Season of Storm (44 page)

Authors: Alexandra Sellers

Now, in the moment that she and Mischa Busnetsky looked at each other for the first time, what she felt was--oh God, what it is to be a woman! And it was a prayer of the deepest, the most delighted gratitude, and the most profound discovery suffused her, earth-shaking, as significant to her as "I think, therefore I am."

He was tall, taller than her father, taller than anyone in the vicinity, and he was thin and his hair was jet black. And those eyes that even in the photograph had seemed to see so much, saw everything there was to see about Laddy Penreith—heart and body and soul. Over Mischa Busnetsky's shoulder, the painting of a naked woman on her knees, her back arched and her hair dangling down her back, cast its golden glow over her mood, and she had a light-headed, drunken feeling that she knew the entire meaning of life.

He took her hand and said her name, and his warm hard strength seemed to issue equally from his deep voice and from the touch of that roughened palm. From him directly she recovered the strength to speak, and what she said, softly, gently, was, "Don't go to prison again."

An indecipherable look, like a mixture of regret, resignation and sacrifice crossed his face, and his eyes were momentarily darker. He smiled down at her, a slow, understanding smile, and that, too, touched her physically, in a way she had never before experienced and only instinctively now understood. "I do not want to go to prison again," he said, "but this is a choice that is not mine to make."

She understood that he intended to continue his battle, whatever the result might be, and something deep within her cried out for her to tell him to give it up, to give in, to tell him that nothing was as important as what she felt in that moment—not freedom or right or truth. But she held back the cry as a betrayal, and she smiled at him in her turn. In that moment she knew all the agony of a woman who sees her man off to battle knowing that nothing in life is as important as what they have together—nothing—but letting him go to make the world right, knowing that the world can never be right for her if he does not come back.

Mischa Busnetsky and her father talked quietly for a long time about important things—of which Laddy heard not a word. Afterward she could not even remember whether they had spoken in Russian or English. She was learning a whole new language—the song her body sang. She understood that the red velvet of her dress over the soft fullness of her breast was an unmatchable eroticism, that the brush of red velvet on her thigh was also the touch of black denim on Mischa Busnetsky's; that she and this dark man were, at one and the same time, one complete being and its two composite, opposite halves.

When her father's attention was claimed by someone else and he moved away from them, Laddy and Mischa Busnetsky stared at each other in the crowded room, buffeted by the milling crowd, but untouched by anything except what they saw in each other's eyes.

"Have you looked at my friend Vaclav's paintings?" he asked her at last. And when Laddy shook her head, he said, "Come. I will show you." And the electricity between them was so powerful that she knew that his putting an arm round her waist, light as the touch was, was an involuntary movement; she knew with a direct, certain knowledge that he could not prevent himself from touching her in that moment, any more than she could stop her own body's moving towards him so that her hip and leg brushed his as they walked.

He paused in front of the painting of a woman who stood in a simple pose, facing the viewer, waiting. That was all, except somehow one sensed the woman was watching the approach of her lover. Her eyes and part of her golden body were in shadow, but Laddy knew that the woman was looking at a man she loved passionately, and in every line of that naked body was evidence of a battle she was fighting with herself to wait, to wait and make him come to her.

Laddy drew in her breath through opened lips and felt Mischa Busnetsky glance down at her. They said nothing, and he guided her gently but firmly to the next painting.

A woman on her knees, her arms up and her lips parted, but this time the shadow falling on her was in the shape of a man's leg and hip, and when she realised the significance of it, Laddy felt her insides turn over. For a moment she closed her eyes.

"You are young," his deep voice came from over her head. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen," she breathed, her whole body aware of the contact between them at leg and hip, and his hand, burningly strong at her waist.

"In the West that is old enough to have learned about love," he said quietly. Laddy caught her breath.

"Have you learned about love?" he asked, quietly, gently, and she breathed,

"No."

"It will not be long before someone will wish to teach you," he said. "You are so beautiful, so alive." There was quiet regret, resignation in his tone. "I would like to teach you about love," he said, and Laddy felt as though she had been struck in the stomach. She looked up at him; he was looking down at her, the same quiet regret in his eyes as she heard in his voice.

"But these things are not to be," he continued, his voice now causing a warmth to flow through her body, his voice caressing her and her body responding.

Her eyes, wide, gazed into his, and she felt that he must kiss her. "Look at the picture," he commanded quietly, doing so himself, and she looked at the picture of the enraptured woman with parted lips.

"This is a look I will never see on your face," he said. "But this is how you would look for me if I taught you about love."

No one around them in the crowded apartment was taking the least notice of them, and Laddy realised, with a kind of drunken joy, that what he was saying to her, in English, could not be understood by anyone in the room except her father, who stood by another wall engrossed in conversation.

"Here I can make love to you only with words," Mischa said. "Shall I do this? Shall I tell you how my mouth would touch your hair, your soft lips, your full young breasts? Shall I tell you what we would have together if the world were not what it is at this moment?"

She said breathlessly, "Mischa—"

"Look at the painting of my friend Vaclav," he commanded again. "This is a woman who is in love with a man body and soul, as you will someday be, but not for me. But if it were I, if you looked at me like this, how would I keep from touching your lips?" And he reached out and his fingers lightly touched the oil-on-canvas lips of the woman kneeling in the golden glow and the shadow.

Laddy's mouth burned as though it were her lips that he touched. His hand dropped to his side.

"When I am next in prison," he said, "I will remember this as though it were your own flesh I had touched, and I will remember you looking at me with a face such as this, and then I will wish that life had been different." He looked down at her again.

"You do not yet know about love, but I know how you have looked when my hand is on your breast, I know what you have said to me when I touch your thighs, your long legs. Everything I know about you, even how you have made me tremble."

Laddy already could hardly speak, could hardly stand, but the thought of what it would do to her to know she had made this man tremble, made her head reel. She swallowed, licking her lips.

"I would like to make you tremble," she whispered, hardly knowing what she said.

She saw that she had reached him by the sudden breath that he took, the involuntary tightening of the clasp of his hand on her hip.

"I trembled the first moment I saw you," he said roughly. "These other things will never be, but—you have made me tremble."

Suddenly she felt tears in her eyes. "Tell me," she said, fighting back the tears, for in that moment it was as though all the years stretched out ahead of her, desolate, empty and loveless, while she waited for this man, the man who could never come to her. And instinctively she wanted all the memories that he could give her, to store up against the future emptiness that she saw so clearly. "Tell me how it would have been," she repeated, and in her voice was a plea against the loneliness, and she knew that he heard and understood.

They walked around the whole room then, looking at the paintings, and all the time his deep quiet voice, rough with passion, was making love to her, slow, incredible, passionate love to her, and her body responded fanatically, drunkenly, to every word until, when he said that she would moan his name aloud, she did so.

"Mischa," she breathed, and he said, roughly, "Lady," for in his deep, full-vowelled accent her name was changed.

And she looked into his dark face and thought she could feel her heart breaking. Mischa Busnetsky touched a tear from her cheek with a gentle finger and smiled down at her.

"The world is not as we would make it," he said quietly.

She saw her father coming towards them over Mischa Busnetsky's shoulder, and her heart was chill. She looked up at him while her father helped her into her coat, and she saw in Mischa's eyes that she looked at him for the last time, and it was a pain worse than dying. He caught her hand and their fingers clung, as though through a barred gate—a gate that would never be unlocked.

Holding her hand, Mischa saw Laddy and her father to the door and then down the ill-lighted hallway to the top of the stairs. Her father started down, but with a foot on the first step, Laddy turned and gazed in anguish at the man looming so darkly above her.

"I love you," she whispered, her stomach hollow and knotted with pain. Mischa Busnetsky breathed as though he had been struck and silently bent to bury his mouth in her trembling palm.

The sound of a stifled cough several floors below travelled clearly in the silence. The secret shadow, their watchdog, waiting in the warmth for his quarry to reappear.

Mischa raised his head and caught her gaze. "Not as we would make it," he repeated, and he smiled at her as he might have smiled at his own death.

She would not protest at what could not be changed. Smiling back at him in salute and farewell Laddy took her hand from his and turned and walked slowly down the stairs to her waiting father.

The next day the art exhibition was closed by the secret police.

A month later Mischa Busnetsky was in prison again, for "possession of anti-Soviet propaganda."

Meet Alexandra Sellers

Alexandra Sellers is the author of the award-winning Sons of the Desert series. She has written over two million words for print, including 40 romantic novels. She is the recipient of the Romantic Times' Career Achievement Award for Series (2009) and for Series Romantic Fantasy (2000). Her novels have been translated into over 15 languages. She divides her time between London, Crete and Vancouver.

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eBooks by Alexandra Sellers

Captive of Desire

Fire in the Wind

Sons of the Desert mini-series

Bride of the Sheikh