Ivan Press

Hilary de Broqueville

They go back to Paris for Christmas. It's Hilary's idea to return, and she has so few of those of her own -- though ever more, it seems -- and of course Ivan indulges her. They are set up in a townhouse for close to a month: the boy and the servants below, the highest set of rooms for Hilary herself. Perhaps Ivan stays the entire time. It is unlikely, though. They dine, and they stroll, and they show Anton the lights. Hilary makes breakfast on Christmas morning; it is one of the rare times when Ivan wakes in bed to find that she's left before he has.

For the first time, perhaps, Hilary has thoughts on gifts. She doesn't just buy Anton toys and clothes and whatever else comes into her head to get for him. There are presents under the tree for Ivan as well: a new watch that represents tens of thousands of dollars is the main event there. Silk ties. Gold cufflinks. The like. Nothing particularly intimate, but then: it is Hilary. She has trouble enough translating her thoughts and feelings into words, much less gifts. But the fact that the idea even had air and light to germinate inside her mind is... telling.

That's all behind them now, though. Christmas came and went. New Year's has come and gone. Spring is on the horizon, tantalizing but withholding. Nice is cool, and a bit rainy. They can afford to keep the pool filled, cleaned, and heated, but it is hardly used for now. Elodie does more baking than usual. Polina is away for the week, on a rare vacation split between visiting her family and taking time for herself. Miron is actually doing a form of preschool for Anton, with time set aside each day for language, for maths, for reading. He and Polina have been doing research on schools and reporting to Dmitri. No one is talking to Hilary about it yet, not in depth.

It's late morning, and the air has a bit of a bite to it, and the rain is a steady trickle from the sky. It sounds remarkable on the ocean, where Hilary is. Perhaps it sounds equally remarkable on the cobblestones of Nice proper, or on the windowpanes of Ivan's townhome or the roof of his car. Wherever he is.

His phone chimes. It is a message from Hilary. She doesn't always like texting very much, but it's efficient and she does seem to appreciate that.

Why don't you come for lunch? Stay for dinner.

Then, a rare follow up:

There are things I wish to speak of with you.

Christmas Day brings an obscene amount of presents for Anton. Toys from his father and his mother; action figures and building blocks and tricycles and all the like. A fucking hamster, too, which Miron will have to take care of because god knows neither Ivan nor Hilary will spare it any thought from here on out. Hilary, too, has her share of gifts: jewelry, scarves, purses, a pair of heels that only a man would buy for his lover; also, a new car. Because why fucking not.

More surprising, Ivan has presents. He is delighted, even if they are only the stereotypical gifts one receives in sitcoms and plays. He is casually dressed, but puts one of the ties on. It looks ridiculous. She tells him so, his strange and intoxicating lover. He kisses her indecently, and Anton is getting old enough that he is rebuked for it. He seems to find a strange sort of pleasure in that, too, because of course he does.

Some time later, it is New Year's. And then, it is Valentine's and there is dinner and there is rather vigorous fucking and then he is gone for a week or two. As luck would have it, he returns the morning she texts him. He receives the message on the way home from the airport, sitting in the back of whatever limousine Dmitri has procured for him.

Knave that he is, he texts back:

Are you cooking?

He never gets a response to that text. Perhaps she put her phone down and forgot about it. Perhaps her silence is an answer, as if he is supposed to imagine her scoffing, her rolling her eyes, her making some annoyed or disgusted comment about his stupidity. Either way, his phone doesn't chime again.

There's no new text from Ivan, either. An hour or so later, though, the front door to the villa opens. Ivan strolls in, slipping sunglasses off. His arrival surprises the staff, as it always does. Neither of them bother to keep the help informed of their comings and goings.

He heads for the kitchen first, doffing his lightweight blazer as he goes. It is cool outside, though hardly cold. Inside, there is a furnace, heating. Some windows are still open to let a little air circulate. The blazer ends up tossed over some credenza or endtable or other for someone to pick up. The sunglasses end up clipped in the collar of his shirt, which is open-collared and similarly lightweight, shortsleeved.

He has for her a little gift: a container of sfogliatelle; a hint to his whereabouts these past few days.

The rain is still coming down. The gravel driveway to the villa crunches under his tires. The sun breaks through grey clouds here and there, hints of a spring that is still a few weeks away. It's really quite beautiful, even with the inclement weather: it never becomes truly frigid here, so there are leaves for water to drip languidly off of. The breeze is bracing, and wakes one up every time it touches the face. The terra cotta is stained a deep red from the moisture, and the fountain in the central atrium splashes away regardless.

The villa has that sleepy quietude of a rainy afternoon: Anton is napping less these days but is down for one currently, and Miron is catching up on some work on a laptop on the long table that's inside the kitchen. Elodie is at the island nearby, has flour up to her elbows, and is occasionally tossing out phrases in French to see if Miron is learning. It wasn't in the original job description that he needed to know French, but they live in France now. His charge is speaking more French every day. So he has to know French. Somewhere, a maid is vacuuming, a dull hum in the air.

No one comes to greet Ivan, and for a while he wanders through the villa alone. Many of the rooms are cold, because they are not used. Others are cozy and warm. Fresh air isn't hard to find, all the same: this will never be the dusty, stuffy sort of mansion that Hilary grew up in, that Ivan once had on the lakeside, that Hilary despises.

Eventually he runs into someone. Maybe wanders into the kitchen where Elodie is kneading bread and Miron is researching schools and practicing his French. But eventually, someone tells him that Ms. de Broqueville has been at her cottage since last night. They haven't heard from her since she went down the path after Anton was put to bed last night.

That is where he goes, then, meandering down the winding path. Taking his time, because that's just the mood of this sort of day: grey, wet, cold in an inoffensive sort of way. Though he barged into the villa like he owns it (which he does), he knocks on the door of Hilary's cottage. He always does.

While he waits, he brushes a few raindrops off the thin cardboard box that contains the dessert. In the distance, the sea booms. Raindrops fall on tree leaves. Lunch, perhaps, is a scent on the air.

The trees are thinner at this time of year; some have leaves, some do not. Some have a faded color, others are still vibrant green. He sees her cottage sooner than usual, due to this; she is still hidden, but less so. It means he finds it easier to see her out on the porch that faces the sea than he normally would. She is under the overhang, sheltered from the rain, sitting in one of the low wooden chairs. Another seat is beside her. She is sipping a crisp white wine as she watches the rain on the ocean. And yes: he can smell lunch, some sort of stew simmering on the stove inside. Freshly-baked bread.

She looks up when he comes around the side of the cottage. Glances at him, then at the chair beside her. "Lunch is almost ready," is the first thing she says.

The second, when he is closer, perhaps when he has sat down and is pouring himself a glass from the chilled bottle between the chairs:

"Edmund Grey is dead."

He sees her before he reaches the door, and his path alters. He comes around the side of the cottage instead. The wind comes off the ocean, brings with it the scent of rain and salt. There is a seat for him, and he takes it without needing to ask.

Lunch is almost ready. He smiles to himself. His small present he hands to her. Then he reaches for the bottle, the glass.

Pauses when she speaks again, "Is that so? What did him in, the Wyrm, a rival, or one of those terrible children of his?"

Hilary is holding the present, the delicate Italian pastry, in her lap when she tells him. She is wrapped in a soft blanket from her bed inside, over a thick cable-knit sweater. She is in slim-fitting yoga pants of all things, with warm socks. He's hardly ever seen her wear such things, but she is in her retreat, she is at home, and she has never liked the cold.

She shakes her head a bit. "Miranda offered to look into the circumstances when she sent me the message, but-" a sigh, here, "I don't really care." Hilary pauses a moment. "I'm sure you could find out, if you really wish to."

Another drink of wine. "It... has gotten me thinking. About that time."

'That time'. After the world knew her as Dion's castoff, mother of a stillbirth, tragedy, open wound. When Anton was still a newborn, safely hidden away in Russia. When Edmund Grey and all his terrible children came sniffing after her, and what was her Cliath guardian supposed to do about it?

Hilary has dark circles under her eyes. She hasn't slept -- not enough, at least -- since she got Miranda's message. Was it last night? It had to have been. She sips her wine.

"That time. All of it." Deciding she didn't want to be sold from wolf to wolf until she was used up and discarded. Deciding to scare Edmund off with the true story of her childhood. Fucking Oliver. Being attacked by Oliver. Running out of the country, really, to get away from them all.

"I think I'm only just now realizing how much it changed everything."

She turns finally, looking over at Ivan. And for a moment, that's all she does: looks at him. His fair hair. His sun-touched skin, which also hints at where he's been lately. The line of his shoulders, the angle of his torso. The way he sits. The shape of his mouth. The dark glint in his eyes, which in another man would almost look innocent.

"We almost lost each other after, didn't we?" she says quietly, as though she hardly remembers. But how could one forget the way they fought, and how it went on for days, and how nothing he could do or say could placate her, how she tore at herself and the two of them and him,

came to Novgorod in the middle of the night to take her son away.

[CORRECTION: anton was actually like a year old. not a newborn.]

While she speaks, he finishes the pour. It is generous, a full glass of the clear white wine. While she speaks, he sets the bottle back on the little table. And while she speaks, he takes his first sip, eyes narrowed on the rain-silvered ocean.

While she speaks, he attends. He listens to every word, carefully, the way he always does when she speaks. Sometimes she thinks of him as a god. He never thinks of her as a goddess, but she occupies much the same space in his life that one would.

When she is finished, he glances at her, a sideways skate of his eyes. Another sip, and then he sets his glass down.

"Yes." He does not lie. He doesn't cushion it. "But it wasn't the first time we almost lost each other." Pause. "I hope it's the last."

She used to think of him as a god.

She doesn't anymore. Not really. And it's one of the thoughts that came to her over the night and morning: a memory of him, anguished and angry: I'm sorry I'm not a god!

He says it wasn't the first time. She knows it wasn't. They both know: they gave up on each other before that. It was just a little while before the day that Anton was conceived.

"It was different."

And that's true, too. Strange how it started: he had her followed one afternoon. That was all. She'd had her head smacked into a railing by an angry Galliard just a short time before that, Ivan knew she never took much care to protect herself, and... everything unraveled from there. With stunning, horrifying speed, everything seemed to fall apart.

"I... betrayed you," she says. "With Oliver." Looks at him again, closer, as though to make sure she isn't misremembering reality. "And you told me later, it hurt you. You didn't tell me then, because you knew I would fall apart. But you felt the way I did, when I found out you'd been --"

Hilary doesn't finish. He knows. They both remember. She isn't looking for him to answer, or confirm. It's as though she's only just know realizing: it all really happened. To her. To them.

She sips her wine. "I think I understand now, why I... was so angry. About everything. What I was really going through."

A breath, then, deep and steadying. "I'd like to tell you, if you don't mind terribly listening. I know it's all in the past."

When he looks at her again, it's a longer regard, his eyes moving over her thick sweater, her comfortable pants. Back up to meet her eyes.

"Why don't you come closer," he suggests. It's an affirmative of sorts.

Miracle of miracles: she doesn't scoff at him. She doesn't wince in disgust. She just glances at him. "I would. I think... I would prefer the space. For now." So she stays where she is. Takes a long drink of wine, then sets it down.

"When I was around the Greys, I felt almost... normal. It wasn't like being with other wolves, or with you. In some ways I was the sanest of the lot. Except perhaps that one son. The older one." John was his name. The Philodox. Not that she remembers. "But among them, I felt... that I was like them. They were like me. A mad little snake." He wasn't there when Oliver called her that. He doesn't realize those are his words. She never told him what Oliver said to her, that day at the yacht club. How he told her it was no surprise her baby died inside of her; she was just that toxic.

Her brow is furrowed a bit, as she remembers again. "Afterward, for the first time... I think I knew what I really was. And I hated it. And I didn't know how else to be. Or how to escape it, if I could. It was awful. I don't think, in all my life, I've ever been so afraid. Or so angry." It's saying something. She has spent her entire life in anger and terror. It shattered her quite early on; left her in pieces. But then -- she says -- something changed. She could see herself for what she was. She could feel it in a way she had learned to ignore.

"I think that is why I could not forgive you. For anything. There was nothing you could have said. Nothing you could have done. It was never about you. Not really." Having her followed. Her leaving the lake house. Sleeping with those other girls. Talking to her after, fighting with her -- none of it, really, was the problem. Hilary looks over at him. "I know it was a long time ago. But I wanted to tell you. I did not understand what was happening to me. What I was feeling. What I wanted. All I knew to do was... blame you. Make you fix it. But you couldn't. There is no way you could have."

Her face is anguished, for a moment. "I am sorry, Ivan," she says, without breaking, without being broken. Perhaps the first, truest apology she's ever given him. "I am... very glad we did not fall apart, then. We came very close."

They have a newfound comfort in each other that has developed secretly, silently, without their ever really noticing it. They must, for her to tell him she doesn't want to be closer and for him to accept this without skewing off into some petulant or paranoid tangent.

She stays where she does. He does too, though now he is watching her, turning his face and his body to her.

She speaks. He listens. She apologizes, as unheard of as the way she'd given him presents at Christmas. More. Surprise is a fish in the ocean of his eyes, flickering to the surface and then gone. He looks down, as though her naked honesty were too much for his modesty. He could parade her naked before a Halloween bacchanalia, but he can't in this moment bear to witness her truth.

His eyelashes move as he blinks a few times. Then he looks at her again.

"I am sorry too," he says softly. "That I did not ... I don't know. Keep Edmund Grey from you. Keep myself from doing the things I did. Betraying you." He sighs a little; runs a distracted hand through his hair, which is in need of a trim. "I have not always been a good -- mate, I suppose." A rueful pause. "I've rarely been one. But even when I am behaving my worst, you still mean the world to me."

Again and again, and now, his eyes find her.

"I am glad too."

That almost makes her laugh. When he apologizes for not being a better mate. She doesn't laugh, not really. A strange expression on her face instead: aching, and amused, and most suprising of all: understanding. Also, it is simply laughable to her that he. Would apologize to her. For not being a good mate.

"I know," she says quietly, when he says she means the world to him. They are looking at each other now. And she extends her hand to him, fingertips chilled from holding her wine glass, which she's switched to her other hand. "There is more," Hilary tells him then.

--

She goes on, her fingers entangled with his now. "I was awake most of the night, after hearing about Edmund Grey," she confesses. "At first I did not understand why it troubled me so. Why it brought so much up. It was years ago. But... it was when everthing changed. For me. For us. And I think it is because of how I felt when I was among them.

"They surrendered, Ivan," she says, her voice still low, barely audible over the rain. She does not tell him what they surrendered to. He knows; he must know. "They all learned it from him. His terrible children. To give in. No matter what it makes of you. What it makes you do.

"That is why I felt like I belonged with them."

Hilary breathes in deeply. So deeply that he nostrils flare, that color rises in her cheeks a moment. His hands (ever sensitive) and his senses (ever sharp) cannot miss the way her pulse thrums against his hand through her fingertips, her wrist. Her heart is pounding, however calm she looks.

"I think that is what changed everything for me. I saw them, and I saw myself. I saw my parents. I saw us." Her throat flashes white as she swallows, the light catching her pale skin and adoring it, as all light seems to adore their kind. "I... do not want to be that. Live my whole life under the pretense, sleeping through it when I cannot ignore it, and sometimes... destroying everything I touch." She exhales, shakily. "I know that I will never be quite right." No, that isn't what she means. That isn't the way to say it.

"I know I will never be sane."

Her lips press together. She does not take her eyes from him.

"That does not mean I must surrender to it. Or that you must. Or Anton."

Perhaps this is just a re-tread of other conversations they've had. He knows she has come so far; he's watched her. The way the pieces of her mind have, in places, sealed together again. The fact that she still has pills, but takes them less and less often. Gifts at Christmas. Ordering croissants for Anton and the servants. The books she has filled the house and her cottage with. Other moments, dozens of them, where she has seemed like the capacity for compassion or self-awareness has not utterly escaped her in this lifetime. Perhaps she doesn't need to say any of this.

Or perhaps the need to say this aloud, to be heard saying it, is a part of it.

--

"So that is where I stand," she tells him. "I will do what I can to fight against it. Teach Anton to fight against it. To not be... consumed. Or at very least, not quietly allow ourselves to be consumed.

"And so I have come to a decision," Hilary goes on, her hand actually a bit tight on his now. "But I must know if you are with me, in this."

[CORRECTION: everthing = everything. gud lawd.]

It is not a retread.

They have broached the subject before: the way she's changed, the way they've changed, the way they've left what they knew and were behind, started anew. The life they've carved out for themselves here. The covenants they've made to one another, spoken and unspoken. They've even spoken, albeit briefly, of their madness, their intrinsically flawed nature.

Never like this, though. Never so directly, so baldly. Such naked truth.

This time, his eyes do not shy from hers. His hand moves, a twitch like pain, when she calls herself not sane. Insane. He wants to deny her any flaw, but that would not be fair. She is not a god, no more than he is.

So he listens. And she lays it out for him: what she has contemplated, what she has concluded. What she has resolved. What she asks of him is at once so monumental and so miniscule that he is for a moment dumbfounded. A furrow in his brow; a quirk of his mouth that wisely never makes it to humor.

It is no laughing matter, even for one born to a new moon. No more than the Great War is. It is a Great War all its own: their private, personal war against the darkest shadows of themselves.

"Of course I am with you," he answers. His grip firms in turn. "Devushka, I wouldn't leave you to this alone."

"Good," she says, and exhales a bit: it's relief, because some part of her must have known that he might shy from this. He might say I can't. He might think it isn't worth it. He might think himself incapable. Some part of her must have had room to believe that she would be in this alone, with their son, trying to hold back the darkness.

Such a little sigh, for what must be potent relief.

One last sip, and her wine glass is empty. She doesn't move to refill it yet, though she does gently remove her hand from his. She sets her glass down on the table between them. Folds her hands among the folds of the blanket she's wrapped herself in. She looks at him, rather than at the sea.

"Then I want to have another child."

Now,

Ivan is truly speechless. He stares for a moment. Then he says it, the single most obvious and idiotic question he might have asked:

"What? Why?"

She's looking at him, and his reaction amuses her. She smiles. No: smirks. Looks away again, out at the ocean. The rain is slowing. Moving onward. There are more cracks in the sky through the clouds, more light streaming through.

"I've told you about my brother, haven't I?" she asks him. And maybe she has. In fits and starts, in dark moments, on in ones like this, he's gotten the full story. She was so young when he died. The way he died was so horrific as to be unthinkable. No one's mind could process that, much less a child's. Even if Hilary weren't a Silver Fang, something in that experience would have cracked her in half.

Rarely does she speak of him, though. Emmerich Agustin Laurent de Broqueville, namesake to their son, at least in two parts. Her same fine features, her same dark hair. His eyes were grey, though, dark as stormclouds. He was much, much older than she was. Close to adulthood already when their parents died. He was a named Cliath when he died. She was Anton's age, then.

"I miss him," she says, and whatever else he knows of Hilary's brother, this is the first time she has said such a thing. Her brow is furrowed a bit as she says it. "Not just him... who he was. I remember very little of that. But I have always felt his absence. There is much of our history and our family that I do not know, because I have forgotten, or because it was never told to me. He would have known. And had he lived, I would not have been so alone, always. There would have always been someone... who knew. Where we came from. What we had been through."

The smallest shake of her head. Hilary gives a tiny shrug, like an echo of that shake. "I want Anton to have that. Even if nothing should happen to you or I, I think it will make a difference. And... I want for the other one to know him, too. For them to know one another. In a way I can't. Because I'm... their parent."

She is quiet a moment, then takes a breath and looks over at him. "I also like what having Anton has done to me. How it has changed me. And you."

Ivan considers this. She released his hand some time ago, but it is only now that he thinks to pick his wine up again; to sip. While he listens he plays with the glass, wetting his finger on the condensation and running it along the rim to make it hum.

"I haven't any siblings," he remarks. "I suppose my parents were so distracted by their own individual, unintersecting lives that they never got around to producing any more children. So I don't know what I've missed.

"I understand, though. I think I do. Having someone else who shares the same roots, the same experiences -- that would be a valuable thing. Especially when we are who we are."

Pause. She was so brave. He should be too:

"When we are insane."

He looks at her again, and now he smiles. It is a different thing from his customary smirks; lighter, simpler. "But you absolutely hated being pregnant," he reminds her. "You hid yourself away in Mexico for six months, and you were quite cross when I came to visit."

"I don't think I would hate it as much now," she says. It's an easy answer for her to give, but she doesn't say it glibly. She's given it some thought. She looks at him. "For one thing, I know now that you aren't going to stop loving me. And I have servants now who don't belong to a controlling, obsessive mate."

She gives a small shrug. "In the long term, it is only a little while to suffer. It becomes worth it."

Hilary watches him. "Do you want to?"

"I want to." The answer comes oddly without pause; as though he's had it for some time now. "I'm just surprised you want to, too.

"I liked it when you were pregnant," he confesses. "Perhaps some stupid, Cro-Magnon part of me relished that reminder of your femininity. Fecundity." He makes a self-dismissive gesture. "Whatever it was. Or maybe some part of me believed or fantasized the child was mine, but it wasn't real enough yet to frighten me, and so I liked it. Or perhaps, perversely, I just liked how vicious it made you. Forgive me. I don't like it when you are unhappy, but I love it when you're mean.

"I liked being with you in Mexico, too. I always like it when we're somewhere together, hidden away. You know that. I liked the rich colors and earthy feel of that hotel we met in. Your cottage reminds me of it, a little.

"As for actually being a father of two -- well. I doubt it'd be much different than being the father of one." He is honest about this: "Especially when the work falls to others. And perhaps this time we'll have a little girl. I'd like that, I think.

"So yes. Let's make another beautiful little brat, darling, for the plebs to marvel at."

It actually surprises her a bit that he answers in the affirmative. She looks at him, and it shows that she's surprised. He cares for Anton because Anton is his, and because it pleases Hilary. This is what she knows to be true; to hear him say that he has an affirmative desire either way is intriguing to her. She can't quite wrap her mind around it, that he would agree to this for reasons other than indulging her.

One could wonder, then, why she asked. Maybe she just wanted to know, one way or the other.

A single brow raises when he confesses what he does. Liking her pregnant. Cro-Magnon lust for her fertility. She would smirk, but a moment later he is remembering: they did not know until it was born that the child was his. There was no way that delicate-featured, pale-haired child could have any relation to her dark, heavy-browed mate. Anton may have moods and whims that are eerily similar to his mother's, but to look at him, one would have to be blind how much he takes after his true father.

Well, Hilary does scoff when he says he likes it when she's mean. She rolls her eyes a bit, but not in anger.

She takes his hand again, as she watches the sea. Afternoon sunlight glints off of it, turns every chop into white gold. She listens while he speaks of being hidden away, of the similarities between hotel and cottage, Mexico and Nice. She doesn't pull away when he says he's not sure there would be much difference between being a father of one child or the father of two. In a way, she agrees, but the truth is: she also knows that they are wrong. It has to be different. She just doesn't know how, yet. And that is frightening. Tantalizing, too.

A girl, perhaps. She thinks she'd like that, too, but doesn't say it.

It will be different this time. All of it. It won't be an accident. The child won't be spirited away in the middle of the night. It will have its mother -- and often its father -- around more than twice during its first year of life. All of this will be different this time. Hilary knows that; Ivan must, too, no matter how glibly he speaks of it: another beautiful brat.

"Good," she says, not for the first time. Perhaps just to his assent: yes. He wants to. Good.

A child who won't be spirited away hours after birth, but instead live amongst its own blood and kin. A child who won't grow up in some small, chilly, ancient city of Russia, but instead on these sunkissed Mediterranean shores. A child who won't come to know its servants better than its parents --

well. That will likely still be true. But at least its parents will be around. Near. Graceful, charming strangers who float through every so often to baffle and bewitch.

Their fingers lace again. She watches the sea; he watches her. She is pleased. He finds he is too. His fingers tug on hers gently.

"Are you going to come closer yet?" Beat. Now he does smirk, "I don't plan to drag you to bed, if lechery is your concern."

"It rarely is," she says, of his lechery. After all: look at what she's done to him. Look at what they've become to each other. It didn't start out like this.

It started in a hotel room.

She slips her hand from his, and rises to her feet, holding the blanket around her for now. "Let's go inside for lunch. We can be closer there. We can turn the furnance up and strip down to our socks and roast alive while we feed each other. You can even fuck me, if we're so inclined."

He laughs aloud, watching her rise. What a queenly thing she is, he thinks. What a strange and rare jewel.

What he says, still smirking: "Roasting alive and fucking in socks. It's almost as though you wanted to avert that second child we just discussed."

She doesn't understand his joke. She doesn't understand --

and then it clicks. So she raises her eyebrows at him, walks inside, and leaves him to follow her.

--

Inside the cabin, the doors closed and the stove on, it's quite a bit warmer already. Not roasting alive temperatures, but warmer. And when he comes in, closing the door to the porch behind him, Hilary is facing him.

She drops the blanket. Then she strips. First the little yoga pants, peeling them down and off along with her panties. Then her sweater, up over her head and dropped to the floor. Then, without breaking eye contact or saying a word, she reaches behind her back and unhooks her bra. Slips that off and drops it, too.

Stands there a moment, in nothing but her cozy little socks, hands on her hips, looking at him for all the world like an empress daring an ambassador to insult her again.

A few seconds pass, and then she turns away, walking into the kitchen to check on the lunch she made for him.

If Ivan had issued something of a bluff, Hilary has certainly called it. She strips the one item, then the other. Then the rest of it, except for her socks.

She stands there a moment.

He stares.

She turns away. He follows a half-second later, past the cozy little dining table and the bookshelf, into the kitchen. It's a few degrees warmer here. She's been cooking. She's still cooking, checking on lunch. He palms her ass; runs his hand up to the curve of her back, and down again.

"Just to be clear," he says -- unnecessarily, perhaps, "I am quite inclined."

Hilary is standing over the stove, opening a steaming pot, stirring what's inside. Smells like meat and potatoes. Smells like spices and herbs. Smells good. Ivan follows her, strokes her ass and her back,

her ass again.

She ignores him. Tastes the stew; reaches for salt.

Undeterred and unhurried, Ivan's hand stays where it is, stroking. Ivan's lips join the fun a moment later, kissing her shoulder, her neck. Ivan's other hand -- provided Hilary hasn't simply walked away by this point -- courses its way around her waist a moment later. His fingers open over her belly, her midriff, find their way to her breast.

"Turn the stove off," he proposes. "Leave it. We can have lunch later."

She doesn't obey him, at least not right away. She stirs the food she's made, while Ivan strokes her ass. Her breast. His rage is a furnance all its own beside her, pulsing through his clothes and suffusing her skin. She can't be ignoring him; his hand is so terribly close to her cunt. His fingertips graze her nipple.

"I was just proving you wrong," she informs him. Glances past her shoulder at him, their faces close, their bodies closer. She turns the burner off. Moves the pot to a trivet. There's a small window open in the kitchen, the post-rain breeze coming through.

"Would you like to begin?" she asks him, all the same.

His laugh washes a breath over her shoulder. He lifts his head from where he is kissing her -- and kisses her. It is soft, open-eyed, a brief touch of their mouths while her head is turned. The lick of his tongue over her lips afterwards makes it less than chaste.

"What do you think?"

She tastes of wine. Faintly, but it's there. Just as she smells of rainfall, of the sea. More and more, his senses have turned to her to find her changing subtly to blend with the surroundings here, as though the changes in her soul cannot help but be expressed through her scent.

Hilary kisses him back. Opens her mouth just barely, enough to catch his lower lip between her own for a moment. Her lips are still parted when he licks her.

What do you think?

She considers this a moment. Her eyes darken and glance down. Then her gaze returns to his. She turns slightly, facing him. Shifts closer, her hand coming to rest on the outside of his pants, palm warm through the fabric, pressing against his cock.

Now it's his eyes that lower. He looks at her hand, so fine and elegant, pressed against him. He looks at her body. He looks at her mouth. He lowers his head to kiss her, his hands loose at his sides. There is elegance in that kiss too, so soft and precise.

And then opening, even as his eyes close. He starts undoing the buttons of his shirt, his knuckles brushing her skin as his hands descend. He pulls the tails out where they're tucked. He undoes his belt, and then his slacks. Sheds both in a single push.

Now he is as naked as she is. He still has his socks on. Normally he wouldn't -- he thinks it's an absurd and undignified look -- but it was part of the joke, was it not? It makes him smile to think of it, a curve of his mouth while he kisses hers.

He picks her up. He carries her out of that kitchen, around the corner, through the doorway, into her bedroom. Light bathes this room on sunnier days, but right now it is shadows and the aftermath of rain. Cooler, too, the air a sharper contrast to their warm skin. The bed is slept-in, familiar, smells of her. The sheets are soft against her back when he lays her down.

He's not smiling anymore. He is all intensity and heat, looking at her, running his paired hands from her waist to her shoulders, coming back to cover her breasts. His eyes are on her face when he bends over her, licks a nipple; sucks the other into his mouth, which is when at last he closes his eyes.

He kisses her, and her breath is a gasp that shoots back into her throat. Her hand grows more bold against his body, stroking him as he leans into her. Her mouth opens, her other arm wrapping around his head, her forearm pressed to the back of his neck. She is not concerned with elegance now, nor softness. And in this at least, whatever is between them, she has never been much concerned with precision.

Every button undone makes his knuckles brush over her, touching her skin, nudging her breasts. She doesn't help him; she seldom does. He manages to dislodge her hand when he undoes his slacks, dropping them, stepping out of them, but her touch returns a moment later. Now she wraps her hand around his cock in full, murmuring into his mouth. There's no shyness or coyness to this, not this time: she's jerking him off, and even being in the kitchen doesn't seem to bother her.

They don't stay there long, after all. He lifts her up, and her long legs wrap around his waist, her ankles crossing behind his back. She would agree with him normally about the socks; absurd, undignified, childish even. But she isn't looking at his feet. It's not far to her bed; this little cottage is essentially one large room, the kitchen opening to a spot with a table, and past the table the bedroom facing the little sitting room, the fireplace, the door to the porch and the ocean. Whatever windows were open are still visible; the air from them is still moving through the house. The day outside hasn't regained its sunniness yet; and what light comes in through the curtains is filtered, hazy, with a sort of wetness from both the sky and the sea.

One look at her bed tells him how little she slept last night, as thoughts of their past and their potential futures spun through her mind. There is an empty mug on the nightstand, which once held tea with honey. The pillow is dented but the bed otherwise still made; the blanket she dropped on the floor she must have tugged up from the foot of the bed, wrapped herself in it to try and sleep. It still smells of her. Everything here does. This is her den. Only her mate and her cub come here with any freedom, and even they must be invited. This is where Hilary lives, almost all of the time; where she makes tea when she can't sleep. Where she stays up reading by lamplight. Where she sleeps, so many nights.

This is where Ivan lays her down, covering her with his body, touching her, lifting the weight of her breasts in his palms, enveloping her in his mouth. Hilary exhales, tipping her head back; she has her hand on his scalp, her fingers stroking the curve of his skull. "Lick me," she whispers, as her own eyes close.

So much for not dragging her to bed -- though one might argue she wasn't dragged but carried. Borne aloft, prized, cherished like the -- what was it he thought outside? -- queenly thing she is. Into her somewhat rumpled bed they sink, where her legs unfold to let him loose.

He is at her breast when she asks something of him. There is some ambiguity there: lick her. Where? He doesn't ask. Sometimes these opportunities are rare. There's a glint in his eye; she would know, if she looked, what he's thinking. Well. She might know. One can never be certain. Hilary has come some distance, but she will never be one to easily understand the thoughts and desires of others.

He shows her, though. Perhaps that is a great part of why their entanglement has lasted: he is undeterred by her distance, her dissociation that can sometimes present as coldness. He persists. He pushes, sometimes. His mouth is hungry on her breasts, sucking at her nipples, the soft undercurve; nose brushing her skin on his way down. He makes his way past her navel. He slips off the bed, knees on the floor. He parts her knees with his hands; holds them apart as he licks her cunt.

There is a certain unhurriedness about him today. The rainy weather, perhaps. The low tide outside. The gravitas of their conversation. Or perhaps: just his mood right now, which is languid. He wants to enjoy her. He wants to love her, and his mouth on her is loving, lazy. He licks her as a beast might a particularly delicious meal, surrendering every now and then to a suck, a nuzzle, a nip with the lips.

After a while he sinks into it a little more. He parts her folds with those long fingers of his, and now his eyes open again. He watches her, as he often does -- as often as she lets him do this, anyway -- while he well and truly attends to that sweet, hot cunt of hers; that exquisite, sensitive clit.

If her hand has left his head, he pulls it back. He likes her fingers in his hair, it seems.

Once - and once only - has she asked for this. Only after several shots of tequila and in such a way as to cause them to fight terribly,

but this is not like that. She's naked, or near enough, her hair sprawled out over her bedspread, her skin warm to his touch. It seems to come up from within her, unquestioned and unquestioning; she does not ask him to lick her as though she thinks he'll refuse, and she does not ask him to lick her as though she is fighting with herself to do so. It comes out in a gasp, like a bird finally freed from a cage, loosed into the air, liberated.

Oh, and Ivan obliges. Despite what happened last time, and despite how she's reacted every other time. He indulges himself at her breasts for a while more, licking her there, sucking on her, but not for too long. Soon he descends, sliding off the edge of her bed to his knees on the rug beneath. Her fair thighs open for him, legs over his shoulders, and the scent of her fills him, surrounds him. The sight of her, too, becomes the central focus of his world: how wet she is, how deep and rich the pink, the quivering tenderness of her. Soon, then, the taste of her, salty and sweet at once, unique in the sense that one never wants it at all until one wants it very badly indeed.

Which he does. Which he shows her.

Hilary groans. She does not seem to be wracked with sudden regret, jerking away from him, crawling up the bed. She just seems eager, and perhaps this, too, is the gravitas of their conversation, the languidness of a rainy afternoon. Perhaps it has a bit to do with the glass and a half of wine she's had, and a night with perhaps an hour or two of sleep and no more. Her defenses are down. Neither Ivan nor Hilary herself is broken against those walls that are usually so firmly in place. So he licks her and she arches instead of recoiling; he opens her and is not the only one who enjoys it.

Looking up her body, he sees her reach blindly with one hand, hand grasping at her pillow. She pulls it over her face and cries out into it, louder than before, and this is what he's treated to as he circles her clit with his tongue. Her hips wind under his hands; her moans muffle themselves in the pillow. Her other hand is on the bedspread beside her; this is the one he moves to his hair, and she grasps him, instead.

Never has she been so willing, so pliant, so eager. Never, not in all her many submissions, has she ever submitted like this: not to brutality but to pleasure; not to him, even, but to her own body.

Ivan is unabashedly enjoying this. He licks and nuzzles, laps and sucks; he eats her up as though she were the finest meal, the richest wine. Her hand is in his hair and his hand is -- well, one is on her breast, his arm lean and hard along the line of her body. The other is on himself, stroking his cock in these lazy, languid pulls, taking his time because he isn't trying to get off. He just wants to share this with her.

He does share this with her. Every shiver through her body mirrored in a shift of his balance; every twist, every shimmy, matched with a subtle movement of his own. He stays with her, pleasuring her; keeps his mouth on her and his hand on her and his attention -- every bit of it -- on her. She's moaning into a pillow now. He laughs, a dark and delighted sound. Sometimes he calls her terrible things, but tonight it's all sweet nothings:

darling and delicious little pussy and such a sweet, sweet devushka.

--

He has her close to orgasm when he pauses. When he lays his palm over her pussy as though to keep things just as they are. She's so wet and it's on his face, his chin. He sits back on his heels. He still has his cock in his hand and he's still stroking it slowly, slowly, and now his palm over her pussy has shifted; he's sliding his fingers into her. His eyes are dark, pupils huge. He licks his messy lips like an animal.

"So tight," he tells her. "So wet. How would you like to come, darling?"

There is (still, always) a part of her that resists this. That is ashamed. That is overcome. Tonight, however, there is another part, stronger for once, that not only bears it but enjoys it. Asked for it. Whispers in her ear that maybe this time, she's earned it.

That voice sounds an awful lot like Ivan's, murmuring between strokes of his tongue on her clit and his hand on his cock: darling, delicious, sweet, beautiful. She writhes for it, her body moving beneath his arm, her fair skin flushed with color, explosions of pink across pale cream. She shudders, and her voice shudders, even muffled behind the pillow. Perhaps he leaves her that: she can share this with him, but some part of her still must hide. Perhaps he can see that it helps her.

Hilary is sweating after a while. It would take such a long time, if he weren't so very good at this. She might fight him eventually, pull away, if he weren't so eloquent with that tongue of his, if he didn't know her so well. She's quite close when he pauses; she's dripping, and the wetness slicks on his palm when he covers her. She lets out a moan, helpless-sounding, but doesn't take the pillow off her face.

But his question gets only a sort of... awkward silence. A confusion.

Somehow,

amidst all this,

he finds her overwhelmingly endearing. It's her silence. It's that confusion -- the fact that she's confused, and the fact that she reacts by saying nothing at all. By becoming rather still and silent, as though if she simply keeps quiet enough long enough, it'll simply pass her over.

She's not wrong. He touches her -- almost thoughtfully, his fingers inside her, his thumb rubbing her clit. He kisses her thigh softly, almost reverent.

"Okay," he whispers. It is a certain forgiveness. Okay: she doesn't know what to say. Okay: she doesn't know what to do. Okay: she doesn't know what he means, or what he wants. All that is okay. What she has given him already will have to be enough.

His mouth finds her cunt again. His tongue licks past his fingers; he licks her clit the way he does, so fucking expertly, sinking into what he does, giving himself over to it even as he urges her -- with touch, with tongue -- to give herself over, too.

Truth be told, many other women - almost any other women - would have had an answer. Might have grabbed him by the hair and shown him exactly what to do with that teasing, questioning mouth of his. Or, depending on mood, might have dragged him up the bed and wrapped their legs around him. Perhaps other women have, back in those days when there were other women.

Not Hilary.

She has never been like other women, not most of them and not many of them and, truthfully, like no one else he's ever encountered. She's a mad, vicious, selfish thing, who has little for him much of the time but cutting words or scathing looks. And then she is unexpectedly, inexplicably endearing. A crack opened in her, some years past, and what has been spilling out is small and uncertain and wondrous, easily blown to pieces by a dark gust of wind from the depths of her howling soul. There are moments like this: she has surrendered to herself, she has believed for just long enough that she is deserving of such attentions and that they aren't quite so frightening, and then Ivan asks her what she wants and she has no answer. One doesn't entertain wants when surrendered.

At least, Hilary doesn't.

It doesn't last too long, though; he doesn't tease her. He doesn't laugh at her, or question her further. He murmurs assent, and acknowledgement, and understanding. Descends upon her again, not making her think, not making her decide, because sometimes when she is quite vulnerable there is nothing more bewildering and frightening to her than deciding. He knows. Draws her back into it, brushes aside those unwelcome thoughts and ideas that plague her so. Gives it to her again.

Spends what time he needs to, building her back up again. Helping her forget the pause, the gap, the white space that opened up and yawned hungrily beneath her. She whimpers, and slowly, slowly this time, falls back into it. Her fingertips - and yes, sometimes her nails - rub across his hair, press into his scalp. Soon he has her moaning again. Has her, even,

discarding that pillow so she can breathe properly, turning her head to the side, clutching at the bedspread, crying out loud now, as her orgasm first

tightens inside of her, coils more and more closely in on itself until she can't bear it anymore, she is at the very knifepoint of collapse,

and then the fall. The panting, helpless plummeting that has her grinding against his mouth, choking on her own outcries, coming in a way she hasn't in ages, in forever.

Times like this Ivan can be rather relentless. Ruthless, even -- the way he goes at her, keeps at her, takes her up and over and keeps hold of her, keeps doing what he's doing to her, until she's a shaking, shivering, sweating scatter.

There's a pillow on the floor. There's a hectic flush to her fair, fair skin. There are strands of hair across her face and for no reason he can name he finds this intensely erotic. She's still writhing, arching, grinding against his mouth, but he's lightening up at last. Those driven, focal flutters of his tongue have settled into something slower, relaxed; he licks her up like he simply enjoys the taste of her. Which he does.

Eventually her hand loosens in his hair. And his hand opens over her breast, rubbing palm to nipple, lazy circles. He sighs. He sounds pleased, fulfilled. He climbs up the bed and gathers her up and kisses her, filthy mouth and all. With a hint of a smirk -- or is that a smile? -- he leans off the bed, picks up the pillow.

Drops it near her hips. Takes her by the waist and turns her over, lays her over that pillow, and now she has to know what he's after. She has to know, long before he drops his hands to either side of her shoulders, long before he rubs his brow to the back of her neck, nudging aside her hair with his nose so he can kiss her skin.

"You can handle a little more, can't you?" he murmurs. He's touching her again, exploring her cunt with his fingertips, rubbing the pads of his fingers from her opening to her clit, and back.

He is terribly good at this. The heights of it. The slowing-down. The way he licks her more slowly now, avoiding her clit for a little while. Wisdom, there, too: she might knee him in the skull if he teased her directly, while she's still shaking like this, still lost in it.

Hilary's entire body is overcome, like someone with a fever taking hold of their brain. She shudders, but he knows well enough to leave her be: it is warm enough in here. It is not too warm. She will return to baseline. She'll survive. He's done far more to her. He's lent her out to strangers. He's beaten her til her skin threatened to split. Hilary is, at least physically, much stronger than she looks, with the regenerative tenacity of being half-blooded and the stamina of a disciplined, highly trained dancer. She will be fine.

And yet times like this, it's hard to miss that there is always more to it than what her body can handle. The rest of her is a crystal chalice, covered with a spiderweb of cracks. Even a tone pitched at the wrong frequency might shatter her. Perhaps Ivan, observing her as he strokes her nipple and crawls up the bed after her, can tell what care must be taken.

He almost always can.

She doesn't kiss him back. Can't, yet. Dimly and distantly she is aware of the way he moves, reaching for the throw pillow on the floor. It, like her bedspread and so much of this strange cottage, is quite colorful: a textured mandala of gold and scarlet and turquoise, the fibers soft and a few of them moist from her moaning mouth, her sweating brow. No matter; it is still useful for what he intends for it. A little whimper escapes her as he pulls her down toward him, turns her over, arranges her over that pillow so that the curve of her ass is angled towards him. A shudder of a wholly different sort goes through her.

A different sort of gasp, too, as he touches her.

She doesn't answer. Surely he knows.

He does know. He knows the way he knows her body: by touch and by intuition, because with Hilary communication is often wanting. He must be very careful, sometimes. She is cracked. She could shatter. She wouldn't -- couldn't -- even warn him before she does.

She is not shattering right now, though. She has been pushed past the boundaries of the ordinary, the blander spaces where she usually exists. She has not yet been pushed to the edges. And she can handle a little more. He can tell by the way she responds; that gasp, that shudder.

He kisses the nape of her neck. It is loving, very tender. One hand leaves the bed to guide his cock into her, and that too is loving, very tender. He is not rough with her today, though he still presses his knuckles to the small of her back. Holds her there, holds her down ever so gently, while he starts fucking her.

Her skin seems luminous against the rich colors of her bedspread. Her hair is lustrous-dark, moving as she does -- echoing the quickening pace of their coupling, the faster harder rhythm he sets. He has both hands on her body now, one holding her where she is, the other reaching under her to touch her, tease her.

"I love it when you come," he whispers, and it's okay if she has no answer to it. "I'm going to make you come again."

There's the arch in her back, and the opening of her legs against that pillow. The way she falls into place for him. By these things, and subtle other shifts: he can tell. She can handle a bit more.

She wants more.

That kiss on her neck means almost nothing to her - or she thinks it doesn't. It does matter. It's how she knows that it's him. It's how he reminds her that this is more than any of her stupid, howling boys or that brute Oliver Grey. It's how she knows, without even realizing she knows, that she is neither using nor being used. That's the pretense they both avoid breaking though, isn't it? But he would never fuck her like this if he didn't adore her the way he does. She would never let herself be broken down so far if she did not love him in return.

And then there's simple fact of the sex itself: she groans when he presses his cock into her cunt. She opens a little more for him, welcomes him, arches her back to take him. She likes it. She fucking loves that cock of his; she loves his knuckles on her back and loves how he holds her down while she squirms. She's so close to her orgasm still that her cunt is pulsing around him, enveloping him, slicking him easily. She bites her lip while he slides inch after inch into her, lets it go when he starts fucking her.

Giving it to her.

Nailing her.

Fucking her.

Can't bite her lip anymore because she's crying out, some wordless affirmative whimper every time he thrusts into her. She's louder, the harder he makes it for her. Truth be told, he hardly needs to reach for her the way he does. She's going to come anyway. Look at her, moving up on her forearms, spreading her legs to take him deeper, her hair and her tits both bouncing in time with what he's doing to her. "Fuck me," she gasps, which isn't really an answer, which has nothing and everything to do with what he said. "Oh, fuck me with that... beautiful hard cock. Fuck me, Ivan."

Of course he hardly needs to touch her the way he does. He does it anyway; need is not the point. Want is the point -- that, and a certain strange generosity. He loves it when she comes, after all.

And she does have an answer this time. What she says makes him laugh. It could be cruel, could be mocking, but it isn't. It's something dark and warm, scandalous and appreciative. He never stops; keeps fucking her just like that, smooth and deep. His hands move. That hand on her back opens, runs up her spine. Grips at her shoulder for a moment, then drags back down, fingers leaving transient white tracks across her skin that just as rapidly fill back in. Mark of life, that: blood moving through tiny capillaries with every beat of her heart.

He leans over her. His chest to her back, his arms around her waist. His weight on her for a moment, then lifting as he sets on hand down on the bed again. The other finds its way back, back between her legs.

"Look how beautiful you are," he mutters, meaning the flow of her hair; the coil of sleek muscle in her back; the grip of her hands in the sheets. Meaning the way she looked in cabled sweater and thick socks, perhaps, watching the sea and the rain. Meaning who she is now, what she says now and what she does. Meaning all of it, none of it; meaning

the way she gasps when he touches her, the way her breath stutters when he drives into her. His hand covers hers, grips hers. He kisses her skin, tastes sweat; fucks her cunt, tastes paradise.

It's her orgasm that sets him off this time. Something about those scattering, shattering sounds she's making. Something about the shuddering in her body and the sense of tension and release, the pulsating of her cunt, the pull of her hands on his. Something about that, and everything that came before, that makes this all suddenly too much to bear. He has no words. He has nothing but a raw sound, far more feral than he pretends to be; that and the way he pushes her down, fucks it into her, groaning.

He covers her, when it's over. His weight upon her again, his hand still caught somewhere between her body and the pillow, her thighs and her pussy. He kisses her behind her ear, meets mostly hair. Lazily he pushes those strands aside and tries again. Lips upon skin this time. He sighs, pleased.

It's raining again outside. After a while he notices: the outside world beginning to filter in once more.

God, the way she reacts when he claws at her back: lightly, but not gently, dragging his nails across that soft, delicate skin. She arches, lifting herself off the bed, rolling her body into the path of his hand,

fucking him back a little faster, there, a little more eagerly. It's nothing like what he did to her in Montreal with the cat o'nine tails, and the marks will be gone this time tomorrow if not sooner, but all the same, she revels in it. She rolls around in the sensation, the sting, the suddenness of it, the possessiveness of it. It stings again when he covers her, and she gasps, her hair hanging down, her mouth opening in a soft groan when he presses her to bed and reaches for her cunt.

That groan becomes a sort of whine, a squirm, as though she is at once trying to escape him and trying to fuck him harder. Get him to fuck her harder, maybe. She bucks at him until he does, fights his rhythm until he covers her hands, holds her there, starts nailing her again.

--

It's not one of those times when Ivan walks down the crooked path to her cottage and the screams are almost loud enough to reach the main house. It's not one of those times when she leaves for his townhouse and they are all silently but deeply grateful that Ivan has this other place to take her.

No, today it was... this. Which is almost normal for them. This is, for the two of them, actually very gentle. They did, after all, just decide to have another child together. They did, after all, just examine their pasts and consider their futures. Of course they aren't in one of their harrowing 'playful' moods.

Afterward Hilary is catching her breath, panting against her quilt, wrapped in his arms, covered by his hand, waiting for her sweat to evaporate and her skin to cool. She lets him nuzzle her hair aside, kiss her ear. He listens to the rain, which has come back to saturate the afternoon once more. She listens to his breathing.

--

Time comes when he rolls away a bit, just enough that she shifts, can feel her joints again, turns to face him. Her bed is not narrow, but it is not terribly large; it really is meant, most of the time, for just one person. But not so small that there isn't space for him, room for him in this oddly warm, oddly colorful place that a dark, cold thing like her feels safe. Feels... herself.

Has discovered that she has a self.

And a bit later: "I meant to say," she murmurs, "da, moy vladelets."

She doesn't say to what she intended to say this. Maybe some dark, heated question while he was fucking her. Who even knows. Maybe she just wants to show him: she has been practicing. Her pronunciation is coming along quite nicely.

Her eyes drift closed, then open again, in a slow, animal blink. "I'm hungry. It's all cold by now, though. Selfish man."

They listen to each other. The rhythms of their bodies, finding balance again. They listen to the world too: the whisper of wind, the rush of rain, the distant and everpresent boom of the ocean.

Beautiful here, in their beautiful hidden retreat. Beautiful, at the edge of the mid-earth sea.

His eyes open when she speaks. Da, moy vladelets. The corners of his mouth turn up, a secret and pleased sort of smile, almost feline. He reaches over and touches her, heavy and affectionate and quite utterly possessive, as though he had every right to touch her. His hand weighs her breast, slides down her waist, finds a comfortable perch on the rise of her hip.

"Moya krasavitsa," he whispers.

And then she is complaining again. And his smile becomes a grin, a silent laugh. He makes no move to get out of bed, though he does roll on his back. Stretches, long and luxurious, elongating that lean and supple body. Relaxing at the end of it, his hand again falling over her hip. The other hand, this time.

"It was stew, wasn't it? It'll reheat well. We'll eat it in bed like barbarians, tearing bread with our hands."

"We shall not," she retorts, her drowsy comfort taking absolutely none of the edge out of her voice.

She doesn't move to get up, either. The rain coming back has turned the afternoon light hazy again through the windows. It's a sleepy sort of day, and she is glad she summoned him. His arm over her hip is pleasantly warm as her skin cools. She can smell the sea through a cracked window, and the rain, and the woods. She is less pleased that he did not rise immediately to bring her food, despite her refusal to tear bread and be like barbarians with him in her cozy bed. On the other hand: almost no part of her expected him to hop up and go fill bowls of stew for them. And this, in an odd way, comes back to pleasing her.

Hilary shifts a bit. She comes closer to him, tucking her toes beneath the muscle of his calf. She does not put her arm around him or over him, but tucks it close to her body, folded between her breasts and his side. Rests her head on his shoulder, hair spilling hither and yon. Her eyes close.

"Would you like to watch me dance, later?" she asks him, from where she's arranged herself for a midafternoon nap. "Before supper."

A beat.

"I am going to make tamales."

She doesn't wrap her arm around him, but he does: takes her hand and draws it over his chest, around to his side. Then, completing the motion, he slides his arm around her, too. There they are, then, gloriously naked except for their socks, sprawled abed with the rain falling softly outside.

"I would love to," he says. He raises his head a few inches, nudges his socks off. Wiggles his toes in the open air, setting his head back down. A huff of a laugh, "Tamales? That's not your usual fare."

There are times when she would slap his hand away to communicate her desire to stay just as she is. And he feels it, for a moment: resistance, refusal, a tension in her arm he seldom encounters. And then she relents. That's as unusual as how close she comes to him now; normally she is so... all or nothing. And it is so usually nothing.

But she lets him draw her arm over his body, and she isn't even passive about it, in the end: her hand rests against his side. She holds him. She seldom holds him. Even when he shows her he wants that.

Holds him now.

"You think that?" she murmurs, idly and rhetorically. She decides to dismiss it: "I suppose you haven't had much of my Mexican cooking." Another beat, longer, and then she does something startling: she reflects. Ends up saying:

"I suppose my mind is on past mates, official and potential."

Clothed or unclothed, they make a beautiful pair: slender and regal, secretly savage. Her arm is alabaster to his gold. There's only a little give to his body; so much of him is lean and hard, though never chiseled the way some of her stupider boys were. His hand grazes her arm idly. He shifts a little, looking at her.

"I suppose I haven't," he replies, "though there was that catfish once. Delicious."

She surprises him. His eyes flicker. He settles back, eyes on the ceiling. No high soaring spaces here; everything small and cozy, close. After a moment's thought he parries with a jest: "Please, no kidney pie or jellied eels next."

Predictably, she makes a vaguely disgusted noise. His affection for bottom-feeders. Revolting. If only she'd known some of his friends in Chicago. Or any other number of cities. Who knows what sort of sound she'd make then?

He jests, though, when she mentions her thoughts. Her mates... Dion. She doesn't answer for a moment. Her mind turns over what he said: she thinks he means Grey. Grey was English, wasn't he? She never cooked for him. She thinks of jellied eels, which she knows how to make but could never eat. Reminded her too much of... other things. Things she's seen. Things she remembers only on a primordial, panicked level. Kidney pie isn't quite as bad, but she's never much liked pies in general. Making them, yes. Cutting them open and the hot red and brown chunks spilling out onto a pristine white plate: she has a strange fascination with that, too, even if she doesn't quite enjoy eating them. Not that she enjoys stew much, either. It's so heavy. But she thought Ivan would like it, with the rain and the chill in the air and the way he likes to pretend to be barbaric sometimes.

This is what she thinks of, while she's not answering him. It isn't quite that she is hurt that she shared her contemplations and he brushed them aside with a joke, or suddenly angry; she simply sees it as a lack of interest on his part, and so she does not continue speaking.

Her eyes remain closed. Her arm remains over his. Her breath leaves her nostrils, hitting his skin where her face is close to him.

And so they lapse into silence. And her breathing grows even, and perhaps she is treading the edges of sleep when he speaks again. The sound vibrates through his chest into her skin an instant before it reaches her ears:

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to make light of your thoughts. I suppose I don't particularly like being reminded of your mates, official or potential. Or that I'll never be amongst their number."

His hand wraps around her forearm, gentle. He looks at her.

"Officially, anyway."

She is, in fact, close to sleep. Despite her hunger, she has still had only a few hours of sleep in the last twenty-four. She was up all night, watching the sea, listening to the rain, trying to read, unable to stop thinking. Sunrise was a godsend; it's a miracle she waited as long as she did to reach out to Ivan, but then: it's Hilary. Reaching out to someone who loves her when she's struggling is far from the first thing that comes to mind.

Her eyes open drowsily next to his chest as he murmurs to her. Forgive him. She listens, though, to what comes after that: listens to him, and not the myriad crashing reactions in her own mind. She is too sleepy right now to hear them, anyway. But his voice cuts through, clear as a bell. It reminds her of the sunrise today.

The ending: never.

officially.

makes her breath pause a moment. A hitch, nearly soundless, except to someone holding her naked in bed. Except to him, more aware than most even on his worst day.

There is a pause --

a space there, scarcely wider than a breath, where he is looking at her and she is looking at him and he is seeing her, clearer and more deeply than perhaps anyone else on this earth ever could. And what is there to be seen is, perhaps, far more complex and profound than anyone else on this earth would give her credit for.

She's no stranger to being wanted. All those mates of the past, true or otherwise, wanted her: but they wanted her in a very specific way. They wanted her beauty and her grace and her elegance and the implicit status that comes with having her. Someone like her, anyway. The someone they all thought she was, demure and submissive, a lovely trinket to hang from their arm. They all shrank away when they began to perceive the depths inside her, the darkness of which she was capable. Edmund Grey ran away when he realized it. Espiridion Durante began to hate her for it. Only that first one, that beautiful young Frenchman, was drawn to it -- but then, he had his own darkness, didn't he? And anyhow, he died so young.

Ivan wonders if Espiridion has died yet. Wouldn't that be poetic, if each and every man she's been through was dead already.

But then, that's not the point. The point is: complexity. Fold upon fold, pattern upon pattern. Not a smooth and gleaming hollowness at all, not a mirror in which his own brilliance can be reflected back at him -- but something dark and organic and turbulent, like a trench in the ocean. And yet she is not all coldness and darkness and howling, crushing depths. Not anymore, anyway. There is something else inside her, realizations, understandings, connections forming, sparks sputtering fitfully across synapses that have come awaken some three-odd decades late. That's what he's looking at, when he looks at her the way he does: so intently, so searchingly. That's what he's looking for, though sometimes it's hard not to wonder if he's just like all the others. If he isn't seeing in her what he wants to.

So easy to do that, when she's so silent and still. So easy to see his own light and call it hers.

He puts his hand on her face. He touches her cheek, strokes the tapering edge of her brow. He touches her like he might read something from it, and at the end of it he puts his face close to hers, his forehead touching hers.

A whisper: "Would you give me a different answer now?"

[DLP!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )

[screw that i had 4 succ]

On the surface, all Ivan can tell is that Hilary wasn't expecting that: for him to allude to such things, again. She understands it, of course: men and their possessive natures, the claims they like to lay on her. Perhaps that's unfair, but to her credit, most of the men she has encountered who expressed such desire to have her, for their own and forever, have not been men at all. What is culturally pressed into the minds of billions of human men is something in blood and spirit of the garou, and even there the desire to mate for life is warped by an upbringing in a world that twists such partnership into ownership. And maybe that is what Ivan would think: she is unhappy that he brought that shit up again. Having her as his mate. Whining at her like one of her howling schoolboys, wishing to have her for his own forever and ever and... ugh.

But that is not it, and he knows it. It is a guess at first, a subtle thread through his mind that in a fraction of a second he knows to be true. That isn't Hilary's reaction at all. It's something far rarer, far more uncanny: she hadn't thought that mentioning them would make him think of such things. It really didn't occur to her that discussing Edmund Grey's death, its impact on her, and the memories it brings up of Dion and Dominique, would make Ivan think of his own place in her history, or her future. Her life. Her heart. And that is perhaps the most surprising realization; Hilary, in that little hitch of her breath, is noticing yet again that Ivan exists outside of her, that he has feelings of his own, and she is remembering what she always seems to forget: that she can hurt him. Usually without even trying.

Almost always, without even trying.

Still. It's not guilt or self-recrimination that he is digging out of that singular breath, his senses and his mind so sharp and so attuned to her that he is calculating all of this in hardly more than a moment. Hilary is not stupid, and she is not terribly forgetful about the things that matter to her. Those things are so few, after all. She very well remembers the day that Ivan gave her that blood-red diamond, and how - impulsively, ardently, thoughtlessly - he said Marry me. It was years ago. It was the first time. It was not the last. And she remembers every time they've spoken of it, fought over it, until the mere thought of it was something they were both simply (seemingly) resigned to: they must not make anything official, because he will grow bored of her and leave her, or he will hate her for the way she binds him to her, or she will feel choked by the grip of his love, or whatever other truths they have supped on and sipped at over the years.

Right now, Hilary thinks of all that, feels all the times she has rejected him like they are happening anew, and for the first time is laying those out parallel to other times. She lays one truth, believed in her bones, next to another truth, experienced today, and yesterday, and a year ago.

When Edmund Grey approached her 'guardian' to seek a claim to her heart and body, they both submitted to it, but Hilary - in the end - could not bear it. She would not be sold again. She would not be owned by another wolf. So they undid it. They made it not so. She drove him away

with a story

that Ivan has also heard. And accepted.

When she broke faith with him, Ivan forgave her. Swallowed his pride, his pain, and perhaps even some measure of fear, and let her stay. Let her be. Even more of a miracle: he did tell her, eventually, the truth of what she had done to him. But still he did not leave her.

When Hilary almost left him, when she was breaking his heart and so he broke faith, it wasn't boredom that drove them apart, or hatred. It wasn't even, really, that she felt stifled or choked by him. He was never trying to own her. He was simply trying not to lose her. Not to another wolf, but to something far worse, and far more permanent, than an affair. To being broken on another wolf's rage; to death.

They have traveled the world together. They have found this odd rhythm: traveling together sometimes. Ivan traveling alone, at others. Living apart, and yet together. He is bound to her, by faith and blood and spirit, and has not grown bored of her. He has gone far, but always returned. Never with hatred, or disgust. Even as she changes, even as his restlessness cements its place in his being, they have been years together like this. Everything she asks of him, he gives: a home for Anton, a secret place for her, a separate place for him. He shows Anton affection here and there. He has not broken faith with her, nor she with him. Even tonight: she asked him to try and fight their insanity together, and he is willing. Another child, she said. And yes, he said.

And none of it has made him resent her. Want to escape her.

That is what is settling in Hilary's heart, and in her mind, as she catches that breath, as her hand flattens and then curls against his side, holding him a bit more tightly: nothing she has done has made him abandon her, or love her less. But far deeper than that, underneath the layers of her self that even Hilary has trouble excavating:

nothing he has done, and nothing she has become, has made her love him any less, either.

She is beginning to think that nothing could.

There is a pause --

a space there, scarcely wider than a breath, where he is looking at her and she is looking at him and he is seeing her, clearer and more deeply than perhaps anyone else on this earth ever could. And what is there to be seen is, perhaps, far more complex and profound than anyone else on this earth would give her credit for.

She's no stranger to being wanted. All those mates of the past, true or otherwise, wanted her: but they wanted her in a very specific way. They wanted her beauty and her grace and her elegance and the implicit status that comes with having her. Someone like her, anyway. The someone they all thought she was, demure and submissive, a lovely trinket to hang from their arm. They all shrank away when they began to perceive the depths inside her, the darkness of which she was capable. Edmund Grey ran away when he realized it. Espiridion Durante began to hate her for it. Only that first one, that beautiful young Frenchman, was drawn to it -- but then, he had his own darkness, didn't he? And anyhow, he died so young.

Ivan wonders if Espiridion has died yet. Wouldn't that be poetic, if each and every man she's been through was dead already.

But then, that's not the point. The point is: complexity. Fold upon fold, pattern upon pattern. Not a smooth and gleaming hollowness at all, not a mirror in which his own brilliance can be reflected back at him -- but something dark and organic and turbulent, like a trench in the ocean. And yet she is not all coldness and darkness and howling, crushing depths. Not anymore, anyway. There is something else inside her, realizations, understandings, connections forming, sparks sputtering fitfully across synapses that have come awaken some three-odd decades late. That's what he's looking at, when he looks at her the way he does: so intently, so searchingly. That's what he's looking for, though sometimes it's hard not to wonder if he's just like all the others. If he isn't seeing in her what he wants to.

So easy to do that, when she's so silent and still. So easy to see his own light and call it hers.

He puts his hand on her face. He touches her cheek, strokes the tapering edge of her brow. He touches her like he might read something from it, and at the end of it he puts his face close to hers, his forehead touching hers.

A whisper: "Would you give me a different answer now?"

She's so easy to frighten away. Absurd, when one considers how little fear she shows in the face of things that could actually hurt her: a sea, when she can't swim. A wolf when she insults him. Even more bizarre, when one thinks of how frightening she can be, herself. But it's easy to see that shedding light on her, on what's interior, can make her skitter away and wrap herself up in the shadows that both unnerve and comfort her. It hardly matters if it makes sense; most people's choices seldom make sense.

So Ivan can tell, as he comes closer, rests their brows together, touches her face in a way that shields it somewhat from the hazy afternoon light, that this helps her. Hides her a bit, when his comment and his question threaten to bring so much up to the surface.

And he can tell, because he has somehow come to know her and understand her, how remarkable it is when she simply whispers back:

"Perhaps. But you aren't asking right now."

There is something of a tell in that, too: that right now, this moment, would be wrong. For her, at least.

Anyway. She curls closer to him. She tucks her head under his chin and wraps her arm more fully around his body. She buries her face in his chest, aligns their bodies and presses them together.

Even if that's all she can manage, even if immediately afterwards she must hide, it is something. It seems to be enough. He wraps his arm around her too, tightly, holding her as she turns her face to him.

They speak of it no more. They speak no more at all for some moments, until the tension that drew her to him begins to abate, until she begins to slip toward sleep again. His arm loosens a little, then. He sits up, carefully drawing away from her, slipping out of bed.

"I'm just going to reheat the stew," he tells her, if she asks or if she looks at him in question. "We'll eat, and then you should sleep." A pause. He adds, "I'll be right here."

It really does not take long for Hilary to start descending towards sleep. Even with this particular line of thought knotting its way through her mind, she is quite exhausted. She has done more soul-searching in one night than she has in all the years since she decided that she did, indeed, have a soul. And Ivan has fucked her soundly, wrapped her in his arms, made her feel safe. Beyond that, there is this cottage, this safest of all the safe places, and the patter of the rain on her windowsills. She is drifting, and he can sense it, so he stirs her:

she did say she was hungry, after all. And far be it from him to let such a thing stand. Most of the time she is so detached from her body it's a miracle she even remembers to eat, remembers to feel such mortal pangs as hunger and thirst.

Stir she does. Hilary breathes in, opening her eyes once more against his chest. She watches him move, and blinks slowly a few times. She gives a small nod, and murmurs: "Da, moy vladelets,"