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

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.’