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

of this one might be slightly smaller than her brother’s—Vasilii travelled extensively all over the world—but it was every bit as luxurious, if not more so. The expensive plain grey carpet with its black stripe was thick and immaculate, the leather of the charcoal-grey leather chairs so soft that Alena couldn’t resist stroking her fingertips along the arm of her own.

      This section of the cabin was furnished rather like a small meeting room, with its leather chairs and a sofa, but a door in the dark glass screen at the rear of the cabin caught her attention.

      Seeing her look at it, the steward told her, ‘The door leads to Mr Andronov’s workstation area, and beyond it are the bathroom and the galley. If I may take your coat for you?’

      Nodding her head and returning his smile, Alena allowed him to help her off with her coat. He was a good-looking young man, with a certain look in his eyes when his gaze brushed her body that told her he was attracted to her.

      Kiryl, who was on the point of entering the cabin, saw the way the steward looked at Alena as he took her coat, and the sudden, sharply savage red burn of male possessiveness that took him from the doorway to Alena’s side was so swift and overwhelming, so instinctive, that it had dictated his actions before he could even think of defying it.

      It was, he told himself, perfectly natural—given the importance of the success of his plan. And, given Alena’s naïveté, he wanted to ensure that no other man showed appreciation of her. His response had been driven by practicality, that was all. Practicality. Not male possessiveness, and certainly not male jealousy.

      ‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going,’ Alena reminded Kiryl when he took his own seat preparatory to take-off.

      ‘No, and I don’t intend to tell you. It’s a surprise, remember?’

      ‘But you can tell me how long the flight will be?’ Alena suggested coaxingly.

      ‘Around seven hours,’ he told her promptly. ‘And seven hours could take us to many places. New York—one of the most vibrant cities on earth—Oman, or Dubai, where so many Russians love to go in the cold weather.’

      Alena laughed. ‘Vasilii certainly loves it there. He hates the cold. His mother’s family tribe came originally from the desert.’

      ‘Then there is the Caribbean,’ Kiryl continued.

      ‘You could always simply tell me where we are going instead of keeping me guessing,’ Alena pointed out.

      ‘Ah, but if I did that what would you have to think about for the next seven hours?’ Kiryl asked softly.

      His words might sound innocent but Alena knew that they were not—just as she also knew perfectly well exactly what was going to be occupying her thoughts for the next seven hours. And that would not be their destination so much as what would happen when they reached that destination. Kiryl holding her, touching her, taking her to bed and making her his. Kiryl, Kiryl, Kiryl. He was her journey and her destination.

      Seven hours later, after an elegant lunch of smoked salmon followed by sea bass served with perfectly cooked vegetables and then champagne and orange mousse, Kiryl had flirted with her so subtly that some of the time she hadn’t been sure if he had really said or intimated what she had thought he was saying, or whether it was her own fevered longing and imagination that had made her believe his words cloaked a deliberately sensual message and the promise of shared pleasures to come.

      One glance out of the jet’s window as they started to descend told Alena exactly where Kiryl was taking her. Her face alight with joy and excitement, she turned to him to exclaim happily, ‘St Petersburg! Oh, Kiryl. Thank you. You remembered what I said about it.’ Impulsively she reached out to him, her hand on his arm, her face turned up towards him.

      As he looked down at her the sudden savage ache of physical desire that gripped his body shocked Kiryl into immobility. She was the one who had to want him so unbearably that her need was impossible for her to resist—not the other way around.

      He reached out to push her away, but a sudden movement of the plane caught them both unaware, jolting Alena so that she lost her balance and fell against him, leaving Kiryl with no alternative other than give in to his instinctive male response to protect by taking hold of her. And once she was in his arms his body reacted to her presence there as though it was something it had hungered desperately for.

      Need surged against the barriers of his self-control, its urgent arousal hardening, its ache for so much more than the feel of her mouth beneath his as he took it in a kiss that was far more intense than he had wanted it to be.

      As their jet descended from the clouds to what for Alena was the most beautiful winter city in the world, it wasn’t St Petersburg that captured and held her attention but Kiryl himself. The hot, passionate swiftness with which he had taken her mouth thrilled and delighted her, and answering arousal rose up inside her to make her strain eagerly and urgently against Kiryl’s openly hardened body. His tongue caressed her own in moves as fiercely sensual and urgent as the most explicit of intimate tangos.

      It wouldn’t have mattered where he had chosen to bring her, Alena acknowledged. What mattered—all that mattered for her—was being with him. The landscape of her dreams and the city of her heart was now Kiryl himself.

       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘THIS is your room, so I’ll leave you to make yourself at home here before we have dinner, which I’ve arranged to be served in an hour’s time.’

      ‘My room?’

      Alena was conscious of the fact that she had barely spoken since the helicopter waiting for them at the airport had dropped them off here, on one of the many small islands in the delta of the Neva, and Kiryl had shown her into a house so perfect that she had only been able to stand and gaze in delight at its fairytale interior.

      Obviously dating back to the time of the early eighteen-hundreds, from its exterior architecture, the house was a perfect jewel of its era. All she had been able to say, after taking in its soft sugared-almond-blue-painted exterior and the elegance of the interior, had been, ‘This house is so beautiful! Is it yours?’