Golden Paradise

by Susan Johnson

  "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 naïveté of her request but by her utter candor. "Gladly," he replied, his emotions evident in his voice, "with intemperate feeling and pleasure."

  When her face lighted up at his response, her joy and hap­piness immediately apparent, a warmth of unprecedented feel­ing washed over him. Gently lifting her face to his, he said very, very softly, "I plight you my love on this mountaintop," pledging surety to her and with that pledge, unknown to Lisa­veta, offering his love for the first time in his life.

  He lifted her in his arms then, as though his patience had a finite limit, and carried her out of his study and up the small curved staircase. The polished wooden railing resembled a sin­uous grapevine, curling upward as it would in nature, min­utely detailed with beautifully carved tendrils, leaves and fruit; the treads were covered in lush grass-green carpet, silken and luminous. So close to nature were these creations of man she almost expected to gaze up and see stars in the sky.

  "Where are the stars?" she playfully murmured.

  As if he read her mind, as if they were so completely in har­mony he knew what she was thinking, he answered, "In ray room."

  Past the top of the vine-draped stairs, at the end of a narrow hallway hung with candlelit icons and illuminated paintings reminiscent of glittering jewels, Stefan pushed open double wooden doors, hinged and ornamented with brass serpentine animal forms, and stepped into a room he'd known since childhood.

  Toys were stacked on shelves and tabletops; a wooden rock­ing horse painted dapple gray in primitive craft style with large staring eyes and an unusual smile gazed at them from a win­dow embrasure; a special glass case held massed armies of miniature soldiers. The polished wood floor was covered with fur rugs, as was the plain four-poster bed, although the elabo­rately embroidered, lace-trimmed white pillow covers were an incongruous sight in this young boy's room.

  The dormer windows were curtained in plain blue linen, made less plain by the entwined Bariatinsky-Orbeliani family crests woven in gold thread and picked out with sapphire jewels. While austere in design, Stefan's room spoke eloquently of his family's enormous wealth, from the sable rugs to the cabochon emeralds in his rocking horse's eyes.

  And the stars.

  When he pointed up with a smile so she'd look, Lisaveta saw a lapis lazuli arched ceiling set with diamond stars.

  "You have a fortune in your ceiling," she couldn't help but say. Even though her mother's family was in the exclusive ranks of the Empire's wealthiest and the Lazaroffs were far from paupers, she'd never seen anything like the lavishness of Ste­fan's households.

  "My mama's Persian background," Stefan explained. "The Orbelianis had a different standard of wealth than the rest of the world." He didn't reply with either apology or pretension but simply made a statement of fact. "I wanted to see the stars at night when I went to sleep, I told Mama when I was very young and this lodge was being built."

  "Does Choura like your diamond stars?" She couldn't re­strain her remark although she'd valiantly suppressed it twice before it came tumbling out. Her jealousy was stridently real and Choura was wildly beautiful by anyone's standards, an untamed dazzling enchantress.

  "I haven't brought her here." He'd never brought any woman to this room. It was exclusively his in a selfish intro­verted way. He'd never wanted to share his past or his feel­ings—all openly visible here in his mementos and childhood toys. He'd preserved the shelter of this room intact against the personal disasters that had decimated his family. His happiest memories of childhood were inventoried and catalogued by each particle and belonging in this room, and until today he'd never wanted to expose those intimacies to anyone.

  Lisaveta's gaze was skeptical.

  "Her room was on the main floor facing the courtyard," he matter-of-factly said, secure in the truth. "I'll show you if you—"

  "No," she said. "No, don't show me." The thought of Ste­fan and… her… in any room made her feel green-eyed with resentment. "So she never saw this?" It wasn't that she didn't believe him, only that she found it hard to believe.

  Stefan set her down carefully in an oversize chair uphol­stered in royal blue damascene, squatted down in front of her so their eyes were level and said, this man who was known to prize his personal privacy, "Ask me everything and then you'll be content."

  "Don't patronize me, Stefan."

  "I'll answer honestly." And that, too, was a startling ad­mission from Stefan, who by virtue of necessity in the sheer number of his amorous liaisons considered evasion an essen­tial.

  Lisaveta sighed, her expression rueful, her golden eyes in­nocent as a young girl's. "I'm sorry. Do you think me exces­sively possessive?"

  "I think you've brought me unmitigated joy the week past is what I think." He grinned. "And I'm in no position to be passing judgment on character."

  She smiled back, charmed by both his admissions. "True," she unabashedly said, happily accepting both his statements. "Why didn't she see this?" she asked then, because she wanted the detail behind his action, because she wanted the pleasure and luxury of hearing he hadn't cared for Choura as much as he did for her.

  "I didn't say she didn't see this. She may have when I was gone. None of the doors are locked."

  "Why?"

  "Why aren't they locked?" A lifetime of evasion wasn't so easily jettisoned.

  Lisaveta gazed at him with mock severity.

  "It was my room," he said bluntly. "I didn't care to bring her here."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know." His reasons were not so eas­ily disentangled from the muddle of his past. It had been a matter of survival, perhaps, for a man who'd seen his world destroyed while very young. His dark eyes held hers for a mo­ment. "Introspection is a new concept for me, dushka. I'm sorry," he said, apologizing for the inadequacy of his answer. "It didn't seem right. Is that sufficient?"

  "I'm sorry," she said, recognizing the effort he'd made in answering, "for being so insistent. It's as though I've no con­trol over my jealousy."

  "We're well matched then, sweetheart, because I must keep you by me… regardless…" He left the sentence unfinished, for each knew the difficulties evaded to bring them here to­gether.

  His shoulders seemed very wide only inches below her eye level, the breadth of his chest like a solid wall before her. His black eyes beneath his heavy brows were like a force of nature, so vibrant and intense was his glance. He was dynamic power and energy and a magnetic beauty she could no more relin­quish than the earth could stop turning on its axis. With a cu­rious finality she said, "And I want you selfishly for myself alone."

  His voice was intense and gruff. "We're agreed then." She looked the most perfect woman he'd ever seen, rosy-cheeked, her golden eyes bright with spirit and passion, her slender form dwarfed by the custom-built chair made to suit his own enor­mous frame.
Her traveling suit blended perfectly with the royal blue of the chair as if she'd planned her wardrobe for the eventuality of this moment. The dusty-rose linen, trimmed with white organdy collar and cuffs, buttoned in steel-gray mother-of-pearl, dramatized both her femininity and warmth and he wanted her in his bed with an urgency he'd never experienced before.

  "I can't wait any longer," he said, the way a young boy might. "Have I answered everything now?" Anyone knowing Stefan would have been shocked at his grave diffidence. He was not a humble man.

  "Have I told you how happy you make me?" Lisaveta re­plied, astonished at the exhilarating bliss she felt in his pres­ence.

  "And I can make you happier," he murmured, his smile ro­guish and familiar, his mood restored. Adoring women were a constant in his life. He was back on familiar ground.

  "Arrogant man," she whispered.

  "But you need me," he whispered back, reaching for the buttons on her jacket.

  She stopped his hand. "We need each other." She waited with an arrogance matching his own.

  "Yes," he said, engulfing the hand that stayed him but holding it gently in his warm palm. "We do."

  They made love right there in the chair because it was most convenient for their unbridled passion. The second time, when their frantic need had diminished slightly so they needn't so selfishly take from each other, they tested 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."

  "No doubt," she ironically replied.

  "And perhaps a touch of your hot-blooded Kuzan lust," he added, his face very close to hers, his dark hair brushing her cheeks, the feel of his body an invitation to pleasure.

  "I thought maybe there was something more than my mind," she lazily murmured, "that interested you…." She moved minutely beneath him, her full breasts silken friction against the crisp hair of his chest, her legs sliding comfortably around his. "It's just a wild guess," she added, reaching up to touch his lips with her tongue, "you understand."