He saw her in he inn and all his entire reason for being there had faded away. He had gone in for coffee with sugar and cream. Finding no sugar in the whole of the inn had frustrated him to the point of a restless, fruitless anger and he had been about to leave when a vision of exotic beauty filled his eyes.

Italy. He had always adored the passion of Italy for freeing the English soul from it's self-proclaimed, self absorbed limitations. She was a striking Italian beauty and she watched him, as he watched her. He introduced himself and told her that his entire existence till that moment had been uselessness. He told her that he lived now for her life, breathed for her breath. Mighty God, but they were good lines and she delighted in each one, drawing him into her net of desire with an ease unparalleled by any woman since he had arrived on this dismal world.

He admired that fire, that attraction and he would not soon forget this one, this Isabel.

"You are a divine creation, mademoiselle," he purred to her. "I should love to visit with you somewhere quietly, so that we might better get to know one another."

A dimple appeared at the corner of her full lips. She spoke in a quiet whisper, "Me, I think this to be so ... but where, cara? I stay with mi amici now. With a rueful look she produced from her pocket a number of crumpled parchments. "The villa ... it will not be drawn, much less to build, for many weeks."

He looked at the plans, smoothing them out, admiring the half-finished detail of each one and the simple, elegant beauty of the construction. "I should like to see it, once it's completed." He stood close, and could smell her fragrance, a soft barely discernable aroma of lilies. Searching her black eyes he said, "Will you trust me to show you my estate?"

"But of course, signor."

He smiled and slowly stood. His fingers feathered around hers in a dance of touch. "Then come." She seemed so small beside him as she lithely slipped from her chair, her diminutive stature emphasized by her full skirt. He smiled and lead her to the door, his hand clasping around hers as they walked. His attention was full on her, eyes on her face, studying her form as they made their way to the door. His feet seemed to know where to go and once they left the inn it was but a short walk to his carriage.

Isabel stepped lightly beside him, her free hand lifting her skirts an inch or two to avoid the dirt and grime of the path. Ethan glanced up at Robert who waited patiently although his glance was a mite disapproving as they reached the side of the carriage.

The lady's look was perfection. Haughty to a fault, her almost imperceptible lift of her delicate brow quelled the servant.

Ethan spoke to Robert in a hard tone. "The steps." Isabel never heard him utter anywhere near so harsh a word to her. Robert bowed his head and moved immediately from the seat to the side of the carriage. With dexterity and alacrity he lowered lowering the step and opened the door. The entire time he kept his head bowed.

A quick keen glance from Isabel to Ethan showed her own approval at his handling of his man. She lifted the skirt a few inches higher to allow her to step up into the carriage without tripping.

"Better," Ethan muttered to Robert and guided his guest to the step with one supportive hand. He smiled only gently to her. It was clear she was much practiced in managing the elegant gowns which many ordinary women would find cumbersome. She leaned ever so lightly on his hand, enough to make his heart flutter and stepped into the richly appointed vehicle.

"Forgive him, my lady. Robert tends to think himself my 'protector'." He laughed softly and only briefly at what was plainly some very private joke.

Her husky laugh greeted his sally. "And me, I look of such fierceness?"

Ethan stepped up behind her, close upon her for a moment before she sat in the carriage. "Ah, sweet beauty is always a danger to men with an affinity for it."

Robert scowled to himself as he closed the door and folded up the step until the latch caught it in place.

When Isabel had settled in her seat with little fuss, she laughed again. "Ahhhh, the signore must be protected from himself then, eh?"

The carriage rocked slightly as he again took his place. It began to move even as Ethan sat. "Yes, I fear all too often I have excellent taste but poor judgement."

Isabel’s eyes critically assessed the carriage, the interior and the springs. Finding all to be of satisfactory construction, she looked to him, one brow raised, "And this judgment of a poorness ... it has effects most serious mia cara?"

He offered up a bright, almost apologetic, even toothed smile. "I've nearly lost my head a time or two."

Her own velvety chuckle followed on the heels of his smile. "Fear nothing, signore ... to remove the head of one so very handsome would cramp my soul."

He watched her from where he sat in repose across the carriage, the leather of the seat that held him and her as well was a highly polished deep burgandy. It was impressively tacked in with brass studs, each engraved with a small crest. He knew she could feel the smooth warmth of the brass against her back as she sat. Reaching out to touch her hand in a lingering caress, he whispered, "To cramp your soul would be the worst of sins ... "

Flashes of sunlight peeked through the windows as the carriage moved and danced across her fair face, catching the bluish glints of the black ringlets that framed her face. Each golden splash of light warmed her the dark eyes. The lips of her mouth curved slowly, Her hand, turning palm upward, returned his caress. "Signore," she said quietly, " ... it is of an impossiblness this ... unless it is permitted by me."

He shivered slightly at her touch, his pale eyes half lidded, all too plainly showing him to be a creature of pleasure. The carriage took a few bumps smoothly and the horse, a deep brown beast of worthy stock slowed his trotting. He watched her as the carriage moved. Her dark, delicious gaze turned toward the window taking in what she could see without craning her neck in the vulgar way of those with lowly breeding. She contained her curiosity, though Ethan could see how it burned within her.

"We are nearly there, Isabel," he whispered, possessively owning her name with his mouth. Even as he said it, the sound of the iron bound wheels changed as the carriage moved from cobblestones to flagstones and finally the sound stopped altogether.

"It appears we have arrived, cara."

Through the tied back, wheat-colored curtains the estate was visible ... looking something like a shimmering castle ... never completely in focus. It's parapets and crenelations glinted by turns silver and blue and white in the slanting of the sun.

She squinted slightly with her remarkable eyes to bring his Camelot into a greater clearness of view but he knew she could not. That was the nature of the place, after all. Finally she whispered, " ... it is most beautiful signore."

Clearly it had rained and droplets bejeweled the bushes and trees. "It is but a shadow of what I could hope for ..." He smiled as the door was opened. "But I will show you all you wish to see ... with pride in knowing it is mine."

She politely waited for him to step out, preparing her dress and herself to follow in a delicate female fashion. She laughed lightly, warmly, but there was nothing false or forced about it. "This is a wisdom unlooked for. Many forget to be proud of what they possess."

Ethan moved with a dancer's grace through the carriage door. He ignored Robert completely this time and offered Isabel his hand with a bright smile. He was able to garner a glimpse of her neatly turned ankle as her daintily slippered foot peeked from under the hem of the gown. She slipped her hand into his and he said, "You may find it less than wisdom when you discover I take pride in all I do." He clutched her hand with a gentle pressure to assure her stability during her descent.

She shook her head. "No signore ... more wisdom perhaps."

"Even if my pride extends to the very act of getting you here? I do admit.. it was a joint endeavor." He was tempted to wrap his hands about her waist and draw her to himself, He smiled at the feeling as it filled him and gave into that temptation. Her waist was tiny, fitting into the span of his hands easily.

She glanced up at him roguishly. "Si. Even this. Easier, perhaps, since it is possible that both had the same end in thought."

"That pleases me, Isabel." He grinned at the taunt in her glance.

With one hand reaching up to touch her small nosetip lightly and the other slipping around her waist, he smiled. "Forgive me if I am too familiar, lady. But the truth is that you are difficult to resist," he said softly.

Isabel's straight little nose wrinkled as she chuckled "No signore.....me I will of a certainness tell when you have offended, if it is possible for you to do this." Her dark gaze was permitted free rein, and traversed over the grounds quickly and then up the walk

"Come then, most captivating lady, and I will show you my prize ... " He turned her slightly, even as Robert glared at his back. Although Ethan felt the heat of Robert's eyes, he ignored the implications as much as the man.

Isabel seemed acutely aware of the warmth of his hand on her waist. The bodice of her tightly cut gown rose and fell with the soft but sharper intake of her breath at his proximity.

Ethan led her with choreographed steps through the small garden maze that was prologue to the estate. Their steps through it, turned this way and that, and obscured the 'castle' time and again.

Isabel looked back as Robert followed them at a discrete distance. Her brows knitted for a moment but her shrug spoke eloquently of her ease with such things. "Dio mio ... but of a puzzle this," she said, her fingertip reaching out now and again to flick at a raindrop on a leaf. Ethan could tell that she enjoyed his arm snug around her waist and his close company.

"It was a whim ..." he explained, a contrite look crossing his youthful face. His eyes glimmered slightly while his fingers lightly kneeded at her hip.

Her glance up at him was full of knowing. "A whim, eh?" She nodded but said nothing.

He spirited her up the path that led out of the small garden maze and to the house. A series of steps of marble began their ascent, four, then a landing and four again to a wooden drawbridge. The double doors beyond the bridge reflected a castle portal even to the perfection of the portcullis.

With drops of rain on her fingertip, Isabel brought the finger to her lips. She frowned and commented, "The rain here, it does not taste of a sweetness like Sicilia." Her hip pressed against his hand in its sway as she walked up the steps with him. With no heel on her soft slippers, her delicate steps were soundless.

feeling an electricity from the connection of fingertips and hip despite the dress between "The rain here falls too late in the day as well," he said. They crossed the drawbridge, the sparkling water in a moat below shimmered much like the castle itself did from a distance.

She looked up at him with a delighted smile. "Si ... it is of a truth this. Perhaps it is why it holds a bitterness."

"In a perfect world, my lady, the rain never falls 'til after sundown." He could smell her scent, stirred by a gentle breeze. The same toying tickle of wind lifted her shining ringlets and mixed the smell of her bathsalts with the scent of the bright water. "By eight a.m. the morning fog flies away." He paused on the drawbridge before entering, his other hand joined the first about her waist again.

She stopped, turning to look at him. His fingers met as they spanned the scant width of her back. His thumbs touched in the front. She brought her hands up to rest on his broad chest.

He faced her with an intent expression and the wind toyed with his golden-brown locks as well, like a lover's fingers. "Isabel ... I'm going to kiss you." He looked down into her fathomless eyes as he told her so.

She smiled. The breeze blew tendrils of darknes across her face. "Me ... I would like this," she confirmed.

As the scent of her borne on the water breeze stirred him inside he drew her closer. The feel of her tiny hands against his chest jumpstarted his heart to a staccato beat. She slid her hands up to rest upon his shoulders, moving to stand on tiptoe and offer her lips up to his.

He bent down feeling one of her small hands steal up into his hair and brush it's velvet fingerpads across his neck. He traced one hand up along her back, the other slid down in the folds of her dress to caress the curve of her hip. He brushed his lips over hers, back and forth, silk to satin in a tender caress. He felt her shiver beneath his touch. Her gasp was so soft as to almost not be heard and then the wash of breath that had for a moment been caught in her throat in that gasp of desire dripped over his mouth, warm and honeyed.

He lifted her from the ground, her form so small that it was ridiculously easy to do so, He deepened the kiss to a capturing of her sweet mouth as he carried her inside.

" ... ohh ... dio mio ... "

====

Isabel had been perfect, petite and well used by the time Ethan left her. She lay on the marble slab, and he wondered if she dreamed of what she had spoken: to be his always, to wake beside him. He smiled when he went to visit his mines leaving Robert to clean up the mess. He would not take her again, Ethan knew, for her perfection had been ruined. She could never again be the perfect Isabel he had used to satisfy himself in that one exceptional moment.

====

After Isabel, there had been others, nameless, faceless even when they were easy conquests. There were a few who remained outstanding in his memory. The one who sought so much to serve that she seemed disappointed - almost annoyed - when he wasn't more forceful with her. It made him laugh to think of it. He pleased himself and not her because she was so willing to give and give he merely had to take her all. He was delighted so much by her that he took the time after to have an information file drawn up on her. He learned then that her name was Asha. He thought he might look her up again.

Ethan bedded whom he chose for himself and no one else, not even his selected partners. Freud, that old crackpot, would have said he was obsessed with women - the loss of his mother causing a need to be filled by an endless stream of inadequacies. Partly the rebrobate would have been right. There never would be a woman like his sainted mother. Why shouldn't the unworthy suffer to have only part of him and never the whole when there was no wholeness they could give him? Sometimes, he didn't even bother to take them to please himself. They were so pathetically obvious about wanting to be taken.

There were ones that "got away". The felinoid who oftimes pretended to duel in the local Dojo on Rhydin. Ethan went in himself occasionally to be pounded to a pulp by his favorite "American Cowboy", Robert Braxxx. The feline he'd met in the lounge of the station that orbited Hedonism. She reminded the English Lord turned entrepeneur of the Sibling(*) Ruiby who had once worked for him as Camelot's Stardriver(*). That furry creature had cost him millions of creds in retooling the Camelot so that she could fly without a Stardriver if needed.

He despised Ruiby but he'd wanted her back. She'd shown so much promise and he owed her for her betrayal. She clearly needed to make a living. He would find out who she worked for and he would pay her everything he owed.

In the felionid named "Kyttn", tritely enough, Ethan thought, he saw a chance to get even on the non-humans who seemed to plague him and space in general. Her refusal to sleep with him was so unexpected that it was almost worth the embarrassment of his failed pick up lines to experience it. She claimed that her heart was taken and she wasn't interested in liaisons.

He'd taken home a hooker. Because the cat had aroused such interest, he had chosen to sink low, fullly intent on venting his frustrations through her. Instead, even the hooker had been surprising. He paid her well and spent the night discussing women with her.

The other who'd escaped his charm somehow was Ms. Bria Thorne. He let her serve and in the conventions of the present day paid her well for her talents. Very well in fact.