The buggies and the women were still there. The pain in her heart felt like a volcano about to erupt, but Alena knew that she had to force her emotions back down inside herself-at least for the duration of this hated, unwanted and humiliating marriage.
She didn't realise that Kiryl had come to stand at her side until she heard him ask, "What are you looking at?'
Moving away from him, she told him in a brittle voice, "The children. At least I'm to be spared the horror of having your child, Kiryl. I couldn't bear to think I'd brought a child into the world who might grow up like you. Do you know that when you first told me about your father I was actually stupid enough to think that what you'd experienced at his hands would make you a wonderful father? I thought you'd want to be so different to him. Because you'd never want to be considered anything like him, I thought you'd want to be the kind of father-the kind of man-
who understood his children's need for his love. But I was wrong-just as I was wrong to tell myself that your father's treatment of your mother must have given you compassion and understanding for someone who loved you.
"When I thought about the boy you had been I wanted to hold that child and protect him. I wanted to tell him that it was his father who was despicable and unworthy, not him. I wanted to tell him to be proud of his mother and of himself. And when I thought of the man I believed you were I wanted to give him everything I had to give-all my love, all my loyalty, all my happiness. Everything.
"But of course you weren't that man, were you, Kiryl? You never wanted to turn your back on everything your father had been and become a man as different from him as it was possible to be. You never wanted to reject everything he represented. I assumed that was what you wanted
-but it wasn't, was it? You're just like him. There are other ways you could have chosen to prove yourself better than him-many other ways-
but you chose to mirror him, to be him-only more so.
"You were never the man I thought you were, and I was a fool to imagine that you could ever be. You decided to deny yourself the opportunity to be that man a long time ago, when you lay in the gutter watching your father walk away. I should hate you, but instead I pity you-because no matter what you do, or how much you succeed, you will never know what it means to love someone, or to be truly loved by them. Because you don't have it in you to allow that to happen. Is this what your mother would have wanted for you? Is this the way she would want you to represent the love she had for you?'
Abruptly Alena stopped speaking. She had never intended to say all she had, and now she felt slightly light-headed and dizzy.
She looked round the master bedroom and then said to Kiryl emotionlessly, "I don't know why you've insisted on me seeing this house.
Wherever I have to live for the duration of this wretched marriage will feel like a prison to me. But there's one thing for certain: I might have to marry you, Kiryl, but it will be a marriage without love and without intimacy. Whichever room I sleep in I shal be sleeping in it alone. There is nothing you could do now that would ever make me desire you again.'
"Be careful when you challenge me, Alena,' Kiryl warned her angrily. Her words had pierced the armour of his self-control even though he was not going to allow her to see that. What she had said about him had ripped and opened up scar tissue he had thought hardened to withstand anything life could throw at it, but he had now discovered it was still unbearably raw.
"It isn't a challenge. It's a statement of fact,' Alena told him fiercely.
"That I can no longer make you want me? That's a fact, is it? Are you sure about that?'
Of course she was. So why was she looking anxiously to the door as Kiryl came towards her? He penned her in between the window and his body, a male gleam in his eyes that warned Alena that she had gone too far. But what she had said to him was true, wasn't it? There wasn't anything he could do now that would arouse her desire. After all that desire had been for the man she had believed him to be-not the man she had discovered he was.
"Hunger for another person's touch isn't something you can turn on and off. It isn't something you can control or subjugate to your own will.' As he had already discovered, Kiryl acknowledged, remembering night upon night during which he had lain awake, his body aching for the intimacy they had shared as lovers.
Oh, yes, he might have pretended to himself that that wasn't the case. He might have denied to himself that he wanted her. But deep inside that part of himself that she had somehow managed to touch had refused to bow to his commands to accept the lie he had been telling it. It wanted her. It wanted her beyond logic or reason. It ached and hungered for her just as it was doing now.
He could see the way in which his deliberately spoken words caused Alena's eyes to darken, and his heart thudded violently into his chest wall. He had known the minute he had walked into this room and seen the dark grey curtains and the silk throw on the bed that so closely matched the colour of Alena's eyes when she was aroused that this was the house he would rent, Kiryl admitted to himself now. This was the first time he had been alone with her since the announcement of their engagement, and the scent of her as they walked from room to room together had already been maddening his senses well before she had challenged him.
"Alena … '
The familiar warmth of Kiryl's breath against her skin made Alena shudder. With rejection, not desire, she told herself. But it was a strange rejection that had her allowing him to take her in his arms and mould her body to his, and an even stranger one that had her head tilting so that he could brush her hair back from her face and then cup it whilst he looked down into her eyes before brushing her lips with his.
Such a tender, gentle kiss-and one that she could have avoided or denied instead of making that small keening sound deep in her throat.
But she had made it, and Kiryl's response was to crush her even closer, kiss her deeply and intimately. Now she tried to resist him, realising the danger she was in-not from Kiryl, but from herself, in the response within her that was rising up inside her like a rip tide.
No matter how hard she tried to force her body to deny that it wanted him, the need he aroused refused to be controlled. Just the merest touch of his breath against her skin was enough to make her shudder with need, and right now Kiryl was doing far more than merely breathing against her skin. Right now Kiryl was kissing her, touching her with something that if she hadn't known better she would have believed was a savagely hungry need of his own.
His hand had found and cupped her breast, his thumb and finger caressing her nipple through her clothes. Fierce longing exploded inside her, depriving her of the ability to think or assess. When Kiryl pulled aside her clothes to lift her breast from her bra and suckle sensuously on her nipple Alena was lost. She was vaguely aware of raking his back with her nails through the fabric of his shirt, and then sobbing with a mixture of release and impatience when he pressed her lower body into his, his hand on her bottom encouraging her to move her hips rhythmically against him in response to the hard presence of his erection.
He was lost-helpless-possessed by the intensity of his need for Alena, Kiryl recognised even as he tried to hold back the ferocity of need claiming him. She was all he wanted, all he would ever want. He wanted to lose himself in her and let everything else fall away. All he wanted was Alena.
All he wanted? That couldn't be possible. It must not be possible. Abruptly he released her.
Shocked out of the her own desire back into reality, Alena pulled away with a small shocked cry of denial, darting past Kiryl and pausing only to pick up her handbag before running down the stairs and out into the square. Her heart was pounding. She felt physically sick with self-disgust, unable to believe what she had done and how she had felt. The sight of a cruising taxi had her flagging it down and climbing into it.
And then, even with all that had happened, she was unable to stop herself from looking up towards the bedroom she had just left.
Kiryl was standing there in the window, looking down into the street. Her heart rocked to a standstil inside her chest. What had happened was all her own fault. She should never have challenged him like that. She might have guessed, knowing now the kind of man he was, that he would think nothing of adding to her humiliation by making her want him again.