Seized by Love (8 page)

“Look at me, Alisa,” Nikki said softly.

She looked at him, embarrassment, shyness, desire all there in confusion, but kept her eyes averted from his obviously aroused masculinity.

“Look at me,” Nikki insisted quietly, but she resisted.

After a moment Nikki continued teasingly.

“Look what you do to me.” He was laughing and relaxed, while blushing, she avoided looking at him.

“Come now, dearest Alisa. Do as I ask.”

She shivered, then reluctantly obeyed. Hesitantly and trembling slightly, her violet gaze rose to his stiff erection.

“Touch me, Alisa,” he continued quietly, drawing her unwilling hand to him. “Here, I’ll show you how I like you
to touch me. Hold me thus.” He gripped her hand tightly in his, showing her how to rouse his prick for her satisfaction.

With his free hand he slowly stroked her warm body, rubbing her nipples softly between his fingers till they stood taut and hard, caressing the silky inner flesh of her thighs, probing her soft warmth now wet from his lovemaking. She began stirring under his practiced fingers, breathing irregularly, quivering with the pleasurable sensation mounting within her.

He released her hand and whispered, “Do you want me again?”

Her eyes held his for a moment and she nodded.

“Tell me.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and shut her eyes, too, in trembling shame.

“Perhaps next time,” he whispered with a faint smile and moved over her. He eased himself into her until he could penetrate no further and began to warm her with slow, steady thrusts, exercising all his constraint in order that Alisa would have every opportunity to satisfy her newly roused sexual appetite, so she could fully taste the rapture her senses craved. He continued the steady rocking, turning lightly from side to side, moving inside her with practiced skill, watching her blushing, upturned face and reading from her fluttering eyes how she was feeling, then he set to work in earnest and drew her to new heights of pleasure, finally pleasing himself as he pleased her.

Alisa was lying quietly now, enclosed within Nikki’s strong arms, the trembling of her body having ceased.

Into this wonderland of pleasure, this paradise for the senses, drawled a lazy voice.

“It looks as though you win the bet, Nikki. I should have known better, since your skill in these matters is widely renowned. Must say, I envy you the ride.”

Nikki swore and rolled onto his back, his eyes glaring contemptuously at the mocking, derisive smile of Illyich. Cernov was at his side, blandly surveying the delicious display of Alisa’s body. He gave the faintest flick of a wink at Nikki.

Alisa lay there, eyes still closed, caressed almost into insensibility. Nikki quickly drew his shirt over her nakedness.

He watched her floating slowly back into awareness from the nirvana of sexuality where she’d so wondrously expired. She opened her torpid eyes, deliciously languorous, still remote, unfocusing.

“You bastards!” Nikki snarled, turning to the two men.

“Now, now, Nikki, don’t be vulgar. You know perfectly well I escaped illegitimacy by ten days,” Cernov imperturbably retorted.

“Damn voyeurs!” Nikki spat out, a frustrated, blazing anger igniting his mind.

Alisa’s lovely eyes opened with a startled look, at last fully conscious of the scene and its spectators.

“Nikki!” she whispered frantically, appalled she was lying almost naked before two strangers.

“I’ll give you two seconds to get out of here, or I’ll kill you both!” Nikki said in a voice that was solid ice.

Sensible of the reputation Nikki enjoyed as a brawler, the two officers judiciously turned on their heels and left. Cernov, grinning, calmly blew a kiss in Alisa’s direction as he wheeled around.

“Who the hell would think Nikki would get angry over some little piece and a frolic in the woods?” Cernov exhaled softly in amazement. “I’ve never seen him regard a woman as anything more than a serviceable convenience.”

“God only knows, but when Nikki’s in that murderous a mood, I’m not going to wait around to find out why,” Illyich responded with a prudent expediency that had served him well in the past. Together they returned to the lodge to satisfy the desires that Alisa’s lush body had stirred within them. Nikki listened to their hasty retreat through the underbrush, then turned to the dismayed woman.

“Forgive me, Alisa, for the crude stupidity of my friends,” he apologized softly.

As Nikki watched her silent face, he saw a tear well out of one corner of her eye and trace a course down her rosy cheek.

Damn them, damn them to hell, he thought. Of all the abominable luck!

“I’m sorry,” Nikki said aloud, and moved toward Alisa as if to offer what comfort he could.

He’d had vague misgivings and qualifications about this seduction from the beginning, and even more so after their second encounter, but he’d brushed them aside. For Nikki had always lived unhampered by restrictions, ungoverned by rationale, totally unconcerned with consequences. Now he found himself uncomfortably conscious of being the cause of Alisa’s pain and humiliation. He felt guilty, and this guilt upset him because it was foreign to his nature.

In addition to the guilt, he was smolderingly furious at his wretched friends. If he’d been honest with himself, he could have understood their puzzled reaction to his rage. For years the men had participated in many “shared” experiences with women. How were Cernov and Illyich to know that in this rare instance they were not supposed to join the fun?

Alisa cringed from Nikki’s sympathetic gesture. He hastily stayed his hand in midair.

“Please go,” she whispered.

“Alisa, let me explain,” Nikki began, forcibly struck by the misery in her tear-filled eyes.

“Please,” she remonstrated in a barely audible voice. “Just go, you’ve had your amusement.” Her body involuntarily shuddered. “Just go!” she cried hysterically.

“Very well,” Nikki said stiffly. He dressed swiftly, apologizing formally when he withdrew his shirt from her naked form and replaced it with one of her petticoats.

“Please accept my deepest apologies, Madame,” he said in a clipped, cool voice as he bowed briefly to her recumbent
form, her eyes staring, unseeing, averted from his. Then he walked quickly away, flushed with frustration and anger.

Quite suddenly, all the light went out of Alisa’s day. She wept and wept, hugging her petticoat to her as though to keep herself from breaking apart from the great racking sobs of humiliation. She wasn’t ashamed of the men seeing her unclothed, she could survive that; she was ashamed for wanting Nikki so, for willingly giving her body to him; he hadn’t had to force her, she had wanted him. And she wept for that capitulation, for her loss of will. Strong and resolute enough to withstand an intolerable man and marriage for six years, determined enough to patiently plan and wait for escape from a husband she despised, she’d been brought low by an unfathomable desire for a man with a reputation for treating women casually. Who at this very moment, no doubt, considered her simply another pleasant diversion.

Alisa’s life hadn’t been happy since the death of her parents; everything she’d loved and cherished had been swept away in a few days when influenza had claimed both her parents within hours of each other. The raging fever that had held them in its tenacious, deadly grip had never broken. Her lovely, gay mother and quiet, scholarly father had eased into a coma from which they’d never wakened. Alisa had often wished in the years following that she, too, could have died, but her young, strong body had defeated the disease.

Then so shortly after, indeed quite improperly so, the incredulous demand of her hand in marriage by old Mr. Forseus, arranged, he’d said, by her father. Unthinkable, but apparently true, since her father’s signature was on the document.

If she’d not had Katelina to love after that first year, a child to bring joy to her, she wouldn’t have had the strength or courage to continue her existence. Katelina,
her darling Katelina, her only solace, had given her reason to live.

Now, the one time she ignored reason, negated logic, passionately made a daring, bold grasp for momentary happiness, she’d been utterly shamed and humiliated. Maybe there truly was no hope for joy or pleasure in her life, Alisa sorrowfully thought. But she
had
been happy, deliriously happy with Nikki for however brief the moments.

And she cried afresh at her wounded heart and pride. She cried for all her sorrows and all her misery these many years and sobbed all the sobs that had been so long suppressed. Then at length, when she’d finally drained all the pent-up tears, she took herself to task with the indomitable spirit that had always sustained her.

Be sensible, you’ll survive this mortification, she told herself. She still had Katelina and before long, perhaps they’d be able to leave Forseus and make their way in the world. Arni, her father’s old groom, Maria, her old nanny, and Rakeli, Katelina’s nanny, were devotedly loyal and always ready to assist her, should that hope become reality.

Alisa washed herself hastily at the river, then dressed carefully and adjusted her clothes into a semblance of order, her face in a spurious repose, and walked home.

Nikki partially assuaged his black rage and frustration by summarily driving Cernov and Illyich out of his lodge, spurring their departure with a string of vivid obscenities. With a considerably more polite choice of words, Nikki convinced his young cousin Aleksei to repair to the town house in Petersburg for a few days until Nikki joined him. The Gypsy girls were promptly ousted as well, piled into a carriage in which they contentedly counted their money all the way back to the city.

Nikki immediately shut himself into the music room
with two bottles of brandy and a brooding anger that turned into a brooding melancholy by the bottom of the second bottle.

He roared for his musicians and commanded they play sorrowful, quiet Finnish love songs, the old familiar songs of Nikki’s childhood. His mother’s Tzigane ancestors had settled north of Lake Ladoga over a hundred years ago, when a grateful noble had deeded them a large tract of land and citizenship in return for having preserved an only son’s life from a runaway horse. Nikki’s paternal grandfather had begun construction of Le Repose, northeast of Viipuri, in 1810; the country estate was to become the favorite seat of the Kuzan family. Nikki had been reared there and grew up in an atmosphere of Karelian tradition.

Play “Kalliolle Kukulalle,” he would sullenly mutter every second song, and the musicians would lapse again into the sad minor key and play the single melody Nikki wanted to hear.

The poignant lyrics spoke of a lover bringing his sweetheart to a secluded forest cabin and plunged Nikki still deeper into an agonizing, gloomy depression. He couldn’t dislodge visions of Alisa from his mind. They had shared a sexual response that had struck even the surfeited, world-weary Prince as rare and unique. She was a beauty, unutterably so, artless, dazzling, sensual. He
must
see her again!

At one o’clock in the morning Nikki’s glazed, drunken eyes lit with a brilliant flash of an idea. He impatiently waved the musicians away and called for his steward. After sending four riders out with a message for his father’s gardener,
Nikki, eminently satisfied with his resourcefulness, fell into a drunken sleep, having left adamant orders to be wakened when the messengers returned.

Fifty versts (33 miles) away, in the sunny breakfast room of Le Repose, Prince Mikhail Petrovich Kuzan’s principal seat and model estate of 172,000 dessiatins (484,400 acres), Nikki’s parents were enjoying the early morning companionship of a breakfast à deux.

“What in the world is Nikki up to?” his mother curiously inquired. She was a petite, dark-haired Tzigane woman, still lovely and slim at fifty.

“Need you ask?” his father replied dryly. “When Nikki strips our greenhouses of ten dozen orchids and twenty baskets of strawberries, I would hazard a guess your dear boy has found some woman who adores orchids and has a passion for strawberries. Let us at least hope this sudden passion for strawberries does not signify yet another
enceinte
mistress. He has populated the world quite adequately already with his bastards.”

“Now, dear, don’t be too harsh on Nikki,” Princess Kuzan remonstrated gently. “He’s supporting them all quite satisfactorily, even lavishly, and need I remind you that you quite put him in the shade by your reckless escapades until I tamed you into the joys of domesticity. The rumor mills put his streak of wildness at your door, Misha my dear, for as you well know, the Kuzan bloodlines have long possessed a reputation for vice,” she finished sweetly.

Nikki could do no wrong in the eyes of his loving mother. He could be wild and a hellion, but her love was unconditional and she served as a conciliatory influence on the occasions when father and son’s obdurate temperaments clashed.