around Stefan's shoulders and pulled him closer. Her mouth opened to his sweet demands, her heated body melted around him.
As if she'd spoken, as if she'd said remember, he instantly wanted more. He wanted more leverage, he wanted to press deeper, he wanted with feverish impatience to enhance the tantalizing bliss. Lifting her suddenly, he held her with one arm while he wrapped her legs around his waist, then swiftly, as if these were the last few moments in eternity, his hands slid down her back to slip under her bottom. Supporting her entire weight now, secure in his possession, he slowly penetrated, focusing with self-indulgent intemperance on burying himself to the limits of his need.
Lisaveta gasped as extravagant pleasure washed over her.
Stefan held his breath for a moment, absorbing the riveting luxury of unrestrained sensation.
'Nikki's going to be looking for the Countess soon. Someone went to fetch him from the card room.' The female voice held that cozy chatty ambience of casual gossip.
It was madness to cling to him, Lisaveta thought, hearing those ominous words, sheer unadulterated lunacy to let herself thrill to such voluptuous feelings. But she was inundated by a feverish desire so torrid it was melting away every sensibility in her body save her own carnal urges.
She'd been celibate too long-it had been three weeks since the mountains. Was that excuse enough for this madness? She chose to ignore the fact that no man of her numerous suitors in that interval had so much as piqued her interest, sexual or otherwise. And under the circumstances, crude as they were at this moment, with lust dominant and love unmentioned, it was wise of her psyche to suppress that thought.
'I'd be interested in Nadejda's reaction. Should we go inside and watch the fireworks?' The man's voice was infused with a keen curiosity. 'Her scenes are always memorable, and Bariatinsky and the Countess seem to have left.'
At that moment, Lisaveta cried out, overcome with a peaking intensity of rapture.
'Did you hear that?' It was the woman's voice.
Stefan's mouth swiftly covered the remnant of Lisaveta's cry, responding automatically, his reaction to danger instinctive, while his body continued uninterrupted its tantalizing and measured rhythm.
'It was the orchestra. See, there it is again.' The couple's voices receded as they returned to the ballroom.
Stefan's head came up then and he grinned, his dark glance regarding Lisaveta with amusement. 'You'll have to be more quiet,
'If not for
'If not for
'Neither do I,' Stefan lazily drawled, and just as she was beginning to think she could defy her pulsing needs and gain control over her feelings once again, Stefan moved inside her, setting every intemperate nerve in her body to tingling.
No! she silently disavowed, feeling the first tremulous flutters begin, Stefan's eyes too observant, too knowing. She shouldn't, she mustn't climax, she must resist behaving like a lascivious trollop under that amused insolent stare.
'No-o-o-o,' she whimpered against the injustice of her emotions and her peaking ecstasy.
Lisaveta's gratification triggered Stefan's own release. Their passion matched as it had so often in the past, and he fought against responding so exactly to her unbridled sensuality. She was flamboyantly sexual, resplendent in her voluptuousness, and every man reacted to her as he did.
He tried then to restrain himself, to set himself apart from her legions of lovers. He intended to use her for his own purposes, pragmatic purposes; he wouldn't be tempered by her response, and he controlled his prodigal impulses for a moment more. But Lisaveta reached up then to kiss his mouth in unthinking desire as she peaked, her lips soft and sweet tasting as he remembered, and he groaned into their lush resiliency, felt his shuddering climax begin and knew he couldn't stop himself.
'No…' he softly disclaimed as his white-hot lust poured into her.
'No,' they whispered in unison as their bodies met in perfect harmony and the universe stood for a suspended moment in starlit brilliance around them.
Short minutes later, tugging the lace ruffles up over her breasts, he patted them lightly in place, shook out the lace flounce on her shoulders and then slid her petticoat and the burgundy silk of her skirt down over her legs. Without expression, he buttoned his trousers and tucked in his shirt while Lisaveta stood in shock and anger, furious at him… and at herself for responding so intensely. Still without speaking, he straightened the cuffs of his shirt, adjusting them to his jacket sleeves as though it mattered with no one in sight, and then with a quiet, 'Thank you, Countess,' he walked away.
She watched him stroll down to the shoreline and then disappear into the birches bordering the lawn, wanting to strike out at him in outrage, wanting to follow him with a screaming tirade of wrathful indignation, wanting also, unfortunately- disobedient thought-to cling to his arm and say, 'Take me with you.'
Her feelings were in untidy anarchy, a complicated muddle of wishful fantasy, lovesick yearning and indiscriminate rage. He was too beautiful and self-assured, too sought after and resistant to love. And it was bitter fate that she should want him anyway.
Still warm, with cheeks flushed and pulse pounding, Lisaveta welcomed the sea breeze. Shutting her eyes briefly, she leaned back against the cool granite, letting the sensations of sated passion subside. She shouldn't have been so physically receptive, she thought uneasily; she should have been less susceptible, shown more control and resisted him. Why couldn't she coolly deal with Stefan, save herself the humiliation of matching his need with her own, instead of crying out in delight, clinging to him, wanting him desperately? His motives, though, were never in question, even if hers were disordered and bewildering; his were purely carnal. And while he denied being drunk tonight, she wondered if perhaps he was. How else did one explain his shocking behavior?
But perhaps Stefan lived constantly on the brink of scandal; maybe if she were to ask, Nikki and Alisa would confirm that seizing women in ballrooms and making love to them where all the world might observe was ordinary procedure for Prince Bariatinsky. He did, after all, number Catherine the Great and Prince Orlov among his ancestors, and both had been monumental egos in an era that subscribed to monumentality as a credo. And from all Militza had told her of Stefan's father and mother, they had shown every sign of regarding impulse as a virtue.
And while she might decry the vice of capricious impulse, she in fact had reacted just as spontaneously. Her initial refusal had stemmed from anger. She had wanted him, too, and he must have been aware of her body's response even as she protested.
It was impossible any longer to deny her need of him. She'd proved it, demonstrably, tempestuously, and she might as well confront the truth.
She belonged to the legion of women-ex-lovers, current lovers and future lovers-who found Stefan irresistible.
Chapter Thirteen
Walking through the informal English gardens facing the sea, Stefan found his coachman visiting with the other drivers near the stables and had himself driven to the Yacht Club. Settling into a club chair near the windows, he had a servant bring him a bottle of brandy, watched as the man filled a glass to the point indicated by his finger and then, thanking him with a smile, began drinking. There was no possibility he could sleep tonight, and the liquor might help to mitigate the distasteful sense of affront and self-reproach assailing him.
He shouldn't, of course, have forced himself on Lisaveta.
Yet she had responded like a practiced tart, damn her. How many other men had enjoyed her favors the past few weeks…? The thought of other men touching her maddened and inflamed him, made him resentful, made him covetous.
