Free Valerie's Russia by Sara Judge Page A

fling it away.
    ‘I promised you,’ he said. ‘I promised we would share our love with nothing in the way.’ His lips travelled down her throat, across one small perfect breast, then he ran his tongue over the hard little nipple, making her catch her breath in ecstasy. ‘So small, so pure,’ he said, fondling her other breast and bringing it, too, to a button-like erection.
    ‘You too!’ Perspiration was slithering down Valerie’s body making everything hot and wet. ‘Take your clothes off, Petya – I want to feel your body next to mine!’
    Smiling, he raised himself to a kneeling position and pulled off his jacket, then his shirt. But at that moment came a tapping on the door and they both froze. There was not a sound in the chamber apart from the insistent tapping.
    Then Valerie found her voice. ‘Who is it?’ she croaked, as Pyotr rolled to one side and was on his feet in one deft, soundless motion. Valerie’s throat was so dry she almost choked. ‘Who is there?’
    ‘It is Dunya,’ came the voice of Tassya’s maid-servant. ‘My mistress heard you crying, bárishna, and says if it is bad dreams she also cannot sleep. Please to come.’
    Recovering from her panic, Valerie looked at Pyotr.
    ‘Go to her,’ he mouthed.
    ‘I’ll come,’ called Valerie. ‘Tell her I’ll come.’
    Once her nightgown was back on and her air smoothed away from her radiant face, Pyotr kissed her briefly before placing the shawl about her shoulders.
    ‘I shall leave after you have gone next door,’ he said. ‘Give Tassya all the time and sympathy she deserves, and we will have our joy another time, my heart.’
    Valerie nodded before opening the door and going to join Pyotr’s sister.

Chapter Six
    T he following morning having breakfast at the big round table with Tassya, Valerie was relieved to find both Pyotr and his mother missing. They had eaten earlier and were already out on the estate.
    But an attentive Feodor served the two girls freshly baked bread, utter, and apcot jam. ‘All made here,’ announced Tassya happily. There were also more cups of excellent tea from the bubbling samovar.
    ‘It was so lovely when you came to my room last night,’ she went on, ‘and I am glad it was not a night-horse for you.’
    ‘Nightmare,’ said Valerie.
    ‘I beg your pardon – nightmare. I have terrible dreams, filled with these mares and now it is nice knowing you are close to me.’
    Valerie had spent almost an hour with Pyotr’s sister the night before, thinking more than once that it must have been God’s Will. He had saved her from Pyotr’s compelling love-making and had also given her the chance to get to know Tassya better.
    Pyotr said he loved her but did he mean lasting love? It was true that he was not engaged to Sophia, but there had been no words of marriage to Valerie, either, despite his ardent vows of affection.
    If she were to give in to his demands, what then? Would he marry her? Would she become a countess and remain in Russiaforever? Or would he tire of her once he had possessed her body and leave her heartbroken and alone?
    Don’t give in to him, she told herself grimly as she gazed across at Tassya’s pretty face without really seeing it. Do
not
allow him to make love to you until his ring is on your finger. God had helped her last night, but she could not expect the Almighty to aid her every time she needed moral support.
    She would have to exert her own self-discipline and keep a distance between herself and Pyotr, which was what she had intended doing when she first came down to Mavara.
    If only she didn’t love him. If only she didn’t love him with a passion she hadn’t known she possessed. Perhaps it was Russia. Perhaps it was this exotic, fascinating, glorious land in which she now dwelt. Valerie could not believe she would ever have been swept off her feet, almost drowning in an ecstasy of emotion, in the arms of some cleric in rain-sodden Putney.
    But Pyotr Silakov, with his