Golden Paradise

so she had to look up to see his face. 'I arranged to have you in…my wing.' His dark eyes held hers. 'Scream if you like,' he softly said, 'but I've no intention of hurting you.' His hand came up to touch her and she moved away from the door. Stefan took a moment before following her to turn the key in the lock and slide it into his pocket.

'If I were you, I should think it humiliating to find restraint necessary.' From the relative safety of the center of the room, Lisaveta sharply upbraided him.

'I'm a lazy man,' Stefan murmured, immune to her provocation, testing the door latch to see it was locked, 'and not inclined to chase you… anywhere.' Teasing mockery underlay the moderation of his tone.

'What do you call this?' Lisaveta heatedly retorted as he advanced on her again and she retreated.

He grinned. 'Foreplay?'

'I thought you were more subtle,' she hissed.

'And I thought you more attuned to your feelings.'

'I told you how I felt this afternoon.'

'You told me only that you won't continue our friendship because of my fiancee.'

'That's precisely how I feel.'

'No, you feel the way I do… you feel the Angelglow,' he murmured. 'You feel deprived after a week of indulging your senses. You feel your skin against the silk of your chemise and petticoats. And,' he finished in a husky whisper, 'I can help you.'

Stefan's words triggered the floodgates of sensation. He was advancing closer and she found her will to retreat diminishing. 'How can it matter,' he softly asked, 'if we make love again?'

'It matters to me,' Lisaveta said, low and breathless, but he was very near now, and all she could think of beyond her declaration of principle was how excruciatingly fine he had felt deep inside her, how perfectly he knew the chronology of her arousal, how hard and strong his powerful body felt beneath her hands, how his mouth felt touching hers… the way it would… now-

'No!' She found the will somewhere to resist.

For a flashing moment she saw his anger before she slid away under his arm.

He silently watched her run to the door and try the latch, watched her bang her fists loudly against the solid mahogany door and swiftly turn to face him a moment later, her cheeks flushed with her effort. 'You can't force me,' she said, her voice intense with emotion.

'I'd never force you, sweetheart.' He dropped into a chair, held his hands out, palms open in surrender, and with genuine sincerity said, 'I told you I wouldn't hurt you.'

'Open the door then.'

'I didn't say I'd open the door.'

'Are we splitting hairs?' she angrily retorted.

'Are we?' he calmly responded. 'To deny yourself what you want purely on principle seems like Jesuit dialectics. We shouldn't be engaging in polemics when we both agree we want each other.'

'We don't agree on that.'

'Do you remember Deva, when the night air was so sultry on the balcony your skin slipped against mine when I slid you down my body? Tell me you don't want to enjoy that pleasure again. Tell me you don't want to experience the sensations you felt that morning when I fed you strawberries for breakfast, first.' His voice was hushed because she hadn't wanted to wait but he'd insisted.

Lisaveta knew she'd never be able to eat strawberries again without remembering the heated crying need she'd felt that morning. Nor forget how beautiful Stefan had looked, his dark hair wet from the bath, his bronzed skin damply sleek in the brilliant morning sunlight, his enormous power and strength overwhelming the small cottage room, enhancing his potent virility, and she'd wanted him se badly she'd ached. As she did now.

He hadn't moved in his casual sprawl, his arms resting on the chair exactly where they'd dropped after his yielding gesture. 'Tell me,' he said very softly, looking darkly handsome and splendid, his silk shirt open at the neck, the fine linen of his trousers accentuating the slimness of his hips and the corded muscles in his legs, 'tell me you don't want me and I'll leave.'

Lisaveta's cheeks were still flushed, but no longer from her exertions banging on the door. The color pinking her cheeks came from within, from the heat pulsing deep inside her, the heat of desire she'd tried valiantly to deny or suppress or pretend didn't matter as much as principle and pride.

'Tell me,' he said again, his low voice like a velvet caress in the stark silence of the room.

She should say, 'Go,' she thought, gazing at him, but a fresh rush of desire inundated her senses at the sight of him. He was aroused, it was obvious, and a melting heat responded at that knowledge. Lisaveta shivered as she stood in the balmy night air of Tiflis in July.

'Are you cold?' he inquired, knowing she was not. He rose to his feet in a slow graceful movement.

'No,' she whispered, as if her answer would hold him at bay.

'I didn't think so,' he murmured. His gaze traveled to her bed and then back again in leisure invitation. 'I know everything you like,' he said with a soft emphasis on 'everything,' as though he were offering her carte blanche in pleasure.

And after endless hours making love in the week past, she knew he was capable of tumult and tenderness, playful savagery and the most delicate enchantment. Was he addictive, as well?

Lisaveta was so naively new to all the sensuous sensations that she wondered briefly if indeed it were possible. How else did one explain this hot, ungovernable, incautious urge, this unfathomable insistent pulsing through her blood and brain and sensitized nerves-that she must have him again or die?

'Are you addictive?' Her query was hushed, a question not only of reason but of feeling.

He was startled for a transient pulse beat as he quietly waited for her, because curiously the same speculation had come to his mind. Unlike this naive child, he wasn't a tyro in amorous games. He wanted her with an unfamiliar and disquieting urgency. Heedless of protocol, of his fiancee, of Nadejda's conservative parents, he intended keeping Countess Lazaroff until the very last minute of his leave. If that wasn't addiction, it was something very similar. So he smiled and said, 'Yes,' and in the next breath added, 'Does that help?'

Stefan's smile was relaxed now, his thoughts on less taxing issues than the possibility of falling under a woman's spell. He'd shaken away his disquietude with his facetious reply and he was charming predator once again. His most practiced role.

'I'm serious, Stefan. It unnerves me.'

'Don't be serious, darling. Please.' He moved swiftly toward her, recognizing the most potent of her resistance was past. 'War is serious, dying is serious. Making love is unmitigated pleasure… and joy.' His voice was perhaps more intense than he wished, but Kars was too recent in his thoughts, the stench and horror not removed yet from his memory.

'When do you go back?' She'd seen the flicker of distress in his eyes.

'Twenty-one days, six hours, give or take a few minutes. Haci will come for me.' His words were carefully devoid of emotion… too carefully controlled.

'Up against that,' Lisaveta quietly said, putting out her hand, 'I am being foolish.'

How trivial her selfish motives of jealousy and resentment seemed when Stefan had only a short leave before going back to the brutality of war. How childish it seemed to say, 'I won't love you,' when she wanted to, with all her heart. How unimportant the issue of Nadejda's presence when he was here and wanting her with the same passion flaring through her senses.

He could die, she realized suddenly, when he returned to the war. What would she have then? The warmth of this memory tonight or the empty virtue of having refused him? Her fingers lightly touched his in affirmation and welcome.

As his hand closed over hers, he gazed down at her, thinking how fresh and young and untouched by the wretchedness of the world she looked. He wondered for the briefest moment whether she might be some apparition of his imagination.

But she smiled up at him, reminding him of her luscious corporeality.

'No, not foolish,' he said in a quiet tone, then shrugged, because he knew she was only responding as any young woman of sensibility would. Nadejda's presence was a damnable obstacle. Taking both her hands in his, he pulled her close. 'I'm just being selfish. Forgive me, dushka, but I am. And if it's any sop to your conscience or morality, I won't let you go tonight.'