Ten minutes later, after a quick shower, she removed the cream silk dress from its padded hanger. She had fall en in love with the dress the minute she had seen it in the shop, but now it wasn't excitement about the dress that made her hands tremble as she slipped it on over the nude satin and lace underwear she had changed into. No, it was Kiryl who was responsible for her excitement-her excitement and her longing to be with him.
Exactly on the dot of the hour Kiryl had given her, just as she had finished misting the air around her with her favourite scent, there was a knock on her bedroom door.
When she opened the door to find Kiryl standing outside, immaculately and formally dressed in a dark fine wool suit, as though he had known that she would choose to wear something formal herself, all she could do was shake her head and gesture to her dress.
"How … ?'
"Magic,' he teased, refusing to say any more as he offered her his arm with old-fashioned courtesy.
"I can hardly believe all this is really happening,' Alena murmured in delight as he escorted her downstairs.
"Believe it,' Kiryl told her as they crossed the marble hallway and then went through the drawing room to the dining room beyond, where an immaculately dressed waiter was already pulling out a chair for her at a table dressed with what was obviously expensive china and crystal.
Half an hour later, when they had been served with a first course of caviar and Kiryl had insisted on them toasting one another with champagne, Alena gazed at him in adoration.
"You've made everything so perfect-St Petersburg, this house, my clothes. I can't imagine anything that could be better than this.'
There was a small telling pause, during which Kiryl looked into her eyes and then let his gaze slip to her lips and stay there.
"I hope that's not out true,' he said softly. "Because I can assure you that I can-and I hope that before tonight is over it won't just be in our imaginations that we will have experienced it.'
Alena made a soft murmured sound and took a gulp of her champagne. She wanted Kiryl so much-far more, in fact, than she wanted her dinner. Far, far more. She wanted him so badly right now that …
She put down the forkful of food she had been about to eat, the excitement squirming in the pit of her stomach melting into a heated longing.
"What is it?' Kiryl asked, indicating the food she had put down. "You aren't eating.'
"I'm not hungry,' Alena responded, bravely lifting her gaze to meet his as she added huskily, "At least not for food.'
Kiryl looked at her for so long without saying anything that Alena wondered if he had understood what she meant-or, even worse, if he did understand but disapproved of her being so direct. She was in such new and unfamiliar territory here. She wouldn't have wished away the happy times she had spent in her teens, being so close to her parents that it had been their company she had wanted rather than that of her peers, but not for the first time since she had met Kiryl she was regretting her sheer lack of worldly experience.
For a handful of seconds Alena's directness kept Kiryl still in his chair. He was used to women coming on to him in the most blatant and openly sexual of ways, just as he was familiar with the ploys they used when they wanted to appear more subtle, but the sheer open honesty of Alena's words, combined with her uncertainty, touched and then released something within him-a sudden pang of something approaching protective tenderness. A protective tenderness that had no right to be there and that he certainly did not want to be there, he warned himself as he fought against it.
Another unfamiliar and equally unwanted feeling followed hot on the heels of the first one-this time the knowledge that he could stop now, turn his back on his plans, let her down gently and make it easy for her to walk away from this and him with only her heart bruised.
Give up his plans? His goal? The entire raison d'être that had dictated the whole of his adult life? For what? To save a woman who meant nothing to him from pain? Was he going mad?
Angry with himself, Kiryl deliberately ignored the choice presented to him. There was only one road he wanted to follow, and that was the road he had mapped out for himself all those years ago.
Why didn't Kiryl say something? Anything? The longer he remained silent the more Alena's heart rocked sickly inside her chest, and the conviction that she had somehow misread the situation-that the desire she had thought he had for her was merely created by her own imagination-strengthened.
But then he removed his linen napkin from his lap, crushing it in his hand before he placed it on the table and then stood up. Watching him walk towards her, Alena held her breath, her heart thumping heavily inside her chest.
Kiryl reached down to take hold of her hands and gently pull her to her feet, demanding with heart-shaking urgency as he did so, "You mean that?'
The relief that coursed through her was mixed with heady excitement and a fierce longing that sent its message of arousal coiling and pulsing through her lower body.
"Yes. Oh, yes.' Her voice shook as she whispered the words to him.
It was triumph in the success of his plan that was filling him with the emotions that were racing through him now, Kiryl assured himself. It was desire for that success that was causing his blood to pound through his veins and his heart to pump so fast. Not any real desire for her. The mental images and the physical awareness of how it would feel to have her naked body beneath his touch and his mouth meant nothing. They were simply his body's way of translating all that the success of his plans meant to him. There was no personal significance in those images, just as he did not feel any personal desire for her. That was impossible and non-all owable.
But knowing that did not mean he must not convince her that he wanted her-and not merely wanted her but ached and yearned for her and her alone. Each touch between them-each breath, each look and every single caress-must carry that message to her. And that was why he must make love to her as though she was his everything, his all.
Keeping his gaze fixed on Alena's, Kiryl lifted her champagne glass to her lips and commanded softly, "Drink.'
Slowly Alena did so, her hand trembling as she placed it over his around the stem of the glass. Her gaze was molten silver with arousal when she raised it to him, her whole body shuddering with mute longing when he drank from her glass himself, so that the kiss with which he took the sweet gasp of frantic need from her lips tasted of champagne and then of him. Its sensuality rocked her back on her heels, leaving her needing his arms around her to steady her as he placed the glass back down on the table.
If the slow and deliberate building intensity of his kiss had been a master class in subtle arousal-not that her desire for him needed to be coaxed or husbanded-the sensation it caused inside her was nothing to the shockwave of erotic response that flooded through her when Kiryl demanded, "Have you any idea how close I am to taking you right here and now? How knowing that makes me feel? Have you any idea just how dangerous you are to me and my self-control? How you've occupied every single one of my thoughts since yesterday?'
His words so closely echoed what she herself was feeling that Alena was left unable to speak, never mind control the fireworks of savagely sweet pleasure they sent exploding through her body.
"I want to take things slowly-to give you time to think about what you want-to listen to reason and logic, not my senses-but right now … I want you so much. And I have to warn you that if we leave this room now I can't promise to let you go when we reach your bedroom door. So unless that's what you want-unless I am what you want-'
"You are. You are all I want,' Alena insisted passionately.
Kiryl could feel her tremble in his arms beneath the force of her words, and his own body ignited in a surge of fierce male pleasure in its knowledge of her sexual desire for him. And only because of that. Not because against his own mental will he wanted her with something that was dangerously close to going beyond logical reason. That was something he was going to refuse to hear.
Somehow Kiryl managed the transition from dining room to the door of her bedroom with such delicacy that Alena had no real awareness of them having made it apart from the fact that they were now here, outside her door.
Kiryl's arm was binding her to his side as he turned her towards him, his free hand smoothing the hair back off her face as he warned her, his voice a raw low sound against her ear, "You must send me away now if you want me to go, sweet Alena. How well named you are-as irresistible to me as Helen of Troy was to Paris. I am no more capable of giving you up than he was her.'