power through the hardest and most challenging of circumstances—and it showed.
Nevertheless, he felt obliged to remind him as they parted, ‘As I have already said, what you require if you are to win out against Demidov is a miracle. Take my advice and back out now—let him have the contract. That way at least you will save face and not have to endure the humiliation of publicly losing to him.’
Back out? When he was so close to fulfilling the vow he had made to himself so many years ago? Never.
Could she risk picking up her teacup now, without her hands trembling so much that she risked spilling the hot liquid? Alena wasn’t sure. Her heart was still jumping around inside her chest cavity, and her face was still burning from the effect that one piercing brilliant green gaze had had on her. He had looked right at her. She put her hands on her still hot cheeks in an attempt to cool them down. She must not look at him again. She simply didn’t have the strength to withstand the raw maleness of such a gaze. It had melted her insides, turning them into a soft liquid pulse of longing that quivered within her still. And yet she had to look—she had to let her senses and her body drink in their fill of the dangerous excitement of all that fierce sexual masculinity.
Her pulse had started to race, and her throat was so dry that she had to swallow hard as she allowed her head to turn again in his direction, the longing and excitement beating even more fiercely than ever inside her with anticipation—only to crash down to wretched disappointment when she realised that he wasn’t there. He had gone, and thanks to her silly, immature stupidity she had missed her chance to … to what? To prolong the intensity of that mesmerising gaze until her bones melted and her heart burst with the unbearable excitement of it? He might have come over, introduced himself. He might have …
There was something on the floor—a gold pen. It must be his. He must have dropped it. Quickly Alena rose from her seat and went to pick it up. It felt cool and hard against her fingertips. She was shaking so much that she couldn’t stand up again without her head swimming. She could see him standing close to the hotel exit. The man he had been with was leaving the hotel. Was he going to follow him? Without allowing herself the chance to think about what she was doing, Alena crossed the hotel foyer.
The click of her heels alerted Kiryl to her presence. When she walked she swayed as delicately as the silver birches in Russia’s northern forests.
‘You dropped this.’
Her voice was as soft as the sigh of a spring breeze, cooling the stuffy, overheated hotel air as it brushed his skin.
She was holding out a pen to him. Not his pen, but he took it from her nonetheless. Her hand was delicately boned, her fingers long and slim, her nails buffed to a natural sheen. She had a look about her that money alone could not buy: a translucent, shimmering natural beauty allied to the kind of discreet grooming that whispered privilege and protection. This woman had been feather-bedded from the moment of her birth.
Angry with himself for being so aware of her, he punished her for that awareness by telling her mockingly, ‘And of course you would seize such a golden opportunity to return it to me, wouldn’t you? Given your interest in me. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it is the male’s role to pursue his quarry and reveal his desire, not the female’s.’
Hot colour ran up under Alena’s skin like burning fire. She deserved his mockery—and his cruelty: Vasilii would have said so. But she hadn’t been prepared for it and it hurt. Inside her head—foolishly—she had built up an image of him in which his danger was tempered by a desire for her that matched her own for him. Now she was being made to pay for that fantasy.
Kiryl watched as she struggled to overcome her humiliation, pride battling against pain as her small white teeth bit so hard into that soft bottom lip that it swelled swiftly. Just as it would swell beneath the fierce demand of a man’s kiss? Against his will Kiryl felt the ache in his groin the sight of her had aroused earlier return—with interest.
‘My apologies. That was ungracious of me.’
His apology was deliberately insincere. He didn’t have either the time or the desire to deal with the fragile ego of an emotional woman—no matter how desirable. He knew himself too well, and he knew that in the mood he was in now, thanks to Vasilii Demidov, the darkness within him that he had never wholly been able to control would unleash itself and seek a victim. Over the years Kiryl had taught himself to think of that darkness as something of a mental vampire, an echo of himself that, when aroused, could only be calmed by feeding off the emotional pain of others. No doubt there were those who would say that that dark need sprang from his childhood, but Kiryl had no intention of dwelling on a time when he had been vulnerable. Instead he preferred to live in the present, and living in the present meant securing that contract. The girl was simply a spare pawn in the game, and as such he had no use for her other than as a momentary outlet for his pent-up inner frustration with regard to his bid and the competition he was up against.
For Alena, though, his caustic cruelty was unbearable. She retreated from him, feeling too upset and too humiliated to defend herself, merely shaking her head and turning away to hurry back to her table.
Once there she asked for her bill and proceeded to gather up her coat and her bag. She had shown herself up most dreadfully. She deserved the punishment he had meted out, she told herself. She was just glad that her half-brother hadn’t been there to witness it. Fresh tears blurred her vision.
Automatically Kiryl tracked her uncoordinated, anxiously urgent movements. Because he wanted to distance himself from her, that was all. And yet his gaze and his senses were somehow reluctant to let her go. Even now, when she was plainly upset, there was still a grace about her, a breathtaking natural sensuality, a pliable softness—from the top of her shining fall of dark blonde hair to the delicacy of ankles so fine Kiryl suspected he could easily close his hand around them—that said the whole of her could be bent to the will of the man who possessed her.
And did he want to be that man? It wasn’t so much a matter of wanting as of taking advantage of what he was being offered so blatantly. Kiryl shrugged aside his inner criticism of himself. He was, after all, a man—with a man’s needs. And it was obviously what she wanted. She had practically been begging for it, and it would be one way of ridding himself of the anger he felt at having his plans threatened by Vasilii Demidov. He had taken the savagery of the sharp raw edge off it via his mockery of her. He could make amends quite easily. He knew the format. She would initially pretend to refuse to allow him to do so. He would then flatter her and she would give in. It was a game as old as life itself, and an hour or so in bed with her in his suite would surely be enough to satisfy the ache in his groin.
A brief movement of his hand summoned a waitress. Giving her his instructions, he made his way over to the table.
Alena was just about to leave, her back to him as she waited for another waitress to bring her bill.
‘You didn’t drink your tea earlier, and since I am very much in need of a cup why don’t we share a samovar together? Two Russians together, sharing a tradition from our homeland?’
The unexpected sound of his voice had Alena spinning round, her shock intensifying when he reached out and closed long fingers around her wrist, his thumb on her unsteady, far too fast pulse.
His smile was pure megawatt charm. It softened the earlier arrogant harshness of his features and turned him into every woman’s fantasy of a bad boy grown into an adult male. It gave him the sensuality of a Cossack, the romance of a gypsy, the wild devilry of a pirate and the alpha allure of a hero. With that smile he was all of them and more. And she would be a fool to give in to him.
‘No, thank you.’ She tried to sound distant and cool, but she knew he had heard the vulnerable huskiness of her voice, the note of doubt and longing that undermined her will-power. Her throat felt dry and raw with emotion and tension. She wanted to wrench her wrist free of his hold but somehow she couldn’t.
He was smiling at her again, more intimately this time, the malachite eyes darkening and gleaming.
‘I was rude and I upset you, and now you are angry with me. You think,