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.
