His dinner was excellent and he ate it with a haste his major-domo would have disapproved of, but the comforts of civilization had been sadly lacking the past few months, the food at Kars deplorable, and he intended to relish his first real meal without concern for etiquette. And while he ate and later lounged again on his bed, finishing the bottle of fine wine the servant had brought with his meal, Stefan was regaled through the plastered walls with a tuneful array of songs in the Countess's soft contralto.
She was a most unusual female, Stefan decided, more indulgent in his assessment once the bottom of the bottle of wine was reached. After all the treachery and danger of the past few days she seemed in cheerfully good humor. Most remarkable. He couldn't think of a woman he knew who would have rebounded from the fearful perils she'd experienced with such buoyant resiliency. Her voice, too, had a delicate feminine charm in song. A shame she was an antidote to look at.
An exemplary officer, Stefan dressed shortly after eating and went to see that his men were satisfactorily bivouacked. His guards were flushed with success, much richer for their pursuit of the Bazhis and celebrating their good fortune with the native arrack, a potent liquor known for its fiery taste. Several stoneware bottles were passed around and shared as the chase was described in detail, so it was past midnight before Stefan bade his bodyguards good-night and returned to the villa.
Although the sounds of revelry in the town continued, the courtyard and villa's interior were hushed and quiet. Despite the hour the heat of the day had scarcely diminished, and the area around the small fountain, open to the stars, seemed hung with a dense dark curtain of torrid vapor. Stefan could almost feel himself move through successive layers of sultry air.
He'd stripped off his loose native shirt on his way up the stairs and kicked off his low boots just inside the door to his room. Tossing the shirt on a chair, he shoved the door shut with one bare foot and padded across the soft Antolian carpet to his bed. Unbelting the coarse woven pants he wore, he let them drop to the floor, then he fell pleasantly inebriated onto the cool linen sheets of his bed. The first night away from Kars, he thought contentedly, the pillow beneath his head a luxury he'd not felt for weeks. The first night he could sleep without one ear tuned to the pickets' song, the first night he didn't have to catch himself dozing as he rode patrol. The first night in months he might have had the opportunity to bed a woman. Unfortunately, in a town accommodating thirty thousand troops, one's choices in vice were limited to a less delicate type of female, and he'd decided to sleep alone.
As he drifted off, his thoughts wandered to the very imminent delights awaiting him in Tiflis. Only two more 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.