to allow him to do so. He would then flatter her and she would give in. It was a game as old as life itself, and an hour or so in bed with her in his suite would surely be enough to satisfy the ache in his groin.
A brief movement of his hand summoned a waitress. Giving her his instructions, he made his way over to the table.
Alena was just about to leave, her back to him as she waited for another waitress to bring her bill.
‘You didn’t drink your tea earlier, and since I am very much in need of a cup why don’t we share a samovar together? Two Russians together, sharing a tradition from our homeland?’
The unexpected sound of his voice had Alena spinning round, her shock intensifying when he reached out and closed long fingers around her wrist, his thumb on her unsteady, far too fast pulse.
His smile was pure megawatt charm. It softened the earlier arrogant harshness of his features and turned him into every woman’s fantasy of a bad boy grown into an adult male. It gave him the sensuality of a Cossack, the romance of a gypsy, the wild devilry of a pirate and the alpha allure of a hero. With that smile he was all of them and more. And she would be a fool to give in to him.
‘No, thank you.’ She tried to sound distant and cool, but she knew he had heard the vulnerable huskiness of her voice, the note of doubt and longing that undermined her will-power. Her throat felt dry and raw with emotion and tension. She wanted to wrench her wrist free of his hold but somehow she couldn’t.
He was smiling at her again, more intimately this time, the malachite eyes darkening and gleaming.
‘I was rude and I upset you, and now you are angry with me. You think, no doubt, that I do not deserve your company. And you are right. After all, such a beautiful woman can easily find a far more pleasant and appreciative companion. But I think you have a kind heart, and that that kind heart will whisper to you to take pity on me.’
Oh, yes, he could be very charming—as well as very cruel. And Alena didn’t need Vasilii to tell her how dangerous that made him. Every woman carried within her DNA the instinctive knowledge of just how dangerous such a man could be. And just how compellingly and demandingly irresistible.
The smile that accompanied his apology revealed strong white teeth and crinkled the skin around his eyes. Its effect on her locked the breath in her lungs and started a stampede of small butterfly movements of shocked but exhilarating excitement fizzing in her stomach. The hurt he had already caused her had left its mark, though—like a bruise against pale vulnerable skin and her brain warned her to be careful.
He was massaging her skin, stroking that place where her pulse was thudding so tempestuously, but far from soothing her his touch was only increasing her agitation and her awareness of him. She must escape from him whilst she still could. He was dangerous, and she was not equipped to deal with that danger.
‘I must go. I …’
Her English was refined and unaccented. Despite the samovar he had seen on the table she did not look or sound Russian, except for those silver-grey eyes that reminded him so intensely of the Neva and the city of his birth. And the pain he had known there …
‘I have ordered our tea. See—the waitress is bringing it now.’
Two waitresses were heading for the table—one carrying fresh tea, the other bringing her bill. The waitress with her bill smiled at her and said politely, ‘I am sorry, Miss Demidova. I thought you wanted your bill.’
She was Russian. She had to be with that surname. And not just any Russian surname either. The irony of her sharing the same surname—a relatively common one in Russia—as his rival for the contract he wanted so badly was not lost on Kiryl. Perhaps it was an omen. The voluntary foster mother or babushka, who had raised him after the death of his own mother, along with several other orphaned and unwanted children, had set great store by old superstitions and beliefs, but he did not. He was a modern man, after all.
‘You’re staying here in the hotel?’ he asked, pulling out a chair for Alena with his free hand and firmly guiding her into it, leaving her no option other than to remain at the table.
He was even more magnificent, more imposing, more heart-stoppingly male close up than he had been at a distance. In the rarefied heated air of the hotel he somehow managed to smell of the clean air of the Russian steppes, with an underlying note of their wildness that brought the tiny hairs up along her skin. Oh, yes—he was dangerous.
‘Yes.’ She answered his question. ‘My brother Vasilii has a concierge apartment here in the hotel for when he’s in London on business.’ Her half-brother was something of a nomad, and although he had similar apartments all over the world, and his most permanent address was an apartment in Zurich, there was nowhere that he really called home.
Alena wasn’t quite sure if she was so pointedly introducing her brother into the conversation to warn Kiryl that she was not unprotected and alone, or to remind herself how Vasilii would judge her own behaviour were he to learn of it. Vasilii, who thought she was safely in the care of the now retired matron of the girls’ school Alena had attended, whom he had hired to stay with her whilst she was away. Poor Miss Carlisle, though, had been rushed into hospital with appendicitis, and was now recovering from an operation in the comfortable nursing home where Alena had insisted she go to to recuperate.
Her absence was giving Alena a brief period of unexpected freedom, but Alena did feel guilty about the way she had deceived Miss Carlisle by letting her think that the niece she had begged Alena to contact on her behalf was now standing in for her. It wasn’t her fault that Miss Carlisle’s niece had left for New York the day before Miss Carlisle had fallen ill. She should have told Vasilii what had happened, of course, but she hadn’t. Her brother was still under the illusion that Miss Carlisle, who flatly refused to have anything to do with modern technology and thus would not use a computer or a mobile telephone, was staying in the apartment with Alena to look after her.
Kiryl’s heart had jerked to a standstill, almost cutting off his breath and leaving him feeling almost as though he was at a hangman’s mercy. Surely it was beyond coincidence that there could be two Vasilii Demidovs—both of whom were wealthy enough to maintain a suite in one of London’s most expensive hotels? Perhaps there had after all been some grain of truth in his old babushka’s superstitious beliefs about the workings of fate?
Kiryl, though, had not built up his business and his own status as a billionaire by making assumptions that were not based on properly sourced fact.
After waiting for the waitress to pour their tea and then withdraw, he asked casually, ‘Your brother is Vasilii Demidov? Head of Venturanova International?’
‘Yes,’ Alena confirmed, a small frown puckering her forehead as she asked anxiously, ‘Do you know Vasilii?’
Was she concerned—anxious—about the possibility of him knowing her brother? Like all hunters Kiryl had a good nose for vulnerability in his prey.
‘Not personally. Although naturally I do know of him and his reputation as a successful businessman. Is he here in London?’ Kiryl knew that he wasn’t, but he wanted to know how much the girl would tell him.
‘No. He’s in China. On business.’
‘Leaving you, his sister, to amuse herself here in London, enjoying its nightlife?’ he suggested with another smile.
Immediately Alena shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Vasilii would never allow me to do
