Golden Paradise

Read Golden Paradise for Free Online

Book: Read Golden Paradise for Free Online
Authors: Susan Johnson
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

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