Golden Paradise

Chapter Two

As they approached Aleksandropol, the Russian army's base of operations eighteen miles from the Turkish border, Stefan said in a voice brusque with fatigue, "Until we reach our lodging, I expect you to obey my orders. The city's jammed with veterans of the siege." He didn't say they'd been without women for weeks. Instead he added, "Soldiers at war can't be expected to act like gentlemen." He hoped she wouldn't argue, because he wasn't in the mood to deal with any more of her idiosyncrasies.

Surveying the ranks of lounging soldiers at the city gate, all appearing remarkably large and burly, their eyes trained on her in a disconcerting way, Lisaveta judiciously replied, "Yes, sir."

Stefan glanced down at her swiftly, for her quiet tone and manner were extremely unlike her previous confidence.

"Are we safe from that mob?" she asked, uncertainty prominent in her voice. She was seeing lust with brutal clarity, and it took enormous control to keep her voice from shaking. Stefan was only one man, she thought. Could even his rank protect her from what she saw in the soldiers' eyes? It was the same look she'd seen in Faizi's eyes, although his had been a more leisured inspection. Under the circumstances she felt sure none of these men were interested in leisurely concerns.

Before Stefan could answer he was recognized and a series of cheers erupted, traveling down the ranks of men in a spontaneous cry of welcome. Gruff voices called to him as commander and comrade as they passed through the medieval gate and entered the narrow cobbled streets of the city. Stefan acknowledged the noisy clamor, responding to his men with casual waves and a smile, with personal comments to one and then another, recognizing a remarkable number of men by name. It was obvious he was a hero to them, adored and revered and loved.

But beneath camaraderie and facetious banter, Lisaveta was still aware of the soldiers' eyes dwelling on her as they passed, as hungry wolves would survey a tender lamb. Unconsciously she moved closer to the large man behind her.

After a dozen turns and a winding uphill climb, the crowds of soldiers thinned, the shouting died away, and they reached a small villa the Prince must have known of, for he made no inquiries on the way. Riding through a gateway into a paved courtyard walled round with a low wrought-iron railing, Stefan said, "Wait here," and slid to the ground, his hands steadying Lisaveta on the saddle. Handing her his Colt revolver, he added, "Shoot anyone who comes too close."

"Shoot?" Lisaveta said, not reaching for the extended weapon.

He looked at her for a moment, not wishing to alarm her unduly. But even nondescript as she was, women were in such rare supply she should have a firearm for protection. "A precaution only, mademoiselle" he said, "until I return."

"Should I come in with you?" Brave under normal circumstances, she knew she was seriously outnumbered with thousands of troops in Aleksandropol.

"I'll only be a moment," Stefan replied, knowing he'd have to oust the villa's current occupants. He outranked them, but sometimes more than a polite request was required. Additionally, he couldn't be certain the men wouldn't be "entertaining" themselves with some of the available women, a situation that could prove embarrassing for his passenger. Placing the Colt in her hand, he wrapped her fingers around the grip and asked, "Can you shoot?"

Lisaveta nodded, mute and touched with apprehension.

He gave her a smile, the first she'd seen since meeting him, and she understood immediately a portion of his allure. His dark eyes lost their severity, his perfect teeth flashed white, his sculpted mouth reminded her powerfully of classic Greek archetypes come to life. She felt bathed in a sudden shimmering happiness.

"Good," he said, and was gone, taking the entrance stairs three at a time.

Despite the heat, the surrounding air seemed to cool momentarily at his exit. Good heavens, she thought, shaking away the unusual sensation. Was she so gullible, so unsophisticated, that a simple smile from the illustrious Prince Bariatinsky changed the temperature of the sun?

No doubt he was familiar with the power of his smile. No doubt he was familiar with women responding to that smile. Well, that might be, but he was also overbearing and imperious, and while she was grateful for his rescue, she disliked his style of womanizing man.

The next moment she chastised herself for not showing proper gratitude for her rescue. Without him, she'd be dead now or wishing for death. Certainly, it was the height of ingratitude to be pettishly caviling over his lady loves and amorous leisure activities. She was truly grateful. Period. His style of life was incidental. And she summoned a smile to her face in indication of her sincerity.

He didn't seem to notice when he returned a short time later.

"We're set," he said gruffly, and lifted her down.

He was enormously tall, she thought, a wayward perception that she immediately suppressed as totally irrelevant. As if it mattered what he looked like.

"Would you like to keep the pistol?"

Had he repeated the question? She wasn't sure, but his dark glance was mildly perplexed.

"No…no…not at all…here," she answered, stammering in a rare unease. You'd think she'd never seen a man in skin-tight leather cavalry breeches, half-nude above the waist, his chest sleek with sweat, his muscles…

She felt the revolver being taken from her grasp and her gaze fell from the prominent definition of his pectorals to his hand, only inches from hers. His fingers were long and slender and very tanned, shades darker than her own. He didn't speak as he replaced the weapon in its holster on his saddle, and while she was debating some appropriate casual remark to cover her unease, he turned back to her, put out his arm like a gentleman at a ball or a promenade and said, "This way, mademoiselle."

"Was the villa vacant?" Lisaveta inquired as they ascended the short bank of stairs. She'd seen no one exit.

"A few officers only, mademoiselle, who were more than happy to oblige you."

"Have they gone?"

"I believe so," Stefan replied with equanimity, not about to detail the true nature of his confiscation. A small amount of force had been required in addition to the threat of his rank, and the artillery colonel had been swearing as he'd departed through the back door. The transport officers had been willing to negotiate, offering Stefan several hours of their female companions' time, but Stefan fancied cleaner women and had declined. The Countess Lazaroff, he thought, would appreciate sleeping without the raucous sounds of an all-night party. And he, too, would prefer quiet tonight. Choura was only a few days away; he could wait. After three months, he could wait a few days more.

As they passed through the walled courtyard, its fountain miraculously still playing despite the disruptions of war, and crossed the elegantly tiled pavement, Stefan said, "I've commissioned a bathtub for you, and supper. I hope you'll find the accommodations comfortable. In the morning I'll see you have an escort with one of the guarded convoys traveling to Tiflis."

While his statements were courteous, the tenor of his voice implied he was released from any further responsibility by these acts. "The villa is guarded," he added in afterthought to the dust-covered woman in black. "Sleep well." And with a minimal bow he left Lisaveta at the base of the staircase, waving a servant over to escort her to the second-floor rooms.

"Thank you," Lisaveta ironically said to the back of his head as he walked away. "You're too kind." A sudden resentment, disturbing in its novelty, overwhelmed her. Why did it matter that he dismissed her as insignificant? Why did she care what he thought of her? She should be above the triviality of female coquetry.

When her mother had died, her father had returned to his country estates and never entered the world of society again. Lisaveta had been raised in a quiet country existence, but she still remembered her early years in Saint Petersburg before her mother's death. She had fond memories of her beautiful mother, a Princess of the Kuzan family, and recalled their pink marble palace filled with people for parties and teas, recitals and balls. Bach evening before Maman and Papa left for one of their parties or entertained their own guests, they would come to the nursery to tuck her into bed, and Maman had always been gorgeous in magnificent gowns and splendid jewels. When she'd hug Lisaveta good-night, she'd smell of blooming roses and smile her radiant smile and sometimes slip her tiara on Lisaveta's curly hair and call her "my baby princess." It wasn't often she thought of those long-ago years in Saint Petersburg or of Maman's hugs and kisses or of the very different life her father had once led. She and her father had lived away from the capital so long she'd forgotten the frivolity of the aristocratic world existed. And she'd considered herself insensitive to its amusements and glamour.

But somehow Prince Bariatinsky gave rise to a provoking sense of inadequacy. And it annoyed her. She never felt inadequate. It was his dismissive gaze and tone and attitude-as though she weren't worth noticing. An incipient spirit of challenge stirred in her at his bland negation of her womanhood, an unprecedented feeling, not focused enough to even fully acknowledge, only a tiny flutter of long-suppressed femininity.

And while she despised the Prince for all his arrogant insouciant notoriety, she couldn't deny his sinful, obvious beauty. She'd been too close to the perfect modeled planes of his face, too near the splendid magnificence of his heavily lashed eyes, and she was aware despite herself that his tall lean body possessed an unusual charismatic power and virility. She wasn't the first woman to note these vividly masculine characteristics, she thought, following the servant upstairs. Only the latest.

After arranging quarters for Cleo and his troopers, who would presumably appear once the Bazhis were dispatched, Stefan returned to the villa, took the stairs to his rooms in a run, stripped off his filthy uniform with efficient speed and was in his waiting bath in record time. Submerging himself briefly to rinse the dust from his face and hair, he came up out of the water dripping and degrees cooler, reached for his brandy flask, which he'd set conveniently near, slid back down so he was leaning comfortably against the painted porcelain headrest and sighed his first exhalation of satisfaction in three long months.

Tipping the gold flask engraved with good wishes from Tsar Alexander, he let the amber liquid spill into his mouth, and after his first slow swallow, he smiled into the quiet shaded room. Contentment came from such simple pleasures, he philosophically noted.

In the course of the next hour he emptied the brandy flask while the water cooled, and when he was sufficiently relaxed, the numbing fatigue of the past weeks alleviated not only by the liquor but by the soothing water, he bathed.

When his food arrived sometime later, Stefan was lounging on the bed in one of the silk robes left behind by the villa's owner when his home was requisitioned by the Russian army. The fabric was a cinnamon brocade shot through with a heavy underweaving of aquamarine, and the robe accented the oriental cast of Stefan's features, emphasizing the slight obliqueness of his eyes and the elegant dark wings of his brows. The long-skirted luxurious silk was juxtaposed with his harsh masculinity, the contrast both dramatic and sensual, as if a warrior knight were transposed briefly into a worldly courtier. He'd rolled up the trapunto-trimmed sleeves, an incongruous touch in such a stately robe, as incongruous as his galvanic power contained in the delicate silk.

His dinner was excellent and he ate it with a haste his major-domo would have disapproved of, but the comforts of civilization had been sadly lacking the past few months, the food at Kars deplorable, and he intended to relish his first real meal without concern for etiquette. And while he ate and later lounged again on his bed, finishing the bottle of fine wine the servant had brought with his meal, Stefan was regaled through the plastered walls with a tuneful array of songs in the Countess's soft contralto.

She was a most unusual female, Stefan decided, more indulgent in his assessment once the bottom of the bottle of wine was reached. After all the treachery and danger of the past few days she seemed in cheerfully good humor. Most remarkable. He couldn't think of a woman he knew who would have rebounded from the fearful perils she'd experienced with such buoyant resiliency. Her voice, too, had a delicate feminine charm in song. A shame she was an antidote to look at.

An exemplary officer, Stefan dressed shortly after eating and went to see that his men were satisfactorily bivouacked. His guards were flushed with success, much richer for their pursuit of the Bazhis and celebrating their good fortune with the native arrack, a potent liquor known for its fiery taste. Several stoneware bottles were passed around and shared as the chase was described in detail, so it was past midnight before Stefan bade his bodyguards good-night and returned to the villa.

Although the sounds of revelry in the town continued, the courtyard and villa's interior were hushed and quiet. Despite the hour the heat of the day had scarcely diminished, and the area around the small fountain, open to the stars, seemed hung with a dense dark curtain of torrid vapor. Stefan could almost feel himself move through successive layers of sultry air.

He'd stripped off his loose native shirt on his way up the stairs and kicked off his low boots just inside the door to his room. Tossing the shirt on a chair, he shoved the door shut with one bare foot and padded across the soft Antolian carpet to his bed. Unbelting the coarse woven pants he wore, he let them drop to the floor, then he fell pleasantly inebriated onto the cool linen sheets of his bed. The first night away from Kars, he thought contentedly, the pillow beneath his head a luxury he'd not felt for weeks. The first night he could sleep without one ear tuned to the pickets' song, the first night he didn't have to catch himself dozing as he rode patrol. The first night in months he might have had the opportunity to bed a woman. Unfortunately, in a town accommodating thirty thousand troops, one's choices in vice were limited to a less delicate type of female, and he'd decided to sleep alone.

As he drifted off, his thoughts wandered to the very imminent delights awaiting him in Tiflis. Only two more days, he mused, wondering if Choura would still be waiting at his lodge in the hills north of the city or whether her hot Gypsy blood had tired of the enforced leisure and she'd found some new young buck's back to bloody. The memories of Choura's particular brand of lovemaking evoked a surge of pure lust through his senses. He'd found her savage wildness, the uncivilized violence of her passion, an exhilarating change from the delicate refined sighs of the young matrons in the aristocratic circles he frequented. He fell asleep reminiscing about Choura, recalling the perfect length of her slender legs and how she liked to bite and how much he enjoyed her biting, how she danced for him until she was damp with sweat and lust and how the sleek beauty of her body felt beneath his. He fell asleep with a distinct smile on his lips.

It was no more than twenty minutes when he woke to an unearthly scream, the kind of scream he'd heard at night on patrol, the horrifying scream of Russian prisoners being tortured by the Turks. For a moment he thought he was back at Kars. But his palms rested on sheets. He was in a bed. His mind scrambled desperately to climb up from the depths of slumber, his senses perhaps slightly impaired by the liquor he'd drunk. But his years of military service were manifest in his swift response, and he was halfway out of the bed, reaching for his robe, when he distinguished the source of the piercing cries.

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. Assuming 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 space.

Once he assured himself there was no danger from assassins 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 brushing 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 shield for her form. Both her tantalizing breasts 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 assessed his exquisite quarry with the flushed covetous gaze of trophy-room acquisitiveness.

She was dazzling, breathtaking, her heavy chestnut hair gleaming in the shimmering 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 manuscripts, 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 flashing 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 damn 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 bloody 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 lust, 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 sunshine.

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 amusement 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 choreographed 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 lust? 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 passion 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 passion, "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 Japanese, 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.