PENNY JORDAN - The Russian Rivals - The Most Coveted Prize / The Power of Vasilii

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 …’

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?