The Russian Rivals

‘I am proud to take on that responsibility,’ Alena assured him, finishing her vodka so that she could break the eye contact he was maintaining with her, hoping she sounded suitably businesslike.

Gesturing towards her starter, Kiryl said, ‘I hope the food I have chosen will be to your liking?’

‘This is my favourite starter,’ she admitted.

Of course it was, Kiryl thought inwardly with cynical satisfaction. He had left nothing to chance about this lunch. He knew exactly what her favourite dishes from the restaurant’s menu were.

‘You mentioned your own mother when I asked you what had drawn you to my mother’s charity,’ Alena reminded him, having told herself yet again that this was a business lunch—no matter how intimate it might seem. Talking about the charity would help her to focus on that reality. So she wasn’t asking him about his mother because she desperately wanted to know more about him. She wasn’t.

‘Yes, I did,’ Kiryl agreed, reaching into the second ice bucket and removing a bottle of white wine, telling her, ‘Try this. I discovered it the last time I stayed here and I rather like it.’

Wine on top of the vodka she had already had to drink; was that really a good idea? For a moment Alena hesitated. It was very flattering to be asked her opinion on a bottle of wine. She wasn’t a big drinker—her mother hadn’t been, and Vasilii deplored the growing modern trend for young women to drink heavily.

Quickly she placed her hand over her empty wine glass and shook her head, telling him, ‘No, thank you. I’m not much of a drinker, I’m afraid. Especially at lunchtime.’

Kiryl put down the bottle and gave her another of those searching looks that seemed to probe the depths of her being.

‘Was that decision your own or your brother’s?’ Kiryl asked.

He was smiling at her again. His smile said that she could feel safe with him, but his words had sliced to the heart of her own growing awareness that a byproduct of Vasilii’s protection of her was a certain immaturity when it came to experiencing the things that other girls her age had experienced. Was that how he saw her? As someone immature and inexperienced? A girl rather than the fully sensual and adult woman a man like him was bound to prefer?

‘My own,’ she answered him. ‘Vasilii does not make my decisions or choices for me—nor would he want to do so.’

‘So why not allow me to convince you that this wine will greatly enhance your enjoyment of our time together today?’

Her heart was skittering around inside her chest. Another, more experienced woman would know whether or not Kiryl was indulging in flirtatious banter with her with words that were mundane on the surface and yet somehow held a teasing note of a deeper sensuality, but she did not. So surely it would be better to play it safe and assume that it was merely her own over-active imagination that was deepening them with a sensual promise that did not exist?

No sooner had she made that decision than the calming effect it had had on her was ripped away, when Kiryl stood up and came to her side, gently lifting her hand away from her wine glass and continuing to hold it whilst he poured her the merest half a glass of pale straw-coloured wine, before filling his own glass and then returning the bottle to the ice bucket. All the while he continued to hold her hand. And not just hold it. He was touching her fingers, stroking them lightly and almost absently.

‘You’re trembling,’ he told her.

Of course she was. He was touching her. No, not just touching her, caressing her, and because of that she was trembling—from head to toe—her heart thudding frantically.

‘Your brother must be a very stern protector if the thought of having half a glass of wine without his approval can have this effect on you.’

He thought she was trembling because she was afraid of Vasilii? By rights she ought to defend her loving halfbrother and tell him truthfully that never once in their lives together had she ever, ever had any need to fear him, that it had always been Vasilii to whom she had run with all her troubles, to be comforted by his big-brotherly love for her. But if she did tell him that then he might ask her exactly why she was trembling—and she couldn’t possibly tell him that. All she could do was make a mental apology to her brother and try to control the jagged exhaled breath of relief that shuddered through her body when Kiryl let go of her hand and returned to his own chair, lifting his own wine glass to his lips.

‘So, tell me more about your mother’s charity,’ he said.

‘You were going to tell me about your mother,’ Alena reminded him.

For a moment Alena thought he hadn’t heard her. He seemed to be looking past her into some dark place that only he could see, a fixed expression on his face.

Was that merely a shadow darkening his eyes, or was it really the ice cold look of anger it seemed?

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised uncomfortably.

‘For what? Asking about my mother?’ Kiryl gave a small shrug, his gaze hardening still further. ‘There is no need to be. It is no secret, after all. The reality of my mother’s life has been well documented by those who do not thinking it fitting that the son of a homeless Romany should become successful, because that challenges their prejudiced belief in their own superiority and the inferiority of those they choose to label in such a way.’

And that labelling, that rejection and cruelty, had hurt him badly. Alena could tell. Her tender heart immediately ached for him, and for his mother.

‘It is true that as a child she did not receive the education afforded to the more privileged in society, but that was not her fault. My father was happy to sleep with her—the beautiful gypsy girl he had seen dancing in a café in Moscow frequented by the wealthy—but the minute she told him that she was pregnant, carrying me, he deserted and denigrated her, saying that she was lying about their relationship and that he had not fathered me. He told her he would rather smother me at birth than acknowledge that he had fathered a child with Romany blood.’

Alena couldn’t hold back her gasp of emotion.

‘Your mother told you about your father’s cruelty to you both?’ she asked.

A shuttered darkness claimed the light from Kiryl’s eyes.

‘No. She died when I was eight years old. But prior to that she told me that she wanted me to know how important love was and how much she loved me. How love could bring the greatest happiness life could hold and the sharpest pain. She wanted me to be proud of what and who I was, even though we were living in the meanest kind of poverty.’

His mother had been a fool—too weak to stand up to his father and demand that he did the right thing by them both. All her talk of love and being proud of himself had meant nothing in the real world—the world that was ruled by men like his father, successful, wealthy men who controlled their own destiny and made the rules by which others had to live. As far as Kiryl was concerned it was far better to focus on that reality than to follow his mother’s advice about the importance of love. Look what it had done to her, and through her to him. No, there was no place for love in his life. Love only weakened those who were foolish enough to allow it into their lives.

‘So how do you know—I mean about how your father felt about your mother?’ Alena asked, wondering if perhaps he had misunderstood the situation. After all, surely no father could ever be so cruel to his child?

‘How do I know? I know because my father told me himself, when I finally tracked him down after the woman who fostered me told me the story my mother had told her before she died. My father was a rich man—a powerful and respected man. He told me the truth and then he threw me out on the street outside his grand mansion—like unwanted rubbish, to be swept away out of his sight. I swore then that one day—’

Kiryl stopped speaking, frowning as he recognised how much he had said to Alena. He had never intended to say it, and certainly had never said to anyone else. It was because he wanted to draw her into his plan by eliciting her sympathy towards his mother and making her believe that he had a genuine reason for choosing her charity for his donation, that was why. It certainly wasn’t because something in her expression and that shocked gasp she had given had somehow unlocked a door within him he had thought safely barred against the burned-out ashes of the pain he kept caged behind that door. It was impossible for any living human being to re-ignite those ashes. They belonged to the promise he had made himself when he had lain in the gutter outside his father’s house—that he would prove his superiority by becoming more successful and more powerful than his father had ever been.

His father was dead now, his empire squandered by the second husband of the young wife he had married to provide him with the son she had never conceived for him—the son he had told Kiryl would be the only son he would ever acknowledge.

With the acquisition of this new contract Kiryl would finally succeed in reaching the goal he had set himself as the fifteen-year-old who had gone to Moscow to look for his father and been rejected. That goal had been to create a business empire that was both larger, more profitable and more securely stable than that of his father. Only Vasilii Demidov now stood in his way.

He looked across the table at Alena.

‘When I heard about your mother’s charity I knew immediately that it was something I wanted to be involved with as a donor.’

That was certainly true. He had known immediately he had read about the charity and Alena’s desire to become more involved in it just what a useful tool it would be in winning her trust.

‘I know how much work the charity does to help girls have the opportunity to gain an education. I admire you for wanting to take on that responsibility. Many young women in your situation would have handed that responsibility over to someone else.’ He flattered Alena warmly.

‘I could never do that. The charity was so close to my mother’s heart.’ She paused, and then said emotionally, ‘It must have been so hard for you, growing up without your mother and—’

‘According to my father I was lucky that she died, and that I was fostered by a family without the taint of Romany blood.’

Alena felt her throat clog with emotional tears. Within her head she could see that poor baby, and felt a female ache to have been able to hold and protect it. Poor, poor baby to be so cruelly treated by life.

‘I was very lucky in having the parents I did,’ was all she could manage to say.

‘But unlucky, perhaps, in having a brother who is so determined to control your life?’

‘Vasilii only wants what’s best for me.’ She defended her half-sibling quickly.

‘For you and for himself, I dare say,’ Kiryl responded, adding before Alena could question his words, ‘We’d better have our main course before it gets cold. I hope you like Dover sole.’

‘Yes, it’s another of my favourites,’ Alena began as Kiryl reached over to remove her starter, and then guessed, ‘You knew that, didn’t you? And that’s why you’ve chosen the meal you have?’

So she wasn’t entirely without either intelligence or the ability to reason analytically, Kiryl acknowledged. He gave her a small smile and told her, ‘Very well—I confess that I did ask the restaurant what your favourite dishes are. I wanted to make a good impression on you.’

Alena couldn’t look directly at him. Her heart was singing with delight and disbelief at the thought of Kiryl actually wanting to impress her, and yet at the same time his words had brought her a certain amount of self-consciousness that was making it impossible for her to look at him.

‘I’m the one who should be trying to impress you,’ she managed to tell him, albeit slightly breathlessly, her voice soft and husky with all that she was feeling. ‘After all, I’m the one who has the most to gain from our lunch.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Kiryl told her softly as he placed her main meal in front of her and removed the cover. ‘There is a great deal that I am hoping to gain from our relationship, Alena.’

As he spoke he was looking at her mouth, and as though his look was communicating an unspoken command Alena could feel her lips softening and parting as deliciously sensual ribbons of desire unrolled to flutter inside her with the movement of her breathing.

‘Tell me more about your mother,’ he invited her, abruptly bringing her back to reality, and the fact that this meeting was about her mother’s charity and not about the effect he was having on her.

‘She was a very special person,’ she answered, her voice soft with love for the mother she had loved so much. ‘Everyone thought so.’

‘Including your half-brother? After all, she was his stepmother.’

‘Vasilii loved her very much. He was fourteen when my parents met in St Petersburg, where my mother was working as an English Language teacher at a school there. Vasilii’s own mother died when he was seven. He wanted them to marry before they knew that they wanted to marry themselves, so he always says, although my mother used to say that she knew the first moment she met him that she loved my father.

‘My mother loved St Petersburg. She and my father used to take me there every winter. It’s such a romantic city. A fairytale city with the Neva frozen and the lights of the older quarters twinkling on the snow. It’s almost possible to think you’re back in the days of dashing young men in the uniform of the Imperial Guard driving their troikas, pulled by a team of three matching horses along Nevsky Prospect, ready to race one another in the morning after spending all night dancing. And then in the summer, when the sun never sets, people flock to party on the islands of the delta. I had dreamed …’

‘That you might find love there yourself?’ Kiryl suggested.

Alena shook her head.

‘I am not such a dreamer that I expect to find love there just because my mother did, but I do think that it would be a very special place to go with … with someone special to me.’ That was as close as she was able to get to saying what she meant. Somehow just to speak the word ‘lover’ in Kiryl’s presence was to run the risk of betraying her vulnerability to him, or having him guess that when she said ‘lover’ she meant Kiryl himself.

Kiryl knew the St Petersburg to which Alena referred—the St Petersburg of the rich and privileged. After all, he was one of them. But he also knew another St Petersburg. The St Petersburg of his own childhood poverty and his rejection by his father. He had turned his back on Russia just as his father had turned his back on him. Kiryl considered himself to be a citizen of the world, not of one part of it.

Not that he was going to say that to Alena. He wanted her to believe that he understood and empathised with her.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS gone three in the afternoon—over an hour since they had finished their lunch and Kiryl had invited her to sit down on the sofa opposite him. Now, as she stood up ready to leave, Alena was feeling dizzy from a combination of the excitement generated inside her at the sheer amount of the donation Kiryl had told her he was going to make to the charity, and the glass of champagne he had insisted they drank to cement that gift.

‘You’ve been so generous,’ she told him, wobbling slightly on her heels—no doubt because of the speed with which she had stood up, she assured herself, and not the fact that Kiryl was now standing right next to her, his hand resting supportively beneath her elbow as he walked with her towards the door.

Kiryl had insisted on telephoning the CEO of the charity himself to tell her of his wonderfully generous donation, before instructing his bank to make the necessary transfer, and since that had somehow or other necessitated the drinking of a second glass of champagne it was perhaps no wonder that she felt a little unsteady and very, very euphoric. But what about those other feelings, clear and sharp, definitely not due in the slightest to her intake of champagne but most unmistakably caused by Kiryl’s proximity?

They must be ignored, Alena told herself sternly. They belonged to the rather reckless young woman who had seen him in the foyer and let her hormones dictate her reactions, not the far more sensible businesswoman she had now decided she wanted to be.

Alena started to make a move to the door to the hallway, but Kiryl’s hold on her elbow tightened just enough to stop her.

When she turned to him to ask him why he forestalled her, bending his head towards her. Time seemed to stand still, whilst the earth surely rocked beneath her feet. His breath was a warm, sensual touch that caressed her vulnerable flesh. Rivers of sensation flowed from that caress, like the many streams that came with the thawing of Russia’s winter, to bring the frozen earth to life once more, freeing it from the icy spell it had been under, melting away its resistance.

‘Do you remember saying when we arrived here that you weren’t afraid to be alone with me?’ Kiryl was asking her.

‘Yes …’ Her voice turned her confirmation into a small soft moan of self-betrayal. She was standing on the edge of something so very dangerous, and yet so very tempting.

Helplessly her gaze—the gaze she had so determinedly kept removed from his, knowing what she could betray to him if she looked at him—searched for and clung to his. The green eyes were dark with the knowledge of a thousand sensual mysteries that were unknown to her.

‘Perhaps you should have been a wise virgin and been afraid after all.’

The sound of his voice—deeper, rougher, strained with something elementally male, his words containing an intimate knowledge of her that she had not thought anyone else shared—made her whole body jerk visibly in response.

He knew she was a virgin? How could he?

Kiryl watched the shadow-play of light and dark dapple Alena’s silver eyes, their lucidity as illuminating as St Petersburg’s famous ‘white nights’, when the daylight never truly disappeared. Her lips had parted; the softest pink colour was warming her skin. She was trembling in his hold, held captive by his sexuality and her own response to it.

Her virginity made her an even easier target for the success of his plans. She certainly wasn’t a virgin because she was lacking in sensuality, so her chasteness must have been imposed on her—either by circumstance or her brother, or perhaps a combination of both. Kiryl gave a small mental shrug. Why she was still a virgin was immaterial. It simply made it easier for him to overwhelm her sensually and emotionally. For his plan to succeed he needed to convince her that she loved him, and of course that he loved her back. And his plan would succeed. It had to.

He lifted his free hand to her neck, gently brushing away her hair so that he could curl his fingers round her slender nape. Her eyes were pure silver now, and brilliant with emotion. Looking into them he told her softly, ‘You do know, don’t you, that I’m going to kiss you?’

Her heart seemed to jump into her throat, her stomach hollowing with an aching excitement and desire that spilled over into the lower part of her body, making it pulse with a wild surge of longing.

She lifted her hand to his face and touched the skin that was drawn so smoothly over the high cheekbones. Danger glittered in the malachite depths of his eyes, promising a treasure greater than any priceless stone. His breath against her lips commanded them to part still further, and his fingers caressing the nape of her neck under her hair were sending frantic shivers of arousal coursing through her body. Urgency leapt from nerve-ending to nerve-ending within her, spreading like wildfire, until she was possessed by it, the whole of her body one fierce wild ache of need that would not be denied. She wanted this—and him—so badly.

With a small yearning sound she moved closer to him, offering him her mouth and closing her eyes as she did so.

‘No!’ Kiryl told her, the word exploding into the sensual tension they were creating. ‘No. Don’t close your eyes. I want to look into them when I kiss you. I want to watch the pleasure we shall create together being born. Pleasure such as previously you can only have imagined, little virgin. Tell me you want that. Tell me you want me as I want you.’

How could she resist or deny him when every word he spoke only reinforced what she was already feeling? She couldn’t—but neither could she find the words to speak her need. Instead she could only press her mouth against his with passionate intensity, feeling them burn against the hard maleness of his before they were taken and possessed, shown and taught lessons of demand and desire and sensuality that were as he had promised her: a world—no, a whole galaxy—away from anything her imagination had ever created.

This need, this desire, this hunger he was creating and feeding inside her was both new to her and yet at the same time had an age-old elemental familiarity that called to all within her that was female. She knew that—and she knew something else as well. She knew that the feelings and needs that were surrounding her and filling her now were being conjured from deep within her by the only man who would ever have the power to call them into life. The only man for her for ever. She knew that so deep within herself that she felt the knowledge must have somehow been born with her, and that he must surely be her destiny.

The stroke of Kiryl’s tongue against her own—moving rhythmically, darting, lingering, thrusting with hard demand, then coaxing and teaching her to return the hot intimacy of that caress—set fresh desire exploding inside her. A dazzling banquet of new sensations to experience of which this was only the first course; a thousand new pleasures to know.

Beneath her clothes, her body ached with feverish hunger—her breasts swelling, pushing imploringly against the fabric that denied them the possession of Kiryl’s touch. Beneath the ravishment of her senses by his kiss her need brought a soft moan to her throat.

Holding her mouth beneath his own, Kiryl looked down into her arousal-drenched gaze. Her face was softly flushed, her look pleading, her body quivering like a finely tuned string instrument with the need he had created within it. He could see the outline of her breasts against the fine fabric of the primly buttoned high-necked blouse she was wearing, her nipples stiff and erect. Without saying a word he lifted his mouth from hers and placed it instead over the silk-covered crest of the breast he had cupped with his hand, and then he sucked deeply and hard on it, until she cried out and twisted frantically in his hold, gasping his name with a shuddering breath.

Still without speaking he returned his mouth to hers, nipping sensually at her bottom lip and then thrusting his tongue deep into the soft wetness of her mouth as he covered the now swollen mound of her sex with his free hand and kneaded it rhythmically. Alena clung desperately to him.

‘Is this good for you? Is it what you want? Tell me, Alena. Tell me that you want the caress of my mouth against your naked breasts, the taste of your sex against my lips.’

Alena shuddered wildly as his words unleashed shockingly intimate images inside her head, accompanied by unbearably intense surges of desire. With each word he was taking her deeper into a world in which he was her only compass, her lodestar, her only point of rationality, her guide, her leader, her saviour and her all.

‘Tell me that you want my touch, my need, my desire for you. Tell me that you want me, Alena,’ Kiryl demanded of her.

The sound Alena made was that of a woman aroused to the point where nothing else mattered. She was lost—helpless to resist the surge of biting, devouring, sensual need that Kiryl had conjured up inside her, which had savaged her self-control.

‘Yes, I want you,’ she told him in small, desperate gasped breaths that pulsated with her arousal and formed the words he wanted to hear. ‘I want you. I …’