He could even hear her voice breaking with the agonised joy of their sexual pleasure. If he closed his eyes he knew that he would be able to recall the feel of her touch on his skin.
Alena …
No! The denial roared silently from the damaged heart of the child he had once been. It was a sound that he could not ignore. If he did not give that child what he needed then who would? No one. There was no one-only him. Alena had her brother, and all the men who would love her and comfort her-and they would love her. A sharp, savage, slicing pain bit into him.
Ignoring it, he faced Alena's half-brother as they stood either side of the fireplace.
Vasilii Demidov was as tall as he was himself, although a few years older. His dark hair was cut short and his skin was warmer toned than Alena's, even though he had the same silver-grey eyes. A hand seemed to tighten around Kiryl's heart. Because after today he would never look into Alena's eyes again and see there her love for him. But that did not matter. Nothing mattered other than getting this contract-and he would sacrifice everything that had to be sacrificed in order to get it. Everything.
Deliberately he held Vasilii's gaze.
"I altered the time of our appointment because I wanted to speak with you without Alena being here,' Kiryl began.
Behind the door, on the point of entering the room, Alena hesitated.
Vasilii frowned slightly. "You know my sister?' he queried.
The question seemed to hang on the air, as though it wanted to give Kiryl the time to reject it-a final chance to step back.
Ruthlessly Kiryl crushed into silence the voice inside him that was trying to make him waver from his cause.
"Yes.' Meeting Vasilii's questioning look head-on, Kiryl told him unemotionally, "She believes herself to be in love with me.' He paused, and then added equally unemotionally, "In fact she believes that she and I are destined to be together, and that nothing and no one can part us.'
A burst of fire briefly darkened the silver-grey eyes. Anger? If so it was controlled quickly. The look he was now being given was one of clinical assessment.
"I see. And you, I take it, have encouraged her in this belief for reasons of your own which I imagine, from the tone of your voice, have nothing to do with you returning her feelings?'
"That is correct,' Kiryl agreed. It was good news for him that Alena's half-brother was so quick on the uptake, but knowing Vasilii's reputation in business he had not expected anything less.
Disbelief, like a single drop of icy cold water, touched Alena's senses as she stood outside the room listening to Kiryl speaking-so analytically and without a trace of emotion in his voice, as though she was a stranger to him, as though the love she had given him so freely and so passionately meant nothing to him at all. But that couldn't be possible-not after the way he had held her and touched her. It just couldn't.
"When you e-mailed me to bring the time of our appointment forward, you said that it was a business matter you wished to discuss with me,'
she heard her half-brother saying.
"It is,' Kiryl agreed. "A business matter of great importance to me.'
"A business matter that is more important than Alena's love for you?'
Vasilii's question echoed Alena's own unspoken confusion. She held her breath whilst she waited for Kiryl's answer, praying that he would say something to explain the bewildering and frightening confusion of what she had already heard him say.
"It is my good luck that Alena loves me as much as she does.'
Unsteadily Alena exhaled her pent-up breath. There had been no reason for her disquiet after all. But then, just as she would have flown into the room to Kiryl's side, he continued.
"It is, after all, Alena's unquestioning love for me that is enabling me to put my business proposition to you.'
What was happening? What was Kiryl saying? Alena couldn't understand what was going on, and yet instinctively she felt apprehensive and fearful-as though something dark and treacherous was reaching out to hurt her love, like a dark shadow threatening to diminish the bright light of the sun. She wanted to run into the other room and demand to know what was going on, but somehow she couldn't move or even speak, condemned to simply stand there out of sight, forced to listen to what was being said.
"What kind of business proposition?'
Kiryl could hear the ominous warning note in Vasilii's voice but he ignored it. "You and I, as I am sure you already know, are now the only two contenders for the contract to build and run the new container shipping port. As your wealth is far greater than mine, and your standing is that of a man whose antecedents had an elite standing in our community, that has to stack the odds of winning the contract more heavily in your favour than it does mine.'
"Because I have both the financial and social wherewithal to ensure that I secure the contract, you mean?' Vasilii responded.
Alena's shock intensified. Was Kiryl really suggesting that her brother would bribe officials in order to win the contract? If so he couldn't have been listening to what she had told him about her half-brother-how important honesty and anti-corruption in business dealings was to him, just as it had been to their father.
"Exactly,' Kiryl agreed. "Which is why I decided that it would be in my own interests to tilt the playing field to my benefit. Let's not waste time.
Alena believes she loves me. Nothing you can say or do will alter that. She is mine to do with as I please. She will defy any and every embargo you choose to put on whatever relationship I choose to have with her.'
Alena. Alena who looked at him with so much love in her eyes. Alena who would give him anything he asked of her. Alena. A woman. Just a woman. Women were weak. Their emotions made them weak. He had only to think of his own mother to know that. He would not allow any emotions to stand in his way. So why was he having to fight against the savage, angry ache inside him, that driving furious urgency that was almost an agonised yearning, biting into him and filling his senses with images of the time he had spent in St Petersburg with Alena? It threatened to undermine his resolution. It was her fault. She had made him weak, just as his father had always said he was. The useless, weak and unwanted result of giving in to a moment's sexual need.
"Alena has said nothing to me of even knowing you, never mind loving you as you claim.' Vasilii's voice was tightly controlled.
"I told her not to.' Kiryl lifted his shoulders expressively. "You are a successful businessman who has succeeded in a very hard world. I am your competitor for this contract and you will have had me investigated, as I did you. You will know my history.'
"I know that your father was a man my father said was the most call ous and corrupt man he had ever come across, and that your mother was
-'
"A Romany gypsy, and as such despised by my father. Yes. That is true. He loathed the fact that I existed. My mother's blood made me unacceptable to him then just as it still makes me unacceptable to many people now. Your own bloodlines, though, are far more exalted. Your father comes from a family of the ruling elite. Your mother was a princess amongst her own people. You have the reputation of being a very proud man. Some would say a very arrogant man.'
"Some would say the same thing about you.'
"My pride and arrogance, if I have them, come from what I have achieved for myself-not what I have inherited. But that pride does not blind me to reality. You will not want to see your sister being flaunted in front of our world as my current mistress and then discarded. She is far too valuable a pawn to you for that.'
Kiryl looked towards the window. Now, when he should be consolidating his position by informing Alena's brother of just how much of herself Alena had already given to him, and with what passion and intensity, he was experiencing a strange reluctance to do so. It was as though a door had locked inside him, protecting that information-and Alena-safely behind it, as though he actually wanted to protect her. He simply could not say the words that would reveal the completeness with which Alena had given herself to him already.
But it seemed that her half-brother had worked things out for himself and didn't need those words, because he asked curtly, "You and Alena are lovers?'
"I have taken her to bed, yes.'
The hard, cold, almost stilted words were meant to distance him from any voice within that might dare to remind him of just how appropriate the word "lovers' was to describe the intimacy he and Alena had shared. Instead they felt like the blows of an axe, striking directly into him and causing indescribable pain. The last time he had felt like this had been when his father had rejected him. As he was now rejecting Alena. Why should that cause him pain?