Golden Paradise Part 2

The Countess.

In one blurred motion he rose from the bed, grabbed his robe and dashed out into the hall, shrugging into the garment as he strode the few steps to Countess Lazaroff's room. a.s.suming she'd locked her door, he heaved his weight against the solid wood. The door gave way too readily and crashed explosively against the wall, leaving the plaster in shattered fragments. Catching himself against the jamb, he grunted in disgust. The witless woman hadn't even locked her door.

Some of the guards had been celebrating tonight, as well; it was possible someone had slipped into the villa or perhaps through the window. He scanned the room carefully as he stood in the doorway, alert to danger, ready to spring on an intruder. Moonlight poured in the latticed window, illuminating the room with elegant decorative shapes, and he surveyed each portion of the room in swift perusal.

No one. The furniture was all in place; the latticed shutters were still secured from the inside. The Countess's screams had now subsided into great gulping whimpers that punctuated the hushed silvery stillness like tiny muted starbursts in s.p.a.ce.

Once he a.s.sured himself there was no danger from a.s.sa.s.sins or brutal soldiers intent on rape, his dark eyes followed the sound of her soft whimpers. When his gaze finally halted on Countess Lazaroff, he stood transfixed, framed in the shadowed doorway, his head just brus.h.i.+ng the arched plaster of the lintel, his wide silk-clad shoulders dwarfing the width of the entry, his dark eyes incredulous.

No dirt on the lady any longer. No muddy face and tangled hair. No features lost beneath layers of grime. No disguising volumes of crow-black material, petticoats and shawls and babushkas.

No indeed, he breathed, dumbfounded, and wondered briefly if he was in the wrong room.

Every muscle, nerve and pulsing vein in his body instantly responded to the vision of flawless female beauty barely concealed by a portion of sheet. The Countess, lush and opulent, huddled fearfully against the simply carved headboard of the bed, one slender hand clutching a small drape of sheet to her throat, the fabric serving more as a foil than a s.h.i.+eld for her form. Both her tantalizing b.r.e.a.s.t.s were exposed, as was the alluring curve of her waist and hips and thighs. His eyes drifted lower and a numbing chill ran down his spine.

He felt the same way before an attack... alert, adrenaline pumping.

Felt the same way coursing with his borzois... exhilarated, loving the hunt.

The pause was infinitesimal as he a.s.sessed his exquisite quarry with the flushed covetous gaze of trophy-room acquisitiveness.

She was dazzling, breathtaking, her heavy chestnut hair gleaming in the s.h.i.+mmering moonlight. Her skin was profoundly white, as though she'd spent her life in dim dark archives, he thought. And he wondered in the next thundering beat of his heart whether she'd hidden away her virginity, too, from the masculine predators of the world. Would she be as precious as the Hafiz ma.n.u.scripts, as sensuously refined as the medieval erotica she studied?

He had never conceived of a woman so totally made for love-not only splendidly beautiful but extravagantly formed, like some male artist's conception of a perfect houri. And, if she was a scholar of Hafiz, tantalizingly schooled in all the erotic variations of love.

Without taking his eyes from the Countess, he reached out and eased the door slowly forward, took one step into the room and quietly pushed it shut behind him, the sound of the key turning in the lock a minute metallic reverberation in the close humid silence.

She was no longer whimpering but her breathing was still agitated, like that of a child who has cried too long. As he approached her, her eyes lifted to his, muted golden and sultry, he thought, like the heated night. Too practiced to miscue, he read the lady's acquiescence before she was aware of it herself. Too skilled to rush a lady, he slowly walked toward her, quietly sat beside her on the bed and softly said, "It was a dream."

She nodded, unable to speak with his powerful body so close, and she watched motionless as he put out a hand and touched her throat, slid his fingers in a soft caress across the small distance to where her hand clutched the sheet and, gently loosening her grip, watched the sheet fall away.

"The Bazhis can't hurt you now," he murmured, still holding her hand. Raising it slowly to his lips, he touched each of her fingers in sequence to his mouth before lowering her hand to the bed.

His eyes were like black fire, intense and beautiful with none of the heedless inattention she'd seen in them before. And she understood in a flas.h.i.+ng moment his extraordinary appeal to women. He was promising her something she inexplicably wanted, and she felt strange quivering, warm tremors from the tips of her fingers through her arms and body into the very center of her being. They were not strange and fearful sensations, but strangely comforting ones-like a cozy fire on a cool mountain night that relaxes and warms at the same time. But she felt something more too, a dizzy, feverish wanting, an elusive wanting that brought a blush to her cheeks. It was the first time a man had kissed her fingers... had kissed her... and in her own, self-absorbed way she thought it quite pleasant. More than pleasant-magical.

"Was your dream terrible?" Stefan softly asked, the way a trusted friend would say, "Tell me your troubles." He put his large hand over hers.

"There were dozens of them," she whispered, shuddering abruptly at the memory. "I wouldn't have survived, would I?"

You wouldn't have wanted to, he thought, but said instead very low, his hand stroking hers gently, his voice soothing, "Hush, it's over... it was only a dream." The Bazhis' reputation regarding atrocities toward women was common knowledge. As unpaid irregulars in the Turkish army they depended on plunder in lieu of pay and were, accordingly, almost impossible to control. They traveled rapidly and they traveled light. Once a female captive had been used to satisfy their needs, she was always killed in a particularly brutal manner. It was understandable the Countess should be shaken by nightmares.

Her eyes were still wide with recollection. "I'm truly grateful for your rescue," she whispered, her eyes glistening with emotion. "And I'm sorry about today," she softly added. "I know I irritated you."

"I should apologize for my rudeness," Stefan said, his own glance tender, his hand lifting to brush aside a tendril of curl that had fallen over her forehead. "If it's any excuse, I'd just come off three months of campaigning and was d.a.m.n tired. I'm sorry."

"I should apologize to you for all the extra work my rescue entailed."

Stefan grinned with a sudden boyish charm he rarely exposed. "I think we've covered all the social courtesies. You're sorry. I'm sorry. We've both apologized. I'd prefer," he said, his voice taking on a low husky quality, "to consider our meeting a delightful bit of luck. And I intend to reward my Kurd shaman for his mystical intervention." He was only halfteasing. She had been literally thrown into his path and he was enough of a mystic not to disclaim the metaphysical possibilities. "Are you badly bruised?" he asked suddenly, remembering the violence of her fall. No marks were obvious in the moonlight as his dark glance took in the purity of her form.

"My head... is a bit tender... near my right ear."

I'll be careful, he thought.

"And...well-" she shyly smiled "-my bottom is...slightly bruised."

That, too, he mused, I'll treat with care.

"I...should put my clothes on," Lisaveta said into the small silence, unabashed by her nudity but an innocent in seduction. She didn't realize Stefan had other plans. She didn't realize the game was just beginning.

"Did the servants bring you new clothes?" he asked.

"No."

"Wait till morning then, and we'll find a dressmaker. I'll have Haci dredge one up."

"I'm not as unorthodox as you," she said, understanding then the simple chronology of his sentence.

"I think, dear heart," he murmured, touching the soft fullness of her bottom lip with the lightest brush of fingertips, "you're more unorthodox than I."

"Your reputation-"

"Kiss me," he whispered.

She swayed toward him as though his words were the earth's magnetic poles, her mouth and eyes and soft silken body like an offering. "I shouldn't," she breathed, as if the words could stop the melting suggestion of her body.

"I know."

And the two words he spoke were like a promise she must keep. He could tell immediately, so tentative was the touch of her lips on his, that she'd never kissed a man before. But after three months of war Stefan felt as though some benevolent spirit had taken pity on him, giving him a pale unspoiled woman to make love to, as though she were a gift of innocence and purity after the endless weeks of b.l.o.o.d.y war. He felt no guilt that she was there for him. She was, after all, curiously self-reliant and surely not entirely chaste as a scholar of Hafiz. But at base he simply did what he did best.

And he began by kissing her back.

Lisaveta's first thought, melodramatic and alien to any preconceived notions she had of herself, was, He's attracted to me.

As a woman. A sense of wonder, magnificent in both its novelty and splendor, flared through her body, and she felt the warming flush like a personal sunrise of the soul. There was no denying the reason Prince Bariatinsky's engravings were collected by sighing women throughout the Empire. His head lifted briefly from their kiss and he smiled at her, his face starkly handsome, his dark eyes tender somehow despite their savage blackness. He was, she decided, wicked, sweet unreason, like a fallen angel dressed in sensuous beauty.

"I like your kisses," she murmured. "They warm me everywhere and make me tingle..."

He touched the small straight perfection of her nose with the briefest of kisses, raised his head and, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, said, "Thank you." Her ingenuous directness was enchanting now rather than offensive, the sweetly naive empiricism with which she viewed new experiences tantalizing. He would look forward to each artless reaction as the night progressed.

"Kiss me some more." She said it like a child in a candy store-with unreserved demand and delight. Unguiltily, too, as though she deserved it.

"Your servant, mademoiselle " Stefan murmured agreeably. Numerous women in his past would have been shocked at his placid acquiescence. Prince Bariatinsky, one of the most decorated, celebrated men in the Empire, had never been any woman's servant. Skilled and generous at providing pleasure, certainly, but submissive-never.

"You must tell me, sweet Lise," he whispered with teasing huskiness, bending his dark ruffled head, his breath warm on the aching crest of her nipple, "do you like this more?" And he touched the very tip with a tender suckling kiss that abruptly deepened, then bit with tiny caresses so that she felt a searing flame race downward like molten fire to sanctify each pleasure center in her body.

Her sighing breathy moan was an affirmative response.

He moved later to slowly caress her other breast and then trailed lingering kisses up her throat and across the velvet smoothness of her cheek. He nibbled at her earlobes and whispered the amorous love words that he knew roused women more swiftly than torrid kisses. He knew all the play words, the scented, heated, facile words, and she responded as he knew she would, her small hands reaching out to slide up the cinnamon silk of his robe. They glided with her own inherent coquettish languor under the open neckline and over the solid muscled strength of his shoulders.

"You must make love to me," she whispered, and pulled him close.

"I must?" There was the minutest pause. They were only inches apart, her golden dark-lashed eyes riveting in their boldness. "And if I won't?" he very softly said, although a white-hot excitement was already rousing him, an impatient fever more pungent than blood l.u.s.t, more provocative than Hafiz's poetry and gilded interiors.

"I'D give you pleasure," she said very simply, in the rich womanly contralto he'd heard earlier in the evening. Her palms were slipping down over the firmly defined musculature of his chest, and he inhaled sharply as her small hands drifted lower. "I will, you know," she murmured, her voice as sensuous as a Sultan's favorite, trained from the cradle. It was as if she must tantalize him to pique his jaded interest.

He smiled then. Despite her innocence and lack of experience, he knew she would. "I know," he whispered. As a jeweled gift gives pleasure, he thought, as enchantment might be held in one's hands. "It's been three months," he said. "You will give me pleasure.''

"It's been twenty-two years," she softly said, "and I don't want to wait." Her smile was pure unadulterated suns.h.i.+ne.

He laughed, looking down at her as she half reclined against the pillows, her hands under his robe, resting on his chest, her beautiful face lifted to him, her golden eyes so bright they seemed to glisten with life.

"What if I make you wait?" he teased. He knew how to pace himself.

"You can't," she playfully pouted.

"You're only a Countess." He touched her pouty lip. "I outrank you." The amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes spilled over into his grin.

"I'm a Princess, too. My mother was Princess Kuzan. You may have heard of the Kuzans." Her voice was coquettish but touched with an aristocratic pride he recognized. "We own a great deal of Russia. I'm your equal," she breathed, reaching for the tie of his robe, "in rank and fortune."

It stopped him momentarily-not only the fact she was a Kuzan, but the manner in which she uttered the words. She meant it. An equal. It was a novel thought.

"I'll order you," she softly said, releasing the loose knot of his robe, sweeping aside the dark brocade to reveal his hard, masculine, roused body, and he was reminded that the Kuzans were known for their audacity.

He reached out to touch the turgid hardness of her peaked nipples, lifted them slightly until he saw her inhale deeply and briefly close her eyes. "Shall we see," he said, very, very softly, "how equal we are?" And with a shrug he dropped the robe from his shoulders and followed her down on the bed, covering her soft willing body with his.

She felt his weight for a moment before he propped himself on his arms, and she experienced an electrifying defenselessness, thrilling in its effect. He could do with her what he liked. He was larger and stronger; he could lift her effortlessly like a child into his arms. But in his own way he was defenseless in his need for her, a power she possessed, a power she realized for the first exciting time in her life. It was like standing on a lighted threshold before a vista of perfect paradise. They were equals whether he knew it or not.

Her large golden eyes, framed with the lace of silken lashes, looked directly up into his and she said very quietly without entreaty or decree, her heated body throbbing with desire through every nerve and cell and racing pulse beat, "I must have you or I'll die."

And he gave her what she wanted because it was what he wanted, too. She was unlike other women he knew, so different he had no comparison. To please himself he had to please her, too. He was poised on the perimeters of unfamiliar emotional territory and perhaps he did it for her after all. It wasn't a time to debate or presciently attempt to see the future. He wanted her desperately and she him.

He gently touched the heated dampness between her thighs, his arousal quivering in his own need for her. Feeling her readiness and the surprising strength of her hands pulling him close, he said, "Hold on tight," a heartbeat before he thrust into her waiting body and buried himself in her honeyed sweetness.

She didn't cry out. She sighed, a great, melting, bewitching sigh, and he thought she must be a nymph sent from heaven or Olympus or Allah to welcome him back from the war. She reached up to kiss him and he smothered her waiting mouth with a restless kiss, feeling as though heaven had opened, as though his heart were beating outside his body. Then he began to move gently within her so she could feel the enchantment, too.

"My toes are curling," she blissfully murmured against his throat.

"I'm glad," he whispered, and bending his head, he nibbled at her mouth, pressing upward into her until she felt him fill her deep and hard and so intensely that she cried out in ecstasy.

"Am I dying?" she breathed a long moment later when the sound of her voice had faded into the night.

"No, darling, it's the very best of living, trust me," he murmured into the curls near her ear, and the rhythm of his lower body, slow and smooth and carefully ch.o.r.eographed to suit her, to please her, brought the entire focus of the world to the flame-hot center of her body. It was living, she thought, breathless, her pulse beating in her ears, her skin so hot she felt as though they were back on the plain of Kars. It was bliss and an open door into paradise. Was this love, too, she wondered, this torrid, melting l.u.s.t? Did you love a man like this, skilled and perfect and so beautiful?

She hoped not, she thought in the small pocket of logic that remained in her dissolving brain. She hoped not because she'd get lost in the crowd.

It wouldn't be much longer, Stefan decided, short moments later, watching her eyes and the flush on her face and throat, aware of her small hands fiercely pulling him close so she could feel him longer and deeper and more intensely. She was the most flagrantly sensual woman he knew, untouched by convention, more heated in her intemperate response than his Gypsy lover. Maybe it was the Kuzan blood. Sensuality ran unbridled through the family. She was a glowing, extravagant woman and she was about to climax.

He met and joined her pa.s.sion with his in a driving, insistent wildness that kept her agonized, dying with pleasure for long practised moments until she trembled with small gasping sobs in his arms and he poured, shuddering, into her. Then they lay, sheened with sweat, their heartbeats shaking the bed.

In the course of the summer night they dallied like the lovers in Hafiz, and he taught her what pleasure was. She would say into the moonlit room, breathless with pa.s.sion, "You know that too?"

"And that!" She lay gilded with moonlight and pampered indulgence.

"And than"

Finally he laughed and said, "I'll have to show you the Renaissance printmakers and the j.a.panese, sweet child. Hafiz is only one in a galaxy."

Her smile was new when she looked up at him lying above her, and it was touched with a delightful sangfroid in addition to her habitual imperturbability.

"How nice," she said.

Chapter Three.

In the morning the Prince decided against an immediate return to Tiflis. Instead he sent his troopers ahead and pursued idyllic leisured activities with the Countess for several additional days. And when they finally chose to travel north, the Countess's wardrobe having been nastily restored by Aleksandropol's only French dressmaker still in residence, the two-day journey stretched into a number of more delightfully lazy days.

Prince Bariatinsky's household, of course, had been on the alert for his appearance since his men had arrived days before, so when the Prince and Countess drew up to the grand marble staircase of his palace overlooking Tiflis, his entire staff was at attention in the drive while two women-one elderly, the other young-stood on the first broad landing waiting their arrival.

His aunt lived with him, so her appearance was expected, but the younger woman Stefan recognized with a start. What was Nadejda doing two thousand miles from Saint Petersburg? He absorbed the shock with no visible change in his expression and bestowed casual greetings on the servants as he helped Lisaveta dismount. After introducing her to his majordomo, who greeted her with a proper bow and a friendly smile, Stefan escorted Lisaveta up the rank of white marble stairs to the broad bal.u.s.traded landing where the two women waited.

Lisaveta a.s.sumed the small, trim, grey-haired woman was Stefan's aunt. He'd a.s.sured her Militza would be pleased to have her as a guest before she resumed her journey home to her estate near Rostov. But he hadn't mentioned anyone else. And while Stefan's aunt was smiling, the pretty blonde at her side was not. Was the scowling young lady a niece constrained from her own amus.e.m.e.nts to wait here and greet her uncle? Or simply some family friend, sulky by nature? She would soon find out since Stefan was about to introduce her.

With his hand lightly holding her elbow, Stefan moved with Lisaveta the short distance across the polished marble landing to where the two ladies stood. "Countess Lazaroff," he said, his voice touched with his usual nonchalance, "I'd like you to meet my Aunt Militza and my-" He hesitated the smallest instant.

"Fiancee," the fair-haired woman interjected firmly, her smile tight.

"Princess Nadejda Taneiev," he said, as though he hadn't spent the last eight days in bed with Lisaveta, "may I present the Countess Lisaveta Lazaroff."

"You wouldn't be Felix's daughter?" Militza asked, ignoring Nadejda's anger and Lisaveta's embarra.s.sment, her casual inquiry similar in tone to her nephew's when introducing his newest paramour to his fiancee.

"Yes," Lisaveta and Stefan answered simultaneously, she in nervous response, he because he found himself strangely concerned his aunt like her.

"I knew your father years ago. He was a delightful dancer."

Lisaveta couldn't help but smile, even though her temper was beginning to rise at Stefan's deceit or omission or whatever word best described his failure to mention he was engaged. Not that she was some naive adolescent who expected an offer of marriage after their intimacy-after all she had wanted him as much, if not more. But she expected a certain degree of honesty. She didn't realize that showed her navete. Honesty was hardly an essential in matters of amour; play words were more useful, love words, pretty turns of phrase universally applied.

"I didn't know he danced well," she replied, admiring Stefan's aunt's warm smile. So her father's accomplishments weren't confined to scholarly pursuits; this new image was pleasant. "I never saw him dance," she added.

"He was a favorite of all the ladies before your mama decided she wanted him. Did you meet Stefan at Maribelle?" Lisaveta's mother had once owned an estate by that name near Aleksandropol.

"Actually, no. Maman sold it before she died. I met Stefan on the plain between Kars and Aleksandropol." Lisaveta paused, not knowing where or how to begin.