Golden Paradise

disliked solitude would wait three months for Stefan. He was worth a three-month wait-or a three-year wait.

'She probably couldn't find her way back down,' he lied, treading warily, infinitely pleased she was talking to him again instead of screaming at him or throwing his treasured pieces of sculpture at his head.

'She probably didn't want to,' Lisaveta quietly said, her golden eyes holding his in a steady gaze.

'I didn't want her here,' he said, his simple statement a bald declaration of his feelings, his eyes unflinching. 'I sent her away for you. I left Nadejda entertaining her parents at my palace tonight for you. Is that enough?' He released her hands, gazed at her for a moment as though looking for the answer himself, then walked away to the windows.

Bracing his hands on the molding above his head, he stared out on the majestic landscape that had always served as solace for him, the stark rugged mountains that had been sanctuary for him at times he needed peace.

But today his thoughts were in turmoil, his emotions disturbed, his fiancee left behind without concern for the consequences, Choura dismissed more callously than he liked. For Lisaveta.

'So,' he said, turning back, his own feelings resentful now, 'is it enough? Tell me.' There was demand in his voice, an unconscious authority.

Standing in the center of his masculine study, Lisaveta heard the new chill in his voice, saw the beginning of a scowl draw his brows together and awkwardly felt on the defensive. 'You should have let me go,' she said, adding when he didn't move or respond, 'It would have been better for both of us.'

'I didn't want to.'

'God's spoiled child,' she softly declared, for the Orbeliani motto was familiar throughout the Empire for its arrogance.

Stefan raised one brow fractionally. That precept had been his family's guiding principle for centuries; he could no more ignore the privileged culture in which he'd been reared than she hers. In many ways she was as unorthodox as he, and he said exactly that without rancor or censure.

For a short silence Lisaveta seemed to consider his statement. Her life, of course, had been more male than female in education, in the freedom and independence encouraged by her father, in her choice of scholarly discipline. She was, she supposed, not precisely conventional, and their meeting that first night at Aleksandropol… She smiled. 'We both perhaps have taken what we wanted,' she answered.

She was without guile, he thought, one of her numerous charms.

'I did fancy you that very first night, didn't I?' she said.

His smile was as angelic as a young choirboy's. 'I detected a slight interest.'

'So I can't be assessing blame exclusively.'

'If you wish to be perfectly honest, no,' he said, 'but I dislike the word blame for anything that's passed between us. I prefer happiness… or joy-''

'Or paradise on earth.'

He grinned. 'A good approximation.'

'I should thank you, then, for sending her away.'

He moved toward her, his smile intact, his hands open in peace. 'If you like,' he said.

'And thank you for spending fifty thousand roubles because of me.'

'Plus two racers from my stud,' he added, close enough now to touch her outstretched hands. 'I should feel flattered.'

'I certainly hope so,' he murmured, taking her small hands in his.

'And how many days do we have?'

'Twenty.'

Her smile diminished slightly. 'I might have to leave sooner for Papa's ceremony in Saint Petersburg. I've a personal invitation from the Tsar. I should stop at my home in Rostov first. My cousin Nikki's expecting me…' Her voice trailed away because the observance honoring her father's work translating Hafiz had seemed until this moment of great importance.

Stefan wasn't going to touch that… not after reaching harmony once again, not this minute when he held her hands in his and their holiday in the mountains was just beginning. 'Fine,' he said, his own smile lush with warming passion, knowing he had days ahead to change her mind or adjust her travel timetable. 'Whatever you want.'

Drawing her close, he stood for a small space of time with her body touching his, savoring the first tentative prelude to pleasure, feeling at peace, at home…alone with the woman who'd come to preoccupy his mind and senses, isolated on his mountaintop with the woman he wanted to spend the next twenty days making love to.

'I'm sorry about the abduction,' he said softly, his hand reaching up to take the first hairpin from her hair, 'but I didn't want to lose you.'

Lisaveta touched the bridge of his nose, tracing down its arrow-straight length as if she marked him for herself, as if that small gesture were possession. How nice it would be, she thought, if it were possible to gain possession so easily, if one could simply say, 'I want you too, for always. For the pleasure you give me and for your smiles, for the laughter we share, for the enchantment of being in your arms.' But she was sensible enough to say instead, her voice teasing and hushed, 'I'll make you do penance for the abduction.'

His hand stopped just short of his desk, where he'd been placing the pins from her hair, and arrested in motion, he looked at her from under his dark brows and smiled. 'How nice,' he said.

'You needn't sound so pleased,' Lisaveta murmured, mocking irony in her tone.

'Darling,' Stefan whispered, taking her into his arms and drawing the length of her body against his so she felt the extent of his arousal, 'your whims are my command.'

A flare of excitement raced through Lisaveta. Although she knew as well as he that his amorous words were playful, a rush of gratified power spiked through her. She did indeed command him. 'Are they really?' she said, moving her hips enticingly, testing the measure of her advantage.

'Right now, dushka,' Stefan whispered, taking her face between the palms of his large hands, 'for want of you I'd sell my soul.'

And jettison your fiancee? she wondered, the wretched consideration coming from nowhere to spoil the moment. Perhaps if she'd asked right then he would have said yes to please her and please himself. But she didn't ask, because she wanted him too much and was afraid of his answer. A man in Stefan's position didn't marry for passion; Militza had made his intentions plain.

'My price isn't that high,' she said, her arms wrapped around his waist, a curious contentment invading her mind. He was here with her; because of enormous effort he was here with her; his fiancee was alone at his palace and there was satisfaction in that. She wouldn't be more greedy. 'I don't want your soul, although I think I should be worth at least as much as Choura.'

While her tone was teasing, Stefan gazed at Lisaveta with a slightly altered expression. Was she like all the others after all? he wondered. Although he'd never begrudged gifts to his lovers, he'd found Lise's generosity of spirit unique. Was she perhaps only more subtle in her demands? His voice when he spoke was quiet and restrained. 'Of course, darling, you're worth much more. What would you like?'

'You'll think me foolish,' she prefaced, blushing at what she was about to say.

'Never, sweetheart,' he replied, admiring the innocent color on her cheeks, knowing he would give her whatever she wanted regardless of her request. He was not an ungenerous man. Her large tawny eyes were looking directly into his despite her blushing hesitancy, and he thought again how her frankness appealed to him.

'I want you to love only me, to forget all those other women,' she blurted out, a desperate and unfathomable urge impelling her, inexplicable and beyond her control. She hurried on when she saw the startled look in his eyes. 'I mean now… for these days we have together.' When he didn't answer, she added softly, 'The fiction will do, Stefan, and don't ask me why, but it's important to me.' Had she been asked to define her feelings she would have been at loss to explain. She loved him, she thought with a cymbal-crashing revelation, neither annotated nor detailed but explosive and deafening inside her head. And she wanted her love returned.

For a woman who was not only a scholar but an expert in a man's field, for a woman who'd decided to ride across the battleground of Kurdistan in the midst of war, for a woman who'd traveled up his harrowing mountain trails with a minimum of vapors or complaint, she looked suddenly as vulnerable and artless as a young maid. She didn't want extravagant gifts or large sums of money; she wasn't intent on binding him in a female way he'd learned at a very young age to avoid. She wanted only his love.

And for the only time in his extremely varied experience with women, his heart was touched, not simply by the