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The house was not completely dark when Ivan's groundcar pulled up outside. Ekaterin could see through the frosted class of the front door that the foyer was lit. A guard materialized to speak to the agents that had escorted them to and from the party at Vorkosigan House, probably to exchange reports. Ivan ignored them entirely, as usual, in favor of taking her by the hand and giving her a furtive smile. She returned it with care, afraid any expression at all might betray the sick feeling in her stomach. She cast one last glance over her shoulder at the agents, who were diplomatically not watching them, and allowed Ivan to lead her into the house.
"Would you like a glass of wine?" he asked once they stood alone in the softly lit foyer.
She shook her head. "No," she began and was horrified when her voice squeaked. "No, thank you," she managed, more evenly. A glass of wine might have made things easier, might have helped quiet the restive ghosts in the back of her mind. But she refused to treat this as something to be got through rather than something to enjoy. Her marriage to Tien had been a decade of obligatory sex, and she had often swallowed a secret glass of wine before letting him touch her. This . . . would not be that.
She knew the way to Ivan's bedroom well enough - up the staircase to the second floor and along the darkened hallway. He didn't bother with the lights, which made everything feel more intimate. She would have preferred them on, to be honest; she could feel her heart start to beat faster. Her palms were sweaty. God, she hoped Ivan wouldn't notice.
He did, though, of course. At the door to his bedroom, he stopped and turned to look at her in the dim light coming in from a window high up near the ceiling, stray beams from a streetlight. He smoothed his palm against her cheek, and Ekaterin felt him study her. She fought the urge to close her eyes.
"We don't have to do this, you know," he said after several long seconds. "You could stay and we could just sleep. Or I could take you home."
Ekaterin didn't know what to say. She could not pretend to him that she had no misgivings. "You've been . . . very good to me," she said at last, because it was the only thing she could think of.
It was the wrong thing, of course. She wanted to snatch the words back the moment she felt him stiffen. "If that's why -"
"It's not," she said. "It's just . . ." She looked away, toward the closed bedroom door. You're trying to start something new here. Don't make the old mistakes. Be honest. "I didn't like sex very much before."
"Oh," Ivan said. There was a somewhat daunted silence then; Ekaterin felt her face heating with mortification. "Well," he said at last, with great seriousness, "you weren't having it with me."
She couldn't help it - she laughed. "At least you've confidence enough for both of us."
He shrugged, cheerfully unrepentant. "Not without reason, I'll have you know. My skills, madame, have occasionally been known to salvage interplanetary relations." He opened the bedroom door and gestured her through gallantly before shutting it behind them. "Do you need the bathroom?"
She nodded. It was a bedroom suite, really, with a bathroom and even a small vanity attached. She shut herself in and looked in the mirror, acutely aware of her contraceptive implant. She imagined she could feel it inside her, which was of course absurd. It had to be changed every two years and she hadn't bothered to replace it after Tien had died. But two months ago she had gone to the doctor and, not allowing herself to think about what it meant, had gotten a new one.
She did want this. She had been wanting it for a long time, she realized now. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, she thought suddenly and found herself smiling; she had found that particular dictum of the Countess's to be applicable in a myriad of situations since she had first heard it, but she had never considered it in this particular light. Still, it was true. She reached up and carefully unwound the knot of hair at the base of her neck until it hung down in a thick coil. She combed through it with her fingers, letting it lie over her shoulders, and then eyed the dress. She was wearing a slip underneath. Take it off altogether, arrange it in artful disarray, or leave it as it was?
She was thinking far too much about all of this. It was possible she'd been over thinking everything for years. She ran her fingers through her hair one last time and went out.
Apparently her nervousness had been catching. Ivan had turned down the bed and was fussing with the pillows. He glanced up at the sound of the door opening and started to say something. But before he had the chance she pulled him down by the front of his shirt and kissed him soundly. She felt him freeze briefly in surprise and then relax. One of his hands rested on the back of her neck as it had in the car earlier, the other at the small of her back, but as the kiss deepened they drifted to the fastenings of her dress. She was glad she hadn't taken the dress off in the bathroom; he took his time about things, caressing each patch of skin he bared and raising goose bumps on the back of her arms. Ekaterin felt her knees turn to liquid as the warmth in the pit of her stomach spread downward.
She slid her hands over his shoulders to his chest and popped the first button of his fine white dress shirt free. Then the next one and the one after that, until at last she was able to slip it off his shoulders. He shrugged out of it carelessly and went back to her dress, which was significantly more complicated. But at last she was able to step out of it, and stand before him in her pearl white slip, less clothing than he had ever seen her in.
Ekaterin had the sudden urge to insist on hanging the dress up, or at least draping it over a chair to prevent wrinkles. She quashed it.
"Okay?" Ivan asked, drawing back. With a little thrill, Ekaterin realized he was just as breathless as she was. She had forgotten what it was to be desired and had never known till now what it was not to feel ashamed of it. Tien had always made her want to cover up, to do it under the covers with the lights off and her eyes shut, so she would not have to see how much he wanted her.
Ivan made her want to take her clothes off. Ivan made her feel just a little bit . . . naughty.
She realized she hadn't answered his question and he was starting to look nervous. "Better than okay," she said with a smile. She slid her hand inside the shirt he'd worn beneath his dress shirt, warm skin against warm skin. "You were saying something before," she said, skimming her palm along his stomach, enjoying the way he shivered, "about your skills having salvaged interplanetary relations?"
He grinned. "Not to, er, raise expectations too high, but that's . . . almost true. It's a bit of a long story involving Miles and a diplomatic mission to Cetaganda." She raised her eyebrows, and his smile turned rather sheepish. "Don't be too impressed. There's a side to it that's, er, rather less flattering. I'm sure my cousin would be only too happy to tell it sometime."
"I see," she said, even though she didn't and wasn't sure she wanted to.
"Besides," he said, and kissed her neck, "I think right now we have much," kiss to the other side, just beneath her ear, "much better things to do."
It went more quickly after that, as they divested themselves of the rest of their clothes and fell backwards across the bed, happily rumpling the covers. She let him take the lead at first, which he did with confidence. That whole thing about Cetaganda might have been a joke between him and Miles, but she could almost believe it from the way he touched her, from the way he knew just how to stroke her and how to make her sigh. It was what she had always thought sex should be like - self-forgetful and uninhibited - but never quite believed it could be, not for her at least. When Ekaterin finally screwed up her courage and decided it was time to stop playing the shrinking Vor virgin, it was not out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but because it seemed like the only thing in the world left to do. There were no ghosts and no ugly fantasies here, just the two of them.
When she finally touched him and his eyes fluttered shut, she felt a rush of tenderness that could only have been falling in love. For the life of her she could not remember why she had delayed this so long.
Ivan was extremely patient in this, as he had been in everything else. Almost too patient, in Ekaterin's opinion; he showed a heretofore unknown stubborn - or possibly evil - streak in making her wait until long after she was ready. But perhaps he'd simply been waiting for her to run out of patience and take matters into her own hands (so to speak), because when she finally rolled him over onto his back and settled herself atop him, he said not a word of protest. He slid up so he was leaning against the headboard and pulled her closer, causing a gasp to slip from her throat. His face was very close, his brown eyes almost black with arousal; when he leaned his forehead against hers and moved inside of her, she felt her mouth go dry. This is what she had longed for all those years, if only she had known it. To lean with someone like this, holding each other up, breathing the same air, connected through their bodies and wholly present with each other at the same time . . . she had once thought that to be beyond her grasp. When she finally dared to open her eyes, she saw something in Ivan's expression - a sense of awe, perhaps - that made her wonder if perhaps he had not thought the same thing as well on occasion.
In the end, this was one of those times when the journey turned out to be more important than the destination. Not that the destination wasn't astonishing; it left her shuddering faintly against Ivan's chest, wondering if the top of her head had actually come off, and really, thank goodness for headboards because Ekaterin (rather smugly) thought that Ivan wasn't in much better condition. After a few minutes of lying slack-limbed amongst the covers, which were now far more rumpled, Ivan brought his arms up to gather her close. He kissed her with lingering gentleness, and then said into her hair, "That was . . ." He stopped, strangely.
"Marvelous?" Ekaterin suggested after a beat of silence. She felt him let out a breath, air gusting over her collarbone. He didn't say anything, but she laughed and poked him. "Is that relief, I hear? You were confident enough before."
"Well, that's part of my, er -"
"Act?"
"Charm," he replied with dignity.
"Ah," she said. She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Well, it's just as well. I was nervous enough for the both of us, I think."
"I was nervous," he said, and something in his voice made her open her eyes and raise her head. He glanced down at her and then away. "I . . . I very much wanted this to go well."
"It did," she said. "Very well." She kissed the side of his neck and then, glancing at the chrono, groaned. "Drat, you'd better set the alarm - I'm supposed to meet Elli and Elena for lunch tomorrow."
"Are you sure?" Ivan asked, obviously disappointed. He smiled at her winsomely. "If you give me just a couple of minutes . . ."
She shook her head, smiling but firm. "You will have plenty of time to demonstrate your amazing powers of recuperation, I'm sure. I will be a wreck tomorrow, however, if I don't sleep."
Ivan shrugged and, wincing, set the chrono for 0900. They lay entwined in the dark together for the first time - so many firsts tonight - and Ekaterin realized that she could not remember the last time she felt as she did just then - as though she were too small to hold all the happiness inside of her. It had been years at least, possibly decades. It was, like Ivan himself and his arms around her, something she thought she could stand to get used to.
Fin.