The Most Coveted Prize(13)

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 shal come for you, and when I do  … '

"When you do I shal 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 gull ibility 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.