Golden Paradise

the luxury of the sable rug.

Stefan carried her after to his bed and deposited her like the Princess she was on the crested lace-trimmed pillows and white ermine coverlet. Gazing at her lying flushed with pleasure, her rich chestnut hair in silky disarray across his pillows, her golden eyes half-lidded in the drowsy aftermath of lovemaking, dressed only in Militza's pearl earrings, her slender voluptuous body close enough to touch, he said uncharacteristically, his voice a deep low growl, 'You're mine.' There was nothing logical in his declaration; emotion moved him, not reason.

Her lashes lifted that fraction necessary to afford him a direct remonstrance. 'Temporarily,' she reminded him, her own independence as stubborn as his, their personalities matched in imperiousness.

'We'll see,' he replied, emotionally unwilling to relinquish her, impelled in his present need to brand her as his property. He didn't question the unorthodoxy of these sensations; he only acted on them.

'No, we won't see,' she retorted, unwilling to submit when he wouldn't. The man was engaged; they'd both agreed on the limit of their holiday. Unless some facet of his life changed, which was highly unlikely, locked in as he was to the necessity of a court marriage, she wouldn't further indulge him.

'You're not in any position to resist my wishes,' he quietly said, his smile the kind that might or might not extend into genuine warmth, 'on my mountaintop.'

'Are we talking more of your archaic notions of captivity?'

'Call them what you will. I'm not concerned with your choice of words.'

'I won't be dealt with as an object of your obsessions,' she reminded him, gazing boldly up at him as though she weren't lying nude in his bed hours from the nearest hint of civilization.

She saw his struggle to respond congenially to her words and saw, too, the enormous control necessary to bring his wild impulses to heel. 'I keep forgetting,' he said, moving away from her and striding with a naturalness unconstrained by his nudity to a small liquor cabinet, added no doubt when his boyhood was past, 'you want to be equal.' He said it benignly, as an overture of peace, unaware of the inherent repudiation in his statement.

His words, however benevolent in spirit, were the same challenge Lisaveta had faced all of her life. They brought her to a sitting position in the middle of his ermine bedcover.

'I don't wish to be argumentative,' she said in a voice of suppressed emotion, watching him pour some of the local liquor into a small glass, 'but it's not that I wish to be equal, I am.'

She'd been raised to be equal, had sufficient wealth to be equal, was educated by a great number of tutors to be more than equal to most men and had consequently never felt inferior as a woman.

'Sorry,' Stefan apologized, 'of course,' and lifting the glass to his mouth, he swallowed the fiery spirits. His apology was the mindless variety one automatically expressed when bumping into someone accidentally or stepping on someone's toes in a crush. 'There now,' he said, placing the empty glass back on the cabinet, 'have I told you lately how I adore your very sweet stiff-backed pride?'

His grin was intimate and effortless and Lisaveta wondered how many times he'd evaded controversy with that grin.

'I'm not seventeen,' she quietly retorted, annoyed with his repertoire of avoidance.

'You look seventeen, dushka, word of honor.' He had no intention of arguing over who had more power. While he understood her need to challenge the inequalities, from his male point of view, the world offered her little chance of succeeding. He'd been in positions of supreme power too long to have any delusions about the position of women.

'Do women have to be young to please you?' Sweet malice and condemnation colored her soft tone.

He'd reached the bed as she finished speaking and he inhaled softly as if with restraint before he quietly said, 'No, darling, they don't, and I don't want to fight. I do that every day in a much more bloody fashion than you could ever imagine. I want only to love you and hold you and make you smile, and if apologizing for all the inequities to women of the past millenium will help, I offer that apology.' He looked down at her, enormous in his towering height and breadth of shoulder, his eyes dark and heated and strangely seductive in the harsh masculinity of his features. 'There now, is my blanket apology accepted?' His grin broke dazzling white against the swarthiness of his bronzed skin. 'Or do I have to beat you into submission?'

She grinned back and sighed herself, realizing the futility of their stalemated issues. 'Incorrigible man. Are you beyond reform?'

Sitting down on the bed then, he pushed her backward with the lightest pressure. 'Reform me, darling,' he murmured, following her down, lying atop her so she felt only the silk of his muscles and none of his weight. His smile was breathtaking and a breath away. 'You've twenty days.'

'Somehow,' Lisaveta murmured, her mouth so close to his that tiny vibrations of sound passed between them, her eyes matching the teasing in his, 'I don't think you're serious.'

'I'm serious,' he demurred, adjusting her hips a scant inch to accommodate him. 'I've never been so serious,' he unseriously said.

She hit him.

He responded by playfully nipping her earlobe.

At which point she tried to squirm away in sportive frolic.

Her small struggles amused him and aroused him, and the kiss he took from her was lush and endless and sweetly benevolent.

'I will reform you,' Lisaveta breathlessly whispered when her mouth was released at last, her declaration only half in jest.

'I look forward to my schooling,' Stefan softly replied, sliding her up the mellow ermine so he could settle between her legs. 'Tell me, Countess,' he murmured a moment later, his chin resting on her thigh, his eyes black and liquid with passion, his hands moving to ready her for his tongue, 'when you feel I've made… progress.'

All thought of anything beyond insensate pleasure disappeared from her mind as Stefan's tongue slipped into her. He licked and stroked, the taste of her blending with the distinctive flavor of their lovemaking, his own body reacting to the intemperate welcome of hers.

They were a matched pair, he thought, in passion and desire, a combination of personalities so perfectly meshed he could almost feel her urgency in his own body. When she moved to refine the tactile sensations more exquisitely, a flare of excitement raced through him, and when she moaned in luxurious gratification, the muted sound echoed in his own mind.

Then he realized with a start that she was inexplicably moving away from him, a teasing smile of undisguised allure on her face. 'I think I'll rest for a while,' she purred. She was all feline grace and temptation… and she was lying a full two feet away, her weight resting on both her elbows, her eyes indolent under half-lowered lashes.

'I think you're lying,' he said, his voice low and husky. 'I think you can't even wait a minute for what you want.' He was sprawled opposite her, his bronzed skin dark against the ermine, his heavy brows mildly raised in mocking remonstrance, his smile amused.

'Is this a contest?'

'Not from here it isn't.' There was undisputed confidence in his tone.

'Are you always so superior?'

'I prefer… realistic,' he answered very softly. 'Now don't move and I'll make us both happy.' She moved.

She almost managed to escape the bed. Almost.

With lightning speed he lunged across the bed, his fingers closing around her ankle just before her foot hit the floor. Rolling over on his back, he scooped her into his arms in a single diving motion, depositing her on his stomach with effortless finesse.

'So you're physically stronger,' Lisaveta begrudgingly said, but she was smiling.

'Do I have to apologize for that?' He was playing her game with lighthearted boyishness.

'Actually, it has its advantages.' Her voice was a rich contralto, her golden eyes heated.

He laughed out loud and, reaching out, gathered her into his arms and rolled over her so she was pinned beneath him. 'Beg me,' he said, his smile angelic.

'With your libido,' she whispered, her own smile sunshine bright and assured, 'I don't have to.'

'Maybe I have willpower.'

'Not with me you don't.'

She was right, but anyone knowing Stefan in the past would have been fascinated at his lack of control and his lack of concern at his lack of control.

'It must be your intelligence,' he teased, 'attracting me.'