Love Storm (12 page)

He didn't withdraw but lay still above her, kissing her gently. Her hands strayed lightly over him, still half-shy and sensitive to the wonder of his body and the tender power he held over her. He felt beautiful, and her heart cried out at the fragile loveliness he had given her. She fluttered her hands timorously down his back, feeling the play of hard muscle and the firmness of rib and flesh. He held her close and was silent as she softly explored him. She moved gently under him, pressing nearer to his incomprehensible sensual mystery. And then she felt it, the slow, surging stirring of his sexual desire, and all her newly felt passion reached out to him.

He was very patient; he had never been so patient, wanting to give the sweet miss the fullest pleasure as she learned the exquisite possibilities of her sexuality. Each slow stroke slid into her honeyed depth, and he rested against her arched pearl while her tumultuous passion grew. He was aching now and watched her as she drew near the edge. She hung on to him as if she were drowning. He felt a tremor in her belly, and she moaned a sound of helplessness against the coming storm. She was almost there. Her moan gave way to a soft cry of rapture, and he felt all his passion rushing down, rushing down as the throb of his groin pumped and poured the hot fluid into her.

Warm and sated with his exertion, he dropped a kiss on her lips, murmured softly, "Sweet, sweet, lovely puss."

Twenty minutes later he carried a very subdued beauty into the
dacha
and up the stairway to the bedroom.

Unobtrusive servants, their features politely composed, efficiently cleared their master's progress, silently opening and shutting doors as Alex strode through the
dacha
carrying his houseguest.

Minutes later Alex reclined against the carved and painted headboard of his canopied bed, curving Zena into his arms. She snuggled her head against his shoulder, and he idly caressed her tumbled auburn curls. He lightly kissed the top of her head as he reflected that the Kuzan luck had indeed not deserted him, for how remote were the chances of finding such a delightful innocent flower of passion on the steps of the Dolgorouky palace in a snowstorm. Odds even he would decline to wager on, and he was notorious for betting on the most unfavorable percentages.

Stretching out his left arm, he groped in the darkened room for his August Hollming gold and enamel cigarette case on the bedside table. Finding it he flicked up the lid, extracting one of his custom-made blue silk cigarettes of harsh Turkish tobacco.

As he held it in his mouth while his fingers renewed the blind questing for matches, Alex muttered the obligatory courtesy, "Do you mind if I smoke?" Without waiting for an answer, a match flared in the dark, and Zena looked up to see his handsome dark features illuminated brilliantly in the flare of the phosphorus glow. He bent

slightly to touch cigarette to flame; looking down he noticed Zena's curious scrutiny and winked wickedly before waving out the match. As Alex drew a deep draught into his lungs, the burning tip glowed brilliant otange, the only light in the darkened room. He exhaled lazily, his fingers stroking Zena's arm as he held her against his chest. "Forgive my animal ways, little one. I hope I didn't hurt you," Alex apologized quietly.

"No, of course you didn't hurt me," Zena replied. "But you see, that is
...
ah
..."

"Come, child," Alex interrupted with easygoing tranquillity, "don't worry about being tactful. Just tell me. But what?"

"Well, I will own to a certain apprehension that you'll think me too ready to respond. It's not considered ladylike."

Alex threw back his head and chuckled deeply. "It's quite acceptable,
dushka,
to leave ladylike ways at the bedroom door. Let me assure you, my pet, your eager responses are of unalloyed delight to me. In fact, I'm sure there isn't a single male on the face of the earth who would disagree. There's nothing you could do that would shock me, child."

Zena didn't know her seducer very well, or she wouldn't have been uneasy with apprehensions of unladylike behavior.

Since adolescence Prince Alexander Kuzan had done exactly as he pleased, looking down his insolent, well-bred nose with contempt at any who would dare cry scandal. After initiating or being involved in the most perverse and wicked excesses of the past eight years as the leader of St. Petersburg's fast set, one could understand the merry chuckle and raised black brows at the
mademoiselles
shy consideration of propriety.

"If I didn't know better," he said speculatively, "but there's no doubt I took your maidenhead, I'd be inclined to think you were not an innocent at all. Do women's romances instruct so explicitly?" he teased. "I was under the impression they were all of sighs and languishing looks and unrequited, passionless love."

"Oh, you're quite right about romances," Zena agreed. "I tried to read a few of them, but the silly airs of the heroines are really too idiotic to stomach. My reading instead followed the classics and the histories so adored by my father."

"Hmm," said Alex in faint surprise, "I detect a different side to you—not all beautiful, charmingly female, it seems," Alex mocked softly. "A bit blue, I think."

The
mademoiselles
want of sophistication caused her to miss the cynical overtones, and she continued quite earnestly, "I've always been fascinated by history, my lord, a taste my father encouraged."

"My father and a long line of dissolute Kuzans, as you see, encouraged rather different tastes in me. You're the first woman I've known who admits to reading."

Alex had always found learned women an awful bore, invariably too determined to exhibit their erudition. He heartily embraced the masculine notion that women as a sex were meant to be feminine, dainty, exquisite creatures.

A startled pair of eyes looked up at him. "That seems odd, my lord," Zena said. "I find reading one of my favorite pleasures."

"Please,
mademoiselle,
I beg of you," said the prince lazily, "no more
my
lords."

"Very well, My 1
..."
She hesitated. "Prince Kuzan?"

"Good God, no! My name is Alexander Nikolaevich Kuzan. My family calls me Sasha. My friends call me Archer. My acquaintances call me Alexander Nikolaevich."

"Why do your friends call you Archer? What an odd name. Do you like archery?"

There was the hint of a smile in his voice. "Not
partie
ularly, but on occasion it's amusing. Better call me Sasha. Archer won't do."

"Why not, if your friends call you that?"

"It's a long story, and one that would not interest you." Again she heard the smile in the dark. "Now, no more
my
lords.
Puts me in mind of a servant girl. Sasha, all right?"

"Yes, my 1 . . . yes, Sasha," Zena demurely replied.

His cigarette had been rushed out, and now both hands were languidly stroking Zena as she lay in his arms.

"Very pretty,
mademoiselle."
The prince's long finger traced the outline of a dainty flower-shaped scar on the rise of Zena's hip.

The young woman blushed at his tantalizing finger on her flesh. "A childhood accident," she explained.

His fingers wandered lightly over waist and hip, traced a silky drifting pattern on the inside of her thighs, softly roved upward to caress the lush female breasts, stopping a moment to rub his thumb against a soft nipple. Zena's body was slowly warming to his touch, and his stiffness quivered as the tumescence grew.

"Bluestocking or no, little one," he murmured idly, "there are other roles set aside for a woman in this world of ours. You'll surely want children someday."

"No!" Zena's emphatic response resounded in the hushed room. "I intend to finish my father's research and haven't time for children." Her determined reaction momentarily stilled Alex's roving hands.

He delicately lifted his eyebrows in mild astonishment. Is this young chit so
naïve
that she's unaware of the correlation of their lovemaking and the possibility of children? Does she innocently believe a passionate nature like hers housed in a voluptuous, exquisite, womanly body, even now beginning to stir passionately, can ignore the ofttimes consequences of that pleasure?

Then with an almost immediate indifference, the prince shrugged off her
naïveté
and its attendant difficulties. It wasn't his problem. Light fingers delicately squeezed a peaked pink nipple. Zena shuddered and made a little helpless sound.

He bent to kiss the soft yielding lips so close to his and guided her hand to the arched instrument of pleasure pulsing in anticipation.

They stayed awake all night making love, drinking champagne, and talking about every imaginable subject. Breathless and warm from love he would pull her atop his body and she'd lie on the heated, muscular bed of his torso, inches from his face; he poured her chilled champagne and, in altering moods of teasing and seriousness, they talked of their lives. Reaching up occasionally or drawing her down to kiss her lips, Alex would attempt to recover the train of thought but, often as not the kiss set off a passionate embrace that in a leisurely manner ultimately resulted in a renewed exploration of their mutual paradise. He brought her up countless times that night to shuddering, clutching peaks of enchantment while he melted quivering in numerous sweet deaths within her lush warmth.

At times positions would be reversed, and he would ride lightly above her, feeding her champagne with his kisses.

"Only half a mouthful, my sweet," he teased, "for my selfish instincts prevail—the other half is mine." Thusly in a bantering, joyful fashion another bottle of champagne was consumed. As the bubbly effervescent liquor inundated Zena's senses, her last inhibitions vanished; she opened her heart to this charming rogue, opened her mind to the warmth and security he genially offered, and opened her body to the overwhelming rush of passionate desire roused by the experienced proficiency of a consummate, skillful, courtly libertine, reaffirming his noted reputation as the Archer.

It was dangerous to want anyone as she wanted Sasha, Zena warned herself, and after such a whirlwind short acquaintance, but to a young woman who felt very much alone in the world and had known only cold tolerance the past few years, Sasha's comforting arms, softly murmured phrases of love, and sensuous pleasure were intoxicating.

As dawn approached, the exhausted young maid fell asleep. The prince watched her briefly from the vintage point of one elbow—long, dark lashes falling on flushed pink cheeks. What very long eyelashes the
mademoiselle
had, thought Alex, apropos of nothing. They made great shadows on her cheeks. The heavy mane of red-brown hair was disarrayed in wild waves around her dainty face, one arm flung in exhaustion above her head while the delicate petite body, of proportions Venus would have envied, glowed white against the shadows of the morning light.

The faint color of dawn seeped into the quiet room. Zena's soft breathing stirred the silent air as she lay warm and replete at his side. He gazed at the young
mademoiselle
with an uncommon tenderness. Alex was neither so dissolute nor so
blasé
as to be untouched by the quiet magic of the moment. He was aware of what she had given of herself, of the frank adoration and melting acquiescence presented gratuitously with an open heart.

He reminded himself that she wasn't one of his usual companions. The attendant implications confounded him, and he brusquely dismissed the uncomfortable thoughts with a slight frown.

He rose then and drew a blanket over her in a friendly, protective way, as if she were somehow in his charge. He wrapped himself in his squirrel-lined gray silk dressing gown and retired to a chair by the fire to await the early entrance he anticipated from Bobby.

He'd let the young chit sleep until afternoon. She was unfamiliar with sleepless nights. His normal careless, dissipated life routinely experienced periods without sleep, and three continuous days of drinking and carousing was not in the least unusual.

The eminently satisfied prince spent the morning entertaining a talkative, engaging three-year-old, and only when the dressmaker he had sent for arrival did he wake Zena.

"It's two o'clock, little one," he whispered in her ear, "and duty calls. Are you ready to have pins stuck into you?"

Zena's eyes snapped open in apprehension. Had the considerate, unutterably charming prince of the previous night turned into a perverted sadist?

The warm look in his eyes and the smile flashing his even white teeth belied the startling, alarming inquiry.