“Good morning, Demetri.” The minx fluttered her eyelashes at him. How do women learn these things so fast?
“You look exquisite. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, holding her gaze long enough to show her that two could play at the game of allure and flirtation.
Color flushed her cheeks much to his great satisfaction. And just like that he was hungry for her again. He looked down at her upturned face, and they were back in that moment when their souls had danced together through the simple touch of lips and tongues. Back not hours earlier when they had shared breath, igniting each other, teasing and taunting, hinting at the flames the two of them would generate if they took things further.
With the utmost certainly, he wanted to do that all again, despite the telegram burning in his pocket.
IS IT DONE YET STOP REMEMBER WHAT YOU PROMISED STOP A MOTHERS HAPPINESS AND A FAMILY’S HONOUR IS AT STAKE STOP BE SWIFT STOP BE DECISIVE STOP YOUR BROTHER HAS DOUBTS STOP SHOULD I WORRY STOP
Demetri offered an arm to his quarry.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked in Russian.
“Like an innocent.” He murmured back. He was a blackguard playing the games he did. As if she knew it, she scoffed yet the most delightful touch of color on her cheeks.
“I am assured we have a fine day, no snow, no rain, so, I have an open carriage arranged this morning for a tour of the city, lunch overlooking the river and then a pre-dinner drink from the third deck of the Eiffel Tower.”
Her faced beamed at him, eyes sparkling like the most precious amber his country could deliver. He lifted his arm where her hand rested and bent down to kiss the gloved fingers. He wanted to have her on a bed full of luxury linens, cushions in jewel tones crowding the bed and her wild hair spilling over them while he traced connections between the freckles that could be scattered over her body. He wanted to be lost in her.
And that was exactly how the day unfolded, with glances and touches that drove him wild. They sat opposite each other in the open carriage, the day bright with glorious winter sunshine, with warm blankets over their laps. Yet it could not compare with a sleigh ride in St Petersburg. There she would be wrapped in furs, the harnesses strung with bells ringing as they slipped through snow covered countryside. The things he would do to her under those furs.
It was not so surprising that neither of them talked about what happened in the parlor. Nor future possibilities. He could have asked, could have suggested, but if he needed to use these intimacies in blackmail, he could not have her say he lured and entrapped her. But maybe, just maybe, he could find another way, should she choose him over the Prince.
Inevitably, after dinner and after he heard the sounds of her father retiring for the night, Demetri stepped softly down the hall to their small private parlor. A slice of light seeped out under the door.
He took another quick look up and down the hall then opened the door. A drift of warmth from the fire slipped past him and there she was, standing beside the flames warming her hands, still in the formfitting navy velvet evening gown she’d worn at dinner. She turned, saw it was him and her face glowed at the sight of him. The sight made his heart lift out of his chest and soar.
In two steps he was at her side.
“I was hoping…”
“You are here…” they spoke over each other and laughed. When had he felt this light?
Demetri reached for her, drew her to the sofa and sat her down next to him.
“Georgie.” He drew up her hand, turned it over and kissed her palm, pressed it against his cheek.
“I had a lovely day,” she whispered as she leaned closer.
“It’s not over yet.” And there was that glorious smile again.
She hovered a fraction away from him, still not as confident as she should be where he was concerned.
“Show me what you remember, Bushka.”
Those amber eyes glowed and he felt the smile tug at those lush lips of hers as she pressed them against him. Her hair was pure silk as he threaded his fingers through it. Her mouth a pocket of soft, hungry heat as it opened under his.
It was sometime later when she was nestled in the crook of his arm as they both watched the fire. IS IT DONE YET STOP REMEMBER WHAT YOU PROMISED STOP. Could he live with the fact the betrothal was the result of blackmail? Surely if she chose him and not the arrangement? Would his family forgive him if he didn’t reestablish their honor? He didn’t think so, on either account.
He stroked her cheek, so soft as she pressed into his touch.
“Did you bring the rest of your postcards?” Her hair, satin against his lips as he whispered into it and kissed the side of her head.
“How do you know there are more than one?” She flashed teasing eyes at him.
He grinned. “Ah, let me see. You found your way to a scandalous shop, one where even I found some things unfathomable, only to come back with an image of a couple kissing?” He captured her chin between his finger and thumb and lifted her face to his, kissed her then challenged her. “I think not.” He let her chin go and leaned back against the sofa. “I see the weighty task falls to me to make sure you don’t have anything that would make a man blush and run for the hills on his wedding night.” She slapped his arm.
“I do in fact have more.”
He laughed out loud and put his palm out motioning for her to give them to him.
Her face was conflicted, color high on her cheeks. “They are rather explicit.”
“I am counting on it.” He motioned again for her to deliver.
She slipped her hand into a pocket her dress had no right to have, given how it hugged her body, let alone camouflage something the size of a postcard.
Another thought flashed in his mind, did she have it on her? He leaned over and stroked her neck. “Are you carrying the little miniature?”
Her elbow poked into his rib and he laughed.
“Narcissist,” she teased as she pulled the postcards out of her pocket. He grinned so wide he must look like a fool because nestled under them was the miniature, and for the hundredth time that day a ridiculous amount of pleasure rippled through him.
“You look smug,” she said. He felt it.
“Give me the postcards,” he motioned impatiently with his hand, “put the other little nonsense away.”
She rolled her eyes at him and did as he asked. This woman, these exchanges, he had never seen his parents like this. In fact, he had never been like this, heart so full, the world somehow brighter.
“So, let’s see what little depravities you have collected here.”
Georgie reached forward to grasp them out of his hand. He evaded her.
“Your dark desires brought to light.” He made a sign to the heavens, “may my mind be protected from harm.”
“Demetri!” she lurched out with stronger intent to snatch them back. He laughed and held them high out of her reach.
“Don’t worry, Bushka, I am willing to sacrifice the purity of my mind to gaze at your debauched fantasies.” She jumped to her feet aiming to grab at the items he held out of reach and he laughed harder bringing his hand down to tuck it between his back and the sofa.
To his eternal gratitude, she launched herself on top of him, wrapping her hands around the back of him and wriggled over him, creating all kinds of heavenly sensations.
He released the postcards and pressed his back hard against the sofa so she couldn’t slip her hand behind him and grabbed her beneath her arms. She yelped and he recognized her weakness. He preceded to tickle her.
She squealed, and wriggled, and laughed and giggled. “Stop, stop please,” she begged between laughter and writhing. Elation surged through him at the sounds of her pleas, her laughter, at the pleasure in drawing them from her, in having her at his mercy.
“Demetri. Have mercy. Please. Anything. Anything. Just stop.”
The Betrothal.
The flash went through his mind and he mentally hurled it aside, a viper flung against the wall. Ins
tead he clasped her wrists in one of his.
“What could you give me to make me stop? Now let me see.” He leaned over her. Pressed his body over hers, nuzzling against her neck. “I want to choose one of those postcards and initiate you into its pleasures.”
Georgie shook her head. “You don’t know… what they contain.” She flushed in mortification. She really hadn’t worked it out.
“A man can only hope.” But she shook her head no.
He tickled her until, between gasps, she capitulated. “Yes. Yes. Just stop. Please. Demetri. Just stop.”
He released her with an overwhelming sense of anticipation. He set about collecting the postcards now scattered over the sofa and the carpet. Mouth on breasts and hand up skirt, very nice. An erect man, not so nice, he threw it into the fire.
“Demetri!”
“You don’t need that one.”
“I need all of them. Which one was it?”
There was another one of a woman’s sex. Educational, he handed it to her. Another, cunnilingus, exceptional, that went into his pocket. Finally, a man and woman in union, fundamental. He went to throw it in the fire, and she launched forward, grabbed it from him and had it in her secret dress pocket before he could stop laughing.
“That was not funny, Demetri.”
He simply nodded at her and held up the postcard of a man kissing a woman’s breasts with his hand up her skirt.
“This is the next step.”
She launched forward to grab the image as he slipped it into his pocket before he caught her around the waist. “But for now, we kiss some more.”
Chapter 15
The elevator chimed and the door opened to the aroma of breakfast: cinnamon pastries and roasted apples coming from the Hotel’s dining room they had been in earlier. Demetri stood alongside her father, both dressed as she was, for a day’s sightseeing. Stony faced, the Demetri of the day before was gone. The tension in him whenever he was in her father’s company was escalating.
Together, they visited the Louvre, a carriage tour of the sites which included riding under and around the Arc de Triomphe. Lunch overlooking Notre Dame de Paris where her father excused himself relaying, he had a visit planned with colleagues and not to expect him for dinner.
Their train left in the morning for Copenhagen where they would spend a day and night before taking a ferry to Oslo for an overnight stay before boarding a train to St Petersburg. Three short days to spend with Demetri and she intended to make every one of them count.
After a visit to the Musee D’orsay Demetri escorted her back to the Hotel to rest before dinner saying that he also had business to attend to.
“Say hello to your brother.” She’d showed him her teeth and received a warning look in return. But he whispered, “Meet me in the parlor at five.” Her cheeks warmed and her body did its usual fluttering at the promise in his voice. “We’ll have an aperitif before we go to the Moulin Rouge,” then he’d escorted her to the elevator.
Now, as she rested in her room, the reality was harder to keep away. She was behaving as if Demetri were the man she was to have…and he wasn’t. He was the brother of her betrothed and part of a family who had made it very clear they didn’t not want her joining it.
Georgie reached into her skirt pocket drawing out the small frame and looked on the features she had loved all her life. That was the truth. She had fallen in love with her betrothed through these miniatures, yet they weren’t of him, they were of Demetri. Could she help but fall for the man they depicted in person? She had whispered the secrets of her heart to his image since she was a young girl. He knew everything about her without knowing her at all and yet it felt as if he did. It felt as if they had known each other forever. As if they belonged together…forever. She turned her face into the pillow and squeezed her eyes shut against frustrated tears she would not spill. What if she were free? What if there was no betrothal and no loan?
Georgie sat up and swung her legs off the bed, went to the mirror, tucked the expected errant curls back in with pins and slipped out. Down the hall, she knocked on her father’s door.
“Enter.”
Her father sat, reading the paper at a small desk overlooking the window and the street below.
Georgie sat in the small upholstered chair beside the desk. “The columns?”
“As always. Seems Paris has a thing for the Russians as well.”
“Vodka and Caviar?” she asked.
He nodded still scanning the newsprint, “exactly!”
“Father?” He was underlining words here and there.
“What is it sweet-cheeks, things not going well with you and the General?”
“I need to be released. How are the funds going?”
Her father simply waved a hand in her direction in a there-there gesture.
“You have seemed happy these last few days.”
“That is no thanks to my betrothed.” That wasn’t strictly true, she hadn’t given her betrothed much thought these days, not in the way she used to. No. She saved her wistful longing for his brother. Her betrothed had become a faceless man, with the poor character to avoid seeing her, even here in Paris. Through these events and what it said about him she didn’t care for him. She simply wanted to see him to wrap things up, have her say and get things off her chest. Besides, while she was waiting for her father to fix his side of things, she wouldn’t be able to break it off even if she did meet him. So perhaps this no-mans-land was a kind of blessing.
Her father patted her knee. “The world is not always as it seems. That Demetri seems to be a good sport though. Very personable.” He was giving her his astute speculator assessment.
“Don’t try to read me, father. I am not a prospect.” Yet she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, feeling all of a sudden that he knew about the kisses, the postcards.
“You like him.” He announced.
Eyes rolling to heaven. “Father!”
“It is my job to look over you, Georgie.”
“Then let me step out of the betrothal, find another way to cover the loans.”
There went that there-there hand again. “I am busy working on it. Yet you haven’t answered my question.”
“It was a statement.” She folded her arms.
“And?”
Georgie thought about Demetri, the way he was all kinds of silent and hard to read and then could make her laugh, be light and oh so sensual.
She nodded. “I do…very much.”
He nodded satisfied. ”Very good.”
“You will allow me to call the betrothal off?”
“Oh no.” he said with too much inflection. “The loan is still there. I am working on this, Georgie, but there is nothing yet to alleviate the obligation. If you call it off now, who knows what we’ll lose.” Her eyes narrowed. He was up to something.
“Why don’t you talk with Demetri about it? Maybe he can help given the Prince is not interested meeting with either of us?”
Her father nodded. “It may come to that, but I’ll try to resolve it myself first. In the meantime, enjoy the trip. Get to know the young Demetri and we will see what we need to do once we reach St Petersburg.”
Her father turned and she drew her courage together.
“Father… Demetri implied you forced his father’s hand for the betrothal.” She swallowed. “Is that true…even remotely.”
He rushed to her side and drew her up. “No, no absolutely not. I would never give my most prized beauty in that way. It was as I said, his father who suggested it, who wanted our families to be closer. It is true I had helped him out of a tight spot, but it was not because of that. We had become friends, he met you as a young girl, can you remember that?”
She shook her head no.
“No, of course you were far too young, I had your mother then and he was simply captivated by her, by our genuine affection for each other and you, the gem of both our lives. He wanted that for himself but his wife… well she was not as he had hoped.
When he found out that he was dying, he insisted that I consider a betrothal to you and his eldest son, the son he said was like him in every way. If there is one thing he would have chosen for himself, it was a marriage like I had with your mother. So that was what he wanted for his eldest son. The youngest he said he loved dearly, but he was of his mother’s ilk.”
Demetri was like his mother…
“I don’t think they know any of this.” Georgie said.
“I have evidence, letters between the two of us. I wanted to give them to his eldest son as a gift in memory of his father, to know his father’s heart and wishes for him. But, as we can both attest, we have, as yet, not met the Prince.”
Chapter 16
At five that evening, with a head full of questions and uncertainty, Georgie entered the parlor. Two glasses of sherry glowed in ochre tones on the table, the fire behind them had already warmed the room. And. The postcard of the man kissing a woman’s breast with his hand up her skirt lay on the table causing excitement to race under her skin in anticipation.
“You look sumptuous.” Demetri gave her a very appreciative perusal as he leaned against the mantelpiece, eyes caressing, lingering, causing her body to warm and tingle.
“Thank you.” She wore burgundy, the color Maria insisted was perfect for the season and the Moulin Rouge. In fact, she wore pantaloons, chemise and a corset to match.
He pushed away from the mantel and walked to the small table. “You are preoccupied.” Demetri handed her one of the glasses.
“I talked to my father about what you implied in London, that my father coerced yours…”
His face became that unreadable version he was so good at wearing. Over the last few days she had come to look to him for answers. Yet she knew what he would say, that of course her father would reassure her. But that didn’t mean that he was correct.
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