The Russian Rivals

From her handbag her mobile trilled impatiently, warning her of an incoming text. It dragged her unceremoniously back into the world of reality. She turned towards the sound.

‘Leave it,’ Kiryl commanded her.

‘I can’t—it might be Vasilii.’

The grim look that darkened Kiryl’s eyes warned her that he wasn’t pleased, but Alena knew that Vasilii would worry if she didn’t answer his message.

Just the mere act of hurrying over to her handbag brought home to her the changes that Kiryl had already wrought within her body. Each movement reinforced the agonised ache of sensuality that now flooded it. Although he wasn’t even touching her Kiryl still possessed her senses, and through them her body. Her breast ached in torment where he had drawn her desire for his touch there to its now frantic throbbing peak. The hot swelling of her sex was something she felt with every step she took. Her whole body shook with the knowledge of how he had transformed her and how much she wanted him. So very much. Now and for always. Part of her was glad.

Her hand trembled as she removed her mobile from her handbag and checked the text, telling Kiryl, ‘It is from Vasilii.’

As he watched her read her half-brother’s message Kiryl saw a small frown pleat her forehead.

‘Something’s wrong?’ he guessed, going over to her.

‘Not really. Vasilii says that his business negotiations are taking longer than he expected and he will not now be returning to London for another five days. I was looking forward to telling him in person about your wonderful donation to the charity, but now I’ll have to text him instead.’

Kiryl tensed inwardly. The last thing he wanted was Vasilii Demidov getting wind of his presence in his half-sister’s life until he himself chose to make him aware of that fact.

‘Why not wait to tell him until he returns? Then you can do so and show him the cheque at the same time,’ he suggested with a smile.

‘Yes. Yes, I will,’ Alena agreed. Suddenly she felt acutely self-conscious. Vasilii’s text had disrupted the feeling of connection to Kiryl she had had, leaving her feeling uncertain and physically unnerved by the intensity of her sexual response to him. Without the warmth of his arms around her that intensity now felt more than she was able to handle. ‘I think I should leave now,’ she told Kiryl.

‘Running away from me?’ he taunted.

It was unfortunate that her brother had texted when he had. It was a very necessary part of Kiryl’s plan that he had Alena completely under his spell sexually, and that meant not just arousing her but possessing her as well, winning her total confidence, her total subjugation to him, so that his will mattered more to her than that of anyone else—including her half-brother. It meant giving her the very best sex she could imagine having—or ever would have.

He could take her back in his arms now and make that happen, he knew, but he wanted her to be the one begging for his touch, aching for his possession—demanding it, in fact. And right now he could see that she was too on edge for that to happen.

It wasn’t just the disruption and delay to his plan that was affecting him right now, though, he was forced to admit. The immediacy and intensity of his own arousal was causing his body to ache for satisfaction in a way that it hadn’t ached in a very, very long time. That desire was the result of his need to succeed in his plan, not any specific desire for her, he reassured himself. After all, when had he ever desired any woman to the extent that she made him ache for her against his will? He hadn’t, and he never would. It was Alena’s own foolish giving, her openly helpless sensual response to him and the fact that she had shown him she had never experienced it that was responsible for the unwontedly fierce surge.

If her brother was responsible for spiking his plans with his text message, then she herself was to blame for the raw ache of need within him that was also disrupting those plans. It was certainly not part of the plan that he should physically want her. A cold, clear mind and a totally controlled body were what he needed. He had invested too much of himself—too much of what he had been and where he had come from, too much of where he wanted to go and what he had done to get there—in the goal he was so close to reaching to risk failure now. Especially not because his body was howling for the possession of one single woman. One single woman who somehow or other had managed to touch the emotional darkness of the vampire within him—that part of himself that somehow remained beyond his control.

Alena was looking tense and clutching her handbag, her manner making it plain to him that she wanted to leave—thanks to her brother reaching out across the ether to claim her allegiance.

‘I’ll walk you back to your suite,’ Kiryl told her, holding up his hand when she started to object. ‘Please. It isn’t perhaps the correct thing to do to refer to such things, but I believe in plain speaking and I think our afternoon took a turn neither of us was fully expecting. A turn that led a flirtatious kiss to a place that has certainly left me feeling … Well, let’s just say that what happened between us touched something within me, and that means that right now I don’t want any other man looking at you and guessing what we have just shared. So for that reason you must allow me to be protective and a little possessive and see you safely back to your own door.’

Since he put it like that, how could she possibly refuse?

Five minutes later, escorting Alena along the corridor that led to her half-brother’s apartment, after sharing the journey up to it with a uniformed member of the hotel staff whose presence had made any kind of intimate conversation impossible and Alena herself self-conscious, Kiryl recognised that if he was going to be able to seduce her so completely that she gave him her absolute trust, as well as her body, he needed to do so somewhere he could have her completely to himself, where the realities of life and her loyalty to her brother could be banished.

They had reached the double doors to the apartment. If he suggested that she asked him in she would balk at his request, Kiryl sensed, once again mentally cursing the interruption which had meant their intimacy had been brought to an end sooner than he would have liked.

Outside the door, Alena turned towards Kiryl. She had felt acutely self conscious standing in the lift with him under the gaze of the uniformed porter, her body still on fire from the intimacy they had shared. ‘Thank you for your donation,’ she told him, her voice softening as she added, ‘And thank you for telling me about your mother and for letting me talk about mine and St Petersburg.’

St Petersburg. Of course! She had already told him how romantic she thought the city, and it would certainly be private at this time of the year, with its elite wealthy citizens having decamped for warmer climates to escape the icy grip of its winter.

Kiryl smiled at her—a slow, warm smile that had Alena’s toes curling helplessly into her shoes and the blood beating up under her skin.

‘You weren’t disappointed, then, in our time together?’

Alena tried to look nonchalant and relaxed, but her heart was thudding so heavily and unsteadily she suspected that he must be able to hear it.

‘I …’ She shook her head.

‘Will it help if I go first and say that I enjoyed every minute of it and I hope we can repeat that pleasure?’ Kiryl asked her in a tender voice, and continued without giving her the chance to reply, ‘I don’t want to rush you or pressure you, Alena, but I don’t think either of us was prepared for … for the chemistry between us. It was very special. You are very special. See—you’ve got me talking and feeling like a raw boy who has never desired a woman before. But then no woman has ever made me feel the way you do.’

That, of course, was true. Because of her connection with Vasilii she aroused in him feelings that no other woman was capable of arousing.

‘I want to see you again—tomorrow, if you will let me?’

‘Yes.’ The single word was exhaled on the pent-up breath Alena had been holding. She truly felt as though she was entering a new world—a truly magical world whose axis was Kiryl and the way he made her feel.

‘I can hardly bear to let you out of my sight.’ Kiryl shrugged and gave a small laugh, as though at the un-familiarity of his own feelings. And it was true—he was reluctant to let her go. But because she was so important to his plans, and not because there was an ache in his groin that said his body had plans of its own for her. A flash of inner irritation rebuked his flesh for its inconvenient and unwanted awareness of her.

‘There is so much I want to share with you and show you.’

He made his voice deeper and slightly ragged. And then he discovered that his words were reinforcing—uncomfortably—the surge of desire that had caught him off-guard earlier. His body’s rank disloyalty irked him, but he had more important things to deal with right now. After all no man in his thirties worthy of calling himself a man did not know how to control his own sexual arousal.

‘So much I want to belong exclusively to us,’ he continued softly, ‘and to what we’re beginning to feel for one another. It’s making me selfish. I don’t want to share it or you with anyone else. Not yet—not until I know that you …’ Deliberately he let his words trail away meaningfully.

And of course Alena knew exactly what he meant. The attraction between them might be compelling and urgent to them, but she couldn’t see Vasilii, for instance, seeing it that way. The minute she mentioned meeting Kiryl her half-brother would launch into an avalanche of questions that she didn’t want to face. The newness and delicacy of the discovery of their shared feelings needed the privacy of being shared only by the two of them to be nurtured—not exposure to her brother’s well-intentioned but potentially over-analytical and forensically intense questioning.

‘I feel the same way,’ she assured Kiryl. His admission was giving her a new confidence. She was not alone in her desire. They were connected by a mutual need. That was something they shared.

‘Then it will to be our secret—for now.’

Alena’s keycard had opened the door, which she was holding in one hand. She turned to look at Kiryl, her gaze brimming with the heady joy she was feeling. Still holding the door, she reached out and placed her hand on Kiryl’s arm, looking up at him as she did so.

‘Thank you,’ she told him softly. ‘Thank you for the donation to my mother’s charity, and thank you most of all for this,’ she whispered huskily as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.

Taken off-guard by the sheeting feral male need her kiss drove through him, the only thought Kiryl could formulate was illogically angry—didn’t she realise that she shouldn’t be so open and trusting with him? How vulnerable she was making herself? How open to being used and hurt? But what concern was it of his that she might be hurt? When had he ever cared about anyone being hurt? Never—and he never intended to care either. That way lay the road to vulnerability and self-destruction. He needed to remain single-minded because it was only by being single-minded that he would reach his goal. And it was only once he had reached that goal that he would finally be able to stand free of the dark shadow of his father’s contempt for him and walk away from it.

Pushing her firmly away from himself, he told her truthfully, ‘If you don’t go inside now you won’t be going in alone. And your brother’s apartment is not the place I want to …’

Alena shook her head, not wanting him to spell out what she knew he meant. Because if he did the effect on her of knowing he wanted to make love to her so badly would make it as impossible for her to leave him as he was hinting it would be for him to leave her.

‘Tomorrow,’ Kiryl told her. ‘Tomorrow I shall come for you, and when I do …’

‘When you do I shall be ready,’ Alena assured him, bravely and truthfully.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE was so happy. If she had ever thought before that she had known happiness she had been wrong. That happiness had only been a pale shadow of what filled her now. Filled her and spilled out of her, to surround her with the blissful shining excitement of Kiryl.

She had barely slept, and she’d been up early this morning—adrenalin-filled, and with a surplus of energy that had had her pacing the floor whilst clutching her mobile phone, waiting impatiently for the contact Kiryl had promised her. And that contact would come. She knew that. Yesterday had not been some fantasy-fuelled creation of her own imagination. No, it had been real, shared—a commitment made and given to the journey they would make together. A journey to a shared future?

The knifing, twisting, yielding hot sweetness of her emotional and sensual response to that question told her what she wanted, but she was not going to let her hopes run away with her. Instead she was going to live for the moment, for every heartbeat, every touch, every kiss and every intimacy they would share.

The bell to the apartment’s security system rang, followed within a second by the ring of her mobile phone.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me.’

She heard Kiryl’s voice in response to her own tremulous answer to the phone’s summons.

‘I’m outside. Let me in.’

Her hands were all fingers and thumbs as she struggled with the door’s lock system, and the small handful of seconds it took her to open the door was a lifetime of impatient longing.

Kiryl swept her up into his embrace the moment the door was open, closing it with a kick of his foot and then leaning back against it whilst he kissed her with all the passion and hunger her own heart felt.

For several minutes the hallway was filled with the soft sounds of Alena’s pleasure, the sweetly shocked gasps of her breath and the aching cry of her female delight when Kiryl’s hand found her breast beneath the pale grey cashmere of her jumper.

‘I want you. I ache so much for you that I have no self-control. All last night I lay awake, thinking what a fool I’d been for not snatching you up there and then and taking you with me. But you—us—what we will have together—deserves far more than the anonymity of a hotel bedroom for its culmination and our shared commitment to it. When we sacrifice our individual selves to become united as one I want it to be somewhere very special.’

Each word Kiryl whispered into her ear, between small erotic kisses bitten delicately into the soft skin of her throat, whilst he caressed her nipple into a tight excited peak of eager surrender, sent a fresh surge of sensual longing and urgency through her. Low down in her body the ache that had merely been tamped down overnight burned hotly into new and impatient life. What he was saying to her, promising her, was lovely—but Alena knew that if he had said he was so impatient that he was going to take her here and now, against the wall in the hallway of the apartment, she would have given herself to him without a second’s hesitation.

It made her feel unbearably tender towards him that he should seek to contain their mutual desire in order to give it the right setting, and that feeling increased when he told her, ‘I want to make it special for you.’

‘You are what makes it special,’ Alena replied shakily, her voice betraying her emotions. ‘You are special, Kiryl. Special, and wonderful, and … and I am so lucky to have met you.’

Instinctively Kiryl tensed—against both her words and her emotion—wanting to reject them, wanting to tell her that the last thing he wanted from anyone was an emotional connection. Emotional connections had no place in his life. They never had and they never would. He had learned young that it was safer to shut himself away from his emotions. Except, of course, those that drove him to obliterate the memory of his father’s rejection by achieving for himself what his father had not been able to achieve.

Alena’s open vulnerability irritated him like a piece of grit in his shoe, demanding his attention even though he didn’t want to give it. It had been her parents’ responsibility to prepare her for the harsh realities of life. Now it was her brother’s. If they hadn’t taken care to do that then why should it irk him so much? Especially when her vulnerability was the foundation on which he was building his plans to win that all-important contract.

What was it that was really causing his irritation? Surely not his conscience? Kiryl shrugged aside that thought. He did not have a conscience—not where the all-important task he had set himself was concerned. So why the irritation? After all, it would make things far more difficult for him if she were suspicious of him and his motives.

And, no matter how ready she might be to let him see how she felt about him now, she would be more than suspicious, a few weeks from now, when he walked away from her with his prize, leaving her with her dreams and her pride shattered.

Kiryl tensed his mind against his own thoughts. Her future pain was no concern of his. She was no concern of his. She had her rich, protective brother to take care of her, and she had grown up with loving parents. The contrast between their childhoods couldn’t have been greater. She a child born of a union between two people who had loved one another and who would no doubt have welcomed the birth of a child to celebrate and cement that love. He a child born of a union rooted in abuse and contempt on the part of his father and gullibility on the part of his mother—a child loathed by his father and abandoned by his mother, who had died leaving him unprotected.

Kiryl frowned. He didn’t want to be dragged back to the pain of his childhood. It was over, after all, and he had severed every link that had ever connected him to it. He had re-invented, recreated himself as the man he was now. A man proud to say that his mother had been a Romany and that he had the gifts, the skills, everything he did have, to become what he now was. Unlike Alena, he had had no advantages to help him through life, but he had still been able to achieve his goals. Almost.

‘I’ve arranged a surprise for you,’ he told her.

‘A surprise? What kind of surprise?’ Alena demanded.

‘The kind that requires a passport. You do have a passport, I trust?’

A passport? He was taking her away somewhere? Alena’s heart leapt. ‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. ‘But …’

‘No more questions,’ Kiryl told her autocratically, before looking pointedly at his plain, discreetly expensive gold watch, its strap glinting warmly against the sinewy strength of the tanned flesh of his wrist.

Kiryl had good hands—strong hands. A man’s hands, with lean fingers and clean, well-kept unmanicured nails.

‘I’ll give you five minutes in which to make your choice—either to say yes and come with me or to say no and stay here.’

‘Five minutes? But …’

‘Trust me, Alena,’ Kiryl told her fiercely. ‘Trust what you feel and trust me. Perhaps what happened between us yesterday happened too fast—for both of us. But passion—a man’s passion for a woman and hers for him—can be like that … That doesn’t make it wrong.’ His voice dropped to become hauntingly low as he told her thickly, ‘Nothing we share together could ever be wrong. All I want is the opportunity to prove to you how very special you are to me … how very special we can be together. And for that we need privacy and somewhere very special. If you will let me take you there.’

The colour came and went in Alena’s face. She knew the ‘there’ that he was talking about wasn’t just the ‘there’ of his surprise destination; what he was saying to her—what he was promising—was that he would also take her to the heights of sensual pleasure and fulfilment. Her head was spinning, her heart racing, her body aching with impatient longing. The choice was hers. He had told her that. She could refuse. She could tell him that she needed more time, that she needed more information. But Alena knew that she wasn’t going to. Overnight she had grown from a girl who had felt nervous uncertainty yesterday about whether she was strong enough for her own passion to a woman who now knew beyond any doubt that she was—and how much she wanted him.

She took a deep breath, and then asked him in a voice that only trembled very slightly, ‘What will I need to pack?’

‘Very little.’

When Alena’s face went bright red and she dropped her lashes over her eyes Kiryl laughed. He had been so intent on his plan that he had forgotten for a minute how inexperienced she actually was.

‘Ah, I see,’ Kiryl teased her. ‘You are imagining that I plan for you to wear only the minimum amount of clothing?’ He shook his head. ‘That was not what I meant at all. I should have said that you need only pack a few essentials. The rest we will buy when we reach our destination.’ He paused, and then told her softly, ‘Besides, when I make love to you it will not be “very little” you will be wearing, it will be only your own skin—because the only covering you will need will be my hands, my touch, my kiss and my body.’

Now her face was hotter than ever—and so was her body. The images conjured up by Kiryl’s words were so enticing and exciting that they made her feel giddy with longing.

‘You have three minutes left,’ Kiryl reminded her. ‘And don’t forget your passport.’

‘But I need to know something,’ Alena protested. ‘Are we going somewhere hot or …?’

‘We are going first to the airport, and for that you will need a coat. More than that I am not prepared to tell you.’

He was looking at his watch again.

The sudden reality of how awful it would be if he were to leave without her was the only impetus Alena needed to send her almost running into her bedroom. She stood for several vital seconds, too ecstatically happy to be able to formulate a single practical thought, until she remembered how little time she had.

‘A few essentials’ Kiryl had said, Alena reminded herself as she hurried into her walk-in wardrobe-cum-dressing room and removed a case, quickly sweeping her toiletries into it and then equally speedily opening a drawer to remove a couple of sets of clean underwear, grabbing her passport from her dressing table drawer to put it into her handbag and then reaching up for a quilted dark grey parka that toned with her pale grey cashmere jumper and silk taffeta skirt. Bending down to kick off her heels, she dropped them into a bag before putting them into the case and then slipping on a pair of warm lined boots.

‘Four minutes,’ Kiryl told her when she re-emerged into the sitting room with her case. ‘That’s one minute too many. For which I shall demand that you pay me a forfeit, so be warned,’ he teased her, looking pointedly at her mouth in a way that told her the forfeit he had in mind was going to be a kiss.

‘You’ve got your passport?’ he asked, holding out his hand, his manner suddenly briskly businesslike.

Alena nodded her head, automatically reaching into her handbag and passing it to him. When their fingertips touched Alena felt her whole body tingle in sensual excitement from that brief contact. And if that brief contact could have that kind of effect on her, then how was she going to feel when he really made love to her?

‘Come,’ Kiryl commanded, holding his hand out to her after he had tucked her passport away in an inside pocket of the cashmere overcoat he had previously been carrying but which he was now wearing over his suit.

Just for a second Alena hesitated, suddenly sharply aware of the symbolism of what taking his hand would mean—of the giant step she would be taking, leaving behind her the security of her brother’s loving protection to go with a man who until yesterday had been a stranger to her. A stranger who now held her heart, Alena reminded herself. A stranger to whom she felt more intimately and emotionally connected than anyone else she had ever known. A stranger who was, she was sure, the one to whom she was destined to give her heart and herself.