The Russian Rivals: The Most Coveted Prize / The Power of Vasilii. PENNY JORDAN

hotel. Whilst Kiryl paid the driver, a uniformed doorman opened Alena’s door for her and helped her out. Following her into the hotel, Kiryl tipped him generously. The man would no doubt remember seeing him with Alena—and that would add further reinforcement to his eventual challenge to her brother either to back out of the contract race or risk seeing his besotted sister marry him.

      ‘This way,’ he told Alena, taking a firm hold on her upper arm to turn her in towards the lifts, when she would have walked past them towards the entrance to the hotel’s restaurant.

      Taking advantage of her confusion, when the lift doors opened he guided her inside it, ignoring the faint resistant stiffening of her body.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘I thought we were supposed to be having lunch together?’

      ‘We are,’ Kiryl agreed equably. ‘But not in the restaurant. I thought it would suit us both better if we had lunch in my suite.’

      Suit them both better? What exactly did he mean by that? Alena could feel guilty, excited heat flooding swiftly through her body. Even her face felt as though it was burning with her awareness of how the thought of such intimacy with him was affecting her. And very concerned and wary of that feeling she ought to be, Alena reminded herself as the lift rose swiftly upwards.

      Impulsively, her actions driven by sudden apprehension and the frantic pounding of her heart, she turned to him and told him unsteadily, ‘I’m not sure …’

      ‘You’re afraid to be alone with me? You think I might try to seduce you?’ he guessed. ‘Or is it more that you have been wondering what it would be like if I did try?’

      ‘No!’ Alena denied immediately.

      The lift had stopped. The door was open. He was looking at her with an expression that was a mixture of amusement and something else that re-ignited the desire she had felt earlier.

      ‘Good,’ he told her as he guided her out of the lift. ‘Because I can assure you that for me this lunch will be strictly business.’

      That much was true—even if he had no intention of allowing her to know what exactly that meant.

      Torn between relief and embarrassment that he had guessed what was going through her mind, Alena reminded herself that for her the only purpose of this lunch must be the fact that she would be able to claim to Vasilii later that she had secured Kiryl’s donation to the charity, and that it proved she was mature enough to step into her mother’s shoes.

      The thick pile of the carpet in the corridor muffled their footsteps as Kiryl guided her towards one of a mere handful of doors in its length, opening it on his suite and indicating that she should precede him into it.

      Opposite the entry door to the small rectangular lobby in which she was now standing was a pair of double doors, which Kiryl went to open for her. The sight of natural daylight coming in through the tall windows of the suite’s sitting room brought a welcome easing of the tight constriction of her throat, which she was trying to insist to herself had come from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the small windowless space of the lobby.

      The decor of the suite’s sitting room was familiar to her from staying in exclusive hotels all over the world. Luxuriously comfortable, the room contained everything a demanding guest might need—from a faux fireplace with two small sofas either side of it, through to a desk and the large cupboard which she suspected contained a concealed TV set and a mini-bar, and dining chairs placed neatly against one of the walls. The col our scheme of creams and greys was very ‘boutique hotel’, the fabrics and carpet obviously expensive.

      ‘I’ll ring down for our lunch. I hope you’ll like what I’ve ordered. Oh, and there’s a guest bathroom through the door off the lobby,’ Kiryl informed her.

      Alena nodded her head. She was glad about that, of course. She wouldn’t have wanted to have to walk through his bedroom to find its en suite bathroom. Of course not. She wouldn’t have wanted to do that at all. Because if she had she might have looked at the bed—Kiryl’s bed—and once she had done that she might have started imagining him lying on it … naked … the magnificent body her senses insisted on repeatedly telling her lay beneath his clothes exposed to her hungry gaze.

      By the time she reached the relative sanctuary of the guest bathroom Alena was breathing so heard, her heart pumping so frantically, that she had to lean on the door once she was inside and slowly count to ten inside her head in an effort to calm herself down.

      Pulling away from the door, she ran cold water over her wrists to cool her overheated skin, reminding herself of just why she was there. The charity and Kiryl’s donation to it. That was the only pairing she should be thinking about, she warned herself, quickly reaching for one of the immaculate white linen towels to dry her wrists and hands when she heard the buzzer to the suite and guessed that it was announcing the arrival of their lunch.

      And what a lunch!

      Alena’s eyes widened when one of the two waiters who had wheeled in a hot trolley, along with a table already dressed with a starched white cloth and all the accoutrements one would expect from the most prestigious of restaurants, pulled out her chair for her. The other did the same for Kiryl, and then placed her first course in front of her. Her favourite, she realised as she looked down at the serving of warm pear and goat’s cheese salad.

      ‘Thank you—we shall serve ourselves from here.’ Kiryl dismissed the waiters with a discreetly given tip, before getting up once they had gone to say, ‘A drink first, I think—our national drink to start with.’ He removed a bottle of chilled vodka from the ice bucket and poured it into two waiting shots glasses.

      ‘Vodka?’

      He was holding one of the glasses out to her across the intimacy of the small table, which was also set with wine glasses, giving her no real option other than to take it. Her fingers had to curl around his as she did so. Why had she never known before this intense difference between her own flesh and that of another? The sensation of his cool, firm skin against hers seared her senses, flooding them with the most acute awareness of him. She could smell the subtle expensive scent of his cologne, fresh and yet somehow at the same time powerfully erotic. He was so close to her that she was sure she could see the dark shadow of the body hair on his chest beneath the fine cotton of his white shirt.

      She hadn’t taken so much as a sip of her vodka yet, and already she was beginning to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Because she knew how important this meeting was—for the charity and for her. Her hand started to shake, and then her body, but to her relief he didn’t appear to notice, releasing the glass into her shaky hold before reaching for his own, and toasting her.

      ‘Za vashe zdorovye—your good health,’ he said, before emptying the glass in one swallow.

      Alena knew that she was expected to do the same. It was the tradition to do so. But even though she managed to return the toast, she could only manage to sip at the fiery ice-cold liquid.

      ‘They say it is less intoxicating if you drink it down in one, but I can see that you are a woman who likes to draw out and enjoy her sensual pleasures. And drinking vodka slowly is a very particular sensual pleasure for those who can bear it. One has to withstand its icy cold and then endure its burning heart. Not a task for the faint-hearted—but then I already know that you have a very brave and reckless heart indeed. You have already proved that to me.’

      He was smiling at her, his gaze trapping hers and holding it easily with the same strength with which she suspected he would hold her body between his hands if he chose to do so. And surely worse than being trapped was the feeling that in his compelling dark green gaze was a knowing glint that suggested …

      Alena didn’t want to risk thinking about what it was telling her.

      She couldn’t help wondering feverishly if his words could really mean that he wanted to remind her of his earlier suggestion that she was afraid to be alone with him, when she had denied that suggestion.

      ‘I am referring, of course, to your bravery