I had done the same thing after I’d put it on and realized that even though it had looked modest on the hanger, my boobs decided they wanted to be the center of attention. And they were. The sweetheart neckline dipped in there, not actually showing a ton of skin but hugging the shit out of them. But he’d seen me in tank tops. He’d seen me in my bra of all things. And he’d definitely seen me without a bra on. He’d seen all kinds of parts of me.
But none of that seemed to make a difference because he wasn’t looking away. Why the hell was he frowning?
“That’s not what it looked like on the mannequin.”
I shimmied my shoulders just a little. They were already C-cups when I was in middle school. He could stare at them all he wanted, and they weren’t going to get any smaller.
His gaze flicked up toward mine. He scowled. “Keep the jacket on.”
It was my turn to frown. “Get real. I’m not risking getting this coat dirty; I read the label. And maybe there’s a sugar daddy or two that might be interested in an all-right-looking, almost thirty-year-old virgin. Do you have a lonely, rich cousin?”
His scowl went nowhere, and it might have even got meaner. “No, and don’t do that shoulder shake again.”
I blinked, and his scowl hit yet another level. He eyed my boobs one last time and finished coming over, walking beside me toward the double doors, where a man in a dark suit stood. He must have recognized him because he stood up straighter, cleared his throat, and said, “Welcome, Mr. Akita.”
A woman came over and helped me take the coat off, handing over a small slip of paper to Alex who pocketed it. That was when I got my first look at the inside of the house.
Mansion.
Estate.
I had never used the word “opulent” before, but that was the best adjective I could think of to describe the house. Everything was massive and expensive. The hallways wider than normal, and even the artwork on the walls seemed like something I should have recognized in a museum.
I pressed my lips together to make sure I wasn’t walking down the hall with my mouth open.
“How rich is your family?” I whispered.
His elbow bumped mine, and I glanced over at him to see him raising his eyebrows.
Oh.
I slipped my hand into the crook of it.
That was nice. Some of the tension left my shoulders as I squeezed the hard muscle beneath his clothes. It felt like a rock under there.
“Rich,” he answered simply.
I snorted. “The fact you didn’t even try to play it off says everything, huh?”
He grunted, but I knew it was an amused one.
“I meant to ask when we went to that building… are they, your family, the same Akita family that—”
To give him credit, he didn’t try to play that off either. “Yes.”
“You didn’t let me finish. The electronics, the cars—”
“Yes. Both sides of the family have successful businesses and investments.”
“No shit,” I breathed. That was going to take me another second to process. “And the rest of the families? The other Atraxian people?”
“The head of the house in Eastern Europe is a steel magnate.”
I blinked.
“The family living in India is in biotech.”
“Huh,” I muttered. “Wait. Did everyone that came from Atraxia look different, and did that determine where they settled? So they could fit in better?”
