyes for a moment, shake his head once, sharp and quick. Then he pushes his underwear down. Rises up on his knees to get it off.

They haven't said anything for some time now. He doesn't say anything now, but he does take her hand. He guides it to his body -- his abdomen, his hip, his cock. Something flares in his eyes when she touches him. He lets go of her, reaches instead to tuck his fingertips under her panties; starts to peel them off.

But she doesn't touch him.

She lays back. She is enjoying this, even though her hair is getting mussed. Even though he didn't bother to let it down, remove the pins, run his fingers through it. She enjoys his body against her own in a way that, for them, almost seems innocent. Even if it's so hurried, even if he is drunken and artless. Right now she doesn't care. She can't; she pants, arching as he sucks on her earlobe, the diamond stinging her skin just as it does him, the spike of it digging into his tongue.

He stops. Hilary looks up at him, on the verge of demanding, but she sees him pushing his underwear away, watches him carefully. There's a soft gasp when he bares himself entirely, an ache building in her. He takes her hand, and --

she refuses, then. Doesn't wrap her hand around him. Seems bothered by this, where normally the permission to stroke him -- or lick him, or suck on him -- is like a gift, a reward for good behavior. But this time, when he takes her hand, she wriggles away. She doesn't want that. She didn't come here for that. She said she had a craving, she was anxious, she didn't want to want. She brought herself a bottle of tequila and drank shot after shot to steel herself for wanting something, indulging in something, she never ever wants him to do.

No one, not a soul, could blame him for not reading her mind tonight. Any night. But especially this one.

Hilary puts her hands on his shoulders. She's breathing quickly from anxiety as well as lust. She's trembling a little when she pushes

him

down.

Unexpected. Gives him pause. There are times when she pretends to struggle, pretends to refuse, pretends not to want to. They have no concept of safe words or preset boundaries; it is always up to him to figure it out. He's grown rather good at it.

He figures it out this time too. This much, anyway: that her resistance is real. So he doesn't insist. So he pauses a second, curious, head tilted. Then he relents, and reaches for her panties, and starts to work them down.

And then -- she well and truly surprises him. Her hands on his shoulders, and not to pull him closer. She pushes. There's a torque in that pressure, and it is so new that he resists initially and instinctively. Then he goes with it. She pushes him down. His back hits the mattress and he exhales, quick but soft. She has never done this before, not of her own volition. Once, early on, he asked her to; egged her on, try. The results were terrifying and terrified. They've never tried a second time.

Until now. Now, Ivan is looking up at her, curious but relaxed, watchful. His hands run over her arms. She feels slender to him, breakable, and perhaps she's right: perhaps that is part of the appeal. Beautiful things that break beautifully -- he's had so many, and she's the only one he doesn't want to break.

Well. Not permanently, anyway. Which is why he's touching her like this, wordlessly and reassuringly, encouragingly. Reaching to take her by the waist again, run his hands over her sides. Even after a child, her breasts are small and shapely; weigh deliciously in his palms.

Unexpected. Gives him pause. There are times when she pretends to struggle, pretends to refuse, pretends not to want to. They have no concept of safe words or preset boundaries; it is always up to him to figure it out. He's grown rather good at it.

He figures it out this time too. This much, anyway: that her resistance is real. So he doesn't insist. So he pauses a second, curious, head tilted. Then he relents, and reaches for her panties, and starts to work them down.

And then -- she well and truly surprises him. Her hands on his shoulders, and not to pull him closer. She pushes; not away, but down. It is so new that he resists initially and instinctively. Then, a second time, he relents; reaches up to take her hand, turn her palm to his mouth. He kisses her the way he does, fervently,

has her hand in his as he slides down her body. He trails kisses over her: those lovely breasts, where he lingers, licks, sucks; her smooth belly, miraculously unscarred; her navel. The seamless line of her panties, then. Twice already he's tried to get them off, but now he leaves her lingerie be. He coaxes her thighs apart. He lifts her leg over his shoulder.

It's not that he's never done this before. But always, before, it was something he did to her, and not for her. It was a cruelty, something he made her take, something done roughly or, at best, with a certain vicious gentleness. This feels different. It is different. He nuzzles her through that thin, soft fabric; rubs the tip of his nose over her cunt, kisses her clit.

Licks her, very softly. The first time with her panties in place. The second time -- slipping the fabric delicately and deftly aside, sliding his tongue over her unimpeded.

This is rare enough as it is: for her to come to him. For her to show volition, will, desire, rather than be pushed into it. Forced, almost. It's rare for them to slide headlong into drunkenness like this. It's rare for them pull one another's clothes off, falling into bed like it's the first time, the tenth; like they don't have a child together. They've been through so much in such a short time, yet there are still things between them that are infrequent, strange... new.

This is new. This 'craving' she was taken by tonight, the whole damn reason she dressed up and came over. Not to share a drink with him; the drink was to brace herself for succumbing to a desire she is disgusted with herself for having. Not to make love to him; they never say such a stupid thing, and he could fuck her anytime, anywhere; she could ask him or trick him into fucking her anytime, anywhere. There need be no occasion. But this, she dressed for. Brought courage with her. Came upstairs and drank herself stupid and it really didn't matter if he drank, too; she gave him a glass to be polite.

Wanted him to kiss her. Pretend he doesn't know what she's really like. What she likes.

Wanted him to come up here with her, kissing her just like this, rubbing himself mindless and youthful and fervent against her body like he doesn't know she likes to be pinned down, slapped, dominated.

And now she pushes him down, closing her eyes, tipping her head back not in pleasure but as though to distance herself from what she's doing, what she's wanting him to do, what is happening. Her brow is furrowed and her lips are pressed together; she pushes him hard when he resists, needing him not to fight, desperately needing him not to question, demand explanation, seek understanding. What would she tell him? How could she explain this to him? How does one describe need in careful detail when they're in the throes of it?

--

Ivan does not ask, or demand, or seek. He resists, a moment. He relents. He wants to kiss her hand and she squirms; the intimacy makes her recoil from him, her hand folding in on itself, nails digging into palm. He mustn't do that. She mutters it: you mustn't, and she hugs her hand close to her own body. Exhales when he lets her go, doesn't force her to accept it.

In a way, she will need him to save his force for when she has nothing left. Nothing at all remaining of her will, which is stretched to the point of quivering now.

So he kisses her. He'll go down her body, slowly like this, licking her breasts which are still rather on the small side, flicking his tongue over them. She cannot help but like this. She cannot help the pleasure that ripples through her just under the skin. All the same, she arches her spine again, pushing him down faster. It's as if she can't stand his tenderness yet, and in a way there is some precedent for that: most days, it's as though Hilary cannot bear to be loved by him. Is not sure she needs to be loved by him, or wants it. Certainly never thinks she should accept it, or welcome it, or allow it. When he is lucky -- truthfully, when they both are -- she can sometimes accept such tenderness after he has been brutal with her.

Not often before.

Especially not now.

--

"Don't do that," she whispers, shakily, fiercely, and with patience she seldom recognizes he has -- yet which he frequently exhibits for her sake -- he accepts. He is parting her thighs. They are quivering. He is lifting her leg over his shoulder and she is wet, heady, he can smell the arousal in her that started long before she even got here. Built, and rose, and consumed her. She wishes she could be inviolate, unassailable, but she's not. She knows she's not.

When he nuzzles her through her panties, licks the fabric, teases her or himself or who knows, her face twists in an expression that borders on disgust. "Don't," she says again, her voice on edge, but not with anger, not with refusal. Discomfort, maybe. A desperate yet very specific sort of need. She squirms under him, pants softly when she feels his chest against her body, his breath on her cunt. "Just -- just please do it." Her voice is quite breathy now, and very small. It shakes more than she does. In spite of herself, her hips roll towards him; in spite of herself, that squirming is something else entirely, as though her body longs for it. For this. For him.

Don't, she says. Don't, to every overture of tenderness, foreplay, intimacy. Everything but what she wants -- that one thing she seems to need from him now, fiercely and soul-hollowingly, and that she seems so afraid of or disgusted by that she can hardly bear to ask it of him. That she can hardly bear, it seems, to acknowledge who he is, what he'll do for her.

Perhaps he should be insulted. Perhaps he should be hurt. Perhaps he is, for a fleeting moment. What undoes him -- what always undoes him, ultimately -- is her vulnerability. He can see her shaking. Feel it. He can smell her arousal. Feel it. And in the end, as with all the things she's ever asked him for,

it's not so much.

Ivan bites her. Quick and vicious, turning his head, digging his teeth into the supple muscle of her thigh. Then he pulls her panties off. It's not terrible finessed, nor terribly gentle. He yanks. He tugs. The scrap of fabric pulls her legs back together, and he pulls it up past her knees, her shins. When it's gone he comes back to her, pushes her legs apart, slides his shoulders under her knees. He doesn't talk to her. He doesn't ask her anything. He doesn't hold her hand, he doesn't kiss her body, none of it, nothing.

He licks her cunt. Once, twice, swift, nearly harsh. Then -- with no other prelude whatsoever -- he puts his mouth on her. Sucks her clit and laps at it, licks it, toys with it mercilessly. Fucks her with his mouth as relentlessly as he ever did, and now at last his eyes are back on her; fixed on her face, all the way across the twisting contours of her body.

He makes her cry out. When he bites her, and it's not the sort of way she screams when he's forcing her. When he's punishing her and she's half-wishing he wouldn't. There's something like gratitude in the sound -- no. That's not quite right. It isn't gratitude; it's relief. She lifts her hips when he pulls her panties down, tosses them aside. She opens her legs when he comes back, when they're gone -- she opens her legs rather widely in fact, open and eager, reaching for him by the hair.

Ivan licks her cunt. Roughly.

Hilary grabs his hair and grinds her cunt against his mouth, groaning low and eager.

And while he is watching her, fucking her, she's still got her head tipped back, her eyes closed, her awareness both painfully keen and forcibly removed. She fucks his face with her pussy, biting her lower lip to try to stop herself from making any more sounds like that. Any more cries of pleasure; any more screams.

It doesn't work.

He licks. She grabs. He snarls. She grinds.

He grabs her wrist -- the hand that grips his hair. A sort of unstable impasse, that, each wrestling the other -- but it's forgotten soon enough. Something he does with his mouth makes her buck nearly off the bed, so he grabs her by the hips and holds her down. Makes her take it. Now she's biting her lip, muffling her cries. So he pushes his fingers into her, and she's slippery and hot and squeezing so tight, and he's fucking her with those clever knifefighter's fingers; he's lapping at her, fluttering his tongue, sucking that sweet hot nerve center that she never, never, never lets him taste.

So much for being a gentleman. So much for forgetting what it is she likes and doesn't like. So much for her not liking this, for that matter. His palm spreads over her belly, feels the coil of sleek muscle there. Pushes higher; he has a breast in his hand now. He nuzzles her, gentles a little, but not for long. Wraps his arm around her hips, tight as a constrictor, and now: well, now he's really fucking her, now he's really trying to get her off. Now he's really eating at her, greedily, murmuring low wordless muffles of appreciation, and hunger, and want.

The snarling sets her off a little. She pants out a dizzied breath, gasping for air, rubbing herself on his face with an eagerness that keeps creating flickers of uncertainty, self-disgust, anxiety -- flickers that are quickly engulfed by desire. Yes, she bucks. She cries out. He pins her to the bed and she moans, long and loud and seemingly helpless. Ironically its his fingers sliding into her that make her bite her lip again, trying so hard, fighting it so pointlessly. He's never spent this much time between her legs. She's never let him, or rather: she's never been able to stand it this long, he's never been able to bear taking his torture of her to that level, risking her true withdrawal, unhappiness, rejection.

And yet now, tonight, she shows up out of the blue and demands it. Pushes him down the bed and whines and squirms and almost can't go through with it, but she does, and he did, and now here they are and he's never been allowed to suck on her clit like this. He's never really had this much of her wet, sweet pussy on his tongue, on his chin. It's surreal. The tequila makes it moreso.

There's this, too: when he touches her belly, when he caresses her tit, she doesn't shove his hand away. She likes that. He can tell she likes it because she permits it to go on. He can tell because she moans again, as his hand squeezes her breast. But that moment of gentleness doesn't last long, and couldn't have: who knows how long she might tolerate it? Who knows how long Ivan could stave off some of his darker hungers?

She never really stops fucking him back. Grinding, squirming, rubbing herself off on his tongue, winding her hips. She hardly knows what she's doing or what she wants, just that she wants all of it: sometimes he has to grip her in place, which is no great burden on him, to hold her tight and give it to her. It takes longer for her to come than it does when he's fucking her with his cock, punishing her with his palm on her flesh or something a little bit sharp or that lash she gifted him with to hit her with. She comes like wildfire when he dominates her, her mind easily surrendered to her body. This takes longer because her mind fights it harder, and for a longer time before giving up. Before succumbing. Before she gets to that point where she can't remember her own name, where she doesn't want to.

And when she does come, it's still easily compared to flames roaring through a bone-dry forest, incinerating every blade of grass, every pine needle, every once-living thing in its path. When she comes, her thighs are wide and she's riding her orgasm out on Ivan's mouth, clutching his head and his shoulders heedless of what discomfort she might cause, and the sounds she's making are like cries of pain: keening, beautiful, helpless agony.

There's something primal, bestial, about the way he eats her cunt by the end of it. She never stops fucking him back and he never stops holding her down. Somehow that's part and parcel of it, because of course it is: they'd never be the sort to make this a sweet, playful experience. She's complicit in this and still he goes at her like she doesn't want it, might not let him for much longer. Her thighs are wide open and still he pushes them wider, holds her open until he can feel the strain even in her lithe dancer's body.

And she comes like a firestorm, a conflagration, a cataclysm. And he devours that, too; keeps at her like he can't get enough, like he has to push her higher, farther, deeper, darker. Until her cries are overcome. Until her clutching hands start holding him back. Until she closes her legs. Until she starts squirming away, away, stop, too much.

He follows her. He wrestles her down. He makes her be still. He licks her again, slowly, savoringly, agonizingly. Then, only then, does he stop.

Pulls himself up a little, sliding over her. There's sweat on his back, and at his temples. He lays his cheek against her belly, his chest between her thighs. He exhales, quite drunk, and -- in all truth -- worn out. It is no small thing, navigating the boundaries of what Hilary can tolerate.

Until her crying out becomes screaming. Until she's almost sobbing from it. Too much. Stop. She is shaking, her hands unable to find purchase on him even to push him away. Her whole body is shaking like she's suffering from hypothermia, but she's hot to the touch, she's sweating, she's pink and flushed all over.

She cries when he holds her down. She struggles only because she can't help it, but she's weakened somehow, and tears are running down her face. He licks her again and she begins to fold herself together, thighs, arms, turning her body, curling up in a ball. Hilary doesn't do anything quite as cruel as reaching down to shove him away, but she turns even as he's moving to lay his cheek on her, rest against her.

But when she turns, and curls up, her tears rather quickly abate. She is wrecked but not broken, overwhelmed but not hurt. She curls up, and perhaps he rests his head on her upper thigh instead, or nuzzles her knees. She has her arms crossed in front of her chest, hands on opposite shoulders, chin low, trying to put herself back together again.

He is reminded, briefly and poignantly, of the way she curled in on herself that one Halloween.

And perhaps that memory is what spurs him, a moment later, the crawl up the bed. To move, hand over hand, up along her body. He does nuzzle her knee. Her thigh, too, and the turn of her hip. And her side. And her shoulder -- kissing her fingers where she clutches herself.

Heavily, he slumps down behind her. After a moment, he winds an arm around her.

No shoving or pushing or squirming, no pleas for him to stop. She doesn't flinch. Hilary just breathes those deep, slow, shattered breaths she's been taking, even as he gets closer and closer to her, more and more intimate. But when he kisses her fingers she can smell -- can even feel -- her body, her wetness, all these signals of her own pleasure in the act, all over his face. On his breath.

This makes her tighten in on herself somewhat, but it doesn't last long. Ivan is drunk and worn out. He lays beside her. His arm comes around her. She doesn't ask him for more. She wouldn't, though; not normally. She just lays there, her back to him, eyes closed, trying to find all the many broken pieces of herself that are floating in that endless black of her mind.

[EMPAFEE: HILREE TAY? IS ANYFING IVAN BE DO?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

[Sort of what's in the post! She's just putting herself back together right now. There's a sense she wants to get far away from it and pretend it never happened. As for what he can do, it doesn't seem she wants anything in particular from him right now. She's just sort of focused on coming back to her... baseline.]

So.

For some time, that is all there is. She closes her eyes. She tries to find some sort of equilibrium. He sprawls beside her, and behind her. He has an arm around her, but it is heavy and loose. It is possible -- alcohol-drenched as he is -- that he falls asleep for a little while.

But not long. And not deeply. And after a while, he opens his eyes. It's dim; only a few lights were on when she came here tonight, and he turned on only a few more over the bar downstairs. So they could get drunk. So she could get drunk, really, and get fucked. Like that. Which she's never wanted, needed, asked for before.

He contemplates these things. Holds them in his mind for a while to see their shapes. He can intuit secret paths, connections, places where things fit together. He hasn't the strength or interest to fit them together, though. Not right now. Ivan takes a breath. Without hurry, he rolls away from her, sits at the edge of the bed. Gets up. His feet are almost silent as he pads away from her, out of the bedroom area.

She hears water running. He washes his face, his hands. He goes downstairs and then he comes back up, two angular crystalline bottles of water in hand. One, he sets on the nightstand where she can see it.

The other he uncaps as he sits again on the bed. Their backs are to each other. He drinks. Then he sets his bottle aside, lays back. He is close beside her again, on his back this time, the outside of his arm against her back.

Hilary does sleep. She delves deep into herself, seeking darkness, seeking cohesion, seeking forgetfulness, and so: she does plummet, with a surprisingly controlled speed, into sleep. It is fitful at first, then deeper, and she breathes steadily then. Her hands unclench. Her folded arms loosen. Her legs shift a little, readjust, relax. She rests her body. More needfully: she rests her mind.

And then footsteps wake her. She hears him walking up the floating stairs. She knows Ivan isn't in bed with her. She knows it is dark outside because his bedroom is so open, she can see windows, she can see night sky. A bottle of water appears before her eyes, and he can see her eyes open, dark and reflective as water at night.

They flick up at him, instinctive. Ivan looks at her. Ivan goes to the other side of the bed with his water. Drinks, and lays down, and she feels his arm on his back.

Hilary is silent a moment, then breathes in very slowly and deeply. She exhales slowly, too, and then sits up. She drinks water, too, twisting off the cap and sipping demurely. She feels herself, still wet, still... dirty. Disgusting. She shudders slightly, then rises to her feet, carrying her water bottle with her to Ivan's en suite. She is going to shower. Wash herself. She has to.

His eyes follow her. Clearer now. So perhaps he lied after all: a mere human wouldn't be lucid so soon, after so much alcohol.

When she starts to pass the accent wall that divides en suite from bedchamber, he sits up. Calls after her:

"Would you like me to tend to you?"

She still has on her earrings. Her hair is mussed, but still mostly pinned up. She pauses. She turns, but only her head, and only halfway. She's a silhouette more than a person right now, someone's escaped shadow, not yet sewn back to her human self. She has to think about this question.

Hilary gives a small shake of her head. "No."

Walks on. He can hear her earrings as she removes them and sets them on the counter; he can hear each bobby pin she puts down as she unbinds her hair. Hears the water turn on in the shower, the door or curtain open, the door or curtain close. She doesn't take very long. She washes partly because she was drenched in her own sweat; she washes all trace of her own scent and her own orgasm away. Her hair is wet, which is a shame but not a large one. He can hear her when she's done, stepping out and drying herself off as though she were at home. As though he weren't here at all.

Hilary puts her earrings back in. She combs her hair and then twists it into a low bun, not terribly unlike the chignon but more structured, all coiled and damp. She pins it in place. She finds a robe, either one he has here for her or a clean one -- not whatever one he uses. Slips it on and ties it closed, walking back into his bedroom. She then... stares at her clothing. Frowns. She goes to her little purse, opening it up to remove her phone. It is on Simple Mode. She doesn't know that this is almost an insult, the sort of thing that very old people -- not women in their late thirties -- need. But phones are for telephone calls, text messages, pictures, and occasionally the internet. That's all she really needs, most of the time. So she gets out her phone and begins tapping at the screen. There is no place to sit that isn't the bed.

So she stands.

She won't even look at the bed.

Although he didn't quite expect her to answer one way or the other, this makes sense to Ivan. He watches her go.

She washes herself. It doesn't take very long, not nearly as long as it would have taken if he washed her. He is so strangely gentle with her sometimes. Treats her with far more care than he does himself, or anyone else; even Anton, who really does need care. Look how little he thinks of that fact, though. Or of Anton at all.

He does think of the boy now. Oddly, fleetingly, his mind touching on the shape of his small, golden, black-eyed son -- then flinching away, unnerved. He's naked in bed, after all, and he's just finished eating Hilary out. There are few things he'd rather think about less.

She returns. She is wearing a robe, the one he got for her, which is also a clean one: soft cotton, though not fluffy. Just thick and absorbent, and monogrammed with her initials. Maiden name, of course, which is also simply her name now. She is hardly looking at him. Actually, not at all, because he is in bed, and she can't seem to look at the bed. She gets her purse. She gets her phone.

He feels something. It takes him a moment to recognize it as a sort of irritation, which is actually hurt.

"Are you going home?"

Of course she doesn't notice it. Sense the irritation. Sense the hurt she's causing. She frowns at her illuminated screen. "I think so. Just sending a message to Carlisle to bring the car around."

Hilary puts her phone away again, and sips her water. She doesn't move to pick up her clothing; she'll wear the shoes again, more than likely. The bangles. Everything else -- well, Ivan has people for that, doesn't he?

It does not occur to her to consider his feelings. Showing up one night, drinking herself wobbly, demanding he fuck her with his mouth, then... getting up. Washing up. Leaving him. And leaving her clothes all over his bedroom. It does not immediately appear to her that this might hurt him, or might make him lonely, or angry. They fucked. Now she'll leave, because she doesn't want to sleep in that bed and she's tired. It's very simple.

Beat.

"Want to leave money on the nightstand too, then?"

There's something in his tone that makes her glance up. She looks over at him, finally, curiously. She does not appear to understand the reference, but that's absurd: Hilary is detached from the world, but she's not a stranger to it. She has seen television. Movies. She's heard songs, read books. She is not stupid. She is not as unworldly as she sometimes seems.

Stares at him for a long moment, the bewildered look fading as she loses the energy to keep it up. Her pale, slim face becomes impassive, her eyes stony. She walks over slowly with her purse, opening it again. Stands beside his bed when she removes a bright green banknote, 100 euros. She flicks it downward, dropping it on top of his chest. After a moment of visible consideration, she takes out an orange and yellow note as well, a fifty, and drops that one as well.

Her purse clicks shut.

Ivan is speechless.

He stares at the hundred-euro note. Then a fifty joins it. One day a very long time about now, when he can think about this without instantly becoming incensed, he might ponder whether he should be insulted or flattered by the amount. Probably insulted; he always thought he was a better lay than a hundred fifty would imply.

But that's neither here nor there. At the moment, Ivan can't even contemplate such trifles as his monetary worth. He sits up; the money flutters aside.

"My god." Fury makes him speak softly, laugh. "Here I thought you'd actually grown some vestige of a soul."

Her eyebrows -- well manicured, cleanly kept, as most of her body is -- raise slightly.

Then lower.

"I've made you unhappy," Hilary says finally, calmly. "Instead of telling me so, you attack me. Clearly you don't think very much of this soul you've imagined for me."

"If you knew you'd made me unhappy, why the hell would you -- " he breaks off. For once, he doesn't even have words for it. "How -- " and again. He clenches his jaw; stews silently.

"I didn't."

He breaks off, and that is what she says in the gap.

He tries again, and there is nothing. She is staring at him.

"I made you unhappy. So you lashed out. So I hit back. So you insult me. Now we are both unhappy. Is that what you wanted?"

"I want you," he manages at last, "to occasionally have some -- glimmer of awareness. That I am a living, breathing creature. That I am flesh and blood, and that once in a long time, I might even have a heart to wound."

He slumps a little. Falls back on his elbows. "Even as I say it I realize I'm probably asking more than you can give."

Her brows wrinkle together slightly. She looks annoyed. But she doesn't storm off, or become silent. She is just staring at him.

"I know you're alive," she says petulantly. "I know you're emotional. I'm not stupid."

And then there's this: "I'm not," she repeats, insistent, angry, hurt. "You want me to read your mind."

It's not true. Not really. He just wants her to feel empathy; to think of how she might feel if someone were to behave the way she does, and change her behavior accordingly. He wants her to know how something she does might make him feel, and thus avoid doing it at all.

To Hilary, that would take mind-reading. How could anyone ever do something like that? Absurd.

All in all, Ivan perhaps has a deeper understanding on Hilary's -- quirks, one might say, if one were being polite -- than anyone else. And on some days his understanding feeds into a sort of patience, and tolerance, and sometimes even compassion. That takes energy to maintain, though, and a certain balance of mind. He simply doesn't have it right now.

"No," he snaps. "I want you to not treat me like a whore. You show up here without so much as a phone call. You drink yourself blind, you demand to be romanced, and then you ask me to pleasure you. So I do. And then you're disgusted by it, or me, or yourself. You curl up on yourself. You ignore me for a while. You wash me off your skin. You put on your clothes. And you call for your car.

"Are you telling me none of that seems the least bit hurtful to you? That it would really take mindreading to see how some of that might upset me?"

Hilary is very still. She is drunk, too. She is on edge emotionally, too, perhaps in ways he can't understand. Couldn't, yet. They've never been here. She listens to him relay to her everything that just happens, and there's no color in her face by the end of it. She's ashen. And her skin feels oddly cold to her, separated somehow from her bones, meat, sinew. It feels quite a bit like the dark chill that comes right before a dead faint.

She does not faint. She gives a small sway. And then she feels her phone vibrate; probably Carlisle. He's probably here. She ignores it.

Her voice, when it comes, sounds rusty from disuse, and far away, like she's down a well or stuck in a cave. It sounds paltry. She feels how paltry it sounds.

"I... thought you'd understand."

Ivan's brow furrows. He seems to deflate a little. He sits up again, drawing his knees up, setting his elbows on them. His fingertips he presses against the bridge of his nose, the hollows of his orbits.

"I do understand," he says, quieter. "But there are still ... limits, Hilary, to what I can endure. Even from you."

A pause. He reconsiders: "Especially from you. Especially after ... everything we have done, and become, to one another."

He has said this before. Limits. That he has them. That he is not a god, that he is not... made especially for her, sent to her, created for her, able to withstand everything. He knows she has limits. He knows she is broken; she thinks he'll understand when she acts like a broken person would. That she will never, ever have to explain to him why.

He has said it before. He will have to say it again.

--

She looks down. Wants to argue with him, of course. Tell him that if he was so hurt, why didn't he just say so instead of making that crack about money on the nightstand? Why not tell her, instead of shaming her? She of course wants to tell him that perhaps he should recalibrate his expectations. Stop thinking she's going to grow, and change, and evolve, and be better, and love him back as deeply and wholly and patiently as he is capable of loving her. As anyone, but Hilary, seems capable of doing. It seems so exhausting, she wants to tell him, with so little return, and she doesn't understand the point of caring so much. Look at how volatile he is. Look at how unhappy he can be.

Even Hilary knows that isn't a great route of argument to try walking: look at her. Look at how unhappy she almost always is. Look at how she would rather knock herself out for six or seven hours with pills than just go on existing during that time, living, seeing things happen, smelling and tasting and experiencing these exhausting, pointless things. Look at how much she avoids thinking about what she is, and what her life is, and how it came to be this way,

much less how it could still yet be.

--

She just looks down. She doesn't argue. She very much wants to pick up her shoes and her bracelets and leave, now. She would like to go to the car and curl up in the back seat and go back to the villa and go to sleep in her own bed, wake up a little hung over, forget this ever happened like she had planned to. It is really all she wants in the world, is to not be here, and not be doing this, and not have to talk about it, and... everything. All of it.

Yet she knows -- or suspects, at least -- that if she were to leave right now, with what Ivan is saying ringing in her ears, he might not forgive her. Things might not ever be the same. She would sleep well. She would survive. She would go on as she has been, and she doubts Ivan would try to ruin her life in any way, but... well, he might not love her anymore. This is what she thinks: if she leaves right now, which is what she wants, he will be so angry and so fed up with her that he will be quite done with it. With her. Forever. And she knows she doesn't like that thought. It is deeply, profoundly frightening. It makes her want to scream and scream and scream and scream.

--

Her hands are in tight little fists, her knuckles white. She doesn't walk away now, but that's all she can think of to do. She is stuck, like her feet are in a puddle of thick, tarry oil.

"I thought you would understand," she repeats, somewhat meaningless, like a broken record, like some sort of plea. Like some sort of... attempt, almost. She's straining. She is reaching. She does not know what the words are to say or how to make it better, but she is staying, see? She is saying words. She is trying. He has to see that she is trying.

He has to.

For someone who understands so little about the inner workings of others, and for someone who thinks she understands so little about the inner workings of even her lover, her mate, her master: the truth is, Hilary actually sees Ivan quite clearly. She saw, long ago, his 'great failing', as she so euphemistically put it. She understood, subconsciously and perhaps without ever quite processing it, that he enjoys her company. Enjoys even the stupid little things they do together, the cooking and the traveling and the idle hours on some exotic shore. She knew -- or trusted, or did not even bother to think otherwise -- that he would be pleased to see her tonight, unexpected as her presence was. That he would try to keep her happy, make her happy. That he would try.

Her understanding isn't perfect, though. How could it be? She is so very flawed herself. The prism is shattered, after all. The light goes in. Doesn't show anything coherent.

So she gets it wrong. She thinks if she were to leave right now, something would break forever; and perhaps that is true. That he would never fully forgive her; and perhaps that even is true. That he would stop loving her,

and that is false. She doesn't say it, and so he cannot tell her otherwise, but it is false.

It is impossible.

--

Still. It keeps her from leaving. And perhaps, in some broken way, Ivan would find some solace in that. That at least she cares that much, yes? She'd rather not dash it all to pieces and walk away. She's still here, stuck in a rut now, repeating the same words back to him that he can't really explain any other way.

So he is silent. And she is unhappy, and tense. And he is still naked, and suddenly aware of his nakedness, and for the first time in just about as long as he can remember he is uncomfortable in it.

He leans off the bed and picks up his shorts. The underwear or the overwear, it doesn't matter which. He stands up, stepping into it. Now at least he has one article of clothing on, and he sits again, this time at the corner of the bed, closer to her.

"It's not that I don't understand," he tries again. "It's that sometimes even understanding doesn't help."

"Oh."

Short and small, that. At least she isn't repeating herself still. It does make sense: of course it would. He understands. She wonders if he really does; she doesn't think he does, she thinks he's just arrogant.

But even if he does: sometimes that doesn't matter. It makes sense, sort of. Hilary doesn't quite grasp it fully: she forgets easily that sometimes she feels things even when she isn't confused about them. She forgets, very easily, that other people are sometimes like her and sometimes not, because she can never figure out the rules of when they feel as she does and when they don't.

Everything she can think of to say feels wrong. Feels false. She doesn't want to. That's something.

She's quiet a long while. He puts on his shorts and she doesn't really think anything of that; she doesn't dwell on it. She doesn't wonder. She doesn't think ah, he is uncomfortable in his nudity right now, which might lead her to also think: ow.

Eventually, her brow wrinkling with effort, she says: "...What do you want me to do?"

It is terribly awkward now. To be asked what he wants. To want, rather pathetically, for her to stay -- but of her own volition, see, not because he asked her. Except he would be asking her now if he were to tell her. Ivan is silent a while.

"You should go home," he says at last. "You wanted to, and I'll not keep you here. But ... perhaps I'll follow. In a little while. If you don't mind."

Again, that rush of blood in odd directions that makes her feel the edges of her vision grow faint. He wants her to go home, and she panics. She thinks she's going to drop then, cry, beg, fall clinging to his knees and screaming into his skin please, please, don't. She'll be good, please just tell her what to do.

Hilary hardly even hears the next ten or eleven words. They rush in her ears, roaring not unlike a waterfall.

And then he says he might follow, and she doesn't hear any of the words after that, either. She thinks her knees are going to give out from relief this time, rather than panic. She exhales heavily, shakily, all sudden: "I would like that," she says, tight and earnest, hopeful, because that is, after all, what she wanted, too. To leave, and not be here, and not be in that bed, but not to be away from him, all the same.

It did not occur to her to ask him to come with her. Or tell him that she was uncomfortable staying in that bed. He's not the one who expects his mind to be read. That has always been Hilary.

Thinking this means he understands.

Hilary can be so impassive, her face smooth as a mirror. Yet right now, Ivan can see -- well. Something. He is not certain what, which emotions, why. But they are there, tumultuous beneath the surface. He can hear it in that shaking exhale. The words that follow.

That hurts, too. His brow furrows again. He wants to reach out to her, pull her near, embrace her. He doesn't; couldn't say why. Perhaps he fears rejection. Perhaps he thinks she wouldn't want him to.

So he keeps his distance, and he nods. "I'll get cleaned up, then drive myself. I'll be there soon."

Hilary nods quickly. If she says anything he might change his mind. If she doesn't obey, he might change his mind. If she displeases him again, he might change his mind. She nods again, then darts forward, hunching over, looking for all the world like she's going to... tackle him or something. But she just thumps against his chest, curled up tight, hiding her face, her damp hair touching his bare chest. She doesn't even wrap her arms around him. Still she squeezes him somehow, presses herself to him, and then she rapidly steps away, picking up her high heels, going quickly down the stairs.

Leaves her hundred and fifty euros on the bed with her panties. Leaves her golden bangles on the floor with her bra, her skirt, her blouse. Runs off with her Jimmy Choos, wearing her robe and carrying her little purse.